Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Who is John Galt?

Well, who the fuck cares?

Definitely a much more interesting question is, "Why do Bongs smoke?"

The question hits you hard when you see 4 smokers cramped in a cubbyhole hardly bigger than a bombay loo and puffing away like mad in this supposed green building somewhere in Northern Europe. And 2 of them from you-know-where, faithfully recording their attendance every hour.

Mostly you will hear them argue that its all about peer pressure. When you grow up watching the male half of your family blowing rings at each other at every given opportunity, what else will you do? A boy who does not smoke in Bongland, is generally a fictitious entity. They immediately lose admittance to all these vital sorority rituals which are part and parcel of growing up in Cal, e.g how to light a fag with exactly one matchstick under a fan, how to cup one when the first person you see after lighting up is your mom, how a burn happens only after 3 seconds of contact with flesh, how to blow one perfect smoke ring within another a la Barun Chanda in "Seemabaddhha", how the first fag out of a fresh pack has to be put back upside down always and saved for the last, etc. etc.

Yeah, so much pressure. No wonder the poor souls crack and bow to the inevitable ... burnt lungs.

My personal hypothesis is that bongs smoke to look intellectual. They think it gives them a personality, unique, fashionably anti-establishment, a little risque and one which will build a hopelessly attractive air of vulnerability about them. A personality type, which will bring unknown girls screaming to their doorsteps, all set to bathe themselves in this bottomless well of intellectual depth.

Don't laugh. Some people I have known have actually believed this. Some still do. An active imagination always helps. One person, when asked to explain his quite unexpected success with a member of the fairer sex, put it all down to the fag held fashionably in his left hand. Another, invoked that ultimate bong intellectual hero, Pradosh Mitter and his Charminar while trying to explain the raison d'ĂȘtre of his chain-smoking.

Its funny how the things which are archetypal bong (or at least are considered to be), like culture, fine arts, books, theatre, quizzing, football tend to associated in our memories with cigarette smoke.

Well, it must be just me.

The hour approacheth. Let’s find the other bong.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

An ode to Rembrandtsplein

There was this one time when I learnt ..

.. someone’s idea of a rocking weekend is hiring bicycles for 2 days

.. one unintended benefit of cold weather is that your fags go a long way

.. blackout is not something which happens to other people

.. lateral games are really easy after the first whiskey shot

.. cola can be had neat without diluting it with alcohol

.. a dance is never just a dance, its mostly unconsummated foreplay

.. the risky thing about blackout is not that you don’t remember anything

.. that “I’m starved, wanna grab a bite?” is a killer pick up line

.. that Burger King has made McDonalds irrelevant

.. who dares wins, is not just a TV program hosted by out of work ex-cricketers

.. beer after whiskey is risky because you tend to show off that you are not drunk

.. beds have magnetic fields

.. "Have a great weekend" means “I don’t want to see you in the morning”

.. the risky thing about blackout are the quite colorful artificial memories people would take the trouble to cook up for you

.. sleep cures all

and finally

.. your liver is what makes you live.