A Feel-Good Post About the Warning on My Underwear and Other Arbitrary Things
All righty, then. Things have been getting too serious on our beloved site for a while, so I thought I’d chip in and provide some comic relief.
I wanna start by saying I love Mumbai. I’ve been here for a year now, and it’s already put me at the starting point on the road to my dreams. In fact, one of my secondary dreams, that I’ve had for about 7 years, came true last night. I played guitar at the rock concert at K J Somaya college. I made a $hitload of mistakes. In fact, I screwed up the opening notes of Default’s Deny, our first song. But the great thing about rock is that it provides this wonderful surge of energy, like an outlet for venting your pent-up demons and frustrations. This is something only headbangers can understand. You either get it or you don’t. It was this rock adrenaline that carried me through all the four songs as I jumped around, headbanged and overacted my way through the set list (Meant To Live by Switchfoot, Ten Ton Brick by Hurt and an original). Our bassist is also a pretty active guy on stage, so it was almost like he and I provided visual distraction from our musical mistakes, mostly mine. Musically trained people saw through it, of course, or rather heard through it. But I loved it; I made mistakes, yes, but I loved the experience. 7 years ago, my band in IIT Delhi got cold feet and we decided not to perform because we were a weird band. We didn’t even have a bassist – our keyboard chap did bass for a couple of songs and the second guitarist did bass for a couple others. It sounds filmy, but the ghost of that night has now been wiped out. It’s been replaced by a literal pain in the neck from 15 minutes of headbanging without warm up.
And for all music lovers, here’s a beautiful instrumental by our lead guitarist Silman Marak. Excuse the lack of production values in the video – we had nothing but a half hour’s worth of battery in a made-in-China digicam and Windows Movie Maker.
I also love Mumbai because
1. Compared to many places, it’s better for women
2. People don’t smoke in buses and trains
3. Autos go by the meter and don’t take you for a ride. I mean, they take you for a ride all right, but without taking you for a ride.
4. People stand in queue
5. Roadside cutting chai is fabulous
6. People in buses don’t talk to the guy sitting next to them with vocal volume set at election campaign levels
Of course, I must point out that my lazy ass is very thankful that my profession doesn’t involve taking a local train at 9 AM and 6 PM everyday.
One fine morning, when I was still new, I went to Borivali with a script in hand. Borivali happens to be a terminus, so I thought I’d peacefully get off the train when it reached its final destination. Little did I realize that there were 50,000 people poised to charge and enter through the very door I was standing at. I was Stuart Little trying to go in the opposite direction against a stampede of wild bulls. I nearly fell on to the rail tracks; my script nearly fell off too. I sustained a slight injury in my right hand. My script was made of stronger stuff – nothing happened to it. Since then I’ve been scared to take the train to Borivali.
Wise men have talked about confronting your fears to overcome them. Maybe I will, someday. Till then, bus numbers 210,204,224,229 and then 298 are perfectly okay for me.
Sometimes We Need To Leave Our Brains At Home
A lot of people (forgive me for saying this) have a kind of elitist attitude towards movies. For them, a movie that isn’t deep or thought-provoking or something isn’t even worth considering. Out-and-out entertainers are beneath contempt. I was one of these…heh heh heh. Till I met someone I fell in love with and we went to watch Mujhse Shaadi Karogi together. I can’t remember what exactly she said, but I realised this: it’s not a crime to laugh. Before that day, I had this superior-intellect attitude, “Oh no, I’ll not laugh. How dumb this is.” Even if I felt like laughing I used to hold back. That day, I changed. Now, if I feel like laughing, I laugh.
I’ve also come to realise that people do need mindless entertainment once in while. We need a Mumbai Meri Jaan, we definitely need a Black Friday, we need an Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, and occasionally we also need a Partner or a Welcome.
I no longer react to movies ‘intellectually’. If one asks me for my favourite movies, I’ll anyday have Black Friday, Oye Lucky, Mithya, Chak De, Munnabhai, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Let’s Talk, Bollywood Calling, Dor, Andaaz Apna Apna etc at the top of my list, but…I have no problem admitting that I also loved some ‘non-intellectual’ mainstream movies like Salaam Namaste, Hum Tum, the first half of Om Shanti Om, Aankhen (Vipul Shah’s), the first half of Hey Baby etc etc. I’m not a blanket fan either. I was bored during Veer Zaara, Devdas, Eklavya, Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi etc. I was going to write some “good” things about Mohabbatein, but decided against it. And there’ll be a list of at least 30 movies that I found too excruciating to bear and walked out of. It would be fun to name them here, but I won’t, for reasons of professional diplomacy ;)
I also hereby state that I enjoyed these films more than I disliked them. They were entertaining enough to be classified as timepass movies in my book.
Dhamaal, Salaam-E-Ishq (mainly the Govinda track, actually), No Entry, Garam Masala, Partner, Welcome, Dostana, Main Hoon Na. Do I hear accusations of bad taste? Why so serious? ;)
Tales from Underneath
There was a time when I used to procrastinate about buying new underwear because I wasn’t too financially stable and also because I used the argument “Dekhega kaun?” There was this really old, old one where the main body had practically all but detached itself from the elastic band. This was the emergency undie in case all the others were in some stage of washing or drying. One fine evening I had to wear it. I wore bermuda shorts over it and went off to have a chop or two. Sitting or getting off my bike must have ripped off one side of the elastic completely, with the result that the undie now was so loose that it was coming down at least an inch out of the bottom of my shorts! Now, what d’you do in a public place when your underwear is literally falling out of your pants? You don’t shove your hand inside your pants and grope and try to pull it up – God, no! That would look very indecent in well-mannered society. So what I did was spread my knees slightly and walk bow-legged so that the undie would be stretched out a bit around my thighs and not fall down and out. It wasn’t a very long walk to the bike, so I managed to get there without too many people noticing my queer walk or the internal disturbance I was going through.
When you’re in a teenager you try to be prim and proper in front of the opposite sex. One day in my first year of Higher Secondary School (ie 11th), four female classmates came visiting. I used to stay with my uncle then. We were sitting in my room and having a civil conversation. Everything was fine and dandy till a kid cousin sister came in with my sun-dried clothes. This was in accordance with my brother’s instructions – she put them smack on the table where we were seated, and on top of the pile was my oldest, most worn and torn, local brand undie. “Your clothes,” she declared before I could take any evasive action, and coolly left. I was too embarassed to know how to react. I wonder if the girls still remember it.
There’s a warning on the tags of one of my chaddies. Can’t remember which – Lee, Jockey or Puma (check out the name-dropping). The warning is ‘Keep away from fire.’….???? What’s that supposed to mean? I mean, would there be any incentive for me to go near a fire with that particular underwear on? And are we supposed to keep it away from fire when we’re inside it or not inside it? And would it be extra explosive if we’re inside it? I mean, who in their sane mind would take ANY piece of clothing near a fire? Ties don’t have warnings that say ‘Keep away from fire’. Shirts don’t have warnings saying ‘Keep away from microwave’. Cargos don’t say ‘Keep away from sugarcane vendor’s machine’. What possible financial gain or spiritual enlightenment could I seek to make from keeping my underwear near fire?
Tags: concerts, Mumbai life, Rock guitar, timepass films, underwear
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Kenny: Don’t tell me you don’t know why underwears carry the warning ‘keep away from fire’!!
Kenny — very entertaining post. though it did not have a ’script’, was a very engaging read.
yo Ibanez…..kewl….gr8 tone….nice composition….
fan fuckin elas tically hillarious! I love bbay too! Pining to find my way back to the karmabhoomi… see u there mate.
And just why exactly does this post need to be here in PFC ????…..Go get a personal blog dude ….Maybe someone there would be interested to read about your underwear and love for Mumbai?
I guess it would help if we can have some level of moderation done to what the editors post themselves , won’t it ?
slice of life, and don’t worry, the underwear thing has happened with me too..
@ Meenakshi
Why so serious?
lol Kenny bade bade sheharon mein aisi chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rehti hain ;)
Subrat, to prevent them from burning?
Saurshaz and Magik, fellow lovers of Mumbai!
axw11, Silman’s the first Indian to be accepted for the guitar maintenance course at Ibanez in Japan.
Indraneelda, if this has happened to you too, then I think it’s a good sign for me – main bhi ek din bada aadmi banunga :D
Neeraja, the wardrobe dysfunction incidents were in medium-size shahar of Guwahati
u write well yaar….keep it going! The last paragraph was especially hilarious.
@ Meenakshi
Get a life yaar … Its ok ..
hahah..reminds of that classic oz post..
“Male underwear conspiracy theory”..
I wonder as raging hormones teenagers..how guys drool over seeing a bra or a panty of their female classmates..do..girls..drool over Kenny’s phatti hui chaddi?..lol!!
Phatti chaddi..Nikla..kenny ka post…lmao!!
Kenny, Congratulations on your concert! I remember my first show playing bass. The entire band was pumped up and we were opening with Sweet Child by Gn’R. Went on stage, strapped the bass, took my position…the drummer counts us in, the lead guitarist starts the riff and I completely miss the count to start the bass riff. F***ed up big time but that surge of energy carried me through as I switched to playing the root notes and then came in full on at the next change up
\m/ \m/
Thanks for the emosanal support, guys.
FenderBender, I’m glad you know EXACTLY what I’m talkin’ about!
And this I’ve observed, bass is the most private instrument of all. No one notices bass except for musically trained people; the biggest kick comes for the bassist himself. Only a bassist knows the kind of power the instrument gives.