This one came in an SMS:

Shortest description of a married man - Ek Tha Tiger :-)

You haven't seen anything in India if you haven't seen a family of 4 zoom past on a scooter during peak hour traffic. I was going home after a particularly long day. Songs from the Golden Era were doing a great job of isolating me from the outside chaos. Just then this scooter zipped past my cab window – the dad was driving and the mom was sitting in the back (with both feet on one side) with a tiny tot balanced, in my opinion, very precariously, in her left hand. My heart leapt into my mouth with fear. What do the baby carriers cost these days? They start from INR 1500 onwards. And the price of your baby's life? Priceless!

If spending for a product that can be used for a limited time only is an issue, there is always market for second-hand items. For net savvy people, such buying and selling is just one click away with sites such as Quikr and OLX. For others, there is always someone in the neighborhood with a new arrival in their home.

I don't think they are being careless. Like most of us, they must just be thinking that accidents only happen to others. :-(

I used to be a fan of Chetan Bhagat. I have purchased 'Five Point Someone' and 'One Night At The Call Center' for my personal collection. Then I read 'The 3 Mistakes of My Life' and didn't like it. I didn't bother to read '2 States'. And thereafter kind of lost interest. Just the other day I read that he is coming out with a new book called 'Revolution 2020'.

A search on the net revealed that it's about a love triangle (aren't all novels about the same?) , corruption (a favorite teatime subject for us Indians) and self-discovery (huh?). So I guess I can safely give this one a miss as well.

BEST bus drivers are one of the most maligned lots in this city. But during my daily travel to and from office, I have seen them drive very carefully battling city's potholed roads, heavy traffic, and unruly pedestrians at the same. I am not saying there are no bad apples but the entire cart is surely not full of rotten fruits.

Take yesterday for instance. We were just one signal short of reaching the highway when I noticed a car parked right in the middle of the road. The driver had stepped out of the vehicle and was inspecting its front side. A rickshaw had stopped close by and its driver too joined the car owner. It did not take a genius to figure out that the car must have been practically tailgating the rickshaw and bumped against it when it stopped suddenly. As we watched, the rickshaw driver got into his vehicle and drove a little distance ahead while the car owner kept inspecting his car. Then he seemed to have changed his mind and dashed after the rickshaw. The signal ahead had gone green in the meantime and every car in sight was honking at its loudest.

But the owner was unperturbed. He came back to his car with the rickshaw driver and inspected it some more. The two of them discussed something. The rickshaw driver went away again. The driver dashed again after him.

The driver of our bus, who had earlier watched this whole drama unfold with great patience and some amusement now joined the chorus of honking. He turned to me 'Can you believe this guy? I have half a mind to bang his car and go ahead' he said with a smile. If he had done that, I wouldn't have blamed him.

With me so far? Okay, read on. The car owner, on coming back, showed no signs of moving his car out of the way and the bus driver, losing his cool, opened the automatic doors. That was the only way he would have been able to make himself heard. He shouted at the top of his lungs at the car owner to get his car to the side of the road. I guess that finally brought the jerk tearing out of his own private world consisting of him, his car and the rickshaw driver.

He got into his car and moved it to the side of the road. I am sure he must have gotten down again to inspect it. I wonder if the car was new or was the driver driving on Mumbai's streets for the first time.

Our bus got moving again but the signal had gone red. It was 5 minutes before it turned green again. And you know what 5 minutes mean in this mad city. Remember that song from 'Taxi No. 9211'? It says 'Yeh Mumbai hai....yaha time ka matlab hai paisa' :-)

From outside it looked like any other normal cab with an electronic meter but the moment I stepped inside its dilapidated state became apparent. The vehicle was practically falling apart at the seams. I should have turned on my heels but I was getting late for office. So I decided to stay and then lived to regret that decision.

Mumbai roads will give the lunar surface a run for its money on any day. And the cab was making me aware of it every step of the way. I know what NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover must be going through and it has my full sympathies. If I didn't know how many nuts and bolts go into constructing a taxi earlier, I have a pretty good idea about it now as every one of them rattled to make its presence felt. As if this wasn't enough, I was becoming aware of a very strong smell of some kind of inflammable material. I was sure that I was inhaling some sort of noxious fumes with every breath and not doing my lungs any favor.

All-in-all, it was an edge-of-the-seat ride as I expected the floor of the cab to catch fire at any second (that has happened with me in the past!) or the doors on the rear side to fall away.

Mercifully, when I finally got out, both the cab and I were still in one piece!

'Why is Sanjeev Kapoor demonstrating how to make a scrambled egg?' I wondered as I chanced upon Food Food channel during surfing. Then I noticed that the program was titled 'How To Cook'. So, presumably, it was meant for those who are stepping into kitchen for the first time in their lives. And from the looks of it, it was the very first episode of the series.

I guess Sanjeev Kapoor would have been better off showing how to boil an egg, to start with :-)