Guns R Us

Bob (American): Hi, howr u doin?
Raja (actual name Ramanathan Jagannathan):
Hi saar, I yam doowing verry well, how aar you doowing? At house, everybody wokay?
Bob smiles and goes off

Bob: Hi, howr u doin?
Kama (actual name Kakinadacherlakuri Mahesh):
Hi, doin great! You ok naa? I heards that yesterday pittshburghu steelersh jushtu narrowly loshtu to New York Giantsu? Correct aa?
Bob smiles and goes off

Bob: Hi, howr u doin?
Singh (actual name Tejinder Singh Sikka):
Hello, with rad papsee drinking in plenty, I am always in a mood shood to anjoy here. Bwa haha ahahahaha … you good, oye?
Bob smiles and goes off

Bob: Hi, howr u doin?
Nag (actual name Jaldapara Malda Nag Mullick):
Hello, ebherything heeyar is bhery bhell, bhery good, so, how are you, phine?
Bob smiles and goes off

Bob smiles and goes off because he is very scared
Scared to even make a harmless comment on the good natured Indian accent
Scared to think – what if the guy gets laid off tomorrow
What if he creates another Jiverly Voong? Yes, Voong, the Vietnamese coward who was really pissed off because of 2 main reasons:
• He was laid off
• He was a US citizen, in the US for a long time (14 years) and couldn’t speak English well. So people made fun of him and his grammar.
Side thought
Actually, ironic! Amerikans made fun of his English – cool, isn’t it? I don’t know no nobody, braadhar, who can make fun of that Yoong’s accent, like you know, its all screwed up man, and sad the madhaf* screwed around with guns, meaan! Its all goddamned crazy! (All the time, shake your body randomly to correspond to different well known motions like simple harmonic, salsa, random hip hop etc)
End of Side thought

Ok, now let me come to my point. Like the great Joe Biden, I too have been disturbed by such cases of senseless, senseless violence – big deal, you may think!

Such cases are so common – some random ass gets laid off or his wife gets laid by somebody else or Obama makes a comment on existing gun laws or other students don’t talk to him / her or teacher gives a bad grade or for whatever ‘compelling’ reason! the resultant effect is that a particular nerve in the complicated circuit within the head starts malfunctioning. Such acts of arbitrariness are more dangerous than Taliban or LeT because events are controlled by one mad nut, who doesn’t care!

I am reminded of various incidents involving insects whose behavior matches the Yoongs of this world. Here is one story you may relate to if you experienced the pleasure of humidity in darkness during a power cut. That was a daily affair in Kolkata long ago.
One evening in Kolkata, in 1991, I was studying for a Physics exam, straining my eyes despite the maximum wattage of brightness that the group of two poor candles could emit. My mother asked me to wait for half an hour as it was only a ‘scheduled’ load shedding and electricity would be back in another half hour. However, I ignored her advice and wiping away another tablespoon of sweat from my forehead, I tried to concentrate on understanding the mechanics of pulleys and how a spring affected friction or something somewhere – what all we study in school!! Seriously? Did you ever use a pulley after that to do anything? and that too with springs attached or used multiple pulleys in whatever stunt scene you were choreographing for some hero ever? Huh!

A couple of my neighbor friends would land up and we would share the candle light to ‘study’, mom and neighbor bhabhiji would gossip and dad plus uncle would curse the WB Govt for power loss. The routine continued day after day but one fine day, a flying cockroach suddenly made a grand entry out of the darkness. Accompanied by the background music of its wings vigorously lashing against the hot and humid air, it flew straight into the limelight (read candlelight) and disappeared as suddenly as it emerged – followed by an uneasy silence. It would reappear and disappear a few more times. Out of sheer frustration, my friends and I armed ourselves with chappals and newspapers. We aimed and hurled the weapons at the terrorist cockroach, the peace breaker, that little winged brown bastard!! Even brooms were used and all of us went crazy – if I visualize that scene now, I cannot stop laughing. Strangely, we didn’t find the reactions unjustified too – because the cockroach would fly around, settle anywhere it wanted to, which could be inside your shirt, on top of your head, behind your neck or hide somewhere in the darkness.

All of a sudden, the candle went off, flames giving way to a whiff of smoke and the room was en-‘lightened’. The fan was going round dancing, bringing relief to the inhabitants of my house. Everything in the house including us was seen from a brighter perspective, thanks to the power supply restoration. My friends and I smiled wickedly and hunted down the trespasser. The cockroach tried to fly in random desperate paths but we mercilessly killed the cockroach by using our crude weapons. After a clean up exercise, the death of the cockroach became history. We would remember cockroach X when another equally irritating cockroach, Y would try to disrupt our lives only to meet a similar fate. Then the unwelcome cockroach Z , then A … and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, in our society, some bloody cockroaches are armed with guns and rifles – they carry legitimate licenses and can do much more harm than the gandhee nalee ka keedas (bad insects of the dirty drains) that Big B spoke about in Hum! It is time to seriously do something about easy availability of these life taking toys.
That day is not too far when you will see an ad with a $25 coupon inviting you for a grand opening of a store called Guns R Us! Will you be there – 8 rounds of ammunition free with every gun?