Column

Tales from the Locker Room

Now that Valentine’s Day is over, I can finally come out of hiding—not because I’m scared of cards or the right wing, it’s just that I’m terrified of my wife.

A person who, to quote Geoffrey Chavier when he was touring the provinces on a cheap summer holiday, is more ‘right wingest’ than any other right winger in any corner of any foreign field.

Love has evolved as it always does to that dreaded four letter word ‘Fear’.

This brings us children (actually, only children should be reading these ramblings), to the topic of the day- Fear!

First let me submit the background. All the Broacha men live in fear. My son is terrified of school. I’m terrified of my wife and dad is terrified of noise and long names.Fear was discovered millions of years ago on June 3, at 12:07 pm when primitive man Homo Erectus (primitive man was known for both his extreme passion as well as extremely hairy calf muscles), stumbled upon a forest fire for the first time.

Homo erectus (let’s call him Sloban Vehimojic as that was a fairly common name for many Homo erectuses of the time) was out gathering herbs at the time for the family’s Sunday dinner. It’s a known fact that Monday to Friday, Homo erectuses… sorry Slobadan Vehimojies preferred to eat their relatives.

On Saturday, they abstained from food and on Sunday, they had an exclusive herbal diet, which helped them get back into the mood for a scrumptious buffet of aunt Edna on the following Monday.

Let’s now move a couple of years ahead to the day before yesterday. As part of an incredible death-defying stunt, I and actor Rahul Bose had to attempt a stunt never successfully done by any Indian before.

We had to balance on both our legs in the back of a garbage bumper truck, a feat which early on had destroyed Akshay Kumar for a few years, had Shahrukh Khan hankering to go back to the meat business and Hrithik returning to his MBA. As we routinely wet ourselves and fell off the truck, realisation dawned—taking out the trash had now got a whole new dimension to it.