Yup, They’re Married

What do Bollywood stars do when they go abroad?
Duh. They shop.

What do married Bollywood stars do when they go abroad?
Double duh! They shop together, of course!

Ta-da! Meet Aishwarya Rai, currently beloved of robots, and her husband Abhishek Bachchan, fortuitously the patron saint of robots in films. As soon as I saw these pics, I wondered how come I hadn’t seen or heard anything about their little Roman holiday until now – and then I realized that this is no longer 2007 and nobody cares. Oh well. Let us pretend!

The Glamorous Life of India’s First Couple (with-a-Portmanteau-Name)

ABHI: I don’t understand. What are these short, fat, ugly things? Are they edible?
ASH: Ha-ha, of course not! They’re people – common, little people. Eating them would mess up our organic diet.

ABHI: Astonishing! They’re everywhere. Walking upright.
ASH: Stop staring at them, you moron. They‘re supposed to stare at us!

ABHI: You know, it’s not cool for you to talk to me like that!
ASH: Yeah? Who’s gonna stop me? You and your baby pink shirt, flaming orange watch and that murse you clutch like a blankie? I don’t think so.

ABHI: When you talk like that you sound exactly like your ‘roid rage-y ex.
ASH: Yes, well, this scene was a lot more fun and interesting when Sanjay Leela Bhansali was directing and Ajay Devgan was in it.
ABHI: Huh?
ASH: Just wanted to throw that out there. Hey, do you have a white suit? I just remembered some fanfic we might want to try out.

[via]

 

Agony Aunt for a Day

Well, this shouldn’t get me blocked or relentlessly spammed or anything.

If any of you are reading this on a public computer or in front of eagle-eyed colleagues or nosy children and are sensitive about written words, you might want to come back to it at a later date. Fair warning.

You see… I have found a previously unexplored, terrific corner of my favoritest rag ever: The Mumbai Mirror. A tabloid so awful, they give Ekta Mata a run for her money (so fabulous, I actually cared about the IPL for the quick minute it took me to read that!). Home to journalism so scurrilously yellow, they provoked a Bachchan blackout (never mind, ToI, you can read his blog instead). Joy!

So what is this new section of the newspaper? The Sexpert, of course! They say every publication finds the readers it deserves (note: I don’t think they say that, whoever ‘they’ might be), and going by the letters The Sexpert has the, um, honor to answer, The Mumbai Mirror is certainly a strong case in point.

Now The Sexpert probably knows what he’s doing – it certainly sounds like it. But that doesn’t mean, I can’t butt in and offer some plain speaking, does it? Welcome to the internet. Here’s The Sexpert Alternative at work for you:

I am a 20-year-old man. I want to know the importance of pubic hair. I have lots of pubic hair all over my body and I want to remove them temporarily. How will it affect my body if I remove all the pubic hair?

Awww, I’m sure the girlfriend didn’t mean it when she said you were a giant dick. As for the importance of it – well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but if you take it off, you’ll fall apart. Pubic hair acts like duct tape for your skin. Truth.

I am 37 years old. For one-and-a-half months, I have noticed that my foreskin does not pull back due to dryness. I have also noticed a white-ish-cream layer below the foreskin, which is dry. When I pull back the foreskin, I feel extreme pain and cracks appear on the ring. They hurt when I bathe. I find it difficult to have sex. What medicine should I apply?

Dude! Your peepee has been broken for a month and a half and your solution is to write letters to the paper? When you go to the hospital, ask them for a psych consult.

I am 50 years old and my partner is 58. We are on the foreplay level, but recently, by accident I inserted my penis briefly into her vagina. I experienced a mild burning sensation for one day, all over the penis. Could this be because she is diabetic?

“By accident”? Are you 15 or 50? And what do you mean, is it because she’s diabetic? Like a sugar burn? Look up STD, definition of. And invest in condoms.

I am 34 years old and have been married for nine years. Even though I am slim and attractive, my husband does not prioritise our sex life. Right from the beginning of the marriage, we’ve been doing it only once every two or three months. Then too, it’s very routine. He has never performed oral sex on me or masturbated me with his fingers, etc. Do we need to see a marriage counsellor or a sex therapist I don’t want to cause him discomfort.

Darling. He’s gay.

 

Uncle Underpants

aka An Explanation for My Continued Distraction:

Raipur’s closest claim to fame, indeed the one time it had justified its dusty existence, lay in its Grand Bazaar. A smelly, crowded, barely two-lane road crisscrossed overhead by ominously looped electrical wires that had a bad habit of falling down the moment the wind so much as sneezed in their vicinity or were touched by the merest hint of rain, not even a blind man would have thought it grand. But the citizens of Raipur were proud of it all the same and the reason for it stood immortalized in crumbling stone on one end of the street, at the equally ambitiously named Roundabout where all three of the town’s roads staggered to a stop to gaze dutifully at the glories of the past as captured in statuary and the glories of the present as conveyed by the ugly yellow building of the Municipality office.

Originally designed as a fountain before the realities of water shortage brought the town to its senses, the statuary in question depicted a soldier in British uniform on a plunging horse being brought down by a horde of angry Indians in peasant gear as one Indian raised aloft a flag with a charkha on it. Constructed in the belligerently hopeful period right after Independence, it stood as an ode to Raipur’s patriotic history.

The story goes that when the Indian soldiers of the Raj began their revolt in 1857, a scout from the British Army rode through Raipur, looking for an escape route for his trapped comrades and their families. He got as far as the Grand Bazaar before a brave native stopped him in his tracks by throwing the first stone. Within minutes, he was dragged off his horse, severely beaten and killed. Whatever routes the British army took, Raipur wasn’t a part of it.

That was the official version, the one recorded on the plaque hammered into the foot of the dysfunctional fountain. The Mayor who’d commissioned it, Malik Sahib of the Bari Haveli, had added the flag to update the legend and marry that tale of a rebellious Awadh to the new nation. Nobody minded because what did one extra spin of the polishing cloth signify when the legend had already been burnished beyond recognition?

Because the truth of Raipur’s defiance was this: an albino mutineer from Meerut, out liberating a nearby cantonment from the tyranny of the British, had decided to pay his ladylove back in his village a visit now that he’d proved himself a hero. Drunk as a drum from celebrating their victory and wearing most of his war bounty, which included an officer’s hat, he’d lost his way in the dark and showed up in Raipur in the morning rather than his village, which lay further southwest. Upon stumbling into the Grand Bazaar, he’d disturbed the peaceful slumber of old Underpants Pandey, the town drunk. The two had exchanged a volley of friendly insults about each others’ mothers and Underpants Pandey had had the final word by throwing a stone at his foe’s head. No doubt the soldier would have ridden down old Underpants and gone on to meet his village belle if the commotion hadn’t attracted the unwelcome attentions of several local hotheads who’d been talking themselves into a frenzy about the rising revolution just the day before.

To wake up the day after to find a man in British uniform try to murder their beloved Uncle Underpants was too much. If anybody had a right to thump Uncle Underpants until he was shitting blood, surely it was them – the ones who had to wash his puke off their doorsteps and whose mothers frequently had to step over his corpse-like body on the way to the temple. What right did an Englishman have to come stomping into their town like this and try to kill Uncle Underpants under their very noses? If it wasn’t just like them! Roused to fury, they rushed to the aid of the bewildered Underpants Pandey and immediately tore the albino hero of the revolt to pieces.

By the time a shaken Underpants could bring anyone to listen to his side of the morning’s adventure, it was too late. The town elders decided this victory over the “English” would keep the young rebels at home, convinced they had to patrol their hometown and keep it safe from the rapacious white soldiers who were sure to follow their deceased compatriot. And so Raipur found its pride and its mothers heaved a sigh of relief as their cocky young blades marched up and down the Grand Bazaar. It could be argued that the real winner of the whole episode was the family of Underpants Pandey, who became a teetotaler overnight.

 

Bridging the North-South Divide

Quick Gun Murugun Bole Hadippa is a movie for Our Times. It ought to be made immediately!

“But Amrita!” you say. “Think! How could this abominable spawn of a movie based on a one-liner about a South Indian cowboy addicted to his sambar and Rani Mukherjee’s latest bout of sadistic hazing by the Chopras possibly be any good?”

Aha! But you think! Now that we live in a world wherein North Indians know that “Udipi Restaurant” is not the capital of the state of Madras Cafe and South Indians are aware that people up north have enough water to take showers, it is past time we came together as a nation and made a North-South lowe ishtory. After all, why must only Punjabis on either side of the border score all the nookie like so and so? Granted, Kamal Haasan did his romba best but that was romba years ago. It’s time for a reboot!

And Quick Gun Murugun Bole Hadippa, the exciting adventure of a swashbuckling dosa-fiend who wins the heart of a rough and tumble Punjabi cricketer by unleashing the power of sambar, would be perfect!

No longer will Southies be limp-wristed Bharatnatyam exponents lusting after scornful Northie girls – now nubile Northie girls will be doing the balle balle over the dashing technicolor cowboy of the Nilgiris. When the bad guys attack, national integration will come into its finest hour as the two take a deep breath blow them all away with the power of asafoetida. It’ll even have fashionably homoerotic undertones – and if any Mukti Morcha type person complains, then the movie can deploy the Rani-is-a-woman defense!

I foresee it becoming the new Roja – destined to be aired without fail every August 15th.

[Quick Gun Murugun & Dil Bole Hadippa]

 

Udderly Delicious

A few days ago DesiGirl’s elder offspring, the proud possessor of a brand new baby sister, was heard inquiring about this thing called “nipple cream“. I don’t know what DG’s been telling him, but Auntie Amrita would like to bring an alternative to his notice:

PETA wants world-famous Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream to tap nursing moms, rather than cows, for the milk used in its ice cream… saying it would reduce the suffering of cows and calves and give ice cream lovers a healthier product.

It’s the wave of the future. Cold, creamy, healthy, 100% Mommy. It’s what every loving mother should serve her child. If Ben & Jerry’s isn’t interested, perhaps a cottage industry should be established. Mothers working from home, expressing by the bucketload for the health of humanity and the ease of cows.

Imagine: every time you missed your mother and thought wistfully of the pleasures of home, you could open up your freezer, take out a container of Nipple Cream, and instantly reconnect. The Taste of Home! Real “homely” food. Awww!

It could also be a bonding experience! The family that dines off Mommy together is the family that sticks together, my friends. Forget those dark days of yore when jealous little eyes watched younger siblings blissfully suckling while they themselves were palmed off on nasty plastic bottles. No longer will husbands glare resentfully at this exclusive mother-child experience or skulk in the kitchen to sneak a taste of the forbidden goods (just like last night’s dinner, I hear).

And what of the wealth of little anecdotes this could give rise to? You know how people are always talking about the strange fancies of their pets? “My cat loves pizza” or “My dog will only eat Taco Bell”? Well, now Fifi and Fido might well take a fancy to a drop of Mommy. Dinner table conversation will never run dry again! “Ha ha, Fido is absolutely addicted!” you’d say as he ran deliriously around the table, begging for another taste.

Naysayers point out that production is a bit of an issue – where will we find enough human mothers to feed our ice cream addiction? To which I say “Pshaw!” because here’s the genius part of this idea – the part where we solve global poverty by employing all those Poors scattered around the world, eking out a living by breaking stones in between bouts of dying from malaria.

For years now, all across the globe (in New Orleans most recently), politicians have been asking an unmerciful God just one question: why do the Poors continue to multiply? Don’t they know they’re poor? Shouldn’t they meditate on that instead of, you know, living lives like the rest of us un-Poors?

But now! Now there is a solution! Take out cows, switch in Poors. Big Dairy, wishful of a uniform taste to their product, will take care of housing and feeding (the Poors, with proper training, could possibly handle the milking on their own. Income, amazingly enough, doesn’t affect humanoid characteristics like opposable thumbs), which will immediately give the Poors access to a better way of life than they have thus far been accustomed. Healthcare will also be provided and, given what veterinarians charge these days (I’m told), Big Dairy will probably find it a bargain.

And in return, the world will get creamy, healthy milk from our own kind.

Let “Mothers First” be our motto as we take our ice cream back. Why should cows have all our benefits? Especially after all their incessant farting caused global warming. Mothers fart less. In fact, mothers don’t fart at all. Ask your mother if you don’t believe me.

 

Karzzz: Murder and Theft? Tsk.

The Himesh: “J’accuse! Of crimes against the color gold, the fabrics plastique and mesh, the diaper top, and most of all… cap theft! Thief! Give it back! The only one who wears gold topis around this place is ME!”

Urmila: “Are you sure? Muahahaha! Check my contract, dah-link! The only gold you can wear around here are gold hair plugs.”

The Himesh: “What! Naheeeeeeeen!! Lut jaon, lut jaon…”

Urmila: Uh-oh.

PS: Aspi’s review of the music

 

Top Pop

Ol’ Pop 1: “I saw my doctor today. He’s the FRCP, MRCP, BA, MA, MBBS head of neuro-cardiac-ENT-gastro-medicine at the biggest hospital in our city. He says I need to up the dosage of my cholesterol meds.”

Ol’ Pop 2: “Ah, well. It’s our age. I saw my doctor the other day. He’s the FRCP, MRCP, BA, MA, MBBS, MALLB head of neuro-cardiac-ENT-gastro-pediatric-medicine at the biggest hospital in the next town over from yours. He used to work in America and teach at Harvard and when he wanted to leave they begged him not to go and even offered to give his wife a job but he said his roots are here. So he told me that my cholesterol and my blood pressure are both up and I need to increase my dosage.”

Ol’ Pop 1: “Oh, really? Harvard, is it? And he lives in the next town? Not ours? One of these young fellows I suppose. Very eccentric these fellows, all kinds of ideas. My doctor is a more experienced man. England-returned, you know. He was personal physician to the Mayor of London. Maybe even the Queen but he’s very modest. They wanted to knight him but he refused because he’s one of those old fashioned patriots, you know. He’s also a millionaire and married to the daughter of the man who owns the hospital. Half the doctors who work there used to work in America. Now they all get fabulous salaries to work there. Of course, none of them gets paid what he does. They’d all pee on their shoes if he even looked at them.”

Ol’ Pop 2: “My doctor doesn’t like to live in the big city. He likes to live in our town because you know how your city is these days. Too many people, too much crime, pollution. He came back specially to work here. He used to treat George Bush but after a while he decided he’d rather serve the poor at home. He has principles. And of course, he doesn’t need any money – his father and his grandfather and his great grandfather were all famous doctors. His father used to charge 100 rupees in the 1950s! And still, every morning his garden was full of waiting people who’d come from far and wide to consult him.”

Ol’ Pop 1: “Ah, yes. My doctor is like that. He charges 500 rupees for a ten minute consultation. He doesn’t even do anything in that time but look at you and ask you what is wrong with you. Oh, what beautiful manners he has! Very much a gentleman. Then he’ll listen to your heart and tell you what tests you must take and then he’ll cure you. 100%. And all of those tests are very expensive. They’re not for just anybody. Oh no! You have to be somebody before he’ll examine you. And when he does examine you, he won’t touch you with his hands. He’ll always wear gloves which he throws away once they’ve been used.”

Ol’ Pop 2: How much does he charge for your medicine?”

Ol Pop 1: My cholesterol tablets are 60 rupees. And they’re only available at one chemist shop in our city.

Ol’ Pop 2: Ha! I knew it. I’ve taken that medicine. And it didn’t work for me. All these old and dated medicines are the same. What we need now are new ideas from young men. You know how much my tablets cost? My cholesterol tablets are 20 rupees each and I have to take them two times a day while my blood pressure tablets are 25 rupees each. My medical bills each month are so monstrous, the local chemist offers me tea when I go to his shop. I have his number on speed dial on my cell phone. Have you seen my cell phone, by the way? It’s 45,000 rupees. Imported. But I got a deal on it and bought it for 35, 000.

Ol’ Pop 1: I’m afraid I don’t carry cell phones. Ever since my heart operation, which cost one lakh 75,000 rupees plus 2,000 rupees per day for a private suite with a drawing room at the big hospital as my doctor recommended especially for me, I have been wary of using things that have radiation problems. But in a way that is good because now I can do other things with it like buy this watch. See? It’s 2,00,000, gold plated with diamonds. When I go somewhere, everyone stares at it.

Checkmate.