Girl power-- Jai Maa Kali, Kalkattewali

Do any of you guys (and of course the beautiful ladies) remember that great Indian super-hero named Shahenshah? Any bells ringing?? C'mon people its that stupid comic cop by day and a deadly one man protector of the innocent and defenseless by night, wearing a platinum made arm guard that could stop a bullet and a mortar round with equal ease. Hes the one who would mouth that famous line:

Rishtey me to hum tumhare baap lagte hai, naam hai shahenshah

And had his own personal background music which would play every-night when he started his rounds of the streets of Bombay in search of Amrish Puri and his goons that would go:

Andheri raaton me, sunsaan raho par
Har Zulm mitane ko
Ek messiah nikalta hai
Jise log Shahenshah kehte hai

And now maybe a decade and a half or maybe more, after we last heard of that great Indian superhero, he is back again . But this time with a twist. He is back in a female avtaar(s), patroling the streets of our nation's capital and my home town conducting that dreaded "Noodle Strap" Test with the background music going:

Andheri raaton me, sunsaan raho par
Micro-mini pehnane ko
Kahi bandiyan nikalte hai
Jinhe log Blank noise kehte hai


She stalks the streets of Delhi by the wee hours of the night, wearing body hugging outfits looking for males who dare to even look up at this astonishing sight of a bunch of super-hero she-shahnshahs walking past them in the middle of the night wearing something like a wonder-woman outfit. And any of those poor fuckass, dickhead males who dare to look up is swiftly brought to justice by being reported to that new-age LEAGUE OF JUSTICE by and for the SUPER-HERO FEMALES. Justice is swift, justice is efficient-- the league warns. For my dear old home-town the league has even sterner patroling rules. Agent Jane Smith of the league goes to a street, that would put a damn fish market to shame, in the middle of the afternoon, sashays past a male-beggar in a noodle top and ass hugging jeans (the beggar by the way in all probability has never ever seen any kind of display of any degree of any fair skin in his whole life, agent Smith sashaying by him is therefore equivalent to a girl sashaying on streets of houston in a G-string) and when the beggar looks up from his bowl with the first-in-my-lifetime-sight-for-me-lady look agent smith marks her out for justice.

I, however unlike most of those males who have been brought to justice by this new super-hero female league, am completely smitten by them. These new age she -shahenshahs you see arent a protector of the innocent or the defenseless. They arent worried about issues like child marriage or the plight of that poor muslim woman in the best bakery case, or the plight of dance girls in mumbai's chamiya bars (female-dance-bars) once those closed down. Hell they arent even bothered one bit about the inhuman conditions that exist in Calcutta biggest brothel, Sonagachi. Defending or writing 200 word newspaper articles on these issues lack that cool USP quotient after all. Agent Smith doesnt take up these mundane asignments. Fuck bitch this wont even get me any fodder for my hugely popular desi blog: "the desi-wannabe-feminist-ogre.blogspot", she would complain to the CEO of the justice-league.

Instead, the new age league are the defenders of the sphagetti top, the noodle strap top, the micro mini, the sleeveless kurta worn without a dupatta, the tank top, the hot pants, the body hugging outfit, to be more precise the right to wear them. Their tagline/USP reads :

Inside every salwar kurta-clad woman is another wanting to wear a noodle-strap top.
And by sweet mother mary (note not jesus, jesus is male, the female super-league is strictly prohibited to swear via the male gender) we shall make them wear those.

You see what I mean right. This bunch is exactly my kind of a super-female bunch. What better than to have Indian lassies of all ages , the 20s, the 30s, the aunties, marching around in micro-minis, albeit with mis-shapen asses and thunder-thighs. For starters it would perhaps help to elevate by atleast one standard deviation the abysmally low sexual expression capabilities of the Indian metro-female.

Female liberation has finally entered the new millenium. Gone are the days of BRA-BURNING and enter are the days of the LETS DRESS UP AUNTIE IN MICRO-MINIS. And I for one am really looking forward to visiting Calcutta in a couple of months time. After all micro-mini wearing aunties hopping off that mini-bus would be a great spectacle if nothing else. Though I must warn the league, my mom would take some work before she comes around!!

Some news and some surprise

Ok lets start with some of the news. And before you start getting ideas about the nature of the news, in particular its proximity to the female form, let me clarify, this is good news of the kind that has never before been mentioned in this blog, infact this is the kind of good news that makes the hearts of nerdy geeky people (and no one else mind you) go ga-ga with joy. But hey then again this is that Jhantu blog, so you can be assured though that some mention of the closeness to female forms will come in, maybe a bit later. Now before the subsequent sentences start getting more and more convoluted and ever more confusing and long drawn and before you my dear reader start scratching the top of your head in frustration at the unashamed display of my command or the lack of it of the english language in its written form and scream out O blurt out that fucking good news for petes sake you dickhead fuck, dear readers it is the following:

You see all nerdy research folks and scientists pompously publish unimportant complicated techie papers in completely useless and unimportant scientific journals every year by the tons. But sadly few of them are ever read by anybody, and till date that has been the case with yours truly. But lo and behold, I was at this conference over the past week, when surprise surprise. What do I find but these bunch of Chinese research guys at some big shot company's research division referring and citing with gay abundance about a 4 page work of crap published by one Jhantu on which they seem to have based their entire work. Not just that that work of crap by that one called Jhantu now seems to be the work-horse of that un-named company's production line.

Now believe me when I say this that for us techies seeing our name cited on a random publication or a viewslide in a 20 minute long technical presentation attended by 20 people with gray/no hair, is glamour redefined. We techies you see are satisfied with little. Right from the start (meaning the day we decided to become techies), we know that all our equations and bullet-proof theorems and our super-fast codes are never going to elevate our getting-laid status at a club, the spicy girls are more likely to fall for that chunky truck-driver Chuck, rather than that lanky geeky dude wearing a t-shirt that reads:

And thus we are satisfied with trying to get laid by equally nerdy geeky girls and just to add a pinch of lemon to those out of reach sour grapes we shall say Fucking blonde bimbos who wants to date them anyway, screw those dumb bitches, of course followed by a muffled silent sigh in postscript if only we could.

Anyway without be-labouring the point any more, the bottomline is that we the geeky research folks really get turned on seeing our name displayed on this presentations and tech papers. Thus if your girl-friend or boy-friend or some such character in your life is a geeky techie, and you want to get him/her a really grand halloween present, then come halloween night get dressed in that naughty school-girl uniform (of course dont forget to go commando) and hold one of his pre-prints in your hand and coo to him would you be my professor and teach me how equation number A-4 was derived. And trust me when I say this and believe me I kid you not that you'd be treating that geek in your life to an unforgetable night of 100% pure pleasure if you follow this piece of advise.

But anyway, so I had my one slide's worth of glory in the world of geekies and even had a few students in universities walking upto me and asking me for my email to discuss some aspects of my work that they could not quite follow, but would love to. And I obliged them with my visiting cards in the manner in which Sachin Tendulkar obliges his fans with autographs, feeling all pompous and important and all that shit. Felt good you know, infact felt fucking great.

But then something happened. A few among that bunch of autograph-in-the-form-of-business-card hunting bunch of grads decided to tag along with me for dinner. Now if you have been in a grad school in the US as a geek and been to these conferences, you would know that this is a red-herring with R in caps for that company scientist. Let me explain. The trick that the grad student plays here is that he is out looking for an expensive $100 per person dinner at some posh seafood/steakhouse joint. Of course for those below the poverty line grads a $100 meal is well and truly beynd their reach. So what they do is that they'll get into conversation with a research guy from some company about oh how interested they are in his work. Now the company-research guy being a geeky techie himself, would be overjoyed that some student finds his hitherto crap piece of work so exciting, so that company research guy would take these grad students out to dinner to discuss his work in more details, pick up the tab, and those bunch of grads would get their 100 buck meal, which they were out to look for in the first place.

But what those dickhead grads didnt know is that I am fresh out of school, and for the last four years I have been playing this trick with perfection at numerous conferences. So yea I did take them out for dinner, and being of good heart I did pick up the tab, only the place wasnt Morton's Steakhouse (which by the way serves the best filet mignon in the south coast), but it was Mcdonalds. Game, set and match for Jhantu, I would say!!

And now for the SURPRISE part.

It seems romance has decided to make a comeback into my life. After being sentenced to be in the backseat of thy life for almost an eternity, it seems that she, romance, has decided that it is now time that she would make her presence felt. Now for someone, whose been involved in some of the most eclectic relationships of the heart in the past, allowing romance a foothold is a herculean task in itself. But then pretty hands have a way of tilting the balance:

The princess might kiss the ugly frog and turn him into the prince of his dreams. This might not after all be just tales from the crypt, fairy tales might still come true.