Things Obama will never say in India

First things first - it's lovely to be in Mumbai. It reminds me of New Orleans post Katrina.


Air Force One was taxiing around the airport so long I thought some Sikh gentleman replaced my pilot.


Air Force Two is basically just full of computers that needed to get fixed at Nehru Place in Delhi. Part of my austerity drive.


Saw Mukesh Ambani's Antilla while we were landing. Now THAT's a building I wouldn't mind a plane crashing into. #uglyasFuck


Michelle is now the tallest man in India.


Indians everywhere are calling Michelle Kali. I knew she was strong, but didn't realise Indians thought of her as a goddess. Win :)


Who are these Jaypee Builders and why does my Blackberry have 300 sms's offering to sell me an apartment?


Just got off the phone with a young lady from some HDFC. Have secured major loans to sail over the recession. The trip is already win.


Spent a lot of time researching about India on Rediff comments, and am disappointed no one has offered me cow urine so far.


Proud of the sniffer dog unit accompanying me on this visit. We did a major cultural integration exercise for them at New Jersey.


This Diwali - I'm gifting Manmohan Singh a personality development and public speaking course with Glenn Beck.


I hate the Pakistanis. They keep saying the damn N word all the time.


Tired of Pakistan's double game. First keep saying we want our own identity, then come to the U.S. and pretend to have an Indian restaurant.


So I told Zardari, India is like 50 Cent. You can bust a cap in its ass 9 times, but it'll still land up a successful billionaire. Unfortunately the only 50 Cent reference Zardari got was Get Rich or Die Tryin'


A true test of my being able to win hearts and minds will be if Indian men stop hesitating in watching black on black porn.


I'm not running for a second term if I've to deal with this Rahul chap.




Hamid Karzai's so stupid he thinks an Af-Pak is what you need to become a Bollywood star.


Message to Sikh brothers - Hard for me to give you visas is you put your income in quintals


No India, I cannot give you a UNSC seat through an OBC quota.


Why are you so obsessed with a Security Council seat when you can't even stop the Maoists from taking over 10 states?


Accidentally said I was a Gandhi fan like Miss World. Now have to mention it in every.speech.all.the.Fucking.time #FML


Here's what I think really about Gandhi. Nobel Peace Prize: Me = 1, Him = 0.


American companies are looking forward to investing heavily in the Indian economy. Lemme just check with China and get clearance.


That American companies are at the forefront of cutting-edge innovation is proved by the McAloo Tikki burger.


We've given access to India with regards to sensitive dual use technologies. A Dominos pizza can now also be used to beat the shit out of your wife.


This taking our relationship with India "to the next level" reminds me of convincing my chick to go all the way after months of boob grabs.


I feel the only way to win the war in Afghanistan is if India renames its intelligence agency from RAW to SMACKDOWN


Who is this Vivek Oberoi fellow and why does he keep asking for passes for my dinner with Manmohan Singh?


Saw a preview of Maurya Sheraton's Obama tandoori platter. Every kebab was completely charred. Very funny assholes. But I guess they were just being realistic. Even the Hillary platter was cold, bland and with kebabs wearing a pant-suit.


If I were to write a book about India, I'd call it Eat. Pray. Hope you don't get diarrhea


The real reason Chagan Bhujbal declined my dinner invite is because our State Dept. asked invitees to submit a proof of conscience.
When I ask for cheese they give me something called paneer. When I repeat "CHEESE" they start smiling. This is pissing me off.


There's no way I'm giving you guys access to David Headley. I saw what your cops did with Jamaal in Slumdog Millionaire.


Curious to learn about the plight of drought hit suicidal farmers in the country. Looking forward to meeting Aamir Khan


We are willing to give India our toughest and best military hardware. For example, John McCain.
Why should American suppliers be liable in case of a nuclear accident? You wanted the damn deal not us.


Kashmir is sort of like Detroit. Except Canada doesn't want it


That India and China can put their fears aside and work together is proven every day by the humble Chicken Manchurian


Seems Hu Jintao is the Most Powerful Person in the world according to Forbes. Whatever. Most followers on Twitter bitches.


Overweight American kids can take heart in the successes of their Indian peers like Sania Mirza.


Take it from a black man - stop calling your development schemes "the projects" #deep


Learnt a new phrase today - Zindagi jhand phir bhi ghamand. Can apply it to so my countries my head is spinning.


All I have to do is smile, say namaste and make an Amitabh Bachchan reference to have all of you eating out of my hands


2 volcanic eruptions and an earthquake in the last one week in Indonesia. Seems disaster strikes everywhere I'm supposed to go

Resolutions And Wishlists :)

There were quite some sights to behold last night:

1. Mom, who prides on being a teetotaler and frowns when I even think of alcohol, nursing a mug of chilled beer and ‘Cheers’ing everyone in the room!

2. The great-grandmom of the family dancing to Elvis Presley’s "A Little Less Conversation"!

3. Uncles and aunties enacting skits and acting like kids!

4. Overflowing beer!

5. Four people trying to force open the cork of a wine bottle, without a cork-opener, and managing to break the cork into tiny pieces that fell into the wine!

6. Turning around in circles with a confused look because I was drunk and I couldn’t find the bottle of scotch!

7. Calling up friends and singing Nickelback songs while standing in the middle of the road!

8. Scrambling for money to fulfill the last-minute orders for booze in the packed wine store!

… and other memorable sweet nothings marked the end of 2010 and brought in the new year with much anticipated revelry, fireworks and a collected sigh of relief. It was something that everyone needed, I guess – a break.

Resolutions, Wishlists, Hopes And Fears
Once upon a time (2 days ago) Mitesh had asked me for my resolutions and I had deftly deferred (adamantly refused) the issue until the year actually begins. Now that it has, I can avoid it no more. Through my hungover haze, I thought about it and realized that there are quite a few things that I’d want to do this year – resolutions and wishes – and I made a rudimentary list. I began prioritizing them all, and here’s the final result:


I want to smile more this year, irrespective of the situation. I want to be able to convince myself that punching myself in the face while asleep is not worth losing a smile.
I want to get the two books in the pipeline out this year, come what may.
I wish this year has some surprises in store for me, because all 2010 had to offer was one heartbreak after another.
I want to go to France.
I wish I could sleep for 16 hours a day and laze around in bed for the other 8.
I wish I could wish for more wishes.
I wish I could make others feel better.
I wish people can live in peace without having to kill for it.
I wish I could make at least one person happy per day.
I wish I can grow a year old and look back at myself with pride for having accomplished at least one of the above.
Have a great year everyone! It’s been one hell of a journey, isn’t it?

What The Fish?

Have you ever heard people saying the word ‘Fish’ instead of ‘Fuck’ in a sentence? I’ll explain exactly how annoying that is.

I dropped a piece of pie on someone’s carpet the other night and the woman said, "Oh, Fish!" I looked at her strangely and said, "No, ma’am. I’m Robin."

It was her turn to look at me strangely and say, "No, I meant the pie."

"Fish? I thought it was apple pie?"

She looked at me even strangely, half-angry at me for having ruined her carpet and half-annoyed at me for trying to be funny. I wasn’t being funny. In fact, I was genuinely stumped. I blabbered some incomprehensible apologies and ran out of there, and later realized that some people use fish as an alternative to expletives.

True, its a 4-letter F-word, but so is free, flan, flag, fork, fine, flip, flap, floo and fits, among others. Why not use these words instead of fish? And why fish, exactly? Is it because they’re dumb creatures who can do nothing but swim around all day long, staring at us with those cold eyes? Or is it because they have highly evolved S (doing the act)ual capabilities that threatens our potency?

The other day, someone asked me what the fish I was doing there instead of working, and I replied that I was fishing his happiness. He didn’t understand what I said and left me alone. So, if we were to use fish as a replacement for ‘Fuck’, then here are a few things we could consider adopting in our vocabulary:

Fish you, asshole!
What the fish?
Fish the fishing fishers.
I didn’t realize he was such a fisher! 
Fish! I missed the bus.

So on, and so forth. The list is endless.

But ever wondered what might happen if we actually want to go on a fishing trip with someone? I mean a real fishing trip, with boats, and water-bodies and fishing roads? Er, damn! The above sentence sounds so pervert! My point is that we’re probably ruining the sea-food experience of millions of people by using this alternative. Imagine asking a waiter in a restaurant for a fish, and he winks at you and calls you to the closet? Ugh! Scary thought.

Twenty Eight this year

Its a horrendous feeling. 26 asn’t so bad, I still felt I was a kid. 27was bearable. But 28sounds geriatric. I feel I’m aching all over. I feel the incessant need to play soft music and watch golf. I feel I’m hurtling towards my grave and on some days I feel I have one foot in it already.

I thought I’d make a list of all the things I need to do in the next three years, because when I reach thirty, I would want my life to mean something. I would want to stop being 22 in my head. At least by then.

I want to take a vacation for three months and travel the country. Leave all materialistic desires behind, take a small clutch of bare essentials, my laptop and go visit all the places I ever wanted to see. And I want it to be completely unplanned. No schedules to follow, no time tables, no mad rush to make the plane or the train or the bus in time. Live those three months in a state of next-available-transport.
I want to write a lot. I want to spend a good amount of time writing down my thoughts, and all the stories in my head and all the obligations I need to fulfill – for myself and for others.
I want to grow up, in my head. I want to stand in front of a mirror and be able to look into it and see a responsible adult than a retarded kid.
I want to be able to go to and sit on my rock again, in my own personal haven, and look out at the sea and be at peace.
I want to wake up on my 30th birthday and feel glad about it, rather than depressed.
I want to make at least ten million by then and retire on my thirty-first birthday.
I want to be able to make a more solid list of things, something much more tangible, by that time.

Cooking With Love

Someone said that the food I cook tastes nice because I cook with love. I started wondering about that comment ant this is what I imagined myself doing:

It was a hot, sultry afternoon and the sweat trickled down my skin in thin rivulets as I stood in front of the stove and watched as the oil in the pressure cooker heated. In slow gracious movements, I reached out and grabbed the packet of jeera. The plastic cover felt tingly in my sweaty palms, like a frail body waiting to be loved delicately. I added a bit of the seeds into the hot oil, just a bit, and watched as they turned brown and started sizzling, giving out the most heavenly aroma, wafting up slowly up to my nostrils and tickling my most sensitive senses.

I grabbed a pair of onions, one with each hand, and ran my fingers all over them, caressing and squeezing the soft mounds, and kissed them softly at first, and the nibbled hard at the ends, biting them off. I slowly peeled away the thin outer covering of skin and ran them both under a stream of warm water. The steam rising off the onions and my hands as I washed them was a feeling so sensual that it brought tears to my eyes. I picked up a clean, sharp knife and sliced the first onion cleanly in half. It was like cutting butter with a hot knife, as I made the gentle motions of dicing the onions, with some of its juice oozing out with each cut, in and out, in and out, in… and out…

I added the sliced onions to the oil in the cooker, and immediately, they started sizzling, moaning in pleasure as their cold bodies touched the hot oil, jumping in ecstasy and turning brown with pleasure. I gently poked at them with a ladle and began stirring them, softly, thoroughly, ensuring that no stray piece of onion sticks to the side, clockwise first and then, counter, feeling them sautee in the warmth of the fiery stove.They soaked up the oil and were dripping wet after a few minutes, completely fried and waiting to explode all our senses as they touched our wet, hungry lips.

I spiced up the whole affair with a bit of MTR Pulao Masala, gently sprinkling the powdered essence onto the wet, oily core of heaven, and watched as the onions hungrily ate it up, soaking in the taste and the color and spewing out the amazing aroma of the spicy mixture. The smell gushed out in torrents and filled me up, filled up the whole room, the whole house, and it seemed, the whole world stopped and wafted in the fragrance. I continued my gentle stirring motions and after what seemed an eternity compressed into two minutes, I added a bowl of fresh, green peas.

The little balls of green flavor ran and hid amidst the forest of hot wetness and sizzled where they stood, adding their own little sensuality to the fragrance. The onions, the spices and the green peas danced together in a carnal dance, a threesome made to last, enticing my every sense and oozing with fragrant pleasure and moans of sizzling heat, fulfilling their destiny, filling each other up, completing each other…

After a few minutes of watching them play out their desires and the moans and sizzles settled down, I added two cups of wet rice, washed and cleaned. The Basmati, angry at being left out of the party, took over the gastronomic orgy with a vengeance, and orchestrated the most breathtaking display of fragrance and it seemed to show the other three lovers just how it is done. The onions, the spices and the peas gave in to Basmati’s superiority and embraced the millions of tiny specks of lust and didn’t want to let go.

Four cups of water, three table spoons of salt, three whistles on the cooker, and one of the best man-made slices of pleasurable heaven was complete. Completely sated and thoroughly exhausted after the incredible display of kama, I had peas pulao for lunch.