I have had five interviews in two days with two different firms. And have another interview tomorrow - although that will be a mock. They say finance interviews are supposed to be taxing affairs. Well, I did not do exceedingly well in my interviews, but I can certainly say that I did not get too taxed either.

I spent half of yesterday and the whole of today in central London and must have walked roughly 8-10 kilometres on each of the days. That wasn't too taxing either.

However, what I found truly taxing was the sudden turmoil created in my head after I had a discussion with D, a friend of mine who has been through a similar emotional phase as what I am going through right now. I describe myself as an 'incurable romantic' on this blog - unfortunately, that also implies 'more than partially insane'.

I have been working real hard on getting myself (and my mind) away from a relationship that didn't work out. But it is incredible just how difficult it can be to let go of things. Just one meeting with Her last month and those very same memories come rushing back which I have been trying to get rid of over the past several months. Come to think of it, I actually thought about doing something which most people, including myself when I am in a sane mind (and I am in one right now), would call foolhardy, if not outright insane - all after just one meeting.

I had gone to meet Her purely out of that generic feeling of goodwill that one has for people with whom they were on good terms once. Unfortunately, few minutes into the meeting and that feeling was no longer all that generic. She asked me to fly down to India from London for no good reason really, and I happily (nay moronically) agreed!

Later on, reason began to show up in my head, and the whole idea did appear completely crazy. However, it took a discussion with D at an upmarket London restaurant, followed by a long self-debate, before reason could finally prevail and before I could realize that if I do choose to go, then I would be returning to precisely what I was trying to get rid of and thus negating my own efforts of the last one year or so.

As I write this post, one of my close friends happens to be online on MSN with his nick as "if you do what you've always done, you will get what you've always got". In the context of the state of mind that I was in today, this is perhaps the most relevant quote ever - because I have only had problems with the way I have let things happen and something somewhere needs a change.

Coming to UK had helped me move ahead, but it had not prepared me for the spring-like return that occurred after I met Her. Thankfully, that too stands corrected now.

Thanks to D, I finally did make up my mind - in favour of reason. I am not going to India - certainly not with things being the way they are right now. For better or for worse, but I am not going. Because where I am going is ahead in thought, ahead in action, and eventually ahead in life.

"Pranab Mukherji expresses shock at Ganguly's omission from the team."

"Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee believes Ganguly was omitted for reasons other than cricket."

"Jagmohan Dalmiya writes to BCCI President citing examples when a player was recalled at the Board President's request."

In the last year and a half, my disillusionment with the media (both print as well as television) has grown exponentially. This is partly due to the fact that I was living with someone who was working first with Balaji and later with Miditech - so her insider views on the industry made a major contribution to my dislike for it. However, the major reason for my disgust with the media is the way it attempts to create news out of no news.

The Ganguly issue - if it is an issue at all - only strengthens my belief that most Indian news channels today are simply not worth watching. News channels have been giving half an hour long reports that show nothing but a few prominent people from various professions - mostly Bengalis - being 'shocked' and 'stunned' at Ganguly being left out of the team. There were many such reports but the following are specially noteworthy.

1) Some middle-aged Bengali movie star claiming on camera that "Had Gavaskar thrown Ganguly out, I would have accepted it gladly. Had Kapil Dev thrown Ganguly out, I would have accepted it then too. They are cricketing greats, and I respect their judgement. But the person who has thrown him out is Kiran More - just what exactly are his credentials?"

Oh come on man! What exactly are YOUR credentials to make that claim? What do you even know about cricket? The Aussie selection board is full of people who were never really cricket stars, and they have consistently been providing champions over the last 15 years, if not more.

2) This one was a classic example of someone trying weirdo antics to get back into the news after his unceremonious exit from power: Lalu Prasad Yadav saying on camera "Sourav apna padosi hai, acha khiladi hai. Usko team se nikaal dena bilkul galat hai. Desh ke liye usne bahut kuch kiya hai - usko aise nahi nikalna chahiye."

Well Lalu-ji, I agree with most of what you said, but whether or not it is right to leave him out of the team is none of your and mine business. The selection committe must have had its own reasons, and let us respect those.

3) This was the most incredible one: Some random MP called Mohan Singh (or something like that) shouting away to glory in the Parliament talking about why Ganguly's exclusion from the team is unfair. And to top it up, he later said on camera that "Ganguly issue has affected millions of hearts in India. Since Parliament is a mirror of the Indian citizen's feelings, therefore it is only fair that the Ganguly issue be discussed in the Parliament."

This was not all. Somnath Chatterjee, the Lok Sabha speaker, actually agreed to his request! Come on guys, do we not have enough and more issues to worry about already!? Or does the Parliament have that much free time - despite Volcker reports and bomb scares - that it cant find any better topic of discussion than Ganguly's exclusion.

The new team (i.e. the one without Ganguly in it) has not played a single match yet, and half the country is screaming itself hoarse claiming that this team is not good enough. The politicians, useless as ever, are grabbing this opportunity to find reasons to be on TV. The more useless the politician, the more the noise. The movie stars who do not have any movies or even serials to act in, are utilising their spare time singing songs about Ganguly and hoping some news channel will have enough lack of substantial information to air them. Last, but not the least, a certain section of the general public which is not in the habit of doing anything constructive is taking this opportunity to show off their pseudo-leadership skills by going on hunger strikes and making demonstrations and - in short - doing nothing but wasting their time through nonsensical activity, and wasting others' time by disrupting normal life in kolkata. Many of the people in this group happen to be students who just want to be on TV. In my opinion, the noise made by these people is nothing but hot air coming out of an orifice! Let me not elaborate on that.

It is true that the weirdo antics Indians attempt do not help the situation at hand in any way. But the insane degree of irresponsibility shown by the news channels in actually promoting this sort of madness by giving it long hours of coverage is even more disillusioning. What is even worse is that very often the news is not even factually correct.

One such occasion was the July 26th, 2005, when Mumbai was flooded due to incessant rains. Every single news channel wrote in rudely large-sized font "Breaking news: Powai dam breaks". What they didn't know was that Powai doesn't even HAVE a dam!

There was a time when the Indians' only update was the 8:30pm news bulletin on DD-1. They had twenty minutes to cover everything useful in the country and the news was concise, substantial, and worth listening to. Today's news channels, thanks to their 24-hour availability, have mostly useless stuff on them and also share this tendency to devote an entire day to a single news item - be it an item at all or not.

Perhaps it will take one responsible channel to put the Indian news industry in some kind of order. Or maybe these channels will continue going downhill and reach a point of no return and, in the process, leave the Indian viewer with a completely skewed sense of information. Where things go from here, only time will tell, but for now I think it makes a lot more sense to just listen to the headlines from several different channels and then try to make your own judgement. The news reports and their conclusions on TV are perhaps best left ignored.

There are times and there are times.

The first kind of times are those when you find yourself tangled in such an immaculate mess of relationships, failed relationships, one-sided relationships, and solitude that you just dont know how to get out of it. Too many things have taken hold of your brain and you wish that your memory was a hard-disk, where selecting multiple objects and pressing SHIFT + DELETE would remove those things permanently. But at the same time you realize that life doesnt work this way. At these times, you yearn for a completely different life - a life which has none of this mess, and is completely new so that you can redesign it properly so as to avoid the mess. You yearn to reinvent yourself.

The second kind of times are those when you ARE indeed into a completely new lifestyle and have that opportunity to reinvent yourself. You do that and realize after a while that you were too used to your old lifestyle, and that getting used to the new life is a physical as well as emotional drain. Its not that you do not like your new life - you do like it, but you miss your old life as well. At these times you wish you could combine the good parts of both the lifestyles and create a new life which is PERFECT. But you realize that life doesnt work that way. So you decide to make the most of this life and try to keep it as untangled as possible.

Few months pass, and you can notice those entanglements gradually creeping in. They just dont seem to leave you, do they? The same kind of problems just take a different shape and reappear before you. It is frustrating. They are like hair on your head - despite acquiring a new-look with each hair-dressing, your face returns to its original looks within a few weeks.

I find myself in such a situation these days. My brain was full of thoughts and ideas which I wanted to get rid of permanently, but they just wouldn't go. And they just wouldn't let me live in peace. They were like tapeworms - nibbling away inside my body at whatever I tried to take in and whatever I tried to throw out. A reinvention was required. A reinvention was provided. The beginning of my new life in UK was a perfect lifestyle discontinuity. The initial euphoria-cum-shock gradually became normal life and the natural adaptation to surroundings did take place.

But as I said, the very same issues started rearing their ugly heads once again. I couldn't help but think of Mr. Iglesias's song which goes 'you can run you can hide but you cant escape!' So much for reinvention. It is at times like these that I am, and perhaps others are too, forced to take a closer look at what the problem really is. Or whether there is a problem at all or not!?

Sure enough! I am beginning to realize that perhaps what I was trying to run away from was just a part of myself. And when I took that BA-0142 from New Delhi, this other part too was on the very same flight. You really cannot escape yourself, can you? And the mess? Perhaps life wouldn't have the same meaning, or indeed the same enjoyment, if it weren't for those problems. Not for the first time in my life, I realized that running away doesn't help. Facing it does.

Ironically (or comically) it was this running away which made me realize the above fact! At least it removed the biased thinking processes that I had been guilty of giving space to within my head. It emphasized the fact that this has happened earlier too, and even then the answer lay in facing the issues head on. Thats easier said than done. The colossal break-up I went through prior to reaching here is something which still makes me grimace when I think about it. In times of solitude, I still sometimes wonder just what was it that I did wrong? Just how could something so beautiful end? But then at least I am able to joke and laugh about it now. And that is important. To realize that all good things come to an end. That all bad things come to an end too. And that newer good things (and bad things) replace the old ones.

This post is perhaps as incoherent as any post can be. But an honest writing down of thoughts is very much like this. There are too many thoughts in the mind at any given instant, and not all of them follow each other in a set pattern. In fact, this is probably the central theme of this post. That we cannot put too much order into our lives. That life's glorious disorderliness only makes it more interesting and more fun.

There are times and there are times. You like some, you hate some. But at all these times, life is just perfect. Life is beautiful. New good things will start. Till then let us savour the previous ones. Amen!

I was slightly late in reaching the place. Most of the guests had already arrived and I had to dish out several fake-smile-fitted-aunty namastes before I could reach him. And there he was, looking smartly dressed for the first time in as long as I have known him. Or perhaps this was the first time I was looking at him with genuine appreciation - for the ten years that I have known him, I have always looked at him with that typical condescending attitude that one reserves specifically for close friends.

That was the ring ceremony.

And today is the wedding! One of my closest friends from childhood is getting married today, the bride being his sweetheart for the last four years. I am definitely extremely pleased and happy for him - partly because I played a significant (or at least I like to think it was significant) role in getting his relationship to start with his bride, and partly because of the we-will-live-happily-ever-after look that both the bride and the groom have on their faces 24 * 7 these days.

SK (lets call my friend by that name for the purpose of this post) and I were in standard IX when he joined my school. He was quite a seedha bachcha in the sense that he could never get the 'non-veg' jokes which everyone laughed at, and was naive (on any other day I would replace that by DUMB) enough to actually do something entertaining when I used to goto his place (ostensibly) because I was getting bored at home! Needless to say, I played a major role in bigado-ing him by sharing with him my then newfound knowledge about everything that was 'non-veg'.

On another occasion, when SK and I were having one of our usual cycle races while returning from school, he was leading me and I tried a maneouvre wherein either he would slam into my bike and fall, or he would have to give up the lead. But unlike other occasions, this time my attempt was a resounding success - not only did SK fall of his bike, he also managed to get a massive and very bloody bruise on his right forearm. I helped him get home, and was damn scared because it was because of me that he was hurt. (Did you notice how I didn't write the fact that I was, and still am, positively terrified of his mother!) But SK was nice enough to save my arse by cooking up a surprisingly believable story about how a crazy taxi driver had driven the vehicle right into his bicycle.

SK's wedding has more significance in my friends' circle than this post, or its heavily cliche title, might indicate. To begin with, his is a love marriage and he had to endure a not-so-trivial confrontation with his parents before they agreed - that itself opens the floodgates for all the guys in my group, given that mine is a small town where everyone knows everyone (everyone's mom knows everyone's mom). Moreover, his bride is a year and a half older (hence the confrontation at home) and which, again, opens the floodgates (nay, I should say - extends the 'can be considered' age-range) for all us guys by that much time. Also, he is getting married at 23 - a very young age - so if anyone in my friends circle is desperate to make out (without producing any controversies - amongst other things) with his gf, he can very well go ahead with marriage thinking 'if SK can do it why can't I' ?

At the risk of souding romantic about a guy, I daresay that my respect and admiration for SK has increased immensely since the time I first met him. Not only has he moved from being a rather moronic boy to an intelligent hard-working and mature man, but has also managed to hit upon a stunning combination of being street-smart, yet honest and good at heart (which, these days, is a lot more than what I can say about most people). Perhaps the most obvious indicator of my appreciation of SK and his deeds is the fact that this is perhaps my longest post in over an year, yet it has taken the least amount of effort / time. Hats off to SK!

During the last four days, I have met up with quite a few of my friends and relatives and have said good bye to them. And with each meeting (perhaps parting is a better word), I have been becoming less and less inclined to meet (and part with) the next person.

The reason for this, strangely, is not exactly the sadness due to the parting. It is the fact that each time I meet someone and say goodbye, their behavior and attitude seems to suggest the following :
(1) You must be really happy that you are about to join Oxford University.
(2) Of course, I am sad because you are leaving.
(3) The relationship which we share amongst us is unlikely to remain the same after you are gone.
(4) Since our relationship is unlikely to stay the same in the future, I wish you All The Best. Good Bye!

Now go back and re-read the last two points on that list. Imagine how would you react if every friend of yours, every cousin whom you had played with as a kid, everyone to whom you had ever been close said those to you. I am not saying that everyone I met behaved like that, but yes plenty of them did. What they don't seem to realize is the fact that while one person is going to be away from them, from my life just about everyone I know is going to be far away after I am gone. They don't seem to realize that my departure is not going to make any impact on the amount of respect / love / liking I have for them. That they will still be the same for me - in fact I might perhaps start cherishing their memories even more! That I will still be returning home once in six months. That even the cost of talking on the phone will remain pretty much the same - thanks to facilities like Western Union's calling service. That they will continue to be my friends/ brothers/ sisters/ parents and that the only difference is going to be in the number of geophysical kilometres between them and myself.

Anyway, the result of those last two points is that I feel alienated even before I have left ! There is indeed a twinge of sadness when I part from someone close to me, but that alienating feeling is something which does hurt bad. Perhaps the best farewell I recieved was from my friends from the IITD hostel.

They made me feel that, although I am going, I am still one of them.

(1)

This day has lost its significance for some strange reason. When I was in school, we used to have this funda that all the teachers will get treated to music and food, and the students from senior classes will teach the junior classes on this particular day. Similarly, on children's day we did not have classes, and the teachers used to put up a cultural programme for the students. It was educative, it was fun, and it was sweet.

During my four years at IIT, I do not think I ever went up to a professor and said 'Happy Teachers' Day'. In fact, I positively hated quite a few of our profs at that time.

Its only been an year since I ceased to be a part of that system, and already a lot of supposedly hateful things those people used to say/do are falling into perspective. There are occasions when stray phrases and quotes, uttered by those teachers during some lecture, seem to come to mind and their importance gets highlighted because they fit almost exactly to the situation at hand.

Today, I have mailed four of my teachers from college, and have met in person two teachers from my school days. I kind of suddenly realized that these people have guided so many people that they probably dont even know who I am and when had they taught me.

Naturally, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the teachers I met in person, not only remembered my name, but also my brother's name, my parents' occupations and my place of residence in the city! One of them even seemed to remember what I was like seven years ago (the time when he had last seen me) - the first thing he said on seeing me was "I cant believe this - bete there has been a tremendous change in your personality!!"

Well, I can only say that my respect for them has multiplied lately. I can't wait to meet my new teachers who will be teaching me at Oxford (yes, thats where I am going to study - classes starting next month).

So all of you who are reading this post, go ahead and mail / call / visit your teachers, even if you are a day or two late. They'll be pleased by your wishes, and you will be pleased to see just how much they remember after all these years!



(2)

There hopponed to be quite a few bongolis in the place where I wos working until lost month, ond they oll sheemed to have this identicol way of ottering the different vowols ond consononts. I om shure you guys hove olso noticed it - the tondoncy to open their mouths in a round shape while shpeaking, sho that oll (or ot least a vast majority of) the 'A's in a word sheem to have the shame shound os 'O' in the word "College". Ditto for oll the cases where the vowol E ond U have the shame shound os that in the words "yes" ond "but". Olso, they tond to replace the shound of shingle 'S's with that of on 'SH', if the shingle 'S' shound oppears ot the stort of a word.

Read the above paragraph aloud again and you will notice that there isn't a single spelling error in it! ;-)

P.S. The above passage is not intended to insult a language or a community. It is just an attempt at bugging the people who were unfortunate enough to read the paragraph.

It was the end of May last year when I had passed out from IIT Delhi. I had a job in hand which I did not want to take up, but I wasn't really bothered because I did have a job in hand. I had someone in my life whom I was crazy about, and who was putting up all kinds of efforts to bring the relationship to an end - but again I wasn't really bothered because I believed that despite all her efforts, She did like me after all. In short, I had about a million minor and major problems in life (just like everyone else) and I wasn't worried about any of those. In fact, the first week of June was supposed to be a fun visit to Mumbai with a truckload of friends !

It was a time when I loved life and enjoyed every moment of it, thrusting my arse in the face of any tensions. I was a different person then.

During the last fourteen months, I changed from being a student to a working professional. I changed from being in the middle of friends to being in the middle of a city where I hardly knew anyone. I changed from being in a city of open spaces to being in a city of claustrophobia. I changed from being someone who lived next door to a good friend to being someone who shared a flat with him - and in the process ended up having the friendship strained. I changed from being someone who believed in myself to being someone who realized that a lot, if not most, of things which I had believed in were not really based on facts (actually, they were mostly based on gut feeling, and I daresay I still trust my gut more than I trust most people but yes, doubts have indeed crept in).

I changed.

Thats the point. I changed myself in an attempt to adjust to the situation. Perhaps this was the reason why I could not find Mumbai too enjoyable (though lack of close friends was certainly a major factor). There have been just so many changes in my life during the past one year that perhaps some change in me was inevitable. But perhaps I have let that carry on a bit too far.

Today, September 2nd 2005, is my first day at home since quitting my job. I am back to where my transition (writing this at the risk of sounding cliched) from boy to man had begun about six years ago. This is where I pledge that I, English August, will return to being my old carefree fun-loving self.

Move over Mr. Governor of California, I will be back!

"Oye whats your IIM result? Grr you haven't replied to a single message since your interviews began. you don't need to fear others' expectations all that much my friend." That was the SMS I sent to a very good friend of mine (lets call him A for the purpose of this post) when a common friend (call him P) told me that A had been offered admission by IIM Ahmedabad.

Okay so the last time I made a decent post was way back in December sometime. I did put up 'Ignore This Post" after that, but I guess everyone simply ignored it (Hey, but I cant complain about it!).

Coming back to the topic - some IIMs have declared their results, and the rest will declare theirs soon enough. Now my friend A got thru into IIM Ahmedabad (I, and indeed our entire gang, expected him to get thru actually) and tried to give me a call to inform of his selection. Thanks to Mumbai's congested networks (is there ANYTHING which is not congested in Mumbai?) the call never reached me, and I got the news from P.

This is where something interesting happened. I, despite knowing that A would CERTAINLY have tried to contact me, was hit with a sudden and strange pang of (actually I still dont know what feeling it was ... ) possessive-ness perhaps - in the sense that I expected A to get thru, and I expected the news to come directly from him. And having been hit by this 'pang' I sent him the SMS which forms the opening quote of this post.

Sure enough, A replied and explained what I already thought would have happened. However, the entire sequence of events left me wondering at just how distrustful of people I have become during the last one year. It sort of brought forth the fact that I have let myself fall into the once-bitten-twice-shy trap.

It is indeed true that some people whom I used to trust with my life, were revealed to be major liars during the last one year. At the same time, it is also true that I need to stick to reality. One stabbing in the back doesnt mean everyone is untrustworthy. I do hope I get back to being my old self soon.

Amen!

And yeah, if and when you read this, please accept my sincere apologies, A.

This post is not intended to make anyone read anything. I really haven't felt like doing anything constructive in the last one month, and have spent three out of four weekends outside Mumbai.

My previous post was on 19th december. The first two weekends after that (i.e. the Christmas weekend, and the New Year weekend) were both spent in Pune partying with friends, watching a few good and a few shitty movies. The high point of my Pune visit being the meeting with 2 old friends from school at this place called Not Just Jazz on January 1st.

The weekend after that, I was in Mumbai - did nothing but sleep and spend a few hours at the British Council Library.

The weekend after that i.e. the previous weekend, I was in delhi to attend two weddings. One was a friend's elder sister getting married, and the other was an classmate of mine from school who chose to be the flagbearer by being the first guy in our group to get married. No wonder, I couldnt stop myself from rushing to delhi as soon as i got a chance. Sometimes I do wonder why people get married at such an early age (I mean... this guy is just 22!!). Had I been in his place, I would never even THINK of getting married at 22 - especially because 22 has been an unlucky number for me all my life!
(p.s. and this is why i am sure that i would get married on the 22nd of some month)

Anyway, so after three weekends out of town, I have decided to spend this long weekend doing nothing of substance. This is the precise reason why you are being made to read this rot of a post.

In an attempt to make this read worthwhile.... here is a little quiz for everyone which i am sure most of you would have seen elsewhere. However, do try and solve as many of these as you can on your own. If you get 20 or more, you should be applying for a membership to Mensa (Yes, they used to give this test to applicants).

the first two answers i have already entered.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Scoring:1 to 5 is Average, 6 - 11 Somewhat Intelligent, 12 to 18 Intelligent, 19 + Genius
No.	Cryptic	Answer
0	24 H in a D	24 Hours in a Day
1	26 L of the A	26 letters of the alphabet
2	7 D of the W
3	7 W of the W
4	12 S of the Z
5	66 B of the B
6	52 C in a P (WJs)
7	13 S in the USF
8	18 H on a G C
9	39 B of the O T
10	5 T on a F
11	90 D in a R A
12	3 B M (S H T R)
13	32 is the T in D F at which W F
14	15 P in a R T
15	3 W on a T
16	100 C in a R
17	11 P in a F (S) T
18	12 M in a Y
19	13=UFS
20	8 T on a O
21	29 D in F in a L Y
22	27 B in the N T
23	365 D in a Y
24	13 L in a B D
25	52 W in a Y
26	9 L of a C
27	60 M in a H
28	23 P of C in the H B
29	64 S on a C B
30	9 P in S A
31	6 B to an O in C
32	1000 Y in a M
33	15 M on a D M C

I finally got time to put in another post! It seems Amon was right when he said in his post that if I continue working the way I am doing these days, I probably wont make a very regular blogger.

This post happens to be inspired by a TV show which I happened to chance upon while sifting through the channels one day after returning from office around midnight. I am sure many of the people who read this post would have seen this show... ppl, please do add your views on this particular show.

Picture this - about ten guys (more or less ugly, shabby and skinny... but dressed in body hugging t-shirts), surrounded by an audience of about 150 odd young women dressed mainly in sexy, revealing-type dresses (I apologize for the vague description, it is because i do not know the names of most of ladies dresses). A small pool of water. Alcohol.

And...

Shekhar Suman as your gel-haired, tight-dressed, sun-glassed host.

Actually this itself was enough to put me off TV for a month, but somehow I decided to watch on. Perhaps I was too tired after a long day at office to do anything else.

Then came the name of the show - HE MAN! ... and then the show began.

The ten guys were asked a few random questions about love and dating, to which they gave a few random answers - mostly illogical and dumb, while the all-girl audience drooled over every word that leaked out from the guys lips. Following this, the guys' answers were scored by this audience using some hi-tech button-press funda. All this while Shekhar Suman never allowed a certain orifice in his body to stop emitting hot air and noise(in simple words, he kept on speaking nonstop).

Finally the scores for this round were announced in quite an innovative way. Two guys were supposed to be chucked out of competition. So Shekhar Suman sent two of his associates (which happened to be scantily clad babes who had thus far been swaying their butts to every noise in the studio) to do the honours. These babes, corny-ly named Man Eaters (!!!) by the show (or the channel, or shekhar suman himself perhaps) swayed their asses even more while walking to the group of men, now lined up at the edge of the pool. On reaching the guys, they did a suggestive little jig with every guy (the jig being distinctly reminiscent of the actions of an actress in a porn movie, just before a blow job), before pushing two of the guys into the water, all this while looking and smiling at the girlie audience which seemed to find all this extremely horny and arousing.

So two guys are out. Next round follows. This time the guys are expected to sing a song and dance along with it. The guys tried their level best to not sound like a frog singing and dancing to a snake-charmer's tune, and hoped that their weird antics looked impressive to the evidently dumb women around them. Unfortunately, they failed. Most of the times it was difficult to even identify which song was being sung, let alone sounding good about it.

Once again the women scored the men and again two guys got thrown out by the corny man-eaters in the same vulgar fashion.

Next round was another question and answer thing, though this time the questions were more what-is-your-ideal-date-time-method-for-a-hot-fuck type. Anyway, the guys gave some shitty answers, to which the women in the audience practically masturbated.

By this time I was ready to commit suicide for making the fatal error of watching this show. But what happened next took the cake.

The last four guys were made to strip to their undies which, by some curious twist of fate, happened to be fluorescent purple (!!!) in color for ALL of the remaining guys. At this point the music suddenly became faster and the guys were asked to do some sort of energetic dance to the music. While they were still figuring out how to do it, along came a firang woman looking very athletic and dressed in a tight exercise suit, and started doing all sorts of gymnastic activities on stage. The bewildered guys were now made to follow every step this woman was doing... and Boy, was it hilarious, besides being blatantly obscene!

By the end of this round, every single woman in the audience had a look on her face which suggested an extreme readiness for a hot fuck (Well I dont know how the channel managed it, but the look on the audience's faces certainly seemed doctored).

Finally, the show ended. For the umpteenth time the Man-Eaters swayed their asses (along with the rest of their assets, I may add) and pushed all but one man into the water. Shekhar Suman then declared that the only guy who could stay dry amongst so many women had to win... because all the others were wet now!

(EEEEEEKS... does ANYTHING get worse than this!???)

Mr. Suman then invited a female 'celebrity' guest to give the prize to the last man standing. (the word 'celebrity' is quoted because I, at least, had never seen or heard of this young woman celebrity). Following this, someone brought a bike and parked it on the stage on which the celebrity sat behind Mr.Winner. Shekhar Suman joined the two on the bike, lifted his arm purposefully, allowed it to land on and encircle the celebrity's neck from behind, and then very deliberately moved his hand across to cup her breast... and he did this as he bid good bye to the viewers and the audience, while the celebrity didnt seem to know how to stop Mr. Suman from 'traveling' too far.

With God's grace, the show ended at this point. I, frankly, have never seen a cornier show on TV. I am surprised at the ideas our mediapeople keep getting. For them, entertainment is a gameshow with very clear sexual connotations, for them blowjob is big news on a day when 80 people died in a train accident, for them news is an actress kissing her boyfriend when there is at least one smooch scene per movie these days.

My surprise (and also pity, I should add) at the media heightens when I see purportedly mature reporters like Rajdeep Sardesai discussing the 'blowjob' on respected shows like The Big Fight and trying to identify problems in the DPS and the IIT systems. My question to these people is - Is it really necessary to take the name DPS and IIT everytime you discuss this video? Is the problem limited to these two institutions? Is it really a problem at all?

My guess is that school students were as curious about sex 60 years back as they are now. Just that now they are bold enough to experiment with it. It is just Darwin's theory of evolution. And it will continue no matter what antics the media, or anyone else for that matter, attempts.

Perhaps we should not try to control everything. Some things just find their own way.