Category: Humor

Now and then, I visit a friend or a family member who chooses NOT TO have a knocker on their door, a bell I could ring, or even a security system that showed them my face on their home camera. 

Nope, they won’t have any of it. 

They like and respect the good old knock. I knock at the door and pray they don’t have adolescent kids playing loud heavy metal music at full volume, tailored to drown those knocks out. 

Sometimes, luck is in my favor, and I do get in. Other times, I stand outside their door and call them on their mobile, announcing my royal arrival in a befitting non-royal tone.

My imagination has also taken me to a world where doors exist, but knocks don’t. So you… enter. 

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” comes to mind. 

Well, I don’t want that done unto me. Ancient Athenians must have valued their privacy too, I suppose, for otherwise, they wouldn’t have come up with such an ingenious way to transform the world of respectful arrival announcements.

I assure you, I am not trying to be fussy here. I have tried. Tried and failed (might I add, miserably) – at the subtle art of whistling, snapping fingers, and knocking. 

What I haven’t done as bad at was identifying the root cause; almost all of them have to do with expert use of fingers, or some part of it, to some degree. 

So it must be my fingers. 

A kid in kindergarten would probably do a snap-finger routine much better than I do. 

Whistling has always evaded me AND haunted me. For some reason, I am surrounded by expert whistlers, taunting me every opportunity they get. 

Knocking should come more naturally than those two, you say? Well, not to me. And I have microfractures to show them.

I have tried many styles of knocking: palm facing the door, palm facing me, fingers bent, fingers straight, but none of them generate enough sound to get the attention even of the person standing next to me, let alone the person who’s in.

It’s as if my fingers are layered with some additional silencer skin. 

But there is one good thing about me; I am lazy. So, naturally, I am good at finding shortcuts. 

I now have a variety of ways to do the knocking – and the means I use depend on my mood at the time, on a scale of complete frustration to fulsome zen. 

The means to get the resident’s attention would range from a scream outside the door, “Hey, it’s me, open up, where the hell are you!?” to “ using the key ring to rhythmically tap on the door to a song I like, followed by a complement of some heavy bass fist bangs. I have noticed that the latter approach, i.e., the fulsome zen works better for me.

I am yet to find someone who suffers the same way I do. Misery loves company. It’s unbearable to think I am the only one with this condition. I wish to find at least one person like me one day. 

It’s going to be a thing of history when that happens. 

Guess what the first thing I would do when I find out where their humble abode is?

Knock knock.

 “When the waitress asked if I wanted my pizza cut into four or eight slices, I said, ‘Four. I don’t think I can eat eight.” – Yogi Berra

Pizza, they rightly say, is a slice of heaven. And I have been known to indulge when it comes to that. And I think I have figured out why that is.

Pizza is everywhere. Everywhere I go and think of going, pizza is waiting for an opportunity to pounce on me. If I did not know any better, I would say it is stalking me. But I think I know better.

Like everyone else, the gift of staying confined for the pandemic came bearing ‘gifts’ – of online orders and expedited food delivery.

And also twenty pounds of unwanted weight.

All that pizza weight is starting to show everywhere. The pile of clothes that no longer fit is a shameful reminder that ‘I let myself go’.

A quick scan of bank statements revealed that a shopping spree for replacing clothes is not on the cards. I would have to go for the second best, albeit the dreaded option.

A gym.

I enrolled for a gym membership, hoping to God I become a regular there.

Why prayers?

Because I know I will probably make it there for two days, once in the excitement of the first day and the second to renew the membership.

Although the company of health nuts is invigorating initially, it goes downhill pretty quickly. This is considering how soon I usually realize my ignorance in sustaining the conversation and, after some point, even understanding it.

While the former makes me look disinterested, the latter makes me look completely dumb. Neither of these is ideal, considering the end game.

I summoned all my willpower and directed it to become a regular gym attendant. I can do it, I tell myself. I am so pumped that I even play Eye of the Tiger on my earphones while walking to the gym. 

I use all the excellent self-improvement tips that I have learned over the years and create a plan with four major guiding principles : 

1) Start small.

2) Take it one step at a time.

3) Avoid distractions.

4) Reward yourself.

It worked out well for the first week. I managed to spend at least 30 minutes in the gym every day for the week. I avoided guilt and consciousness by choosing a time when barely anyone would be there.

Frankly, it irks me to see people who can keep running on the treadmill for hours without breaking a sweat. I don’t want Jason Bournes or James Bonds training in my gym. They are bad for my self-esteem. I hate them, mostly because I manage to be breathless on the treadmill in less than three minutes.

With this non-existent level of fitness that I began with, I am in awe of myself, completing the first week. I found that especially impressive, given that the shortest route to the gym has a pizza shop.

Okay, I made good on the first three guiding principles; now it’s time for the reward.

It’s day 8, a cheat day, and I can eat whatever I want today.

Any guess on what my cheat meal is going to be?

“What’s your favorite color?”

This is probably one of the most commonly-asked questions on the planet. Thanks to its simplicity and sophistication, it finds a way to get into the lives of toddlers, teens, and adults alike.

I distinctly remember being asked this question in my school admission test for Grade 1. So the examiner picks up a piece of paper with small squares painted in different colors and keeps it in front of me.

How many colors can you name, sweetie?

Weeks of rote memorization came in handy (my tireless Mom had a huge role to play in that).

Impressed, probably more by my enthusiasm than my answer, she gave me a sweet smile and asked me the following question:

Can you point to your favorite?

I didn’t know what favorite meant, but I knew what ‘point’ did. I picked the very first color square. It was black.

The teacher probably had not seen many children picking black as their favorite color, going by the expression on her face. 

On the walk home, I asked my mum what ‘favorite’ meant. 

Something that you like the most, she said.

I now knew the word’s meaning, but I realized I still didn’t know the answer. I liked red, yellow, green, pink and blue. I did not have any favorites. Black, I guess, was a better answer than an utter and complete freeze.

As I grew up, I noticed that it became easier to pick favorites, and I liked probably every color in the spectrum at some point in my life.

However, the best entertainment I have gotten out of a choice of favorite color has only come in adulthood, especially when I mention, “Favorite? Oh yeah, gray’s my favorite color”.

The best part about that answer is that the follow-ups don’t last long.

Gray has been a certified conversation killer, at least in the experiences that I have had. I only assume that’s because it’s difficult for people to fathom how it can be anyone’s favorite color when it is usually (mis)understood to stand for everything dull.

My reasons are more utility than choice. 

Sure, I would choose white if it weren’t for my being a massive klutz. I think wearing a white shirt to work is one sure-shot way to make my day stressful. My shirt or dress would stay white for precisely 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Wine glasses, orange juices, and plates of freshly baked quiches have a special affinity to anything white. No matter how elegant the color is, it can not be mine—too high maintenance for poor ol’ me.

I tried going with black for a while, with its magical powers to make me look thin. But I realized soon enough although it saved me from orange juice and the Californian red wine (to an extent), it also signaled to the mosquitoes of the world that I was available as their feeding ground. Also, black and a head full of dandruff don’t go together. 

You know from all the anti-dandruff shampoo ads out there, even if you are lucky enough not to have any.

Gray conveniently came to the rescue- with its capability to combine the best( and worst) of both- to a dulling degree. Guess you can call it boring. 

I kid you not; there are color tests for personality profiling. 

Which color are you? They ask.

I was watching The Graham Norton Show the other day. It seemed one of the older ones. That little episode featured Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy. One clip from that episode became somewhat famous, where Mr. Whitehall had a funny anecdote about poop. 

Jennifer Lawrence burst out laughing when he was done. So did I, all the while being disgusted by my imaginings of the scene.

That episode reminded me of something rather than someone -a friend from the past. Although his story was much less disgusting, it was fun, nevertheless. I could hardly even call it a story. It was a fact of his life.

A little context before I jump in: many a time, an icebreaker question that people ask is, “If you get X million in a windfall gain, what would you do with the money?”

The response could be many things, but ‘travel the world’ usually features in the top 10 of almost every list I have ever come across, including my own.

Same with this gentleman. Travel was # 3 on his list.

I later found out that traveling was a passion for the guy. He had already been to around 20 different countries. I was intrigued. 

He recounted his adventures from being in a variety of different places in Europe, Australia, and Africa. Beautiful places, all. 

As he entertained requests to point out peculiarities from each of his visits, I imagined myself in all those places, experiencing the culture, the food, and the natural beauty. My imagination had been doing a terrific job of replacing him from all the pictures by me. It was fun visiting all these twenty countries in my head.

Threatened by my wild imagination, my brain kicked in. He was the hero of these stories. Not me. And I started paying attention.

Spain was beautiful, the language, the romance, the culture. It was amazing. The hotel that we stayed at had great washrooms.

Italy has the best food I have ever had in my life. Those people really know how to live. We lived in budget hotels there, but they were spotless. The bathrooms were spick and span!

.. and so forth

A curious thing dawned on me. Every time he described a place, by the third or fourth sentence of every description, he would come to the washroom, water closet, powder room, the dunny, or some other version of it. It was becoming evident that clean washrooms were a significant part of his successful travel playbook. 

Don’t get me wrong; I like clean rooms, washrooms, and everything. My childhood was especially marinated in the ‘Cleanliness is Godliness’ philosophy. Thanks to working parents, who could use more hands cleaning up the mess than making it.

But it mattered more to the gentleman going by his mention of washrooms at least 30 times in a conversation about 20 countries he visited. 

It made me question my priorities. 

Maybe I am not as clean as I am supposed to be. But the lazy being that I am, I was quick to settle on the following: 

He is way too clean; maybe a freak! He must have some early onset of germophobia or something.

I let my imagination run wild again. Wilder this time. 

I imagined getting my hands on his photo albums from all his travels and one photograph after the other – they were all pictures of the loos he had visited. 

From the most basic to the most exquisite. But all undeniably sparkling clean. 

No mountains, no beaches, no sunrise, no sunset. Just the loo.

And then I forgot all about him. 

Time can do that to you until one day, far from my apartment, loaded on two liters of water with an urgent need to go. 

I never realized I had a photographic memory until that day as the images from that guy’s photo album played in my head.