My father is a most interesting human being. He is one guy i've never been able to figure out. I can't say he's particularly smart, or dumb, or hard working, or principled, or anything. All i know is that he's a pretty terrible storyteller and a couple of people out there would definitely vouch for the fact that so am i ( you shall understand the significance of this statement a little later).

Haan, so I was just having a conversation with him, and he was trying to elucidate me on the significance of ramzan etc, and then the conversation somehow shifted to his beliefs, and His father's beliefs, to our ancestry, and then somehow to the significance of the little Syed before my name that i've always managed to shy away from. Now my father's faith in the concept of Genes is unshakable. It ranges from his defence of smoking (Apparently, how strong your lungs are has a lot to do with genes. Churchill lived till whenever, he cites, how do you explain that? Of course there's a little glint in my eye which he conveniently manages to not catch ), to the fact that he's an honest man (and he's convinced so am i ), to ( now wait for this one ) the inability of any of us to be decent at Math. I come from a family of doctors, my dad and two of his three brothers are doctors, and the only reason for that is because they supposedly all sucked at Math. Also, most of them are short-tempered, and so is my brother, here i guess i deviate a little bit.

Anyway, that's not the point.

The point is, i'm supposed to stand tall in the face of adversaries. Because Syeds are like that only. My forefathers fought against Akbar and told him to chooso his own because they thought Din-i-Ilahi was all shit. He wanted to prosecute them, so they ran off to Bareili, present-day Baro, which is apparently where i Originally hail from. So my puppa told me that i will make it big in life and rise and shine because i'm a Syed. At This moment, i failed to manage to put two and two together ( nobody in my door door ke rishtedaar has really managed to make it Big in life) and smiled and said No daddy, that's not because i am Syed, that's because i am Stud.

But then again, who was i talking to. My baap is the baap of bad jokes. His eternal favourite ( he's cracked it once a month for the last 15 years of my existence, i Clearly remember ), is that once the Indian contingent was sitting at the pool during the Barcelona Olympics when one of the officials came and asked one of our most esteemed athletes if he was relaxing. The athlete turned around and said, "No, i'm Milkha Singh."

Indeed, my father is a most interesting human being.

Ripley's believe it or not.

Rituparna Sengupta's page on Wikipedia says that she got an award in 1997 for a film called "aamar gooder kuttar baada"

I'm not kidding.

Vagera, vagera, vagera sounds like Viagra, Viagra, Viagra.

Yesterday was shabbebaraat, which is an Islamic version of All Souls Day (ya, the pretty-much-only thing which separates this religion from that is the sword, and obviously, you can't say anything more than that because if you've seen cows slaughtered, you know better) and every festival, regardless of what it's supposed to mean, gets the entire Park Circus onto the roads. Which also means that you can't possibly figure out the road from the pavement from the naali which separates them except for when you feel your feet getting wet or feeling moist (depending on whether you've stepped on piss or shit). The funny part is, that they(we?) burst crackers on this day, and don't ask me why. They(we?) make and eat halua on shabbebaraat because the prophet had apparently broken a tooth and couldn't eat anything else on the day so he ate halua (oh man, how i would love to be the prophet just to see this from the clouds), so one can never know.

But anyway, poor old Neil wanted to have cha, so we met in the middle of this cacophony, which he obviously did not expect, and in all his innocence remarked, "Era jekhaane paaye, bomb phataaye kyano?"

All i can say is, well, who knows these things?

And if you're waiting for how the title of the post will eventually fit in here, of course it won't. After all, i'm your friendly neighbourhood attention-whore.

Because life is a Sacred Game.

Sometimes when i read a book, i end up thinking of characters who just pass by and wonder what it would be like if the book was about them. And it happens most when you are in a train compartment because you see characters all around you.

I met an old sarcastic couple. I mean, i've never met an Old Sarcastic Couple before, and these guys were the most fictional real characters i've seen around. And i met the most photogenic little kid i've ever seen, who patiently sat and saw all the photos on my camera, and a hijda who was a Man (i'm sorry, but again, i've never seen a Beard on a hijda, come on) And in the middle of this tedious journey, i was thinking of all the crazy things i did, and how Kerala was like a Wow which stretched on for a week, and about the paddy field i rode the scooty into, and about rocks which looked like sculptures, and mind you, this was when i was taking a break and looking out of the window from the book i was reading, and in the middle of vast green crop land, i saw a bunch of deer hop around.

And suddenly my world stopped. And i tried to savour in the moment. That somewhere, at the end of my month-long cacophonous existence, i saw a sight most spectacular in its simplicity. And its weirdness.

But that's the thing, the book will never be about the deer.

And well, thank god for that.

My brother is a closet Argentina supporter, i know it. One of the most common reasons for supporting a country is usually that they're arch rivals of the team your elder sibling supports. But my brother is not the die hard football fan, not even the ones who turn fans during the World Cup. He supported France in 98 because everybody around him supported Brazil, and this World Cup he's supporting Italy because he had an Italia tshirt and thought it was a good enough reason. Strange man he is, yes.

But that's not the point. The point is, that he happens to come across these random articles written on Maradona and Argentina and he forwards them to me, on the pretext that i'll enjoy them. And i just found one on his desktop. The other day he turned a supporter of Greece (he was supporting Angelopolis, he said) because they were playing Argentina and everybody likes the Argentinians. He screamed and shouted 'Go Greece' every time the the Greek goalkeeper made a save, or they managed to make a correct pass, i mean that's a real sad state to be in. But in spite of his rather embarrassingly drunk-loud-noisy support for the Greeks, i noticed it. His eyes lit up when Messi made a swish and a flick (yes yes, a la Vingardium Leviosa), he smiled when Maradona jumped and danced, his eyebrows raised inconspicuously when Milito pierced through the Greek defence, even though he might have been pretending to be gunning for the Greek defender at that point of time.

Well, one can't really blame him. It's just the game beautifully played after all.

Very often, i see myself fitting in. More often, i see myself fitting out. In the middle of people, looking like people all around me, smiling at people, too many smiles, too many people. That’s when i know it’s happening. And i float in and out, mechanically. My feet move me, so i move, technically, and that’s good enough for most of me. Sometimes, it scares you because you keep seeing the same people everywhere. It’s like a nightmare you can’t get over. You can’t stay at home all day because you need to meet people to keep your mind from getting a little numb, so you get out, to catch some air and at least make faces at the dogs. And then you manage to bump into the same air around you, the same smell of your sweat, the same faces, the same places. And you get drawn back into the same story. Or you fit out.

Basically, i need a drastic change in my life. In a lot of ways.

Mera baap doctor hai.

My father was overflowing with love and concern for his little kid who was running a high temperature and had aches all over his body today. So he comes back home, and tells me that he has got me some things which will make me absolutely fit-and-fine in no time. And unpacks, with a lot of excitement, a box which contains all kinds of medicine.

Clearly, a doctor's life sucks.