Barber Michelangelo

Mukul is in India. A few days ago he was here in Bangalore too. The following text in italics was written by him a few years ago during his engineering days.


The reason Michelangelo was deemed a genius was not only due to
the fact that he was a great sculptor and painter but also because he
had a thorough understanding of the human psyche. This skill is relevant
for engineering students even today.
In 1504 when Michelangelo was working on this masterpiece in
marble- The statue of David – he worked in complete secrecy, not
allowing anyone to see the statue. However just before he finished the
statue one Roman V.I.P. managed to get permission to see the statue. The
statue was indeed magnificent, but he thought he should make some
comment. So he told Michelangelo, ”The nose is too thick”. Michelangelo
said nothing. He climbed upto the nose of the 4-metre statue. Concealed
in his hand was some marble dust and as he pretended to chisel away he
let the dust drop slowly. When he climbed down, David’s nose was
unchanged but the V.I.P. looked approvingly and said, “It’s fine now.”
Cut to the 21st century. As I queued up to the teacher for her
signature on my file for submission, everything was in order but then
freeing a student form this term-work burden on his first try was
against her principles. So she looked keenly for a mistake and finally
said, “The lines in the flowchart are all crooked. Straighten them.” I
went back to a nearby table and pretended to work on the journal with my
pencil and eraser. When I went back to her, the flowchart was as it was
but this time she nodded and accepted the file saying, “It’s okay now”.
I walked away thinking, Michelangelo would have made a great engineer.

Now that day I had been to the barber. As always, I had asked him to cut my hair as short as possible. When he thought that he had cut my hair as short as possible, he asked me whether I was satisified. I asked him to trim it further. The barber told me that any further trimming would not suit me but I refused to budge. The barber then started to making louder noises with his scissors, but then he was not cutting any hair at all...well almost. After a minute or two he asked me if I was satisified. I nodded my head. I walked away thinking, Michelangelo would have made a great barber too.

Ten Reasons Why I Hate My Landlady

1. Asks me to send mails to her niece in the US wishing her on her b’day,anniversary etc. The mails always contain “ May the Lord Venkateswara of the seven hills bless you” .
2. Asks my roommate to swear on his mother about not telling things about me that she has told him, to me.
3. H and S are two gems. Neel is a Bambaiiya Tapori. “Let Neel keep his Bombay tricks with himself.” , she tells H.
4. Neel is a drunkard because he boozes once a month at home and leaves the bottles behind.(She assumes that I alone booze)
5. Asks me to get tenants for her first floor 3 BHK. Wants to cram 8 ppl there and wants to charge 2000 per month. I tell her that’s too expensive for a flat 1 km away from the main road. Gets mad at me.
6. When I ask for my deposit in return for getting tenants, she gets annoyed. ( I am still searching for tenants :-) )
7. Swears at previous occupants. Always abuses them.
8. Asks me to contribute for a 700 year old temple that her forefathers have built somewhere.
9. Claims to be a communist. Says she is a communist because, she eats what she earns. When I say, ”so do I”, she thinks it is rude.
10.Uses the house maid as a spy.

Slap On The Face

I am not very good at arguments. At times, eventhough I am right, I miss some statement which could have left the other party searching for a reply. And I discover that statement after the argument is over. Over the past few months, I have been making a conscious effort to improvise. I liked how my father argued with someone during my last trip to Bombay. And I liked the way I argued with that person too. Talking about Bangalore, I love arguing with my landlady. My landlady is a shrewd and stingy old lady . My next post is going to be Ten Reasons Why I Hate My Landlady. Now, my landlady is about to sell her bungalow in which I stay. I met the would-be landlord in my landlady's house which is on the ground floor of the bungalow I stay in and he asked me to vacate the house in April so that he could carry out renovation. Some days later, I talked about the renovation in April with the landlady. She was adamant that the would-be landlord never talked about renovation. A few days later, I met her again. This is the conversation that we had :

Landlady : Neel, can you give me in writing that the new landlord said that he is going to renovate the house in April.

Neel : Why should I? Do you think I am lying?( She talked about this with Harish,my roomie and said that Neel was lying)

Landlady : No, I want to show it to the new landlord. That would prove that he said that. That would be a slap on his face!

Neel : Why don't you ask the new landlord to give me in writing that he did not say it? That would be a slap on my face!

Landlady, pissed off by now, shouted at me. From that day, she has never talked to me.