Orbit plus is working!!

I wish I could kill the sun! Every morning, when the birds begin to chirp with their sleepy eyes, when the maid at my neighbor's place begins to clean the utensils in a cantankerous way, when Mrs Lalitha struggles with her sleepy kids to get them ready for the school, the sunshine rushes through my window and knocks me out of my dream when I am about to kiss Angelina Jolie! Today was no exception except that it was Salma Hayek. I found Bose sleeping on his bed in his usual crashed-his-face-on-the-pillow style. His loongie found a new mate in the bed sheet and was in the process of getting cosy with it, leaving Bose alone and making the morning a bit uncomfortable for me. I could not sleep anymore.

I jumped off the bed but stumbled over an empty whisky bottle, which Bose must have relished last night. I hate him! He always takes advantage of not sharing it with me as I am in the habit of retiring early. I meticulously crossed the pool of ashes spread across the floor, which is our global astray. Finally I decided to take a bath but my towel went missing as usual. After twenty minutes of tiresome combing process through lots of unidentified and strange garbage, I discovered it inside the refrigerator. I had no clue how it got in there.

Taming my unruly hair after a bath was like taming a wild elephant which was on a breeding spree. After fifteen minutes of intense struggle, I looked no less than Kroor Singh of the famous tele-serial Chandrakanta. I could not afford to look any better as I was getting late for office. I rushed out of the house and bumped into Rakshash aunty. I felt she had gone through a make-over inspired by my Kroor Singh look. My heart sank the moment she smiled at me displaying her sparkling white teeth, the result of chewing orbit plus. Gowadikar was right, “If it works on animals, it will work on human (?) too.” I knew my day was spoilt. It was not that I believed in superstitions but statistics revealed that every time she smiled at me, my day became as stinking as a rotten egg. She handed me a piece of paper with something written on it. Looking at it, I wondered whether she wrote something in English or she let her ink-soaked pet cockroaches to make love on the paper. She told me with her bachelors-are-criminals attitude that it was a notice from the society to keep the volume of music low. I tried to defend saying that we hardly played music at night. She pointed out immediately to some Chinese scripts on the paper "Actually it's the music that you play at noon during the weekends. It disturbs Mrs. Lalitha to grab a nap." I stood in a mute state of things. My mind was vacant and I searched helplessly for words. I had observed that the lack of words in my mind was directly proportional to the number of words that entered my ear from Rakshas Aunty's mouth. I realized that it was time that I make my exit before I become a victim to aphasia.


The clouds were already making merry in the sky. They let out couple of thunders telling me 'tera band bajne wala hai'. I looked at my watch. It was 10.10 am. I thought it should not take more than ten minutes to reach office and I should be in office before it started to rain. Little did I know that my thought could cause roar of laughter in the clouds. I started out on my rampayari, bajaj pulser 150, which behaved like a 'hero puch' because of years of negligence and oppression from its master. Though the disgruntled bike initially refused to start, eventually it gave in to the powerful stroke to its kicker.

Riding in Hyderabad is like playing Chinese checker with an arrogant kid. You move forward by overtaking the next available vehicle. That's not it. The rules to overtake are ingeniously developed in Hyderabad, completely defying the rules set up by the traffic police. Traffic police – they are the mere fictitious characters, who can be spotted occasionally near Chameli's pan shop, catching hold of some helmet-les riders and negotiating the cost of the prospective injuries, or in some road side Irani café sipping in free tea, but never on the crossing of the road. Even if you find them at the crossing, they are preoccupied with joyous thoughts of the movie they watched last night where some Mallika Sherawat had done a power house dance sequence with a Kader-khan-look-alike hero. They move their hand unmindfully in the air thinking themselves as one of the co-dancers of the hero, trying to get a glimpse of the beautiful architecture displaying its assets. Let's not praise this fictitious character so much that they take really good care of me next time they find me on the road. Let's move my concentration to another loud species who rules the road, the riders.

It had already started drizzling. Slowly a pandemonium broke on the roads. Riders began to go euphoric, ecstatic and what not (Actually I’m running short of adjectives). There were so many colorful characters out there and the entire scenario made me feel I was inside a zoo. Vehicles were shuffled on the crossroads the same way a gambler shuffles his cards. One guy stopped his vehicle when he saw the red signal. The rest of the road looked at him in disgust and laughter, and zoomed off ignoring the red signal, making him realize that he was either the biggest moron or the biggest criminal in the world. He had no right to drive on the roads of Hyderabad. When there was no more space for shuffling, there were only horns blowing your heads off. In this confusion, one guy in the centre of the chaos suddenly realized that he had nowhere to go that day and he gave an 'I-just-woke-up-and-found -myself-in-the-middle-of-this-chakraview' look. Another guy was showing his balancing skills while he bent his head to hold the cell phone between his shoulder and the head. He's got to be a heart surgeon. He must be providing live inputs to his junior doctors who are playing around with the heart of a patient in an operation theater. Being in Hyderabad for the last four years, I’ve developed the skill to break free from chakraviews in 15 minutes. Then I met that guy with long hair, cool shades, hot bike, branded shirt, with his cheap polka-dotted underwear, peeping from the back of his cargo. He was more busy handling his hair, rather than handling his bike. He did all the tricks with his bike that even a monkey can't do, perhaps to impress the girls surrounding him. However, soon he found his destiny in an open manhole, a drainage system to clean the city from all the garbage. Then I met that incredible uncle who parked his car in the middle of the road and went to respond to nature's call. It blocked the whole road and everyone had to wait till that incredible uncle closed the deal with nature. I also met couple of riders taking 'U' turn on the flyover. I really didn't want to spend my words on that category.

By the time I reached office, I was completely drenched. I went straight to the rest room where I tried to get myself dangerously close to the hand dryer. Some time it was my back, sometime it was my front, sometime with my legs up. I tried all the permutation and combination to dry me up. The house keeping guy looked quite suspiciously at me. I smiled at him and he rushed out of the rest room with a panic. I managed to dry my shirt and pant but the underwear remained wet. Sitting in the office with wet underwear was no less uncomfortable than standing in a public lavatory beside a six feet huge giant who gave you a sarcastic smile as he overlooked the side barrier.

With four bugs to fix, two meetings to attend, couple of mails to reply to and a wet underwear to bear the rest of the day, I realized it was going to be a really long and difficult day. Orbit plus is working!!!