Happy New Year

So 2013 is here and even though the US did not fall off the “fiscal cliff”, it is still a pretty crappy start of the year with our taxes going up, snow in Toronto drifting on roadways causing treacherous driving conditions, and undue publicity being given to Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy and Hugh Hefner’s marriage to Crystal Harris (and if she gets pregnant, Hugh, unfortunately, will not be the oldest dad in the world…that honor goes to Ramajit Raghav of my native state Haryana in India who recently became a dad at the tender age of 96). It is funny that the US Congress had 518 days to come up with a solution to the fiscal cliff and they still needed additional 21 hours after the deadline to avoid falling off the cliff…..talk about the height of procrastination. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that they still got it done…. and that is why I have decided that my New Year resolution this year will be to procrastinate as much as I can.

And to start with, I procrastinated making my New Year resolution as well. Rather than doing it on the 1^st of January or even before as some crazy people do it, I have waited a week to decide. Then I had promised my lovely sis-in-law-cum-my-future-book-editor, Kanya Bahwa that I will post my new blog on the New Year day but I procrastinated until today. From now on, whenever my soul mate, Anshu, requests me to take care of some household stuff, my strategy will be to postpone it until one of the following two things happens – she forgets that she asked me to do something (my best bet) or enough time goes by and the need to do the task actually goes away (for example, if I leave the empty garbage can outside for a long time, the city truck will eventually haul it away and I won’t have to move it back to the garage…then she can go and buy a new one….problem solved).

Another example – Anshu requested 2 weeks ago when she “winterized” our home (disconnected water hoses, moved the lawn furniture to the shed, brought the beer tanker and the cotton candy machine from the deck to the basement etc.) that I should make sure that our snow blower is ready for the upcoming snow season. I obviously procrastinated and did not do anything about it and when Toronto was hit by a major snow storm, rather than screwing around with the snow blower and cleaning our driveway, I used the immense power of our two SUVs to crush the 8 inch thick layer of snow to get in and out of the garage.

This strategy worked very well for me but I know that my dear friend, Skanda (who also goes by Sikandar for those dimwits who keep calling him Sikandar even though he keeps correcting them that it is Skanda, not Sikandar) did not like it when he tried to park his car in our driveway. Apparently, the car span (I did some research on the past tense of the word “spin” and turned out that both “span” and “spun” are accepted by linguists so I have decided to go with “span” though you are free to replace it with “spun” when you re-read the paragraph from the beginning because I have distracted you so much that you do not even remember what you were reading….and my advice is that when you re-read, it will be better if you skip the portion between parentheses otherwise you will need to start all over again) some 180 degrees when he floored his gas pedal in order to go over the 12 inch high wall of snow/salt mix between our driveway and our street caused by the city plowing trucks. So rather than wishing me a happy new year, the first thing he said when he saw me was, “Dude, you need to clean your driveway.”

However, I still do not understand what the issue is. From my standpoint, we provided an amusement-park-type-exciting ride to Skanda and his family and we did not even charge him for this fun and he is still complaining about the ice skating rink, I mean, our driveway. Secondly, if the car did spin 180 degrees, it was good because he was able to park the car facing the street rather than facing the garage and I know as a fact that 73% of the parking lot type accidents happen when people are going out of a parking spot in reverse (Source: Pakistani Journal of Jihad and Parking Lots, Issue 34; page 112 from the back….because it is in Urdu). This way he did not need to get out in reverse and rather than thanking me for saving him from a potential accident, he was complaining about his so called ‘ordeal”. I guess, it does not matter whatever you do for some people…. they are never satisfied.

What Skanda failed to remember was that we were actually enjoying our winter holidays in beautiful Chicago when Toronto got hit with the snow storm…. and cleaning the snow 3 days after it falls is as difficult as cleaning a baby’s butt 6 hours after the baby has pooped in the diaper. Now, I do hope that Skanda does not get too offended by what I wrote here to demand a refund of $37.50 he already gave me for a copy of my future book, which may or may not get published because I may or may not write it. Obviously, I have already drunk $37.50 long time ago…no, no I did not drink dollars; I drank alcohol bought by his dollars. If Skanda does demand his money back, I will sell a future copy of my book to my friend Deepa to pay off Skanda. She apparently has been enjoying whatever crap I have peddled in the name of humor in this blog so I am sure she will happily part away with money for a noble cause.  

And talking about Chicago, when we were landing, the pilot announced that the outside temperature with the wind chill was -15 deg C. Stepping out of the airport we were thinking “Is there any place on earth that can be colder than here?” And pretty soon we got our answer – yes, it was the rental car. Even though Anshu turned on seat warmers as soon as I started the car, we still did not feel our rear ends the rest of the day. That is why I love this bumper sticker on many cars in Canada, “Screw the Global Warming, we are cold now!!”

Now a million-dollar question is – what is common among a New Year resolution, cleaning drive ways, Skanda, extremely cold weather, and parking lot statistics? The answer is – Nothing. And that is why this is a column about nothing!!!

And, as always, my final thoughts for this first blog of the New Year:

Let me clarify that this time, these are NOT “my” thoughts even though I live by most of them on a daily basis. I read this paragraph a long time ago somewhere and liked it so I am publishing it here. Hopefully, this is not plagiarism. There is nothing funny here and even though most of it may sound cliché, it has some profound thought-provoking ideas so please read carefully:

As you grow up, you learn that even that one person, who wasn't supposed to ever let you down, probably will. You'll have your heart broken and you'll break others' hearts. You'll fight with your best friend or maybe even fall in love with him/her, and you'll cry because time is flying by. So take many pictures, laugh too much, forgive freely, and love like you've never been hurt. Life comes with no guarantees, no time outs, and no second chances. You just have to live life to the fullest – so pick up the phone today and tell someone special what he/she means to you, completely ignore those who are often too “busy” to really be in your life and hence use you as an option, speak out, dance in the pouring rain, hold someone's hand, comfort a friend, stay up late and fall asleep watching the sun come up, be a flirt, and smile until your face hurts. Don't be afraid to take chances or fall in love and most of all; live in the moment because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back.....

In the end, it's not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many people’s breaths you took away.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!