Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Happy Freaking New Year!

Happy Freaking New Year!

It's always the same thing this time of the year, isn't it?  Of course a New Year has to come by, and of course we must be happy that we survived the last one, but can it ever be Enlightened New Year! or Healthy New Year! or Peaceful New Year!?  After all, there is precious little we can do to be happy if we are not healthy, peaceful and/or enlightened.

It would tax our poor minds to try and be any of this.  But we can be happy, freaking happy, without any risk of mental, physical, or spiritual overheating.  It always comes down to the lowest nonsense we can be sold.  And yes, it is official, it is all about selling us something.  Happiness can be sold.  In ridiculous quantities, just like sadness, but for now I will stick with this disease called happiness that many of us would like to be addicted to.

When I see that svelte model selling me a car with a huge big smile on her face, I want to slap that bitch.  No, not the bitch that is doing the modeling for she needs the money and the uplifting experience of showing up, but the bitch that was conceived in some advertising hero's head that if there is a svelte bitch grinning at me invitingly, I am unlikely to notice the shitty engine, the lousy engineering, the extras that don't come with the base model, and the terrible service, and actually shell down a few lakhs of my hard earned money on a stupid car.  That is the insult I can do without.  Happy freaking New Year.

When I see the troupe of little shits telling me to put my AC at a certain temperature so that my cooling is "sensible", I want to boot those smiling germs out of my sight.  Again, not the pampered upper middle class urban Indian little shits, whose parents are busy shagging every rupee out of their jobs and businesses imagining modeling is some sort of career for their little shits, but the little shits that got approved by the marketing manager of this air conditioner company that believes I can be sold a fucking air conditioner by attaching this cute little bunny train of smiling satans to his stupid product.

Yeah, I'd like to be happy as much as anybody else, and most of the time, I am.  But these times are when I am distinctly disjointed to the "idea" of happiness.  I don't want any symptom of happiness to be ever present and showing itself.  It is fucking fake and I am sick of it.

I really don't want plastic air hostesses smiling at me when I enter a plane.  I have done it many times before and I'm hardly likely to refuse to fly after buying the ticket and going through that harrowing nonsense called check-in and security check, including the statutory rape carried out by the assholes with the metal detectors that have so far not managed to nab a single terrorist, but have indeed allowed many to pass through and hijack planes.  But I can put up with collective dumbness, since that damn airplane is a damn good invention if it can spare me from the piss and shit smelling railway stations and bus stops and get me very quickly to my destination.

I acknowledge I love some air hostesses.  They are just sexy enough to let me remember what to grab if the plane goes into a tumble mid air.  I'm sure God will be very happy to welcome the bastard who remembered to live in the moment, even in his last moment!  Happy Freaking New Year!

After going through the horrors of delays and bad food and terrible in-flight conditions, OR the miracles of on time departures, landings and safe exit from the plane, surely, we can be spared the electronic voice telling us we are welcome at the arrival airport, where we really want to spend the least amount of time!  I cannot understand why it takes us about an hour to fly five hundred kilometres, but it takes our bags one third of that time to get to us from the same plane we came on, to our hands.  But I am happiest in that waiting period at the baggage claim area, because there is a quiet, a calm, nobody selling us anything, and no grinning asshole there handing our bags to us!  The luggage just shows up, with minimal fuss, as the coldest, most impersonal machine keeps all nonsense out of the way.  Thank you very much, dear machine and thank God for the inventor that removed the human element from this one.  I really appreciate this not being one more fucking happy experience to soak up.

Insincerity I can handle - salesmen doing their job, being competitive - I get that.  But why the fuck do they have to sell me something based on THEIR assumption that I am not content?  This is the part that really pisses me off.  It's just hard for me to sympathize with presumptuous assholes who go to business school and "learn" that they can take it upon themselves to "sell" me something, which necessarily means an intrusion into my mind space.  Who the fuck gives these motherfuckers the permission? 

If there is any law that prevents one kind of nuisance, like taking a piss on the wall, why can't there be a law on other kinds of nuisance?  Get off a train at 5 in the morning at Chennai Central, and the TV screens attack you with loud music and dancing chicks gyrating and welcoming you to buy clothes, another bunch of whores asking you to buy spices!  They are all grinning orgasmically. and being really inviting, but at 5 AM, I could really use a peaceful walk to the exit.  End result?  This irritation is what I remember and I have remembered never to buy clothes at those shops and never to buy that brand of masala.  Happy Freaking New Year idiots!

There are a couple of very happy fat bastards on TV that I'd like to really send running into a desert, chased by hounds.  They show up on food programs, and go all over India tasting a variety of foods.  They do a very good job of showing us and teaching us how a variety of food is cooked, but how the fuck are these bastards happy with every fucking thing they eat?  I love food, too, but I don't swoon with every new dish I taste!  I just cannot buy the monkey's expression when it grins to the lens after eating something someone in a totally strange land and culture just made - every fucking time!  Even my dog takes a few seconds to totally sniff out and check out something new I may feed him.  He doesn't fall for it, so why would I, motherfucker?

Now, I can be kind and assume these fat bastards are happy they are getting a lot of food to feed their big guts, but then what about the bitches that are there at the flick of a button, selling me shit to lose weight?  They are giddy whores, grinning their asses off, working out on contraptions that resemble nothing in nature.  Some of them are even torturing others in groups, and I can tell not all of them are happy.  Physical exercise is hard, and the payoff is good health and fitness, and of course the release of endorphins, also called "happy hormones", but endorphins just make one feel stress free and relaxed.  I have had enough number of endorphin hits to know I don't feel like grinning at some unknown asshole.

I don't need a grinning Mr. Universe telling me how good this piece of equipment is.  He just has to tell me with a straight face what the benefits might be.  If I wasn't interested in fitness, would I be listening to his spiel anyway?  So what is he selling me?

How come teachers do not grin when they teach us, say, geometry?  Sex sells.  We know that.  And sex is supposed to deliver us to ... what else?  Freaking Happiness!  So, what if teachers were to turn on sexiness while explaining what happens when one line bisects another?  Are you kidding me?  A lot of people would be up in arms against this kind of teaching.  But we have no problem whoring our kids out to sell other people some shit with their cuteness?  Adults have sex to sell us shit, kids have cuteness.  What's the difference?  Both look pleased as punch!

Why would ANYBODY be happy to sell us insurance policies?  Insurance is always against bad news, like injury, death, disability, illness, and the lot of miseries is it not?  So, why are insurance agents always grinning like their policy will bring us happiness?  It might deliver us out of misery, but it sure as hell won't deliver any happiness.  And why are those little shits put in this game too, and why are they too grinning while doing this shit?  I swear, any kid that ever talks to me about insurance is going to need dental insurance.

We really should groom our children to regulate their happiness quotient.  They should bloody well not be happy all the time.  It can without a doubt affect their emotional growth if they know only giddy happiness and do not know what it means to be reflective, sad, disturbed, anxious, worried, peaceful, euphoric, light, thrilled, giving, emotionally generous, neurotic and even crazy!  There is much subtlety to be lost by prescribing happiness and by subscribing to it like the dumb assholes we are taken for.

I've had enough and more Happy New Years.  This time I hope to have something of substance.  And I wish you a wonderful, substantial New Year!

If you don't care - hey!  Happy Freaking New Year!

- BSK.