DNA Celebrity Column: Are you nice?, writes Sajid Khan

Are you a nice person? Do you pretend to be nice? Do you have to be nice? By nice, I mean courteous and congenial. Nice is when somebody tells you, “I don’t like your shirt” and you reply, “I know, but this was the only ironed one. Thanks for being so honest.” Now, you actually go home and discard the shirt. Duniya ki nazron mein you are nice.

But the main difference between our second and third question above is — one’s a choice, the other’s a compulsion. Let’s address the second question now — do you pretend to be nice? If the same person walks up to you and says the same, and your reply is, “Really? Can you please help me buy some trendy ones? I guess, my fashion sense isn’t as good as yours.” All this with a smile and no tone of sarcasm. Now when you go back home, you bitch about him everywhere and aas i. Now that, my friend, is what you call pretentious.   

Ab baari third question ki. Farz karo ki your boss invites you for dinner and their bratty five-year-old throws paint on your shirt. Deep down inside, you want to whack that kid and also his mother who said, “Waah pappu, kya aim hai!” But you can’t! You just smile. Hesitantly, you have to say, “I love naughty kids, I myself was extremely mischievous as a kid. Don’t worry about the stain, I’ll get it removed.” Now when you are travelling back and the cabbie asks, ‘i’, you tell him, “I had gone to my boss’ son’s birthday party and I bumped into a very ugly man dressed as an even uglier woman, till I realised it was my boss’s wife, who offered me nuclear waste in a plate, till I realised it was food cooked by her. Then their chhota pappu, who was giving competition to the dog while stuffing his face with food was introduced to me by my boss. Uglyna then told me I shouldn’t have worn a white shirt because Pappu loves splashing colours on white objects. Bada hoke zaroor MF Husain banega. If only MF Husain had ever worn chappals, I would have used them to hit myself. Suddenly, the sound of B52s attacking Pearl Harbour rang in my ears when I saw a variety of acrylic paints flung at me.” Now, the cabbie feels bad for you and decides to give you a free ride. Not only that, the kindhearted driver instead gives you Rs 500 for laundry.

So what’s the moral of the story? Pretend to be nice when you are actually not and get a free ride home and get paid for laundry. Now, if you have liked today’s column, either you are nice or pretending to be nice. Actually, you don’t have to be. ‘Coz I’m neither a cabbie nor a chhota pappu! Although I can look like Uglyna. But only sometimes!’