24

The following events take place between 6AM and 6AM

I wake up early, much much early , courtesy a bad dream and somehow cannot go back to the warmth of my bed. Cursing, I get up from the bed not realizing that this is just the beginning of what would go on to be a not so great day. My grandparents are doing some chores and I sleepwalk to my bag to get my brush and toothpaste. As soon as I put the brush into my mouth, I yell out (atleast I try to) and realize that I have some scrubber gel on it instead of colgate. I curse, throw the brush away and curse again because now I have to go pick it up! A while later my cousin gets up and we are both super excited because we are going shopping. We get ready and eat little for breakfast because we have secret plans to eat all the roadside crap while shopping. As we make our way to the bus stop , a bus just leaves. Not to let our spirits get dampened by this setback, we wait for the next 50 mins in scorching heat (we arent that excited about clothes anymore) for another bus. Its crowded but we decide to board it neverthless because another minute in the bus stop would have drove us both crazy. We reach our destination, shop endlessly, window shop and then shop endlessly again. In the process we realize that we have just about enough cash to reach home. So we cannot have anything to eat. And we are starving. We look at the bags in our hands and suddenly we aren’t that hungry (well, we both were but none of us wanted to take the blame for the spree). We board a bus, reach home and make a dash for the dining room where granma has everything prepared. We eat like people who have come from food-deprived concentration camps and then the reality sets in. We are tired. So we decide to take a nap. Just as my eyelids are about to close, a huge sound scares the daylight out of me. I look out of the window to see a bunch of kids engrossed in firing crackers. Damn it! So we cannot sleep and cannot eat (coz we have just eaten like Homer Simpson) which indirectly means we have a boring day ahead.

Suddenly walks in our cousin with a huge grin on his face. He declares that he will take us for a movie (actually, he had other plans but we got all emotional and abusive ,so he had to give in). We want to see Roadside Romeo but tickets are not available. One of his friends has tagged along and tells us that a theatre nearby is playing Heroes and its a decent watch. So we get all ready to go and watch a nice movie. But as luck would have it, what was playing there was Hero and not Heroes. I haven’t even heard of this movie. It has Nithin (??? who) and Bhavana (????who) in the lead. ‘Mast picture hai’ says some guy at the counter looking at our perplexed faces. ‘Well,how bad could it be ‘, remarks my brother and so we buy the tickets and enter the hall. 10 minutes in and I know this is in the league of ‘Aap mujhe ache lagne lage’. The acting is horrible, the dialogues are borderline pathetic and there is no story. Wow! Thats an achievement. Add to it some crude humor, item songs and girls dressed as urchins (by which I mean minimal clothing). I want to run out but my bro has a logic. However bad a movie might be – you never walk out till the end credits roll. Shoot. So, we are stuck watching this remarkable piece of art and by the end all of us have a headache. None of us says anything on the way back (secretly though I want to kill the director of the movie). We reach home and then suddenly start laughing hysterically. I guess the movie wasn’t that bad after all. It gave us so much to talk about. We tell all our neighbors and relatives that its a great movie and a must-watch.

Finally, we crash and sleep. I wake up early, much much early and look at the watch. Its 6AM.

Dog of another kind

Ari Gold has a classic quote in Entourage which goes something like ‘This town loves nothing more than a comeback and since Britney blew her’s, there is still chance….’ (a few words have been changed because Ari is an obscenity machine). Unfortunately, this episode must have been shot quite early because Britney is back big time and all the people who cursed her saying she is an irresponisble parent, drug addict, disaster on feet (none of which btw was wrong) are singing her latest tunes. I have always been a Britney fan and am glad she is doing better with her career and life in general. Though, this got me thinking beyond just one person’s comeback. Remember when Sourav made a comeback into Indian cricket and his success was so much ‘more’ phenomenal, Amitabh went through a slump but created history with KBC and everyone started worshipping him once again and the list is pretty long. Its not that people dont celebrate other success stories, its just that when an underdog – someone of whom not many expect great things at that time proves all of us wrong , we actually like it although we were wrong because somewhere deep inside our heart we always root for the underdog.

Do you think the CL final between Milan and Liverpool would have been that dramatic had the latter not been three goals down or the wimby final that exciting had Fed not come down from two sets down to challenge Nadal. I dont think so and I think being an underdog is a privelege. Yes, it can be tough emotionally on you and your family but it gives you such a wonderful opportunity to start afresh without any pressure because people have already written you off. Yet, they want a challenge, a success story worthy of Reader’s Digest and they will cheer for you irrespective of your past accomplishments or failures.

Its so much easier to attack than to defend. Its better to be the challenger than the challenged.

‘Every underdog has his day’