Green chutney in the bin

Goans live by something called the ‘season’. It lasts half a year, and in those six months, Goa is something of a marketplace for fish-eating drunkards. War, similarly, is ‘season’ for the top brass of countrymen. It is the time to look extremely busy, sport smug grins, and contort eyebrows at the end of every fireball statement. It’s now been three years since there has been any sort of major war. And hence, much to their dismay, this has made their lack of activity rather apparent.

In a similar bout of nothingness and strangulating company, I ended up reading a copy of Scientific American India. By far, the most ridiculous magazine in the world. There are more fingers in a leper’s hand than there are pictures in that 64 page compilation of rubbish they call a magazine. Each written piece goes on and on for about four hours, discussing (yes, the worst word in the world) something called Rice Crop Process Modulation through Solar Electrical Systematic Multiple Divide, and how it will make China the biggest superpower by 2032. Yes, there’s an announcement right in between the lines. In 2032, by which time we’d have been 20 years dead, the biggest threat to this world will be The Rice Grain. The military will be extensively trained in rice combat, and nuclear weapons will be replaced by Triple Schezwan Fried Rice from Dragon Chainees, Chineez or, as I once read in Dahisar, Chenes. Our local smoke belching Chinese gaadi will become the centre of Mother Earth, and every Raju ustad will become Mao Zedong. See, it didn’t actually say that, or anything of the sort, but the problem is that I fell asleep reading it. It simply wasn’t getting anywhere.

The editorial unit of that magazine has probably been on a diet of movies with dialogues like “It certainly cannot be doubted that it was perhaps him”. Although it remains to be seen whether effects of reading ten back to back issues of Scientific American are the same as consuming ten sleeping pills all at once. An even bigger problem is the name itself. To learn science and logic from the Americans of today is like taking lessons in modesty from Rakhi Sawant. It’s rubbish. Americans are people who buy Hummers and plastic furniture, both of which are the same, except plastic furniture is faster and better built. Their only contribution to mankind has been the Dodge Charger, and Scarlett Johansson's breasts.

Meanwhile, in Copenhagen, a military aircraft reported sightings of people in extremely funny dresses laughing and shaking hands vigorously. Apparently, they were thinking that 10bn$ a year is going to stop Mt.Everest from turning into lake Everton. So instead of taking running jumps into basins of Tuborg and looking silly, everyone spent a week recommending Toyota Prius’ to their colleagues, and eating sandwiches with green chutney. Funnily enough, right outside the glass walled bay view of the British PM’s hotel room, a bunch of Denmarkers wearing spectacles were killing dolphins by the hundreds. A tradition called on to prove their adulthood, maturity, and if I may add, heterosexuality.

Then, a very keen lady I met the same evening was of the opinion that we must leave something behind for our next generation. ''We must save the environment, and we must live green''. At which point I rushed to the lavatory and emptied all of last night’s Butter Chicken from the Golden Chariot. Frankly, what, from all that we own and cherish today, would our next generation like to inherit from us? The next generation will not want my Suzuki Wagon R because it is dangerous and slow, they will not want my Playstation 2 because it will be outdated (that is going by my insistence that it isn’t outdated already), and they won’t even want my Labrador, because he will be dead by then. You said Mercedes S-class? Oh, is that why they come up with a new one at every motor show? Ahh, Petrol, you say! Take this; in the last ten years, the price rise in petrol has been 12 rupees. So in 2020, whatever little petrol is left will be costlier by another 15 bucks or so. Is that a lot? Not at all. Comparatively, the average wage rate has gone up rather massively. And if we do actually run out of all the fuel in the world, our lives would be more peaceful. We’d eat dinner in candlelight everyday, pray to God more often, and become farmers again. Which sounds good, especially because all of you are on Facebook’s Farmville anyway.