Author: Jamshed V Rajan

[This was written when the rains were lashing Chennai and my Sify broadband connection was down]

It has been raining cats and dogs in Chennai. NDTV tells me that is not true and it has been raining in other parts of the country also. Can`t mess with a pretty babe on NDTV can we? So, I believe her.

Anyways, with rains lashing the whole of Chennai….my life style has been completely altered. To start with, I don`t sleep in the night…I spend at least three hours swatting the mosquitoes that aim to hurt Rekha. She somehow has not appreciated my gesture. But I did manage to get two liters of blood from these mosquitoes and tried selling it at the Blood Bank. They refused to buy …and wanted to know where it came from. How is a man expected to follow a mosquito and get the address of its victim?

Like I said….thanks to the rain…I bath once a week. Whether I need it or not.

Rekha has been complaining but the other girls in the vicinity have been raving about my new habit. Guess this is what they call animal magnetism. A few of my colleagues did say that the office smells as if the garbage collectors are in their 3rd week of strike.

Thanks to the rains none of my clothes are dry. Think it is a conspiracy by all the girls/women in the World. But I have decided to thwart their plan and beg, borrow, steal dry clothes. So much so, I even got new underwear today morning. Well, new to me.

I also managed to lay my hands on something really expensive. Unfortunately when I wear it…it looks as if I have stolen it or borrowed it.

You probably wonder if Rekha has been influenced by my new habits. Not yet. But I think she is on the verge of getting converted…she didn`t take bath when we had to go visit the dentist this Saturday.

Naturally, she brought along a scarf to hide her unkempt hair.

“Did you like my new scarf? Bought it in T Nagar.” she asked.

“Ohh…it is a lovely scarf. And yes…do me a favour… when the scarf blows off in the wind…don`t chase it.”

Though not planned, I had to get a few teeth removed at the dentist.

Some animals have unique features. Some don`t. A giraffe for example can clean its ears with its twenty-inch long tongue. Give that tongue to a man and he would be cleaning the ears of the lady sitting next to him.

Did you know that it is not possible to create a folder called ‘Con` on any PC? Why doesn`t Bill Gates want us to create a folder by that name? Is it because he fears we will create a folder called ‘con` and dump all his pictures inside? Also…why wasn’t Bill Gates son named ‘Window’?

Myth: B.C. means ‘Before Cable` & A.D. means ‘After Dominos pizzas`

Winner of the Miss Universe competition doesn`t represent the whole Universe. If that were true…why does the Miss Universe always have to be from Earth? Wouldn`t the aliens be interested to showcase their women with asset? There is one explanation though, the organizers call for nominations to these beauty contests only in Earthly media…

I am no exaggerator…but last night while having dinner I got a call from the Indian President Dr Abdul Kalam. He said I was being awarded the ‘Exaggerator of the year award`. Since I don`t like to be disturbed during dinner, I informed him that I would call him at the next available opportunity and kept the phone down.

After dinner, my curiosity got the better of me and I did a Google search. Seems ‘Exaggerator of the year award` has been previously won by Subramanian Swamy, George Bush, Amar Singh, TN Seshan, Bishen Singh Bedi, Uma Bharati, Krish Srikkanth and Anirdham Chaudhri among others.

On further research, I found that on 5th of January of each year, both the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha members in consultation with the Executive and Judiciary come up with a list of ten biggest exaggerators from various walks of life. Behind each of these ten individuals, the Govt then tags a CIA operative. You probably wonder why a CIA operative behind each of these individuals….but this shift to CIA operatives is being followed since the late 1950s when Jawahar Lal Nehru won the award for exaggerating the benefits of socialism.

In their bid to win the award, the selected individuals had begun to bribe the neutral watchers…back then the RAW agents. The decision to request US of A for ten able bodied CIA operatives for the above said task was taken after Mehboob Khan won the award for his exaggerated direction of the 1957 Nargis-Sunil Dutt starrer called Mother India. After he won the Best Exaggerator Award, Times of India (which was then actually a newspaper) had said: “No amount of awards will be enough for the way Mehboob Khan exaggerated the troubles Nargis faced. Wherever she went she faced trouble…sometimes the viewer wondered…if the movie was supposed to relax?”

After the awards were announced, the neutral observers said that they had been tempted by Nargis and Sunil Dutt…and recommended that CIA operatives be used so that the language problem and the minimal exchange rate ensure no money exchanges hands.

After a while, I stopped searching and looked for Kalu`s number. The person you address as the President of India is a pal of mine and I address him as Kalu. I had his number stored in my mobile…and thus gave him a missed call. I generally do that because for him outgoing is free…and he always says all calls he makes go into Gandhi`s account. Within a few seconds he gave me a call…and we spoke for about 21 minutes.

Why 21 minutes? I was only trying to convince him that I didn`t want the award…but he won`t listen one bit.

As of now I have agreed to be at the presentation ceremony scheduled at the Indira Gandhi Maidan in New Delhi. Heads of State from 189 countries have agreed to grace the occasion – the biggest gathering since Diana`s death in a car crash. It is being telecast live on NDTV, Aaj Tak, Doordarshan…and on Sun TV because somebody from Tamil Nadu is winning the award after a long time.

To congratulate me on winning the award mail me – jv.rajan@gmail.com

I think I was brainwashed by Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), coz I am not the type to volunteer for tasks requiring courage. But there I was infiltrating the porous India-Pakistan border. I think I took the route Abhishek Bachchan walked/ran in his first movie Refugee.

My instructions were simple…I was to get into Pakistan and lie low for close to a year or two. I was to read all the pages of the daily called “The Dawn” delivered at my door exactly at dawn….instructions for me were to appear in the classifieds section.

From building or destroying a bridge single-handedly to taking care of an Indian diplomat`s 18-year old daughter when her father went spying were the kind of tasks I was to do. Though, I never got any assignments for the first two years.

Then things started to change. I got instructions to quietly sneak out of my house in the middle of the night and wait in a dark alley for somebody with a red rose in his suit. Thanks to the dark alley, I never got to see any rose. Once while waiting in the dark I was caught by the police but I refused to throw light on the situation. A spy`s best friend is his/her lie-ability….thanks to which I reached home safe.

The night after, the policeman caught me again. This time I had little choice but to accompany him to the police station. They drugged me – which ensured that I didn`t resist the arrest – and put me in a cell. The cell did have a cell-phone….no no..not a mobile…but a phone for the cell…but I didn`t make any calls. It was not like I had stolen a few books from the library and they had me booked. I didn`t even know why I was in the prison for. I knew for sure that even if I had stolen a safety pin, the Pakistani authorities wouldn`t be able to pin it on me. My papers were all intact and in place.

I would have got out of the Pakistani prison soon…but unfortunately I was correctly suspected of being a RAW agent. I did try to tell them that I was part of the Refugee movie crew and had been left behind by Abhishek. I tried to reason out that Abhishek was jealous of me getting too close to the movie`s heroine Kareena Kapoor…but they didn`t buy my story.

The good thing about being a writer and being in prison is that there are prose and cons. Ask Mandela, the man knows. I began to write my autobiography.

My heart did believe that the Indian President will get in touch with General Pervez Musharraf and get a presidential pardon for me…but my brain suggested…he might as well get another sucker and brainwash him.

Had it not been for this thief whom I befriended at the state prison, I would still be in the 12X12 cell (which is any day bigger than the 4X4 cubicles all IT people sit in, the whole day long) in Islamabad. A lingerie thief who also happened to be the local commander-in-thief helped me give the jailor the slip!