You Know You’re Growing Old When..

You ain’t old till you think you are. Possibly true. However, once the latter kicks in, you will age faster than Sourav Ganguly blinks.

And as some wise men in China had once said (and had been detained for trying to spread boisterous capitalist ideas), age drops subtle hints before coming out at you outright naked. So, those of you who are or have been contemplating editing their Facebook profile info, here are some hints that age might be prodding you in the eye with.

You know you’re growing old when…

1. You peer too long in the mirror, pretending to check on your stubble, all the while trying to check out signs of balding or whiteys. 
2. You prefer staying put and boarding the next bus/train instead of running behind the missed bus. And/or jumping up on its rear footboard, holding onto the collar of a co-passenger.
3. You find the domestic-pleasantry-borne expletives from the co-passenger embarrassing.
4. You find the only hand up for smoking dope at a party is yours
5. Majority of the crowd at the local pub you frequent seem like irritating fuckhead college-going pricks.
6. The autowallahs actually respect you and do not try to push you off the front seat for laughing at his driving skills.
7. You find your dream job of driving an auto and smoking Dhania-chhaap beedis is not exactly the dream job your in-laws-to-be are dreaming of.
8. You want to have dinner at home, even though you can afford Pizza Hut.
9. You find tying firecrackers to the dogs’ rear fucking atrocious.
10. You hate the word ‘fuck’ and people who use it in random sentences. Or points.
11. Is the number your girlfriend gives you out of 10, because any less could make you go on a drinking binge again.
12. Your girlfriend also tries dropping subtle hints that you should start thinking about marriage. Also when outraging on the issue doesn’t seem to work anymore.
13. Watching Cricket seems more interesting.
14. Watching Soccer simultaneously makes you feel adrenaline-pumped and yet older than a 70-year old Alzheimer’s patient.
15. –year old girls call you Dada/Kaku/Uncle, and ominously without giggling.
16. Getting drunk in the middle of the night, because your non-existent dog just died an imaginary death, sounds weird.
17. Call of Duty means groveling at your boss’ feet and not fighting your way through German machine gun nests on Omaha Beach.
18. Furniture exhibitions interest you more than a rock/metal gig.
19. Is an age you wish you could go back to.
20. You have more regrets than a Vietnam war-hero in general.
21. ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ incites forlorn dreaming of what you could have achieved, rather than what you plan to achieve as a rebel.
22. You would rather drink with your boring colleagues than with your old pals, simply because you are too scared of getting drunk and landing up in odd places with odd chicks at odd times of the night.
23. You try guessing other guys’ ages and compare yourself on that parameter.
24. Is the threshold where you either become a handsome lumberjack or a petty, humorless Bong.

I guess you know now.

Go back to your mirror, or your girlfriend, depending on whichever is new. FIN.

Story of a Budding Entrepreneur

I was about 9 then. Or maybe 8. An ordinary boy living an ordinary life in an ordinary town. Along with Typo (my non-evil twin, in case you forgot), I was content with life unraveling at a languid pace – cornflakes in the morning, school in the day, cricket with 3 other guys and a dog in the evening and homework at night.

Now, all of these activities seemed real hard when you were at that age. I mean how can any kid put up with Math and an agonizing wait to relieve himself simultaneously in school? And playing cricket with 3 guys, using the dog as the wicket, is not very easy. Try proving that you bowled the batsman out, with your wicket running, screaming in an odd voice, like a dog hit in the rear by a heavy rubber ball. Very hard, I tell you. And pretending to finish homework while slyly catching up on the latest fashion on FTV at night is even tougher.

Anyway, point is, life was hard. At least for me and Typo.   

However, like all Bong kids, it was mandatory for us to take tuitions. Now in 21st century, it is easy to say hah, big deal! But back then, what made taking tuitions, & life in general, hard for Bong kids was the tuition teacher – who was not exactly the online voice-over, giving lessons like serenading a monkey.

Ours was no exception. And after 3 months of being pummeled with formulas & equations, we gave in and scored a neat Jhiro on 30 in a Test de la Grande. Yes, me and Typo both did ‘Aryabhatta’ proud.

However, Mr. Tuition Teacher was not a fan of Aryabhata, but admired Sarah Palin instead. This was evident from his ‘red-eyed’ refudiating of everything good that Mr. & Mrs. Pal could have envisaged in their boys.

And so, we ran away from home. Into the wild. Or as Bongs call it, to the Math of the Tepantaur (can’t help if it sounds like a bad breed of the Minotaur). 

Almost-Gone-Missing Aryabhatta-Fanboy

Unlike what you’ve heard in stories, running away from home is easy. All you need to do is this – Sulk > Think of buying a gun & kill Mr. Tor-mentor > Realize it’s not possible > Suicide > WTF? > Talk to Typo > Run away from home at 12 pm post-lunch > Climb over barbed wire fence of Campus > This.Is.Freedom.!!

In our case, all went smoothly except the fact that Typo’s pants got caught in the barbed wire and he has been experiencing man-problems ever since. Rest was all good.

We made our way over mud dunes, paddy fields, passed by a Bata factory & also ogled at women bathing in a nearby pond (Typo insists he did not. What a liar!). We were also stared down as potential kidnap/extortion victims by 4 weird men playing teen-patti in a hutment. One of them was a Steve Jobs-look alike, smoking Dhania-chhaap beedi. Come to think of it, maybe he WAS Steve Jobs - considering the fact that he’s got pancreatic cancer now. Yeah, Dhania-chhaap beedis are not at very good terms with the pancreas, last I heard.

Whatever. We got traced down by the CBI (Chanchal Bhushan Ishmail, our gardener), who had been alerted by terrified ‘gaaowaalon’ about a bear bathing in their village pond. Turned out it was actually yours truly having some harmless topless fun in the sun. Blechh.

By now you must be outraging over the title of the post, and what the fuck am I trying to prove here – with a misleading Title et al. Well, there’s a twist in the tale here.

Yours truly, being a genius sans parallèle, had not run away from home on an impulse. After all, we had planned to set up camp in another city and build an empire ala AOE III. Hence, like a true-blood, nifty entrepreneur, we had made plans for a business first.

We handpicked the choicest of ‘Hot Wheels’ from our collection, some of the rarest books and some easily saleable stuff like pens, chocolate and Femina Miss India posters (wink wink nudge nudge). We were planning to sell off these and make a living till Google or Stevie hired us for one of their sweatshops in Bangkok.

And like a quintessential entrepreneurial partner, Typo chickened out, almost jeopardizing the venture. However, telling him that chickening out may ruin the chances of radio silence on his barbed-wire-man-problems helped sort it out amicably.

And like a quintessential entrepreneurial venture, we lost all of the investment; lock stock and barrel.

There. Explanation complete.

However, the upside of the whole story is that we learnt 2 valuable lessons that day.

Lesson #1 - Running away from home is overrated.
Lesson #2 - Nothing can beat gorging on home-cooked food, especially after learning lesson #1 the practical way.

As I said, life was hard back then. But it was also great, in parts!

P.S.: You really thought this was another ‘Steve-Jobs-is-so-awesome’ story, didn’t you, you bloody Apple fanboys?!