Heavy weekend

It has been a heavy weekend for me. For fitness freaks a heavy weekend would mean lifting heavy weights at the gym. For the music types…a heavy weekend would mean hours of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Blue Cheer etc. But for me…it just means a weekend when I was not able to sleep in the afternoons.

On Friday evening itself, I had to rush to the rescue of Dimple Kapadia. Apparently, she had gained weight for the movie Being Cyrus but couldn`t reduce it after the shooting was over. I started off by saying she should have only three idlies in the morning. I would have continued had not she spoiled my appetite by asking: “After breakfast or before breakfast?” By 9.30 p.m. on Friday, I was back home for three dosas and coconut chutney, which Rekha made for me. Ok, she made the call.

On Saturday morning, Michael Jackson woke me from sleep. He was calling from Bahrain, where he is currently staying. From the lack of clarity in the line, I guess it was the ten-minute long calls that all Malayalees use to call their friends/relatives. Having finished with all small boys in California, Jackson had decided to shutdown his Neverland Valley Ranch. Some 60 odd workers who have been serving him for decades will now be left without jobs. The entertainer wanted to know if he should retain the 60 odd workers for later. I replied: “If with age your taste will drift from small boys to old men, you should keep them as back up.”

At 1 p.m. I was at my dining table (wonder why they don`t call it the lunching table?) with a 7-course meal, which Rekha had cooked, spread before me. Remember, this is a satire site. Even before I could swallow my first morsel, I got a call from Meera Jasmine, the South Indian heartthrob. She was upset that she had a small moustache growing and wanted to end her life. I reached in time to stop her from applying the Anne French hair removal cream, just below her nose. A satisfied man came back home at 7 p.m. to have the meal my wife had cooked for him – here the ‘him` is me. Now, it was truly the dining table.

On Sunday, had it not been for an SMS by the National Award winning director, Madhur Bhandarkar, I would have slept till 8 a.m.. Bhandarkar, whom I had helped with the movie Page 3, now wanted my opinion on his new movie Corporate. Or that`s what I thought till I landed in his hotel room. If you are a girl, I would suggest you don`t land up in his hotel room. This is how the conversation went:

“Jammy, save me from Bipasha Basu!”

“Why? What happened?”

“We had a premier last evening, and Bips is pretty angry. She is sobbing, in the next room.”

“Gosh, what happened? Don`t tell me you did a Preeti Jain on her?

“Not again. Wouldn`t do that. This lady is upset that before the shooting for Corporate began, I had told her she had to be in a suit throughout the movie.”

“What is so bad about it?”

“Hold on…as planned, she was in a suit…just that while signing the call sheet, she had thought it would be a swim suit.”

I was getting impatient. This is the problem with moviewalas. They always have to give a background, then the characters, and then reveal the plot.

“So what is she saying now?”

“Since morning, she has been asking me to include at least one swimming pool scene. And this is a movie on Corporate life!”

“Ask her to wear her swim suit, jump into your bath tub…and you handle the camera work using your Sony Handycam.”

That seemed to sooth Bhandarkar`s nerves. I was back in my house by 6.30 p.m.. Apparently, Madhur Bhandarkar stuck to my advice and went on to film Bips. Check it out – Click Here!

Two many twins

Currently there are two (or too?) many twins in our family. One of our relatives – Sandhya from Rekha`s side -gave birth to boy twins a few days back. Wonder how she is going to manage.

And today morning, I got a funny message from my younger sister –

A sardar had twins, he named them Tara and Sitara. After a few years he again had twins and he called them Peter and Repeater. When after two more years his wife gave birth to another set of twins…a little upset Sardar tried to send a message across by naming them Max & Climax. Unfortunately, one more year and he fathered another set of twins. Not to be beaten this time…he named them Tired & Retired!

I know….the What-if article…”what if all men in the World were gay and all women in the world were lesbians” is still pending. Watch out!

A tribute to Women

My previous article was on why women matter to men. The timing was intentional….after all… 8th of March is International Women`s Day. Heres wishing the very best to all the women I love and all those who love me. Not to mention Rekha!

Here are some quotes, which actually speak volumes about women.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
Timothy Leary (1920 – 1996)

I hate women because they always know where things are.
James Thurber (1894 – 1961)

Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978)

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
Charlotte Whitton, Canada Month, June 1963

At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881 – 1975), Uneasy Money

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

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Jammy’s Talk show

This time around, I have added background music and cheer and audience applause. I must say I was impressed with myself. The problem with getting impressed with self is that you start wondering if the others will also get impressed.

This Podcast is about environmental protection…so go on and have fun.

Click on this image in THIS PAGE to listen to my second Podcast (The wav format file lasts for 2 mins & 24 seconds). You can also download the 2.75 Mb file by clicking here

At the restaurant

Rekha and I went out to eat, last evening. It has been due for a while…

I was so tired (had come back from office only at 8.00 p.m.) that now I don`t even remember the restaurant we went to. A tired me am a monster to handle. Rekha has learnt it the hard way; she now keeps quite long enough for me to doze off. But the waiter serving our table didn`t know that I was tired and thus a monster.

After a ten-minute delay, he gave us our soup. Before he could leave our table, I spotted a twig in my soup. “I think I see a twig in my soup,” I said.

“Oops. Sorry sir, I will get you my branch manager,” he replied. I had a feeling he was making fun of me. As he moved…the shadow cleared and I realized it was not a twig but a housefly.

“Sir, it is not a twig…but a housefly,” I shouted so that the waiter could hear over the din.

He took a sharp about-turn, came to my desk, looked into my bowl of soup and said: “Ohh…that my dear sir, is not a housefly. He is our chef. You might be wondering what our chef is doing dressed like a house fly and that too inside your soup.”

“Yes, I am certainly interested,” I was curt. One has to be curt with the hospitality industry people.

“Sir, our previous customer was a magician. And he didn`t like the food.”

I tipped my hat as a mark of my respect for the magician, and went about dipping my spoon in the soup. It was around this time that I noticed the fly was alive. I might be a Hindu by birth but by faith I am a true-blue Buddhist…I can`t eat a live housefly.

“Sir, your chef is still alive in my soup,” I told the waiter.

He shot back: “Sir, If I kill him, I could be jailed for 14 years for murder.”

All this while Rekha was sitting opposite me and having her soup. She was all but finished. For a minute, I thought…I was just being schizophrenic…for she didn`t respond in any way to my conversation with the waiter.

I knew the waiter was making sense when he said it was murder. What we didn`t notice was that the chef-fly was actually drowning in the soup. Soon enough he was dead, and I was happy. But like I said, when I am tired, I am a monster…an irritated monster.

I called the waiter again: “Sir, I now have a dead housefly in my soup.”

“Suicide or homicide?” he asked. From the way he spoke to me, I had a feeling he had put down his papers at the restaurant.

“Sir, I don`t know if it is suicide or homicide but I know he is dead.”

“And if I may complain of this soup…it now has a dead housefly in it.”

“I am not surprised. Don`t tell me you expected our chef-housefly to be alive at 120 degree Celsius. And anyways he was complaining about the poor salaries here.”

Yours sincerely is an honest man. He recognizes an irritated man when he interacts with him for a minute. So, I decided to have the soup…and I did.

“Eeks!, this soup tastes funny!” I shouted after the first spoonful.

He was quick on his feet to chef-mate me: “If the soup tastes funny, why are you not laughing?”