She was wearing a red tee-shirt and blue jeans and was slightly plump and looked happy for no particular reason. She was the type who could be happy for no particular reason. But being happy most of the time did not stop her from being bored and anxious at times. It was the first day of her first real job. She was told the office bus will pick her up at 830 in the morning. She had reached the junction at 820. She had been standing there for 40 minutes and it was nine now and there was still no sign of the bus. The only distraction she had in 40 minutes of boredom was a quarrel between the man who was standing near her and a motorcyclist. The quarrel was funny because the motorcyclist wanted to stop it and go to wherever he was going, but the woman who was with him egged him onto fighting. She was even yelling Maro salei ko. The other man looked hurt and angry at the same time and now looked rather sorrowful. He had come and stood near her and had not even looked in her direction, not even a sly glance. She thought that this was very unusual for a man as most men x-rayed her with side-way glances and she was slightly proud of it although it was at times irritating.

"Excuse me; are you waiting for the Tectonica bus?"

Stan was comparing himself to a spine-less comic character in the movie he saw last weekend. His only purpose in the movie was to be a slapping pad for the hero and later for the villain. Stan had stopped identifying with the heroes long back and now watched movies only to see the side-kicks and find satisfaction that side-kicks are also a part of life. But sometimes side-kickifying oneself had unhealthy side-effects and one of them was self-pity as deep as the Arabian sea.

Stan did not comprehend the question first and turned his face towards the source of the voice and let out an "Eh.. ?"

"Are you waiting for the Tectonica bus?"

"Yes, I am."

Stan stared at her as if she was a green alien with antennae on top of her head and compensated at a very high rate of compound interest for not looking at her earlier.

"I was told it will reach here at 830 and now it is 9."

She said that after covering her usual expression of happiness with an I-know-you-are-staring-at-me-and-take-the-compound-interest-back expression.

Stan stopped staring and tried to bring on to his face the I-am-civilized-and-not-overwhelmed-by-you expression.

"Oh, well. It usually comes at 915. Gets stuck at the junction before this one before getting stuck here. Never seen you waiting for bus here."

A bit disappointed by the 'time-less-ness' of the bus and relieved that the bus is finally going to come she replied to him with a slight smile because she had become a little more happy than her usual happiness.

"I am joining today."

"Oh, that is good. Where were you working before?"

"Oh, this is my first job." She replied cheerily.

"Oh, that is good. I am Stan."

She offered him a hand and he took it looking a bit unsure of himself which was the way he usually looked.

"I am Tamanna."

"Tamanna, nice name. There is a movie by Mahesh Bhatt that has the same name, right?" Stan mentally patted himself on the back and became a bit surprised of conversation coming easily to him.

"But I am not like the Tamanna in the movie." She gave him what he thought was a slightly naughty smile.

It was then that Stan noticed the office bus that had idly stopped near them. The driver was looking at them both and was getting a bit envious of the loser in crumpled jeans and tee-shirt.

Tamanna got into the bus and the bus tried to take off without Stan but was able to move only half a metre of the 10 metres it was about to move in the next five minutes. Stan did not notice it and got in the bus after Tamanna who immediately went to the back of the bus as if she did it everyday. She got hardly a look from her new colleagues as they all seemed to be in some sort of suspended animation aided by liquid nitrogen. Silence hung like a wet carpet in the bus. Tamanna thought it stank a little as she settled on to the right window seat at the back of the bus. She later thought the stink might have been from Stan's socks that had been colonized by a very rare form of anaerobic bacteria. He had come and sat near her maintaining the respectable five inches distance to be maintained when there was enough space to maintain it.

"Which department do you work for?"

Stan was plotting how to continue the conversation and did not hear Tamanna properly.

"Err. what?" He asked, turning his face to her.

"Which department do you work for? And what do you do?"

"Oh. I am a content developer. Naturally, works in the content department."

He said with a smile that he hoped will make him look witty. Then he remembered he should be asking her about what she is going to join as.

"What are you going join as?"

"I am going to be a code fish."

"What?"

"A software developer. a coder, software engineer, cyber carpet weaver, whatever you choose to call it."

Stan remained silent for a moment and then reminded himself to laugh.

"You do not seem to love it much," he said after finishing the laugh.

"No, I don't love it at all," she said fixing her eyes on a couple kissing inside an autorickshaw that had stopped near the bus. She wondered if Stan noticed it.

"I was very excited on the first day of my first job," said Stan while male-gazing a girl in semi-transparent white trousers who always sat in the second seat from the back of the bus. He wondered if Tamanna noticed it.

"I wanted to be an actor."

"Oh, even I wanted to be an actor. I thought I looked like Sharukh Khan when I was a teenager and used to mutter Tu ha kar ya na kar too hei mera kiran at girls from a safe distance. I even styled my hair like him."

Tamanna laughed and her laughter ricocheted of the wet mat of silence that hung in the bus and caused a few drops of laughter to fall on the zombies suspended in liquid nitrogen, which made them notice Tamanna laughing. Stan thought their expression matched that of the hostages getting shot in Counterstrike. He remembered with a tinge of disappointment that he has never been able to save any of the hostages in the game he started playing two weeks back.

"I don't want to be an actor in movies," she turned to look at him. Her eyes were still laughing and Stan felt her persistent happiness invading him a bit and he liked it.

"Then?"

"I wanted to be an actor in a play, no not a play, plays."

"Then why didn't you become an actor in a play, sorry plays?"

"There is no money in it. I am not rich enough to be an actor in a play."

Stan sensed a streak of unhappiness in her and he thought a streak of unhappiness is like salt is to porridge to a mind full of happiness.

"Even I wanted to be an actor," said Stan after some moments of silence. "But I did not know that till recently."

"Happens with most people." Tamanna said with a lovely seriousness, but laughed with her eyes. "I knew it all along, right from the time I was in the first grade."

They sat in silence for a while. The bus was now nearing their office.

"Acting always used to escape from me. I was the one chosen for the comedian's role in every school play. And for weeks afterwards others used to laugh whenever they saw me. So, I guess I gave a good performance every time I was given an opportunity. no, when forced to act."

"From your performance in the morning, I must admit you make a fine comedian," She laughed and made the wet curtain of silence wobble.

Stan did not laugh, but pretended he was looking at the water hyacinth that covered the lake to the left of the road. Tamanna stopped laughing and said.

"I was just kidding. You can be a serious actor as well. Only a very good actor can play a comic role and make people laugh. You must have been really good."

"I once won a mono-act competition after just one rehearsal and I had not even written the script down." Stan stopped to give the sentence what he thought was the required emphasis. "And I enjoyed it immensely. That is when I realized I could act and it was something I enjoyed."

The bus stopped in front of the entrance to the building with huge roman columns and housed their office. The zombies suddenly woke up and scrambled to the front of the bus to get down as if the back of the bus was in fire. Tamanna stood up and tried to follow the zombies but Stan remained seated.

"No one is distributing sweets outside nor we are going to Disneyland," he said.

Tamanna looked at him and started laughing. This time the zombies took no notice as they were busy pushing and shoving each other to get out of the bus.

Tamanna stopped laughing when they reached the lifts that took them to the reception where they parted. Stan gave her his extension number and told her to call if she needed any help.

"I will call even if I don't need any help."

"Anyways, I won't be of much help."

Tamanna laughed and went away.

There was not much for work for Stan that day. He did what he usually did. He checked his blog to see if there were any new comments, found there was none. Then opened Wikipedia and went on a reading spree. He clicked on all the links that interested him and read about Australian aborigines, Papua New Guinea, The Matrix, and artificial intelligence. He was reading about the wall of sand in Morocco when his phone rang. He picked it up absent mindedly and said 'hello' in his usual lethargic, unenthusiastic way.

"Did they fire you?"

Tamanna's voice shook him up, created a heavy sand storm in the wall of sand and he came crashing down to the real world.

"Why, why did you think so?"

"You sounded as if you had just fallen into a pit filled with Mumbai garbage."

"Oh, everyone says so. How is your first day going?"

"Will tell you in the evening."

Just then Stan saw his project manager coming at him. He wondered what was so different with her. Then he noticed what she was carrying. A meat cleaver, which looked just like the one wielded by the criminal in Grand Theft Auto. She swung it heavily at him. He ducked and his head hit the side of his desk. The world blacked out in front of him.

"Stan, get up. We have reached."

Stan opened his eyes. All the other members of the theatre troupe had got down from the bus.

"What happened? Why are you looking at me like this?"

Tamanna was puzzled to see Stan staring at her like that. They had to get ready for the play and everyone must be waiting for Stan and her.

"Nothing, just a weird dream."

Where are the stories that used to come to me? It seems they have left me realizing that me, the outlet to the world for them, has closed. I should renew the membership in that library. I have been planning to do that for a long time. After moving to New Mumbai, I go to South Mumbai very rarely. Partly it is because I no longer try to escape from the room. I stay in the room and lay around all the time doing particularly nothing.

Right now I read the story of a woman who went for a cosmetic surgery and ended up with serious health complications and a bad face (http://luciacovelli.rediffiland.com/). I felt low as a result.

When am I going to write the stories I want to write? When am I going to write that first novel? I am acting as if that novel will appear out of thin air and present itself to me. And in which language will I write? I am not very sure about my mother tongue. I was not very good at writing it to begin with and I have not written any significantly long pieces using it for a long time. Well, I don't even get to speak that language for most of the day. I have to make do with my not so good spoken English and rude Hindi; rude because I learned to speak Hindi among a race of rude people.

It seems I am just rambling along. I am doing it just because I want to get back to the habit of writing. Writing has become painful. It is like taking a plaster off a wound. The plaster has stuck to the hair around the wound and you have to pull very slowly or do it in a one fast pull, so that it does not hurt much. I am doing it in the former way, writing a paragraph at a time and then going somewhere else and come back and look at what I have written and then again write something.

Published August 17th, 2006

When software engineers in California are not dreaming about going skinny dipping with Angelina Jolie, they are dreaming about making millions of dollars by starting a software company. I do too. I mean the latter part.

I have an idea for this wonderful software. I don't know how to make the software yet, but a like a true day dreamer, I prepared the packing and the feature list for the software. Let me share my idea with you.

What is Craptastic?
Craptastic is an amazing new software that reads a Bollywood (or other Indian movie) DVD and makes it into a movie that is actually watchable. All you have to do is pop the DVD into your computer, run the software, burn a DVD and watch it! You will never have to hurt your fingers again by holding the "2x" button for one and half hours.

Feature list:

• Using modern and complex algorithms, this software makes Aishwarya Roy look like she is almost acting
• Searches each frame and digitally puts a shirt on Salman Khan's disgusting bare body
• Since most songs are rip off of English songs, those songs will be replaced by original English songs
• Using digital pattern recognition mechanism, this software makes dying characters die as soon as they say, "I am dying" sparing the viewer the 10 minute monologue
• By a patented new technology called ChildAgeCorrect, this software adds realism to movies by making children look at least as old as the dialogs they are spewing out. Warning: Most kids in movies will look 18
• Coat color correction: Rich people in the movie will wear normal gray, blue or black suits instead of orange, green or lavender.
• We all know how distracting those protean sweat patches under the armpits of heroes and heroines that are changing in every frame. This softwake make them look exactly the same in every frame
• (Only for Tamil movies) Applies strategic pixallation in fight scenes where the hero is wearing a lungi.
• And many more features!

Bonus software included:
MovieExperience is a great fun software that comes free with Craptastic. Applying MovieExperience will enhance the sound track so that your movie watching experience is closer to watching in a theater. Some features include:

• Adds the voice of the annoying guy talking in the back row
• Adds crying babies (up to
• Adds the voice of that 12 year old girl who already saw the movie and providing a preview of the upcoming scene
• Adds whistles and hoots when the heroine's pallu drops
• After the movie ends, it adds instant reviews in real voices like, "What a load of crap," "I want my money back" etc.

Order now!

He raises his hand, juts out his behind like a Bharatanatyam dancer

And as the Skoda's bumper comes to stop millimeters away from his groin

Waves his hand in one fluid motion resembling the flight of a fat crow

For the children to come to his side

Then he sees the Best giant late to reach Vasanth Rao Naik Chowk

Roaring through the fast lane, expecting all obstacles to be scared away

He runs like a frightened duck, makes a quacking sound, flutters his hands

The giant's brain sees the duck with ten metres to spare

He floors the brake and the gentleman who had taken his hand off the hook

Is flung towards the front of the bus, hits the six and half foot woman

Rests on the ample cushion for a second and was suddenly reminded of his mother

The traffic stopper ignores the curses of the driver and the bark like honks

And extracts his shirt sleeve from the teeth of the giant

All the children have crossed now

He flutters his wings again with a smile in his face

The traffic moves again and the gentleman extracts himself from giant cushion

And the giant mother gives him a maternal smile and everything is normal

Then I thought I will take a rickshaw. The first rickshaw's driver refused me because I was going to the bus stand. I was about to take a decision never to take a rickshaw again when another rickshaw stopped near me and invited me, ready to take me to anywhere in the world. So I hopped in and the rickshaw stopped at the bus stand and while I was getting down, my hand, which for some reason lagged behind, hit the side of rickshaw and I heard something crack and saw that the panel which covered the side had broken. Luckily, the driver didn't see that. Surprisingly, my hand was not hurt and I wondered if all those mosquito bites have mutated me into a mosquito man or something (Are all vampires mosquito men? They drink blood, they can fly, and they are active in the night).

I went to the bus stand and then the bus came and there was the usual jostling to get in. I had misjudged where the bus would stop, so I had to run a bit to make sure I was in front of the crowd. Then something like a thread wrapped around my shoulder, but I ignored it. As I reached the door of the bus and was about to get in, I heard a shout behind me and I realized that there was a man at the end of the thread and that the thread was not a thread, but a mobile phone's ear phone cord. The earphone had developed some affinity towards my tee shirt and had got stuck in it. The owner, a rather bulky man, who was under the impression that someone was stealing his phone had kept pace with me and with some difficulty, extracted the earphone from my tee shirt, all the while expressing sincere doubts about my eye sight in the choicest of Hindi words. It seems the man was talking on his phone when I ran to catch the bus in my hand-flailing-all-around-borrowed-from- swimming style. I hope he was not explaining to his wife the reason behind the lip shaped red stain on his shirt.

It is afternoon now. I hope the 'accident quota' for today is over and the commute back home will be incident free. Also I am planning to swim in the evening. I hope you won't read about a shark attack in a swimming pool tomorrow.

But after a series of sleepless nights I decided I should at least trim or cut through the growth for ventilation. I went to my usual barber shop which I used to frequent when I was conditioned to believe that a haircut is a sign of cleanliness. I couldn't believe my eyes. The shop had shut shop! May be there were many like me among their customers. I walked back and decided to procrastinate the haircut when I spotted a 'Men's beauty parlor'. I decided to give it a shot and entered it. It was empty except for a thin man with betel juice stained teeth. He would have looked appropriate as a vagrant barber, but somehow was a misfit in a 'beauty parlor' strictly in terms of beauty.

I entrusted my heavy fur to his scissors and comb and tried to explain to him in my patchy Hindi that ventilation was my goal and not deforestation. He seemed to have understood me and proceeded to clear the undergrowth leaving the canopy behind. He first secured the canopy safely to one side of the head using a comb. Then he proceeded to clear the undergrowth with the apparent skills an Indian mali has in shearing a Newfoundland sheep. This I understood because he lacked all sense of proportion and symmetry and soon I had an asymmetrical head rather dangerously leaning to the left. He stopped cutting hair and took stock of the situation and asked me if he could shorten my hair. Since I did not want to start a new trend in hairstyling, which could be called the left-not so liberal-style, I agreed. That dude was apparently a grass cutter in an Indian cricket pitch as he did a good job and I soon gazed at a much younger and cleaner me in the mirror. I liked what I saw. I was looking like a college kid and some sort of innocence had returned to my face. I felt cooler (literally) than I had felt in months.

Now the babes in the new office have started noticing my presence and I am liking it. Now I have an explanation for me being girl friend-less for so long. It was my hair. And yesterday my roommate told me that it is only now he realized how shabby I used to look with all that hair. So, all the potential girl friends out there, you have a neat, dandruff-free, non-smelly me to choose.

And last two nights, I slept well.

Or is it that it is not serious? Can any fellow Mumbaiker shed light on this? Does anyone you know has Malaria?

But now I am coming to the conclusion that there is no love. There is only lust. May be love is lust in a comfort zone.

Just think about it. It is all about lust in the end. Everything else is an excuse. Lust is the bonding factor.

I think humans don't have the capacity to love. It is all comfort zones for us. The comfort zone to talk, the comfort zone to bully, the comfort zone to dig your nose, the comfort zone to have sex, and the comfort zone to babble about things that are considered inconsequential by the popular line of thought.

One hot day, towards the evening I felt weak. My body did not obey my commands. Going back home seemed to be a Herculean task. I felt like lying down on the side walk and dying. I reached home and collapsed. While climbing the stairs to the bedroom, the very stairs I had not given any thought till then, I had struggled through each step and my legs had threatened to collapse.