So most of the people reacted saying, “he is going to repeat the same old jokes and why spend 2K when you can watch him on youtube.”, when I told them about me going to Russell Peters show. Well to all of them I would say, you missed a pretty good show! Chennai traffic tops the list of things I hate about this place. And thanks to them I reached the show a good twenty minutes late, and missed out on the laughter. Well to the Chennai crowd, I appreciate how everyone was just organized enough to not rush in and out because of our obvious typical habits. I mean for God’s sake, you have paid for the freaking ticket so obviously you will get your seat, but no, if you don’t push a bunch of people around you and get there before everyone, someone might just capture your seat. But I was glad to not experience such chaos in this show.
The following events have been dramatized and are not in chronological order.
Imagine a suburb in Damascus. The black tarred roads provide a contrast to the orange hue of bricks bathed in sunlight. It’s about 3:30 in the afternoon, and Khalid has just put his younger sister to sleep. He sneaks back to the living room, and after making sure that his mother locked the door before leaving for work, he picks up his battered laptop, manages to fix the charger into the half defunct socket, and settles down to watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones.
That seems jarring to some of you, perhaps? A teenager in Syria obsessively clinging onto the latest episode of an HBO Television series seems far-fetched, especially when you’re busy imagining that he’d be watching an Arabic show.
But fret not. Khalid has ample reasons to be obsessed over a fantasy drama series that breaks almost every custom held dear to his religiously conservative parents. After all, it was them who sent him to an English medium school, and it was them who dismissed it when he began listening to songs by Eminem. So he naturally graduated from episodes of Friends to the latest phenomenon dominating American Television. And he wasn’t alone. Many youngsters around the globe were able to - courtesy of illegal torrents – follow the adventures of the Stark family.
Equality is such a big word which has been thrown around since god knows when. Political propaganda, war declarations, revolutionary speeches or even prenups, each ultimately focusses on the concept of ‘equality’. But at times I often wonder if equality is what we all want? Has it ever dawned upon people that equality isn’t everyone’s cup of tea?
In actuality, equality can have several different meanings. Coexistence, fairness and indiscrimination are a couple of concepts which can be derived from equality. What I personally believe is that ‘equality’ is an abstract idea which may be desired by some but unconsciously resented by many.
Aristotle once defined equality as “same treatment of similar persons”. But not all are same, we all are different. Sure we as humans have the same skeleton structure and are presented with brains to think, but not all are alike. And while equality is a leisure for many, those who have that ideal gift to their disposal at times hope for its riddance.
No other city in the world, in any kind of weather, has damp streets that reflect the light quite like Mumbai. And this, more than anything else I suppose, is what I miss and love most about Mumbai. I like the food and the smells and people and the frenzy and the ‘fuck you, get out of my way boss’ attitude. It is something very special, sitting somewhere and watching the city and its lights move. Sometimes, when there isn’t too much traffic, I experience this on Marine Drive as well. But this is very rare. Because there is this gentle equilibrium between wet and clear and night and traffic and dysfunctional drainage that is needed for the perfect Mumbai glow. Marine Drive rarely achieves this balance. Sometimes if you sit on top in the double-decker from Hutatma Chowk to Worli—the 66?—you get superb reflections all the way from depot to depot.
This is about a night where I sat down with my friends, the three of us were bored at night and had nothing to do. After running out of topics, we finally started talking about something I hadn’t really thought about – Can India advance socially? This obviously lead to nonsensical jokes and ceaseless arguments.
To be honest, politics is not my strength, well is it yours? You can never know enough about it, especially when you’re an Indian with its vast history and the current affairs as well. A friend of mine is rather well versed with it, and I realized I knew more than most. So I guess it was an enlightening night in more than just one way.
If one takes India, with all the talk about secularism, riots, the upcoming elections, you would only come to a conclusion that India can never really be secular in the real meaning of the word no matter how it portrays itself. The recent riots and the Uttarakhand floods have gone on to prove this point. Riots occurred due to community enticement and no one remembers the real reason for it. Hindus have a reason, and Muslims have a reason, while now that it has cooled off, the politicians and the parties are pointing fingers at each other and playing the ‘blame-game’. After Uttarakhand flood rescue operations were being run, politicians were giving media interviews and posting on Twitter that they had rescued people without taking into account what state they were from or their religion. Well, hello? Isn’t it the way it is actually supposed to be. The fact that the politicians ( not taking names ) had to resort to such tactics, explains their true motive . What caused this? The ‘Modi-Effect’ of rescuing a large number of Gujaratis from there when actually he could’ve saved others as well. So the other politicians want to show how they are better midst all the people waiting for faster rescue operations and fighting for their lives.
So you had a kickass weekend? Drank till you dropped dead on the floor and drunk dialed your ex? Now Monday morning is killing you and you regret the weekend and the headache is being a bitch? Hangover is something that reminds you that you had a weekend that was worth the headache. But here is the difficult part, attending early morning classes hung-over or going to the office for an important presentation or meeting and getting annoyed by every second question being asked to you. Yes, all these are very common. Now obviously this article doesn’t go for the ones who drink anything but alcohol. But that doesn’t mean you can’t read it.
Here I am giving you a few tricks which I guess many of you already follow, but still I am going to share it with all of you. 7 tricks of getting rid of that hangover from the already existing morning (Monday mostly) blues.