Baby Wolverine

Snikt, snikt…the retractable claws have stealthily emerged out. The hardened keratin is ready to pounce on its victim. The young boy who is oblivious of the developments around him continues to play with his toy car. The small creature with a disarming smile and doe-shaped eyes stares right at him. The boy is in no mood to let go of the toy in his hands so he shoots back a grimacing smile with an attitude of “I am the big Daddy here”.

 The sweet chubbiness on its face hides the menacing plan working in the back of its mind. The rosy cheeks, the twinkle in the starry eyes and the vibes of cuteness floating in the air surrounding her acts as a charade before Baby Scissorhands unleashes fury on her elder sibling. With the astute timing equivalent to Sourav Ganguly’s off-drive, the small brute makes a wailing cry declaring war on its enemy and darts in the direction of the poor boy. The young kid is startled by the shriek and looks to find the Baby Wolverine attacking him with its razor sharp claws. The soft skin is torn open by the nails and a hint of blood seems to ooze out of the wound. The boy goes dizzy at the sight of the red fluid and  lets go off the car. He runs for cover from his unrelenting sister and stands at a distance.

The unfairness of the whole episode makes the boy resolve to get back his property. He musters up the courage to teach this menace a lesson but then he saw a scary sight. The body of the stuffed toy, which his little sis had been given to play with, was lying disheveled in a corner of the room. Its limbs had been torn to smithereens and its decapitated head was nowhere to be seen. A shiver runs down his spine after seeing this grotesque sight in front him.  Good sense prevails, and like his country, he resorts to diplomacy to solve the issue rather than go for and all out war which would have eventually led to his defeat. He thought it better to lodge his complaint to the Master of the Dungeon rather than face the fury himself. So, he runs to his mother to express his grief. He tries to gather her sympathy by showing off his war wounds. Finally, he convinces her to take a look at his case and forces her to put all other important matters at bay. As the contingent of mother and son enter the room, the girl, all of two years old, quickly understands the dynamics of the situation and camouflages herself in the garb of a benign angel. A dollup of tear drops down her plump cheeks and suddenly the accused seemed to be the victim. The boy is amazed by the transformation and he runs out of words to defend himself. All his well construed statements to win back his mom fall on deaf ears. His stance sounded gibberish in front of the ‘gugu gaga’ of his sister. She had the final laugh.

It’s been nearly 20 years hence, and I am reminiscing about these small fights. The near invisible scratches which were the making of her little hands may have healed long ago but the memories are still afresh. Ah, those days with you bumbling around me and doing nonsensical things together are totally priceless. Not everyone is lucky enough to get a sister who backs you up in the form of Luigi while you venture out to save your princess, or covers you in those shooter video games, or kicks some serious ass in Age of Empires.

Words fail me. Love ya sis :-*. I hope this laudatory post would make do for the gift this Rakshabandhan. Snikt, snikt…did I hear those claws? Oh no, this isn’t working! Mammaaaaaa…!

The Dark Night Rises

Yes, the Dark Nights are rising, and No, I am not talking about Gotham city. If that title reminded you of the much anticipated and hyped movie of Nolan and you came here expecting a Batman fanboy, suffering from a post- Nolan -movie -induced-hallucination, raving  about how epicness and awesomeness is written all over it, then I will do that for you tomorrow. As for now, you are just going to be subjected to a longish rant about a much darker and grimmer city than Gotham. The Dark Nights we are subjected to in this city are on the rise and the sorry fact is that except for the bats in the neighbourhood there is no caped crusader coming along to save us from this misery.

Let there be darkness. –Gurgaon

If Gurgaon was a person and the above line is quoted from him then I would give full points to him for integrity. There would be very few people in history who would have toed the line they have spoken to such an extent.

Welcome to the Millennium city. I had this friendly neighbor kid in my locality named Sourabh. You know that quirky play of fate where you name a kid and when he/she grows up they epitomize the exact opposite of what their name means. This kid’s consistency and frequency to fart would even put Sachin ’s 100s to shame and you would be calling the name of a hundred Gods (Sau- Rab) to teleport you away from his vicinity. Bush should have gone after this kid if he was looking for weapons of mass destruction instead of attacking Iraq. I have absolutely no clue how people came up with the sobriquet ‘Millennium City’ for Gurgaon unless you are talking about the fact that you get relegated back to 1000 AD where people lived in the Dark ages.

The city is full of MNCs housed in their fancy towers and office buildings. The roads are expressways with well manicured lawns to complement the landscape. It tries really hard to give you the illusion of a city of the future. But then it all falls apart when it comes to the power woes. The power problems in the city are so acute that it can put even the remotest village in Lalu-era Bihar to shame.  As my roommate puts it, to say that there are power cuts in Gurgaon is grossly inappropriate; it is more like there are intermittent occasions when power is available in Gurgaon.

The astronauts who are chosen by NASA have to undergo extreme physical tests and endurance. In case, NASA is planning for a mission to the Sun, then I must say, they should look no further, but pick up their candidates from Gurgaon. We are subjected to temperatures in the mid 40s and we survive in this awful weather condition even without a fan. That is no menial challenge and one which we are forced to undertake. We act as real life counterparts to the Human Torch, the guy who blazes in Fantastic Four, but with the opposite ability. We are like the human showers whenever the electricity goes ‘puff’. There is sweat oozing out of every single pore from the body and before you know it, you would be drenched and  standing in a pool of saline water.

The situation is not all that great even when the lights are on. The bulbs and tubelights get converted into psychedelic lights because of the constant voltage fluctuations. You can raise the excitement quotient higher by having a makeshift arrangement for a discotheque in your very own room. Also, you can have the odd spark from one of your electronic items to give you the necessary techno-beats, and if you are lucky enough, you can create a fog effect from the smoke coming out of your burnt devices due to short circuits. I was able to manage this surreal fog environment when my laptop charger got burnt on two occasions.

Don’t even think about venturing out, the streets are like dark alleys where the odd street light is put up just as a showpiece from the days of yore. The presence of modern marvels amid a lackluster infrastructure to support it has given Gurgaon quite a contrasting Two-face.

Here I am, typing away my frustration on my laptop sitting in my room waiting patiently for the bulb above me to show a shimmer of light. Only 5 minutes of power backup is left in the laptop before the last flicker of light in my room dies out. When are the authorities going to get serious or are they going to need an anarchist like the Joker to ask them “Why don’t you get serious?”