Category: Stories

A was addicted to the object of his attention and A was tired of everyone but him getting to say ‘be my lover’ to it in the latest commercial.. it would have been okay if he had nothing else to worry about… but he was in bollywood, where you were only as good as your last hit. and he had taken more than a dozen films to deliver his first one. it didnt help that he was compared to his dad,whose status was kind of legendary..and even after the first hit, there was no respite, coz he had still not followed it up with another…
it would have been okay if he had been given at least a chance.. but alas, he had to sit and watch not just one, but at least three bollywood stars in the commercial.. one was the current shah of bollywood, whose very name meant success.. the second was another actor, who was also the safe choice of lots of filmmakers, who had recently changed his image and with that, his fortune. also, he had recently left his wife of many years, and was therefore ready to mingle… last, but not the least was a star, who many considered was the only superstar that bollywood ever had.. he was still a force to reckon with, many directors still wrote scripts tailormade for him, as far as A was concerned, his role in the commercial was exactly like his last film – Black!!
For he was A’s dad, and since A’s dad knew about the extent of his addiction, he should have suggested A’s name instead of him, but he had not. A was dismayed, for the products you endorsed spoke about you… and these days, he was not even endorsing one…
just when he thought that all was lost with everyone screaming ‘be my lover, bubbly’, A had a brilliant idea to prove a point to bollywood and everyone concerned…. he went back to the people who gave him his first hit.
and thus, though his character had a funny name and due to the numerologist’s insistence, his lover’s name in the movie was spelt differently from ‘bubbly’, he hoped he could prove a point with ‘bunty aur babli’….
until next time abhi, shake well before use to get really bubbly….

His parents had an arranged marriage, so they had little option but to marry each other..
He was born in 1964, because that was when his parents decided to have him…..
He did not spend his initial life in a big city, because his dad didnt like big cities…
He didnt get educated in any big reputed school, his small town didnt have any…
He wanted to study a particular subject in the famous university in the big city, but he didnt get it because they had a massive quota for locals… so went to a lesser university…
He wanted to go abroad for his masters degree, but realised they laid a big emphasis on his educational pedigree.
He started teaching at the famous university he had wanted to study in, and felt a small victory.
It turned sweeter when he met the woman he wanted to marry, she also taught there…
And more sweeter when she gave birth to their son….
a few months later, the child fell sick, because of food poisoning in his baby food!!
he took leave, but she decided to go because she had already used up a whole lot of hers…since she was in a hurry, he decided to get breakfast from the hotel across the road…… and got killed while crossing the road……….
if he had a different set of parents, who decided to have him earlier, and live in a big city,and send him to an international school there, he might have studied the subject of his choice in the big university, gone abroad, not taught at the big university, nor met his wife, nor had the son who had the bout of food poisoning, and so he wouldnt have to cross the road….
and they say you make your own destiny…
until next time, just enjoy the walk, while it lasts….

He was shocked when he got the call from the CM’s office. actually it was a combination of two shocks, one that the cm of a state could blatantly ask for a bribe, and two, they had found out the truth about his activities…
it was all because of his girlfriend’s stupid idea… when they had got into the relationship, she was already an acknowledged star, and he was the star on the horizon.. the entire industry had heaped praise on his acting skills, and were sure that he would be the next big thing in bollywood… but alas, all his films had bombed miserably, and he had gotten coverage for all the wrong reasons…
in a fit of rage, his girlfriend had told him that the only reason she wasnt leaving him was that she didnt want the tag of a ‘fair weather’ girlfriend… she had a history of ditching her last boyfriend when he needed her most… but that didnt stop her from chiding him, whenever she got the chance… including saying that his theme song should be an mltr song that went ‘ i’m not an actor, i’m not a star’…. and after she had come back from the international movie festival and tongues started wagging about the hollywood role, she had become intolerable…
that was around the time when the tsunami struck… that was when she came up with what at that time seemed a brilliant idea… she told him that the waves had done their job, and since he wasnt exactly making waves in his trade, he should get some good pr coverage by doing some relief work.. and in her typical bitchy fashion, she had said that his going off would be a relief to her too..
and so he had gone to the inflicted areas, and since he wasnt exactly cut out to do relief work, he had bribed the journalists to do stories about him.. he still remembered how difficult it was to get the natural looking photographs and testimonials…. and now, that state’s cm had come to know about it, and was threatening to let the secret out..he decided he couldnt afford to bribe her, he would rather bribe the journalists again, to prevent bad pr…
it was all because of his girlfriend… from now on, he decided he would stand up for himself and be v.oberoi, and stop being what his friends teased him to
be – v. obey rai!!
until next time, sometimes stars get struck too

Thats what he liked to call his mind… for though he had a huge workshop around him, he felt that his mind was where the real workshop was.. at least he had felt so until recently, but things were changing now..
he remembered a time long ago, when he was asked to start from a single room office.. the guys who gave him the responsibility had only a bare vision of what his roles and responsibilities should be.. he had developed the entire operation from scratch…and being very process driven, he had slowly but surely ensured that his workshop was extremely systemic…
and thus over a period of time, people had started to use his services more and more.. in fact a vast majority felt that his serices were an integral part of existence, and that was the way it was meant to be…and thus, as his workshop and its target population became more and more systemic, he began to devote more and more time to think up ways to increase the efficiency of his workshop,and to devise more and more ways to entice his target, and the more thinking he did, the more he felt that his mind was the real workshop…
but these days things were changing..some people had begun to improvise on his services so much that they had done things even before he thought about them… there was nothing he could thinko f that they hadnt done already… he began to feel that there was no work to be done in his mind, his real workshop…
but meanwhile the workshop around him flourished, with more and more souls joining everyday…he felt that the constant heat was taking its toll on him, and maybe it was time to retire…
once upon a time the humans had a saying about him -“an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”.. but the way humanity was systematically destroying everything that was good, and generally doing his job for him, he felt that it was high time that they changed the saying to “the devil’s mind is an idle workshop”….
until next time, whats on your mind??

That he was a special child, his parents knew from the start… and it was not just the usual feeling that all parents had for their children.. he was genuinely different because of his sheer talent for song and dance… and all who saw him perform knew he would have a great future..
but he was raised like a normal child, not that his parents had much of a choice, because they barely made ends meet.. he had a horde of brothers, sisters and cousins, and they had many a gala family gathering..but in spite of all this his parents felt there was something really different about him..
they didnt know whether it was his obsession to look different from his ilk… or his penchant forloneliness… not that he was a compulsive loner, for all though he had never had any girlfriends, he had a battalion of boyfriends who he shared a close bond with… he regularly brought them home, watched videos all night, played songs and generally did a whole lot of things his parents thought were just normal ‘boy stuff’…
soon, he lived up to his relatives’ predictions and his song and dance made him an internationally acclaimed pop star… but that didnt stop his parents from worrying.. he became obsessed with his looks and his numerous antics regarding his looks made him the laughing stock among his peersand the general public.. and somewhere in between he had a broken marriage as well..but that was their least of their worries..
he was still bringing boys home, and the things he did with them were not exactly ‘boy stuff’, even by his parents standards..he apparently didnt want to grow up, but that wasnt the only thing he had in common with Peter Pan… he had a ranch he called Neverland.. he brought kids there, played games with them, and when the stories got out, he landed in court…
and gave a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘boys will be boys’….

until next time, games that you play in childhood….