The Leaf Blower and the Witch

This morning a few colleagues from office and I were grabbing a quick smoke at the smoke station outside the office premises, while a leaf blower was doing his stuff blowing leaves with a leaf blower all over the place.

Note to self -
Why doesn't a leaf blower have a formal name for his profession? You call the massage dude /dudette a masseur / masseuse, why don't we call the leaf blower a blowsseur or blowsseuse?


The leaf blower was going about doing his job as he must usually but he had five desi voyeurs to deal with. Yeah we desis can be very disgusting when we decide to drop every other thought from our mind and concentrate all our attention on an honest man trying to make a living in the middle of the day. Takes me back to an occasion during my university days when a high speed motorbike whizzed past on the street with a guy and a gal riding on it. The bike was not a ducati, the guy was no hunk and the gal was no chick. It was a creaky yamaha rx 500, the guy had worn a netted banyan and had a mole on his face - probably a butcher from Chapel Road and the gal (the less said the better about her). The point is ten or so desi teens dropped their jaws and cranked up their necks to follow the bike with their gaze till the time it was visible. The panwalah, maalish walah, ear cleaning walah and every other walah followed suit. In a matter of minutes the entire nation was looking in the direction of the biker, so much mental telepathy caused the magnetic field over the country to go bonkers (The high tide talk is plain bull!). Apart from the 10 over sexed desi teens, no one had any idea what they were looking at.

Note to self -
1 - The guy on the bike was probably Rajnikanth in disguise. He probably subliminally hypnotized everyone to concentrate on the mole on his face. I have no other explanation of the continual mass hysteria over him.

2 - Talking of netted banyans: "Life mein aaraam ho toh ideas aate hain" (Punch line of Dollar underwear and banyan).

Back to the leaf blower. With 5 desis shamelessly starting him down I can only wonder what he was thinking at that point. Maybe he thought about blowing all the leaves on us and going 'Who the fuck you lookin' at?' Or maybe he'd aim the blower at us and blow our cigarettes away'. Bad ideas, both of them. If he carried out plan A, the five desis would have taken the rest of the day off citing unsolicited blowing. If he carried out plan B, he would learn the most swear words in a foreign language ever learnt by an American in a day.

Note to self -
This is not a place to reveal my excuses for taking days off work.

My mind wandered to why the leaf blowing thingie should not be outsourced to desis. In a second, rather less than a second, better in nanoseconds I knew why this would be a bad idea. It's got to do with our inherent nature -

1 - We'd blow more leaves on the parking lot than away from it; never underestimate the flow of emotion of a desi in a foreign land with a foreign object in his hand (ever seen us playing in snow for the first time?)

2 - We'd alter our resume to say we managed and operated a biohazard plant when all we did was blow. It's a habit that never goes, we love lying in black letters on white paper.

3 - The blower would be found in every desi home on weekends for blowing leaves that don't exist; borrowing stuff we don't need to never use is a genetic pastime. OK, I won't be so harsh, we'd probably mess our carpets with leaves on purpose just to blow them out.

4 - The blower would be used in desi weddings to shower flowers on everyone. Again a genetic habit, we love employing office stuff for personal use. A more aggressive baaraat would employ it to propel sutli bombs in the air while the saat pheras were in progress. An enterprising gujju would even probably paint it and rent it out on weddings and other occasions.

Coming back to reality, my mind wandered to less insane thoughts - how can the whole process be optimized? Blowing leaves from here to there might be fun, but it sure ain't pretty. Here's a list of probable solutions I propose -

1 - Scientists, G-8 countries and hollywood all seem to have a pretty good nexus with aliens. They could convince aliens to descend on earth and pull all the leaves up the spaceship. (Imagine a dhatura claiming bragging rights over all other trees stating- 'I was abducted by an alien spaceship').

Anyway, I propose the following ideas to seduce the aliens for this task -
a - Natasha Henstridge tapes from Species and Species II
b - Dennis Rodman. No tapes needed, one glance is all it will take.
c - Hrithik Roshan. His extra thumb could be used as a negotiating tool.
May be a bad idea in hindsight; don't want to give papa Roshan ideas
for more shitty stuff.

2 - The leaves could be transported to Lady Gaga for her next outfit. If she can wear a meat outfit, she can certainly wear leaves. Or knowing her, she would only wear 'a' leaf, or three. Best case four.
But we'll still let the idea stand. If the number of leaves in the outfit increases, we'll drop it.

3 - Hire Christine O'Donnell to clean up the mess. If she's a witch, she'll blow out the leaves with just her breath and fly off on the leaf blower. A secret camera can be attached to the leaf blower to give us an insight into what she really thinks about masturbation. It's a win-win situation. If she's a witch the leaves will go, if not we'll get more free prime-time entertainment.
Either way, she's not winning the election. On second thought she just might, it's Halloween time; peak witch-activity season.

If all plans fail, someone go find that broom Arnold Schwarzenegger used in his election campaign for the Gubernatorial election of California and put it to some use.

Return of the Rental

It's 6 am and I'm filling up the tank of a rental SUV that I drove down from Boston to Albany a couple of days ago. I've got to return it by 7 am to the rental guys and then head to the office. Did I mention that this was a Monday? And that the car was a replacement for a fucked up piece of brand new junk I drove to Boston? Like chocolate muffin covered with mousse topped of with a cherry. Only that the chocolate is me with a full bladder that felt seconds away from exploding, the mousse is a dried botch of latte lite I spilled on me an hour ago and the cherry is the hot rental dame that would zap me 20 minutes later at the rental place.

Now the cherry wasn't anywhere close to my thoughts until I met the rental dame . But a dame that groovy totally justifies savagely flicking away your thoughts to make place for a shiny cherry in them.

While filling up the SUV I had my now customary flash! 'The gas dispenser is male and the car is female.' Think about it - there's disrobing to uncover a dark hollow, careful insertion, pouring it in, the deeper it goes the less chances of a spill and whether it's your own or a rental, there's always a charge on your credit card.

Note to self -
1 - Since this was a flash with sexual connotation, Imma refer to it as a hot flash. (No offense ladies. Like I care a shit if you take any! No I'm not talking about you, I'm referring to ladies - the last one died a million years ago)
2 - Now I know what men say when they say in a weak and feeble tone - 'Bahut petrol peeti hai yaar!'

Back to the return of the rental. First a little background - the car I drove in the first leg of my journey gave up on me when as soon as I reached Boston. Long story short - bikers and joggers overtook me every way on the road and I had to haggle 4 freakin' hours to get a replacement.

Note to self -
1 - When bikers overtook me I realized what the English colonel would have felt when Bhuvan beat him with a last-ball six in Lagaan.
2 - Bhuvan is gay. He was always fully clothed when with Radha and the hot English lady (That's the lady I referred to in earlier note). But exposed every time he played cricket with the rest of the guys. (I will never watch cricket again - Fuck you Bhuvan!)
3 - Haggling over the phone for hours was just like home. Totally like the countless hours I've spent fighting with bank guys, telephone guys, electricity guys and the internet guys back home. (Zubaan pe sach dil mein India).


Back to the story. After the filling up I finally reach the rental place and the rental dame greets me. It's the third time I'm doing business with her. You know what they mean when they say 'Been great doing business with you'? That's right, you don't. I'm the only one who does.

Note to self
1 - Get up and fetch your wallet, it's got her business card.
2 - Just did it.
3 - She would have been a 'lady' if the car she gave me wasn't a piece of junk.

She then goes on to ask me how the car was and if I 'enjoyed' the internet radio in it. Yeah right! Like I'd have the time to 'enjoy' the internet radio with joggers overtaking me at every step. Maybe Sarah Palin would. That delusional hockey mom that does'nt drink tea but enjoys tea parties. I bet she'd go - 'You're overtaking me on your feet, but I've got internet radio. It's a symbol of job creation and God Bless Alaska... Russia too because we can see it from Alaska!'

Back to the dame. I go on to tell her how screwed up my trip was and how much hassle I had to go through to get a replacement. She goes on to shower so much sympathy on me it's like murder by saccharin. A minute more of her sweet talk and I would have been convinced that I was an orphan and she my guardian angel. Now I despise sympathy and sweet talk. Hate it. Fucken puke on it. If it were someone else I'd empty out my bladder on them, both figuratively and literally. Maybe that's how the phrase 'Don't piss me off' came into being. Or maybe that's how piss therapy was discovered. (Ok I'll pretend I didn't write that. I'm quite disgusting but p*** therapy is way out of my disgusting threshold. (See - I didn't even write p*** this time).

Note to self -
1 - After about 7 minutes of sweet talk, my anger was easing off and the p*** tsunami inside me aching to come out. (Maybe that's what they mean by hard shell with a soft inside).
2 - Next time I'm bloated with a full bladder I'm wearing a sign that says - 'Do not approach if package is bloated'.

Now here's where things start to get interesting. All the driving, filling up, p*** holding, sweet talk and sympathy was making me hallucinational (Just realized this is not a word). The same way I felt the first time I breathed in clean, non-polluted, unadulterated American air - I almost choked on it.

Note to self -
1 - Bombay is polluted. BIG TIME!

Back to the interesting part (No more digressions... At least I'll try). I know from earlier conversations that 'the dame' (thats what we'll call the rental babe from now) is a vegetarian and a PETBP (People for Ethical Treatment to Birds and Pigs) activist. And I was overcoming an overdose of this funky cell phone game where you put p***ed off birds in a slingshot to kill pigs that robbed the birds' eggs. The way I looked at it this game would be the perfect activity to groove on with the dame. It's like chicken empowerment - the chicken take matters into it's own hands to get even with the pigs that robbed it's eggs.

Note to self -
1 - The 'pigs' usage in the above sentence is an adjective, not a noun. Like calling a bastard a bastard.
2 - I am getting unusually abusive in this post.

So I go into this mini fantasy where I'm having a good time with the dame with the help of some chicken and pigs. (Not on the plate - I only eat halaal meat :) )
She's wearing this grey business suit (she always wears a grey business suit; next time there's a sale in Macy's Imma call her) and what does she do? She gets into a tirade about me not respecting pigs and birds and subconsciously wanting to harm them, manifesting itself in my addiction to the game.

Someone needs to teach my fantasy the law of averages. I am only one of millions that play this game and the dame is perhaps the only grey-suit-wearing-car-rental babe I dig. This is NOT supposed to happen!


Digression to reality - Somewhere between the bashing in the fantasy I come back to reality and tell her I'm not going to pay for the rental for the trouble I had to go through. She agrees. If only she were this affable in my fantasy.

Note to self - My fantasy has a life of it's own. Bitch!

Hoping for some redemption I go back into my fantasy. She's apparently rambled all the time I came back to reality to get my discount and I just caught her threatening me that she'd protest outside my place with the rest of her PETBP gang. I contemplate what to do next. That's right I contemplate in fantasies too. In a matter of seconds I hear footsteps rushing towards my apartment with a PETBP banner on the horizon. I shudder at the thought of what's in store for me - an afternoon in a chicken pen, an evening of forced pig-cuddling or maybe me tossed over the city in a giant size slingshot? I shudder once again and await my fate. 50 or so PETBP chicks (hot chicks) are marching towards me with venom in their eyes and grey suits on their bods. They stop right in front of my window and do what they do best - Strip off their clothes and pose nude in protest of the bird and pigs game. Journos all over start rolling the shutter bugs, I join in.

Poof! Ends the fantasy, I bid the dame goodbye and rush to the nearest restroom.

Note to reader - PETBP does not stand for People for Ethical Treatment to Birds and Pigs. It is a cabal of politicians still supporting BP after the oil spill (People for Empathetical Treatment to BP).