It’s an important movie – It may potentially change how movies are made in the future. This may kick start the novel trend of movie studios listening to the audience.

Right out of the bat, the movie just is leagues above the theatrical cut. Just is. Leagues above. Get it?

Wikipedia

“Ughhh… Yes, got it. Maybe we can get a Snyder cut version of that joke 5 years from now?”

Context: The Story Behind the Snyder Cut

By this time, the butchering of the Justice League is enshrined in movie history. Arguably, the story behind the Snyder cut is even more interesting than the movie itself.

Batman and Superman were indisputably the world’s most famous superheroes. With a library of epic tales, a stellar cast of iconic villains and a rabid fanbase, it was the go-to superhero hub that even had some early big screen hits with the Donner & Burton movies. If anyone were to bet on Superhero franchises taking over Hollywood, the wise bet would have been on DC.

Instead, DC’s rival, Marvel dominated the screens with lesser known superheroes – and established a fantastically coherent Cinematic Universe that grossed around 11 billion dollars… and counting.

DC was understandably pissed. They felt that with the help of properties like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and who-the-hell-even-cares-who-else, they could easily topple the Marvel giant and cash in all the superbucks. So they roped in Zack Snyder and built their own Cinematic Universe – tactfully named the DC Extended Universe, or DCEU for short.

Justice League 2017 | Warner Bros.

For the last time, we’re not knocking off Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. We’re the DC Extended Universe. Extended! Completely different.

They started with 2013’s Man of Steel, which portrayed Superman like you’ve never seen before; moody, despondent, dark and not-fun. Then they followed that up with 2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where they introduced Batman like you’ve never seen before: easily manipulated, shooty-shooty killy-killy, and generally unfocused. While the movie gave a few minutes of some truly awesome Batmanning, it didn’t create the sensation that DC was hoping for.

Undeterred by the lukewarm reception, Zack Snyder went on with his planned sequel – The Justice League. It was the movie that was expected to break our real life universe with its unrefined awesomeness. Its grand ambition to oust Marvel’s 20 year ‘lucky streak’, however, fell flat. Marvel was still kicking DC right where it hurt them the most – their wallets.

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“I’m sorry. We did everything we could. But your wallet didn’t make it.”

This made DC/Warner Brothers sit up and take notice. They wanted to learn from their mistakes. What made Marvel movies work, while their own movies went full Suicide Squad on them? Was it because Marvel spent years cultivating character arcs and making the audience care for them? Was it the attention to details? Was it the way the movies adjusted tones to suit the character being portrayed without losing narrative consistency? Was it the easter eggs strewn about the movie that told comic book fans they understood the source material? Was it the quirky puns and quips? Was it the…

Hold it… The puns! Of course! That was it. They just needed to make things light-hearted. By the time they were inching to that conclusion, something unexpected happened – DC actually made a fun, well received movie – 2017’s Wonder Woman. This made them double up on their convictions. Yep. The trick is to make the movies funny and bright. Marvelize the sucka. That had to be the golden ticket to unlimited cash.

Flickr | Purple Slog

They NEED unlimited cash. What else can they burn to survive the cold winter nights?

Meanwhile, Zack Snyder was already knee deep in all the footage he’d shot for his edgy, non-campy, non-quippy Justice League, and he was already planning to split his movie into two long, brooding, serious installments – which would delay box office returns further. So he was ejected gracelessly in the midst of a real-life personal tragedy in the form of his daughter’s untimely passing.

So who could Warner Brothers bring in to sprinkle some Marvel magic into the movie that was mostly already filmed in a decidedly un-Marvel way? Why not bring the actual architect of the Avengers movie they were trying to emulate? Why accept substitutes when the original Joss Whedon was right there for the taking, doing Joss Whedony stuff.

Wikimedia commons

“Here! Here! I’m open! Over here!”

So they brought him in to do post-production work, with the mandate of trimming the movie down to size, and to funny it up a bit.

Joss Whedon is a superb director in his own right, which is why it’s troubling how badly he butchered the movie. He apparently did the job as if he was still on Marvel’s payroll. He snippety snappity snipped all character development arcs from Snyder’s film, rewrote lines so campy that he seemed to be aiming for Adam West’s Batman tone, made the oh-so-fantabulous decision to CGI off Superman’s mustache, and recolored the dark and gritty tone of the movie to his Marvel-ous hues.

The only thing non-Marvel about him turned out to be that he behaved like a DC villain on set – abusive, unprofessional and trash talking his predecessor’s work while actively butchering his artistic vision.

Twitter

Which was especially classy considering his predecessor was grieving his daughter’s tragic death at the time.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the blame solely on Whedon – He was under studio pressure on movie length and to release in time to preserve their bonuses. It might be troubling to learn that the studio executives prioritized their bonuses over delivering a good quality version of your favourite childhood heroes, but that’s because you don’t know their backstory – As children, these movie executives were bitten by radioactive piles of cash who also shot their parents dead. Distraught, they were brought up by stoic butlers who trained them in a mythical faraway land to hone their gift of squeezing dollars out of mashed up comic books.

I know. I’m feeling teary eyed just writing this down.

By the time Whedon was done Whedoning the Snyder footages into the jolly campy nonsense that was approved for theatrical release, you had very little of Zack left. Granted, the movie was marginally better than if Whedon and the movie executives had released a 2 hour uncut footage of them taking turns blowing the raspberry at the audience – but it didn’t turn out to be the Marvel destroying juggernaut that everyone expected.

Considering how campy his reshot dialogues were, he might as well have gone the whole way and added canned laughter tracks. (insert laughter here)

Fans were enraged, and not too long before the movie was ejected from theaters, they clamored for the ‘Snyder Cut’ – a mythical, perfect version of the movie that captured the original vision and intended tone of the movie. The rallying cry of #ReleasetheSnyderCut blew up across the internet, and Warner Bros was inundated with cries to bring back the director’s version.

Even as the DC Extended universe collapsed in its own hubris, with the biggest stars stepping down, the call for the Snyder Cut intensified enough for Warner Bros to request Zack to release a raw version of his footage. Zack refused, saying it would be better to let it remain a mythical unicorn that fans can imagine as perfect, rather than release an unedited, unfinished version. But when Warner Bros allotted a 70M dollar budget to get it done, he finally relented, and released the fabled Snyder Cut.

And this release has been bursting the seams of the WorldWide Web – and in particular, generating marketable interest in the premium streaming platform of HBO Max.

The decision to release this behemoth was easier in the course of the Covid19 pandemic that had essentially halted the industry in 2020. New filming was not as easy as before, and streaming services were more viable – the perfect time to experiment with a new format respliced from pre-shot footages just lying around in the Warner Bros garage.

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Spoiler alert: Here’s the complete epic climax for the movie, uncut.

Industry impact

This changes everything.

This is a singularity that can alter the very concept of filmmaking in Hollywood. Movies once released were kinda set in stone. Except for some special edition cuts that gave 10 minutes of deleted scenes or crappy first cuts of alternate endings, for the most part, fans had to accept the movie as it was released into the wild.

That has changed.

Fans of established characters now know that if they scream loud enough, they can reverse the creative direction that the studio crammed in for artistic/dollar reasons. Filmmakers have the option to discard traditional limitations they consider for theatrical releases – Running time is not a real concern if you don’t have to cram in as many showtimes per day to recoup movie costs. And streaming platforms don’t have to stick to reduced budget imitations of the big screen counterparts as they have been doing up to now – they can take on the full big budget experience.

Granted, smaller steps towards these changes were already taking place over the past few years, but the Snyder cut has undoubtedly fast-tracked the next stage of movie evolution.

Oh… about the movie

It’s not often that a movie review crosses 1500 words before actually – you know – talking about the movie itself, rather than the behind the scenes shenanigans. However, it was a necessary detour.

But let’s get to the obligatory review of the movie now –

The Snyder cut was somewhere around 90-98 times better than the Joss Whedon cut, known as the Josstice League by sniggering amateur critics around the world. This made the movie engaging, coherent, sensible(ish) and… good. It wasn’t spectacular, and it would never have worked in the frame of a 2 hour movie as the studio wanted – but it truly established the characters and put up character growth that was sorely missing in the Josstice League movie. Not to mention it avoided digital barbershop works.

Zack Snyder's Justice League | Warner Bros

“I dare you! Joss TRY to airbrush my upper lip again.”

The plot remained similar to the theatrical release in many aspects – Armor covered God, Steppenwolf, is drawn to Earth after Superman’s death by magical infinity stones mother boxes, that have the power to do whatever the script wants at any given point. Batman and Wonder Woman assemble a team of superheroes who can’t quite work together for the first half. They then use the infinity stone mother box to bring back Superman from the dead. Superman has a brief fight with the rest of the team and flies away right into the movie’s climax, where Steppenwolf is defeated.

But it’s also different in the right places – Steppenwolf (who is now even more armor covered, and more evil-spike-y) is acting as an agent of Thanos Darkseid, a power hungry God set on conquering the universe. Superman helps defeat Steppenwolf, but he doesn’t do it singlehandedly – like in the Whedon cut. In a radical twist, each member of the Justice League contribute to the fight in relevant and meaningful ways. Plus, the cringe-inducing quips are trimmed off, burned to dust and flushed out of the system.

The pacing is perfect – and that’s saying something for a movie that’s 4 hours long. It never felt boring, contrived, or stretched out.

The movie is not without its flaws. It introduced too many characters, mostly for setting up sequels that will likely never happen. The 20 minute epilogue by itself tried to rev up the engines to 20 different plot threads that may take 30 movies to effectively execute. It’s seriously difficult to understand why Snyder would toss all those eggs up in the air, knowing full well that they’re mostly going to go splat. There simply isn’t any way to juggle them all into movies – whether theatrical or streaming.

It’s not just that there is no way these setups will amount to full fledged movies – Honestly, I don’t even want some of the setups to become full fledged movies. Some touched upon storylines that I have enjoyed reading in comic format, but acknowlede as too different from the characters to actually work on the big screen. I am doubly miffed because everyone knows these are all dead ends.

Now that this review has grown way, way too long, I’ve decided to step aside and let Joss Whedon’s standup commentary wrap it up for me.

Wikimedia Commons

“Knock Knock.
Who’s there?
U Mustache.
U Mustache who?
U Mustache yourself if it was worth bringing me in to close this review.”

One of the things I knew were the common phrases surrounding babies, which I was finally able to test out in a home environment. For example, I can now confirm that it is indeed easy to steal candies from babies – they’re pushovers when their mom is not around. Also, the phrase ‘as helpless as a baby’ is well founded. And considering that most babies spend the majority of their non-napping periods being cranky and crying, the phrase ‘Don’t be a baby’ is also an advice built on solid foundations. However, whomever coined the phrase ‘slept like a baby’ has a funny idea about sleep.

Pixabay

I am forced to conclude that this is pure fantasy

One of the stereotypical images of babies is their infamous habit of sucking their thumbs. This has been documented abundantly across pop culture, from Looney Toons cartoons to classic novels (I would presume).

But not every child behaves the same way. My two year old son, Nate, for example, has some very progressive attitudes about thumb-sucking. Firstly, he does not discriminate between fingers. He firmly believes that all fingers deserve a bit of sucking. Secondly, he can’t be bothered to suck on them himself. No. He has opted to delegate the sucking process in its entirety. He would merely bite/chew his lips while vigorously forcing his fingers into the mouth of the nearest adult.

Now, sucking fingers is never an admirable trait. When parents boast about their kids, you hear about how they moved around alphabet blocks (Ooh, he’s going to become an engineer) or how they smeared food all over the wall (Ooh, he’s going to be an artist) or how they scribbled illegibly (Ooh, he’s going to be a doctor) or even how they were drawn to knives (Ooh, he’s going to become a surgeon). Rarely do you hear talks about how thoroughly they suck fingers.

Finger sucking is moderately adorable in babies. They’re just being babies. But it Is imperative that they grow out of it. It doesn’t matter how cute or smart your child is, but if he’s sucking fingers while writing his SAT – or worse yet, having his fingers sucked by the student sitting at the next desk – it’s something you should leave out of his resume.

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“So… when you wrote you like to crunch digits, you were actually not talking about numbers”

What about during the toddler years? Sure, it’s socially more acceptable at this age than during his school years, but toddlers tend to be rather lackadaisical about what they put on their fingers in, and this can be a problem for the victims with working taste buds.

A healthy, naughty toddler with a curious nature can be – to put it bluntly – quite disgusting. They are happy to get their hands dirty – literally. They’d readily dig their fingers into anything; paint, sand pits, oil, cat litter, muddy puddles, shoes, grease, brooms, wax, earwax and snot.

Nate would do all of this during the 0.57 microseconds that we take our eyes off him (Ooh, he’s going to become a Ninja). We’d only discover what he had done once he shoves his finger right into our mouth. As my wife is usually the nearest adult, she has taken the brunt of these involuntary taste tests. She is now an expert on what awful things taste like. She can probably taste a sample of soil and determine where it’s from.

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Children’s fingers are now nightmare fuel.

But this is just a phase. They grow out of eccentricities like this. This is what I keep telling myself. And yet, every now and then, I’ll be watching TV or reading a book when suddenly my son would ahem… give me the finger.

I’d often plead to him “Buddy, why can’t you be normal and just suck your own finger??” And he’d put on an adorable smile, and bite his lip meaningfully, as if to say “Are you kidding? I’m not putting that in my mouth. Who knows where it’s been?”

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade – after borrowing some sugar, water, a juicer, a jug and preferably, some ice – because life is not in the habit of making things easy. As long as I’m stuck with my son continuing his proxy finger-sucking behavior, I’ll have to think of ways it can work to my advantage. Perhaps I’ll add some toothpaste and grit my teeth when he does this. It would force him to brush my teeth as he tries to work his fingers in. Maybe I can find a way to use this instead of a toothpick after meals. Maybe I can enlist my wife as a consultant for the police – “Yes, officer. The tangy, yet fruitful taste on this mud on the victim’s boot suggests he’s coming from the southern side of the city, near a playground.”

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“She can do what-with-the-what now? Ok, you can have this case. I’ll wait for the next one.”

As a parent, it’s important for me to know what’s going on in my son’s life. But knowing his what his life tastes like is probably going a bit overboard.

As I write this, I can see him playing with his books and pens, blissfully unaware of the scandalous article his dad is penning about him that could prove embarrassing 20 years down the line. He’s happy in his own world, doodling on a sketch pad. As I look on at this calming scenery, I can’t help but think – “Gawd… I’ll soon find out what that ink tastes like, won’t I?”

I had to know. I was balancing on tenterhooks at the edge of my seat on pins and needles, waiting with bated breath to find out – why that mustache was so goshdarned important.

For those of you who don’t know, there was a supersized-drama behind the scenes around one of the main actors. Henry Cavill, better known for his role as Superman, had a critical role in the movie. Once he was done flying around as the caped superhero in the 2017 Warner Bros. movie, Justice League, he started prepping for his role in MI:6. However, once the studio got wind of the crappy crappiness of the Justice League movie during its preview screenings, they decided to re-shoot some scenes. For this, they had to bring back the lead actors, including Cavill. Unfortunately, Cavill did not come alone. No. MI:6 era Cavil came with a decidedly unSupermanny mustache.

Mission Impossible: Fallout | Paramount Pictures

People in Superman’s world consider glasses to be a near-perfect disguise. Using facial hair may result in even Superman failing to recognize himself, leading to an identity crisis.

Warner Bros. essentially said “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to shave off that mustache”.

Paramount chose not to accept it.

One proposed solution was for Cavill to shed his lip garden and for Warner Bros. to pay around $3M for adding a fake mustache for MI:6, either via CGI or via actual make-up. The MI:6 director, Christopher McQuarrie, scrapped that plan, saying that fake mustaches would be unconvincing.

Let me say this again. The people behind Mission Impossible – a franchise that infamously relies on agents whipping up prosthetic masks to perfectly mimic a completely different person, irrespective of height/size/mannerisms – said that a fake mustache would be too much of a stretch.

Mission Impossible 3 | Paramount Pictures

So, one of these two is Tom Cruise? Sure, I’ll buy that. As long as there’s no mustache involved.

In the end, Caville played the costumed superhero with his full blown mustache. During post production, CGI was used to give him a digital shave, and presumably to edit out the muffled laughter from his co-stars. And that’s the story of the most expensive mustache in movie history; incidentally a more entertaining story than the Justice League.

The resulting CGI upper lips were truly cringe-worthy – turning Cavill’s naturally handsome face into an uncanny valley nightmare. This was arguably one of the lowest points of the Justice League movie.

Man of Steel, Justice League | Warner Bros.

And then there are those who feel that the digital mustachectomy was so bad it distracted attention from the (oh, so many) other ways in which Justice League sucked.

So, when Mission Impossible: Fallout finally launched on the big screen, I had to watch it as soon as I could. I was not disappointed – it was slick, stylish, smooth and finely layered into a visibly ordered structure.

And the movie wasn’t bad either.

I mean – yes, the plot was cliched, simplistic, predictable and formulaic – but the riveting action sequences and the fast pacing fully met my expectations from the franchise. So that’s a solid thumbs up from my side.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to the focus of this review. The mustache of legends. For all you naysayers who said they could have chopped down the bush and helped out Justice League – let me assure you, that it was absolutely impossible.

In Fallout, Henry Cavill plays Special Activities Operator August Walker, who starts out as an impulsive, muscular jock who stares at characters with menacing nonchalance. Half of his character is entirely represented by that mustache.

Mission Impossible: Fallout | Paramount Pictures

Intent stares contributed another 18-20%.

The face of a demustached Cavill may be ideal for a superhero with boy-scout morals, but it would have broken down instantly in the role of an impetuous, ham-fisted, reckless agent who’s unimpressed by the Impossible Mission Task Force.

And don’t tell me he could have pulled out his acting skills to make up for the mustache deficit. No! From what the director implied, remember that Henry Cavill doesn’t have the acting chops to play “Henry Cavill with a mustache” unless there’s a real mustache hanging onto his face.

Don’t get me wrong; He’s perfectly capable of handling the role he was given in the movie – the franchise is not notable for its Oscar baiting performances, after all – but the mustache was a big part of selling that character.

In fact, once you see the movie, you may actually hate Justice League a tad further, if that were possible. The audacity of it all. How could they ask anyone to cut down that glorious mustache? Just look at it.

Mission Impossible: Fallout | Paramount Pictures

Spoiler alert: If you don’t want to spoil a key plot twist that reveals itself towards the middle of the movie – or in the first 15 minutes if you’re paying attention – skip this paragraph.

Oh, I meant THIS paragraph. Jump on to the next one. As the plot moves forward, the role of the mustache becomes more and more important – It turns out Cavill is the rogue agent/antagonist of the movie. The movie had to seriously up its game in terms of screenwriting, and credibly give depth to the character to make him believable as a ruthless anarchist who had been secretly masterminding a deep operation from within the CIA. Either that, or it had to take a shortcut and glisten an impressive mustache instead. The screenwriters were busy developing an unlikely romance sub-plot, so the mustache was the inevitable choice. In the final act, half of Cavill’s face is burned off, and a giant hook tears into him as he falls off a cliff into an exploding helicopter – not exaggerating, by the way. But viewers are not explicitly shown what happens to his mustache, so I fully expect to see it in the sequel.

The mustache’s performance was so powerful, so deep, that I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be the first oscar nominated role from the franchise. I am quite confident that no other mustache would have performed as well in this role – no offence to Tom Selleck.

In the end, it worked out well for everyone. MI:6 got to keep the ever-so critical mustache in its movie, we got one entertaining movie out of the whole thing, and Justice League fans got to pretend that the movie would have been good if only it hadn’t been for the mustache issue.

Note: The image used as the Featured Image for this post – is a very creative and hilarious fan art I found online. If anyone could direct me to the original artist, I need to credit him/her and obtain permission to use it here. You can check out the full poster here.

Oh, I remember the times of old; simpler times when they got along so well. They were inseparable. You could hardly see one without the other. Actually, you could hardly see one because of the abundance of the other. They finished each others sentences. Of course, that was easy to do because neither spoke sentences, but that’s beside the point. You know what I meant.

But times change. Hair entered a rebellious phase, started losing its grounding. It wanted to see the world, felt that Scalp was tying it down, refused to listen to reason. He stopped caring.

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“You know what – You can get up if you want to. I’m just gonna sleep in.”

It’s troubling to see bonds like that crumble. I blame myself. Whenever I saw Hair starting to jump ship, I’d go into helicopter parenting mode: “Oh, no, don’t do that. What do you want? More oil? Here’s this fancy syrup that’s pseudo-scientifically ‘proven’ to get things back on track. And here’s a nice head massage that’s going to stimulate your growth. Or you want something natural? Let’s just go all in and do a cleanse. Noooo, don’t go! Ok, fine! No more quackery from these quacking quacks. Here’s the medically approved drug that’s going to build you back up. Who cares if they say prolonged use could increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases! Come back!”

BBYY

“Cardio-what-the-what, now? WTF, man? Why are you dragging ME into this mess??”

All of this unsolicited coddling has clearly given Hair a massive ego. An inflated sense of self-worth and a devil-may-care attitude has emboldened that little imp to behave like its all holy.

In terms of apportioning blame, it’s important to note Nature’s contribution to it too.

Oh, Nature gets good PR everywhere – ‘All natural’, ‘pleasantries of nature’, ‘natural ingredients’ – all positive, maternal imagery engineered to boost her public image. However, behind that sugary facade, she’s more like a ruthless, violent, petty asshole, like Winston Churchill, Don Corleone, and the Disney corporation.

It’s all fun and games as long as you ‘respect nature’, or go along with the ‘natural order of things’, but if you decide to fight her, or go against her in any way, then she sends her goons, which includes earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, poisonous snakes, and goddamned bears

Wikimedia

Here’s one, on a scouting mission to see who has crossed nature.

It’s not all tornadoes and mauling, however. Nature has subtler tactics too. In this case, she has taken on the role of a divorce lawyer, feeding off the tragic separation of Hair from Scalp. Nature was poisoning the waters, making it seem more and more evident that a nasty separation was in the works. She was attacking the roots of the relationship, withering down whatever support Hair had left.

The way things were going, we were looking at a complete separation in a decade, at most, leaving Scalp behind with nothing – not even visitation rights. There was nothing to be done. Nature was going to take its toll. Even the doctors were all like “Let it go. You can’t fight nature.”

Well, that stops now. Nature, you can kiss my asterisk*.

And hair, all that coddling ends now! It’s time for tough love.

I shaved my head last week.

BBYY

In protest. As a lesson to my hair.

Hair is up for a bout of culture shock. “But… but… I thought you loved me!” – Ha. Gone! You’re banished from my bright, shiny head, piled up in a garbage bin somewhere.

I beat Nature at her own game. The next time she comes up trying to sow its seeds of discord, she’s in for a surprise too. “Ah, listen, you know what else that nasty Scalp is saying about y… hey, WTH… Where IS Hair?” Gone! You have no power here. Go be a calamity somewhere else.

It’s a hard stance to take – especially considering my crippling fear of mystic gypsies rubbing my bald head for luck.

express.co.uk

It’s especially unnerving when disembodied, oversized ghost hands do the rubbing.

But psst… it’s all a ploy.

The tactic is essentially the ol’ ‘playing hard to get’ routine. I’m hoping that the new ‘shaved head is awesome’ policy would make Hair stop and think. Maybe it will realize how good it had it all along. Maybe it will start growing, and start wanting to stay on. You know what they say – Absence makes the hair grow stronger – or something like that.

And when it does, I’ll be all, like,

“Oh, it’s you. I didn’t even notice you growing there.

Whatsatt? You want back now, eh?

I’ll… think about it.

Maybe.

Wellllll, I’m not entirely sure, cos this bald thing is pretty awesome. You know I don’t even have to carry a comb anymore? How cool is that?”.

I’ll crack down hard. Pretend like I never even missed it in the first place. I’ll speak out loudly “Can you believe I used to like hair? Eww, right?” to random strangers until they file for restraining orders.

That has got to work, right? I mean, think back to all the romantic comedies and love stories where the guy does this? The ‘playing hard to get’ gambit is a tried and tested, undeniably effective tool to…

Oh, it’s not?

Ok, so I am being told that it rarely works out in real life. The only certainty is how the one who tries and tests it is an undeniable tool. Wish I knew that sooner. You know, like a few minutes before the razor went off… At least before I shit-talked Nature.

Oh, my god. I… I can’t believe I pissed off Nature. Why did I have to be so smug about it?? I don’t know what she’s going to do, now.

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“Let me in. I just want to talk. The Mother sends her regards.”

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“Hi, me. It’s so nice to meet me. Have I lost weight? Oh, me? Nah, I don’t even lift, bro.”

But that was ancient history. Nowadays, you have sites that teach you anything – YouTube videos that explain how to work on any software product, online universities that email your graduation certificates, teaching sites dedicated to developing your skill-set for five bucks a pop, and even websites that teach you how to use websites to teach yourself stuff.

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“Learn how to learn this lesson. If you manage to learn it, congrats, you’ve learnt your lesson.”

So learning any new skill is as easy as deciding which skill to learn. My first choice was to learn break dancing, but sadly, this isn’t 1983. A bit of anger management was next on my radar, but signing up for that course was so infuriating I punched  my laptop shut. I could have learnt the art of fighting procrastination, I suppose, but that can wait till next year. There was an online course on how to overcome laziness, but it just felt like sooooo much effort.

But no. I had to find out how to learn something that would actually be useful for me. Something that would address the problems life has thrown my way. Something that is the need of the hour. That narrowed down my options considerably. I knew what I needed to learn.

I needed to learn how to steal.

Admittedly, it’s not something that I could justify to myself at a moral level, and it’s something that I would have to learn from scratch. My only experience in this regard so far has been to watch an unhealthy amount of heist movies, and it’s not like the Fast and the Furious franchise is a realistic depiction of how thieves operate.

The Fate of the Furious | Universal Pictures

For example, pushing an active torpedo away with with your hands – in real life – would probably burn your fingers a bit… even if you’re wearing fancy gloves

So there is a long way to go. It’s not something I like to do, but at this point, there may not be many other alternatives. I am a resident of Dubai, where life is an enjoyable, pleasant party that you can’t really afford, but pay for anyway. And recently, my expenses have shot up like… like a torpedo that the Rock failed to push away. And they’re not going down anytime in the near future.

I’ll be hunting for nurseries for my son soon, and some of them charge two thirds of my salary for their services. They can do that with a straight face because frankly, they’re already on the advanced theft course.

In addition, the erstwhile tax-free haven of UAE has also decided to charge a 5% general consumption tax… or ‘value added taxes’ that trickles down to people like me and nudges costs up from merely ‘unaffordable’ to ‘seriously-unaffordable’. Some experts note that most of this cost will be absorbed by the businesses so that the average customer would feel only a marginal bump of 1 or 2%. This makes me feel teary eyed. It’s heartening how much faith they have in the business world.

flickr | Thoroughly Reviewed

This… this faith in the selflessness of corporations is overwhelming.

At the same time, the telecom services have cracked down on all that unhealthy free messaging going on in the dark, shady underbelly of pretty much everywhere around the globe. I had been relying on Skype to talk to people back home. It was a clear, easy, universal and free platform that truly helped me keep in touch with friends and family scattered around the world. But it was free, so obviously, the universe had no choice but to take that away from me.

Meanwhile, in my own country, India, we have a mild havoc surrounding the new taxation rules (GST) and its poor implementation. New rules also dictate how the money in my bank account will need to be linked to the new ID system (the Aadhar card), which I can’t procure without visiting the offices in person. This has resulted in my accounts being frozen. On a temporary basis, I hope.

So brazen thievery is at least a solution worth considering. As a bungling amateur, maybe I should start with beginner’s courses, like… I don’t know… Learn How to Steal Candy From A Baby in 10 Easy Steps, maybe. But that’s not going to help me with my utility bills. Maybe I should step up my game. However, searching for advanced thievery courses only linked me to tutorials on How to be a Politician, and I don’t qualify for those because my soul is not black enough yet.

Nope. There has to be a sweet spot in the middle. Burglary 101, perhaps.

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First step is to buy the headgear. I mean, of course it is.

So, if I learn Batman-like Ninja skills, dressed in black, tiptoe into the night, pick a lock, enter the home of a sleeping family, and crack open their safes/wardrobes, I get to… gaze into their empty wallets? I mean… people don’t really keep money in their homes nowadays, do they? Plus, chances are that people who don’t secure their homes enough to thwart an amateur burglar are probably as broke as I am anyway. What am I going to do, then? Steal TVs and laptops? As if I my utility bills aren’t high enough already.

No, no, no. That’s not going to help. Burglary is not going to cut it. What I need is to go for the mother lode. Banks! They have all the money, right? They should be buried to the hilt with the green stuff. Plus, they’re the bad guys – ever since their corporate villainy surfaced in 2008, they’re the staple villain for the modern age.

So… how does one go about robbing a bank? There are no direct courses online, so against my first instinct, I have to piece together the strategy via Hollywood montage.

Firstly – and obviously – put together a crack team of professional thieves who are cartoonishly perfect for their jobs, and yet dysfunctional in adult society. Then hack into the bank’s mainframe computer, stalk the guards for six months, create a detailed, minute-by-minute schedule of their rotation, rappel into the bank from the ceiling, locate and neutralize the cameras by covering them with a photo of the lobby, replace the loot with fake counterfeits that somehow weigh exactly the same, and escape by rigging explosives to blast a tunnel to the outside world.

Importantly, find out if there are any brooding, loner cops in the city with a personal grudge against a team member. If there is, then it’s customary to taunt him/her with vague clues about the heist every now and then. At every stage, make sure there are at least four pithy one liners on stand-by.

Oceans Eleven | Warner Bros

Also, budget for one of the team members to eat, like, everything, all the time.

Perfect, isn’t it? I don’t know. It feels like I’m still missing something. Maybe I need to go for a classroom course by a master thief. Such courses are even harder to find, though. I can understand why. If you were a master thief, and you were to teach someone to steal, and the student steals from you, does that make you a good teacher? If he does NOT steal, does that make you a failure as a teacher?

I give up. It’s all too complicated. Besides, it’s probably not worth the risk anyway. I think the penalty for bank robbery is a hefty fine. And this year, those fines probably come with additional VAT too.

Most of you don’t need an introduction to what an Easter Egg Hunt is. But for those of you who are not ‘most of you’, let me do a quick recap. Typically, it’s a game wherein ‘Easter Eggs’ are hidden all over a garden or play area and kids are encouraged to hunt around for them. ‘Easter Eggs’ are gifts from the Easter Bunny – usually egg-shaped candies or chocolates wrapped in multi-color decorations. That’s as much as I know about it.

As to how any of this is actually connected to Easter – the festival celebrating Jesus’ resurrection – your guess is as good as mine. Actually, since my guess is that right before his ascension to heaven, Jesus blessed a virgin rabbit who laid 12 golden eggs filled with chocolate – your guess is probably better than mine.

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The details are outlined in the book somewhere… probably.

Anyway, back to this spectacular Easter Egg Hunt of mine – well, it wasn’t your typical Easter egg hunt. There were some notable differences. Firstly, it was played completely indoors. No sense playing under the desert sun in Dubai, is there? And tell me – is it still an Easter egg hunt even when the eggs are not decorated or colored or wrapped in any way? I’m gonna take that as a yes. Great.

But there are still just a few teeny tiny points that make this an atypical Easter egg hunt – There were no kids involved. Arguably, no adults either. It was just me. None of the eggs contained chocolates or candy. Plus – I may have exaggerated when I said ‘eggs’. It was just an egg. Singular. One hard-boiled egg, still in its shell.

Wikimedia Commons

Like these, but fewer. Much, much fewer.

So, my great Easter egg hunt was me, by myself, hiding a single, solitary, ordinary chicken egg within my small, one-bedroom apartment, and organizing a party of one to search for the same.

You might be thinking – “Hey, that doesn’t sound ‘spectacular’. It’s one small apartment. It couldn’t possibly be that challenging.” Oh, you couldn’t be more wrong, my friend. It is NOT an easy task. It’s been a while since I hid the egg, and it’s still nowhere to be found. It’s the ultimate hiding champion.

You might then think – “So what? How hard could it be to search for an egg that you’ve hidden yourself?” But therein lies the rub. You see, in the spirit of upping the ante, I completely erased any memory of where I actually hid my egg.

Men in Black 3 | Columbia Pictures

And I did it the old fashioned way. None of those fancy electronic memory wipes.

Like I said – I understand that this has many differences from a traditional Easter egg hunt. But it IS an Easter egg hunt. Why else would I say it is? What possible reason could I have to lie?

Hey – I admit it – I’m no saint. Never claimed to be. Some of you may remember that for the past several months, my wife has been in India, and I have been living a pseudo-bachelorhood life. Even fewer may remember what my actual bachelorhood entailed;  an unkempt room full of pizza boxes, dirty laundry and dust swept under other layers of hardened dust. It’s been an open secret that left to my own devices, I am hardly what you would call ‘organized’. I tend to be bit of a klutz, and I have lost a fair bit of personal belongings because of that.

Wikimedia Commons | Atari

Which reminds me – If you ever find an old Atari 2600 with the power button ajar and my initials etched on top – just stick to my story that it got stolen by peculiarly specific, geeky burglars.

I’m not perfect, but why would I lie about this? What? Do you think that maybe I just boiled this egg one fine day, kept it aside to browse the internet, lost track of time, have been unable to find it in the days since, and am now afraid it will stay lost till my wife comes back next week? That she might find it slightly more excusable that I’m playing an extended Easter egg hunt than that I lost a by-now-rotting egg behind the front room couch cushion?

Oh, wait… The front room couch cushion!! Of course! Just give me a minute… aaaaaand nope. The hunt is still on. Come on! I’m offended! Would I lie like that? Really, people. It’s a rhetorical question, by the way. Lay off the keyboard, please.

No. I wouldn’t. And that is why this is a really special, honest-to-goodness true Easter egg hunt. Unless… it starts to smell bad and I am able to track it to its hiding place – in which case, I’m throwing away the egg and this Easter egg hunt never happened.

That would be a shame. Cos this is turning out to be a spectacular Easter egg hunt, isn’t it?

But the giant had to catch him first.

Crip made a hard turn to the left, and then to the right. He was almost at the door! Once he through there, he would probably be safe! The crazy giant was not going to follow him outside. That’s it! Just a few steps more. He’d almost made it! Ha. He sure showed that stupid giant. Then Crip stopped. He couldn’t just leave without having his say. He couldn’t speak, but he glared at the giant as if to say “You might have won now, you big ugly giant! You have butchered my brothers. But mark my words, I will return. I will avenge them. As god is my witness, I swear that I – Crip, the cockroach, will once again, infest your fri… (STOMP)“.

If Crip hadn’t stopped to glare for a bit, he wouldn’t have been stomped out of existence. But no, Crip is not the protagonist of this story. The fact that he’s a cockroach should have clued you in to that fact. No. Crip was the aggressor. Him and his army of disgusting relatives. The protagonist is me. I am the giant of the story.

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Just because this article started from Crip’s perspective doesn’t make him the star.

I had been away from Dubai for a few months. I had a situation to handle back home in India. Being a die hard supporter of conserving energy, and an even bigger supporter of conserving money in my wallet, I cleverly shut off power to my apartment when I left.

That’s actually a good practice – Why waste energy when you’re just not going to use it at all? Most prudent energy savers take precautions. Simple stuff, like keeping the windows locked, covering up furniture so they don’t get dusty, and discarding all the perishable food in the place – especially the fridge.

Unfortunately, these prudent energy savers did not advice me in time. I switched off my non-empty fridge when I locked up, and didn’t even think about it until I got back. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that the entire fridge was crawling with Crip’s cousins by the time I got back. But surprised, I was.

What do you do when find roughly two thousand cockroaches gleefully partying in your fridge? You take three steps back, jump two feet high, and scream unintelligibly like a little girl. At least, that’s what I did.

flickr | Clemens v. Vogelsang | Cropped

“Screamed like a little girl my foot. I’m tired of being stereotyped.”

I shut the door and made a hasty retreat. It wasn’t just the roaches – the fridge was full of mould. It was a literal homegrown bio-hazard. For the next half hour, I kept talking myself out of burning the house down.

I decided that I was vastly unqualified for handling this job. This demanded expert hands. This was a job for Supergirl. So I called up my wife.

The call did not go over well. Her precious kitchen was one phone-call away from being locked down by men in hazmat suits. Eventually, she calmed down. She suggested that I get professional help. I knew I should have turned off the fridge, but I thought that was uncalled for. Then she explained that she meant professional cleaning services.

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“Interesting. Do you want to talk about what you thought she meant?”

But calling professional cleaners would have been counterproductive to my sacred prime directive: to cheap it out on everything but food and electronics. So I told her that I will manage this on my own. Knowing well how adept I was with tools more complex than a fork and a knife, she started worrying for my safety. She suggested that the best course of action was to discard the fridge completely and just buy a new one. Apparently, Supergirl thinks she’s married to Bruce Wayne.

I was determined to do this myself. My first order of business was to google “My fridge is infested with cockroaches, slime and mould. Help!”. That bombarded me with roughly forty ads for professional cleaners and two for the Ghostbusters movie. Then I decided to search message boards. It was there I learned about the roach-buster side effects of baking soda. Apparently, if you got them high on baking soda, it bloats them up and slows them down.

So I geared up like a low budget Walter White – I wore two sets of gloves, a face mask, and several rolled up newspapers to start my swat attack. I threw in small ‘grenades’ of baking soda and then closed the fridge. I let them wallow in the foggy cloud of the soda for a while, and then… I opened the fridge.

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I expect that’s the same feeling one gets when one opens the gates of hell.

Some sprightly young roaches jumped out immediately, and I had to chase them around in a weird dance routine that involved a lot of stomping, a lot of sweeping, a lot of hand waving, and a disgusting amount of cleaning up afterwards. Many, including Crip, made a run towards the door, but I couldn’t risk them getting back in later on, so I gave chase and wiped them all out.

Once the roaches were done, it was on to the mould. I sploshed, scrubbed, rubbed, wiped and aired out every corner of the fridge multiple times just to make sure the mould was completely taken care of. Just to be safe, I burned off all the gloves, face masks and knee pads used for the process.

I was finally done.

It was an entire day’s work – exhausting and disgusting in equal measures. I was so happy to finally relax on the couch, my feet up on the desk. I was wondering if I managed to get all of the roaches… I mean – I got all that I was able to see, but it’s possible a few odd ones would have slipped my radar. After all, they were all scattering in many directions, and I was just one guy. Could some have slipped away? No, right? Maybe?

As I lay pondering, Crip’s even littler brother slunk in the darkness, underneath the oven – swearing vengeance.

Nobody gets a year that goes entirely their way. There will always be several ups and downs, and the best anyone can hope for is that the ups make up for the downs. For every year I can remember, there has been a bunch of good memories that I cherished, and a bunch of bad memories that were difficult to get over. But that’s par for the course.

And then, there was 2016.

Oh, words aren’t invented for the kind of spite and contempt I hold for this smug, ungodly shitfest of a year. If 2016 had a physical form, I’d punch, kick, cut, slice, hang, shoot, burn, and dismember it, and then I’d start to torture it just to hear it whimper. Maybe that got a bit too dark a bit too soon. But just typing 2016 moves me to a dark place.

Last Week Tonight | HBO | Avalon Television

John Oliver had the right idea

And 2016 did NOT have to be like that. In fact, 2016 gave me one of the most joyful events in my life – My son, my bundle of joy, was born this year. When I say that even that pinnacle of happiness didn’t tilt the scales in 2016’s favor, you know it’s been a bad, bad year.

When my son was born, I thought 2016 was trying to make amends – maybe a modest olive branch to say “Hey, I’m really sorry I’ve been a shitty year so far, but please take this peace offering, and know that I’ll try to be good from now on.” Like a sucker, I bought into that. My personal blessing was almost immediately countered with the most tragic event in my life so far – my mom’s untimely death.

2016 wasn’t extending an olive branch – It was taunting me. Mom was ecstatically looking forward to her time with her grandkid – time that she never got. Having her grandson so close, and yet so far away, made her sudden farewell even more tragic.

2016, you can go to hell.

You’d be more at home there anyway.

As deep and scarring as my mom’s passing was, that was a personal tragedy. Charting 2016 as an objectively shitty year may demand a more global range of events. Thankfully, 2016 has left a trail of messes that earns it the title.

Where do I begin? I guess the best way would be to address the elephant in the room; the narcissistic, misogynistic, race-baiting, unprincipled, comically uninformed, orange-faced, taffy-haired elephant in the room. Let’s call that my trump card.

flickr | Global Panorama

Teknikaly, eez MY trump card.

I’m not saying that his opponent in the 2016 race was a great choice – not by a long shot, but going head-to-head against Trump, she was better at almost all counts. She probably lost because of her own baggage, her misguided optimism, and her dismissal of a chunk of US citizens as unworthy of attention. But the fact remains that a fair size of the US public voted him in either because of, or in spite of, his obvious mountain of faults.

That’s a big thing – Humanity took a strong hit then. If it turns out that Putin actually did manipulate the election to get the perfect dummy to office, I’m actually going to be relieved – at least that lifts the blame off a large chunk of people. But I’m not hopeful. George Carlin’s words sting precisely because it echoes the truth – “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

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If this man were alive, 2016 would have been useful at least as comedy fodder.

In the world stage, Americans have long monopolized stupidity; from creationism to trickle down economics to reality show babies to gun nuts to being the only major country to not adopt the metric system. So it’s easy to blame the Trump phenomenon on the stereotypical ‘dumb ‘murican’.

However, several months ahead, Europeans had their own skirmish to reclaim stupidity – Armed with a litany of lies and fear-mongering, idiots in power engineered BREXIT, the cutesy name given to an economic and social catastrophe in the works. I would argue that with the Trump victory, US has regained the stupid, stupid throne, but it’s clear that other world powers are capable of stupidities as well.

Take India, for example. On the same day that the US regained the throne and propped an orangutan on it, India engineered a social and economic experiment that divided the nation – Charismatic prime minister Modi took a sudden decision to devalue 86% of the currency of a country that houses nearly a fifth of the world’s population, most of whom survive on cash transactions.

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“The REAL goal is to make the country cashless.”
“Umm… so introducing the Rs.2000 note is going to help that… how?”

There are fans and detractors of the demonetization. Even if you take out the babble from the Modi fans who support it because it was a Modi initiative, and the Modi haters who fight it because it was a Modi initiative, you still have a lot of pros and cons for the act that can fill up hours of debate.

The demonetization didn’t pinch me at all – My friends and peers had only minor obstructions and delays to hurdle, so at first, I felt that the move was in the right direction, and only needed a better execution. However, with more articles I read – I noted that most economists and experts who studied the larger scale of the operation and how it affected rural communities are less optimistic about the initiative. It has affected the stock market, transportation, agriculture, and businesses of a vast majority of people while only being marginally successful at curbing black money (its original goal). On the whole, I’m currently leaning towards the ‘demon’ part of the demonetization gambit. And you can bet your life that I’m pinning that on 2016.

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Not that one more pin is going to make a difference.

These are the biggest craptrosities of the year of the top of my head, but there were many, many more – Terrorists struck in Belgium, Germany, France, Berlin, and several other places, as terrorists are wont to do. France reacted by scaling up its Islamophobia and banning burqas in beaches. While the Syrian crisis didn’t start this year, I’d still blame 2016 for the most brutal periods of the war. Refugees from warn-torn nations were denied asylum by well-off countries who used that as an opportunity to fan racist tensions and Islamophobic hatred, blaming them of terrorist connections without any real evidence.

Which brings us to the intangible casualty – Facts. There is no real value to evidence anymore. Lies have always been part of the human landscape, but 2016 brought that to a whole new level. The hip and dangerous new thought is that one’s feelings and thoughts are just as valid as facts. If someone feels something is true, then we are urged to treat that as a valid evidence. It’s a strange new world. If I feel you’re a cow, but you bring out the fact that you are, demonstrably, not a cow – then we’re supposed to weight these as equals. Probably, we’ll end up compromising in the middle – I agree that on some days, you are not a cow, but on the other days, you agree that I can milk you dry.

flickr | Dennis Jarvis

If your yield is low, I’ll have no choice but to sell you to Cutts, the butcher.

And then, we have the deaths. Mohammed Ali, David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Glenn Frey, John Glenn, Harper Lee, Umberto Eco, Anton Yelchin, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Garry Shandling, Gary Marshall – these are just some of the people that I happen to recognize and like – It’s almost as if the pop culture icons foresaw the innate shittiness of 2016 and just clocked out.

If you think 2016 was just being an un-ironic, non-sentient concept as shitty things happened, just look at Debbie Reynolds, the star of classics such as ‘Singing in the rain’,  who died one day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, who was herself a star in the iconic ‘Star Wars’ franchise. They’re going to be buried together – that’s not just a random fluke. That’s the 2016 mojo in action.

Star Wars | Lucasfilm

If you sensed a disturbance in the force – that was the 2016 mojo right there.

If you’re still unconvinced, let me remind you that George Michael was found dead on Christmas Day. I doubt if there were any George Michael fans who heard that news and failed to link it to his iconic song ‘Last Christmas’. If you were one of those, well – WHAM. Now you get it.

If you need to look at further proof, I give you Fidel Castro and Abe Vigoda – For several decades, they have had more obituaries in the rumor mill than retractions. Abe Vigoda’s death has been falsely reported so many times they had to put up a website at abevigoda.com for the sole purpose of noting that he was alive. They survived dozens of individual false reports, but finally died at the cowardly hands of 2016.

2016 – Just… just get out of here. I’m soooo done with you. Pack up and leave. And punch yourself on your way out.

Happy New Year, everybody – 2017 can’t possibly turn out worse, can it?

On the 11th of October, my mom passed away after a long battle with cancer, a particular brutal and rare one called angiosarcoma. She was 62 years young. Exactly 62. She celebrated her 62nd birthday the night before. She went to bed happy; full of hope, with plans for the future and a deep yearning for life. We slept oblivious to the fact that the next day would be the worst day of our lives.

Side note: As you may have understood by now, this article is unlike the rest you will find on this site. I generally try to write about things I find humorous in some way or the other. Sadder, quieter moments are usually left off. However, this was such a momentous milestone in my life that I felt it warranted a mention. If you’re looking for a funny, cheerful article, maybe you can check this out.

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Roughly a million years ago. Happier times.

Mom had only recently started a new phase of life: After over three decades of dedicated hard work, she had signed up for the joy of retired life. Mom and dad had a string of activities lined up for their time – music, travel, exploration, books, movies, and the like – a list that would easily have eaten a couple of decades into their time. However, merely one year into retirement, she got the tragic diagnosis, and the year after was spent in treatments.

After an early surgery, we hoped things got under control. However, the cancer metastasized, and the oncologists gave up on her. We scrambled through a host of alternative treatments, see small signs of improvement now and then, and kept hope alive.

I’m proud of my mom – she persevered through what most people, including me, would have given up. I’m struck by her patience and optimism, and humbled by the deep impact she left on everybody who knew her.

But that doesn’t stop the hurt.

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And the hurt runs pretty deep

For dad, my brother and me, mom had been such a core part of our lives; she laid the foundation for everything. Everything good in us owes her a tribute. She was a source of inspiration, direction, and joy. She was our friend, our teacher, our muse, our moral compass, our historian, our event organizer, our story teller, our chef, our financial adviser, our problem solver, our fashion designer, our life coach, our sounding board, our psychologist, our business consultant…; she was an entire village of amazing personalities dedicated to loving and supporting us.

When one of us had an interest in something out of her zone, she would learn about that just enough to extend her support. At the age of 55, with limited experience with computers, she learned how to operate a professional audio editing suite just to help dad record his songs. In a household with three guys, she cultivated an interest in electronics, action movies, gadgets, boys’ games, and other guy stuff just to carve in more time with us. She held back on ‘girly’ stuff; she waited for us to marry and bring her daughters home for that.

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It was a long wait.

She was unbelievably fast in everything – from writing to cooking to even shopping; whether she was shopping for clothes, shoes or groceries, she was blazingly efficient. Also, in a household crammed with men, she was always the first to get ready.

She had so much to share; she was a treasure trove of knowledge; she was a high performing career woman, who also was an avid fashion designer who frequently stitched her own clothes, had a penchant for floral arrangements, had amazing language skills, wrote poetry, had beautiful penmanship, and was passionate about gardening. On top of that, she was a master chef with her own unique set of dishes that were famous in their own right. Once, we had an in-home party with around 80 guests, and mom single-handedly cooked up a rich buffet for the entire crowd. I am still clueless about where she found the energy to be herself.

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Supermom

For all her talents and interests, the activity she considered most important was to just be with us – being part of us, loving us. We were in her thoughts every moment of every day. Even through her illness, she was less afraid of death, and more afraid about leaving us alone. She realized how devastated we would be, and that was more upsetting for her than anything else. That was probably why she forced herself to stay upbeat.

Her enthusiasm and energy kept us all full of hope. If anyone could have conquered cancer by sheer force of will, she would have. And for a long time, I believed she was doing exactly that. She radiated a powerful glow of hope through everybody, and that’s partly what made her ultimate demise such a surprising shock for us.

We found out later – that despite the hope she kept alive in all of us, she was also preparing for the worst. She confided in some of her closest friends that from time to time, fear did break through into that iron will; a fear that she kept hidden from us. Fear – not of death, but of leaving us sad and inconsolable. The physical pain from her cancer never fazed her. The mental anguish of death didn’t break her. But the thought of how we would get through her passing; that kept her awake at night. She had handed over some documents, passwords, and other details through others, so that she could keep us in the dark about her occasional wavering of hope.

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Keeping us happy was always a priority for her.

It’s difficult to see silver linings in a veritable thunderstorm, but there are a few points that console us slightly. Mom did manage to travel a bit – she toured Europe, explored Dubai and Singapore, visited the holy land, and holidayed in select localities within India. She saw her sons graduate from college, secure jobs and get happily married. She was finally getting her girly time with her new daughters (she would get upset if anyone ever called them her daughters-in-law); she would buy them dresses, groom them and smile at them the way only a mother could. She only got to spend a short time with her daughters, but enough for them love her and miss her. We all felt her love, and she knew it.

She had that magical quality that made everything better – soft, pleasant and ever-smiling. Her geniality was infectious; her radiant personality was apparent to even casual acquaintances who met her just once. She had a natural flair for seeing the good side of everyone and everything. If she had one flaw, she used to forgive people for just about anything a bit too easily. It was entrenched in her nature to be the better person; she couldn’t help it if she wanted to.

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I know we’re biased here, but… she was the best person we knew.

She really loved kids. Even in her younger years, children used to bond with her almost immediately. When she got kids of her own, she spent every minute she could spare with us. Even after we got older, she would always have a stash of chocolates in her handbag just to dispense to random kids she would encounter during the day. When her friends and peers became grandparents, she would jump at the opportunity of playing with their grandkids.

Finally, when she finally became a grandma in her own right, she was too sick to play with her grandson. But she still fought through her pain and fatigue and held him in her arms. She spoke to him as much as she could. She gave him his name. She gave him all her love. It saddens me beyond words when I think of all the things she’ll miss – his first words, his walk, his school, his growing up… I feel even sadder for my son, who will only know her through our retold memories. He will get a brief inkling of what he’s missing, but would never really know the magnitude of his loss.

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My son won’t even remember the few times he met his grandma. I can only cry for his loss.

Because she was involved in every part of our lives, absolutely everything reminds us of her. Everything we have now is connected to a memory of her, and everything we will have later is a reminder of what could have been. As much as we’re all reeling from the shock, dad is impacted even more. Mom was part of every aspect of our lives, but for dad, she WAS his life; half his life was about taking care of and supporting mom, and the other half was shaped up by her.

My parents shared a life so entangled and in-sync with each other that it’s difficult for us to see them as individuals with different thought streams. The cancer cut short their love story to a paltry 37 years. However, within that 37 years, they have stayed apart for less than 30 days altogether; and roughly less than 5 days at one go. Ever since my dad retired, he had been counting the days till mom’s retirement so he could whisk mom off to finally explore the world. During this period, he would drop mom off to her work, and pick her up after; not because it was difficult for mom to come home on her own, but because he was determined to minimize the minutes apart from her, as far as possible.

She was his rock; his pride and energy. They would sometimes drive aimlessly – with him behind the wheel, and her voice helping him navigate. He has often said that with her by his side, he always had a sense of calm, a confidence to face whatever came their way. She was the foundation for every ounce of strength he’s had. She was his salvation, his reason, his life support.

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The light of his life

For any happy moment in our lives going forward, there’s going to be a heartache alongside it; a brief reminder of how much better it would have been if we could have shared that with mom.

It still doesn’t register that mom is not with us. I don’t think we will ever really move on from this. Furthermore, I don’t think we really want to, either. Every now and then, there’s a strong instinctive drive to call her… talk to her… ask her for help. The hurt is very real, and ironically, she was the only one who could have helped us through this hurt.

She was an indispensable part of us; our center of life, universe and everything.

The hole she left will forever be a painful void. She left behind a host of unfinished dreams and plans. We will miss you forever, mom. And we love you with all our hearts.

AndreaMosaic

Mom in memories – Click for full mosaic.

Sometimes, a bit too much character, which is why they are shortcuts used by lazy screenwriters everywhere. Femme fatales in your script? Throw in a French accent. Homegrown American idiot? Slap a Southern accent for ol’ Bubba Cooper. Dangerous mob boss? There’s an Italian for that. Sophisticated gentleman? British English to the rescue. And why bother with elaborate character motivations for the villains when you can just give them all Arabic accents?

Rocky IV | MGM/United Artists

You can’t just keep punching Russian accents. You need to adapt with the times.

Accents are not all dependable, though. Your accent can change with time and exposure. Or you can just fake it. Some fake it better than others. Personally, I don’t have the stereotypical Indian accent, but it’s still recognizable as Indian.

My friends, coworkers and classmates spoke with a lovely variety of accents – sometimes their accents told more stories than they did. I was particularly interested in how they changed accents as they moved to different parts of the world – Germany, Switzerland, UK, Singapore; no matter where – their accents evolved to match their regions. I noted that some of them changed their accents overnight. That felt so unnatural – so fake. I found it fascinating that they’d fake an accent. You yourself might be amused by the insanely trivial, random nonsense that I find fascinating.

Pixabay

“Is that… Is that paint peeling? Oooh. Let me get some popcorn.”

When my brother, Lewin, and his wife, Swetha moved to California, I knew I’d see a change in accent, over time. I speak with both of them fairly regularly, but haven’t noticed a shift yet. I usually dial Lewin’s number to reach either of them. One late evening, however, his number was completely unreachable, so I had to dial Swetha’s instead. As I was calling, I was also listening to the voices in my head (as I often do.)

TRING TRING

Come on… What happened to Lewin’s phone? And why is Swets taking so long to pick up??

“Hello.

Wha… what’s with her accent?? She has a New York accent all of a sudden??

…you have reached… 

Ha ha… Swetha’s using a fake accent for her voice mail message? This was just too amusing. (The things I find fascinating are NOTHING compared to the things I find amusing)

…my voice mail…

This needs to be mocked. How could it not? This accent was new. It was not pre-installed. It was a custom add-on that materialized overnight. What sort of a brother-in-law would I be if I let this slide without at least a slight jab?

… please leave your name and number…

Oh, no. It’s almost over. I have to think quick. What do I say?

… at the sound of the beep…

Knock knock? Who’s there? Yaaaa… Yaaa who? Well, that’s what you sound like with that new accent of yours, Swets.

How about that? Nooo!! That’s stupid. First of all, her accent is clearly not a ‘Yahoo’ type of accent, and secondly, knock knock jokes don’t work if you do all the lines yourself! Stupid, stupid, stupid.

… and I will get back to you…

Quick! Something else. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Just do… something. Just… mimic her accent. Yes, that’s it! Just leave a message in a fancy New York accent…

… as soon as I can.”

Ok. Ready.

BEEP!!

Well, here goes!

Pixabay

Time to channel my inner New Yorker.

Howdy!

Wha… What are you doing? That’s not a New York accent!!

That’s a maaghty fine accent ya got thar, m’ lady.

Great. Apparently, I’m Texan now. With a dash of pirate thrown in. But fine. It doesn’t matter. Just make some subtle jab at her accent.

It sounds purty lovely, I say.  Been practicing long, I reckon?

Not quite the zinger I was hoping for, but it’ll do, until I talk to her directly later on.

I was tuckered out ’til I heard your voice mail. Talk ta ya soon, Swets.

Ok. Running out of stuff to say. Wrap it up before your accent breaks apart.

Jus’ pick up the phone an’ hit me back, whydontcha?

And done! That’s a wrap, everybody. All the voices in here can just retire for the day. Pack up.

It was pretty late, and I wasn’t expecting Swets to call back any time soon. I actually forgot about this completely.

Until today. I was with my wife when I tried to call Lewin. Once again, he was unreachable, and I had to call Swetha instead. As the over-the-top New York accent greeted me with the voice mail message again, it reminded me of my call last week. I cut the call and started laughing.

My wife asked me what I was laughing about. I was all too happy to tell her the story of our lil’ sis-in-law and her fancy new accent. She found it slightly amusing, but also pretty confusing. She had a pretty good memory, and she didn’t remember such a New York accented message the last time she called her. She decided to dig a bit deeper into the mystery.

“I’d have helped, but all I have is this magnifying glass, and that’s useless for digging.”

It turned out that The Mystery of the New York Accent was not that deep after all. She found out – rather quickly – that I had two contact records for Swetha, one of which had an old, discarded number that I just failed to delete. I was dialing the wrong number; a number that apparently got reassigned to some young lady with a New York accent.

Oh. Kay. I let that sink in for a minute.

Apparently, somewhere in New York, there was this young lady who had retired for the night sometime last week – probably after a long and grueling day in the Big Apple. In the morning, she checked her phone for messages, as she was wont to do. And she found this little nugget – from a vaguely Texan sounding stranger calling from an Indian number, who said – “Howdy! That’s a maaghty fine accent you got thar, my lady. It sounds pretty lovely, I say. Been practicing long, I reckon? I was tuckered out ’til I heard your voice mail. Talk ta ya soon, sweets. Jus’ pick up the phone an’ hit me back, whydoncha?”

Gulp. If that isn’t the creepiest, flirtiest, skin-crawlingest muck she’s heard this month, then she must really lead a truly awful life. On the off chance that you’re one of the three readers of this site from the US – lady – I’m really, truly sorry.

That doesn’t seem enough. I should probably apologize over the phone, but I don’t trust myself to dial anymore. If you want a fresh apology, I guess the only option is for you to contact me for it. Just… Jus’ pick up the phone an’ hit me back, whydoncha?