Category: Daily Dose
-
TOP DOGS AND UNDERDOGS
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Argument. Why does everyone always root for the underdog. Why knock the person or side that is closer to excellence? It seems so unfair considering how we exhaust our lives trying to get to the top. Then we kick the guy off the pedestal and hate him for winning. I…
-
VOHRA AND THE SPOILS OF WAR
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra I once saw Andre Agassi play at Roland Garros (pronounced ‘orran gawo’, you uneducated slob) and after he had won the match he took off his shirt and flung it into the stands, thereby starting a mini-riot as a slew of lovely French ladies fought stalwartly to retrieve the trophy.…
-
VAT EES YAR PRABLUM?
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Is it so difficult to laugh at ourselves? So Doordarshan, the official Indian TV station, sacked an anchor for addressing the Chinese President Xi Jinping as Eleven Jinping. No one told her how to pronounce Xi. Point is, she should have been briefed. By that token, most of us reading…
-
My Wonderful World of Worry
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra If I ever get a chance to take a walk with Bobby Mcferrin, the man who sang “Don’t worry, be happy’, I think the odds are we shall end up in a dark alley where I shall initiate a deep discussion on the merits of his lyrical advice. Of all…
-
THE SAGA OF THE 6 STAR SHAVING CREAM
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Let me hear it from all you folks who are globetrotters and keep putting your profiles on Facebook showing yourselves in airport lounges and reclining in first class cabins. Clearly, you stay in swank 6 star hotels. So tell me, their rooms have these amenities, right? and they are all…
-
WHY THE BROWN IS THE NEW BLACK?
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Back in 2006, Joe Biden, then a Senate candidate ran into trouble for a remark that “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.” Gaffe-prone Biden got away by explaining that it wasn’t a racial slur but “was meant as a…
-
A PLATEFUL OF NONSENSE?
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra How it all began was the other night we were invited to this swank restaurant (sometimes it does happen) where the stewards have fake accents and are better dressed than you are and the menus are the size of hoardings and you could covert them into tents for a family…
-
WHY WERE THEY ASLEEP IN ROTHERHAM?
—
What were they doing in Rotherham? Sleeping? Ignoring the agony whirling around them? How can you explain away 1400 cases of child molestation in a small town with 100 babies born from such sexual predators and enough whistle blowers whose whistles were not heard. Children were hurt and tortured over 10 years, they were raped…
-
IF YOU CANNOT HELP GET LOST
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra If you don’t like your job, leave it. Don’t take it out on the customer. Especially if you’re working in the service industry. There is nothing that puts one off more than a surly, sulky grumpy attendant in a Mall shop or a behind a counter or an attendant who…
-
WHY ARE WE SCARED OF BEING IN OUR OWN COMPANY
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Oops, I have just had a thought. Not one of those cosmic, celestially illuminating, lightning strikes the empire thoughts but one of those ‘what do you know’ variety where something vaguely hits you and it has been there for years tucked away in the recesses of the mind except you…
-
WHY WE HATE TO CHEER?
—
Bikram Vohra comments on the lack of “warmth” of Indian audience As a people we are lousy when it comes to applause. We hate giving it with generosity. I was watching the Modi speech and the thousands gathered could not muster enough enthusiasm for applause… just a smattering here and there, nothing wholehearted and collective.…
-
ASIAN LITE TRIBUTE: Robin Williams
—
CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN ,YOU DID SEIZE THE DAY…Bikram Vohra pays tribute to Robin Williams I guess he gave so many people so many laughs he ran out of laughs for himself. People who make people laugh are usually isolated people and the goblins in their mind come from a whole other tribe. Robin Williams kept his…
-
DAMN WE EAT BADLY
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Have you ever made observations that not only get you into trouble but also earn you the undying wrath of people who hear you. Like I was at a few airports earlier this week waiting for planes with that stoic sense of surrender when I said the human race is…
-
DARLING, THANKS FOR THE SPACE,
—
Daily Dose By Bikram Vohra My wife and I are currently staying in a swank hotel. No, let me rephrase that. We are in the same room in which she has 93% of the space and I have the rest. This division is not inclusive of the bathroom which hovers around 98.4%… hers. First, there…
-
OKAY, FRIEND, WHERE WERE YOU YESTERDAY
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Don’t you just dislike it when people offer you smarter options than the one you exercised after the event is done and dusted? Like you have just told them how expensive the flight was and they say, really, why didn’t you go for the package deal, it was much cheaper…
-
THE LADY AND THE LOST LENS
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra On a flight recently, I chanced to sit near a crusty old man reading a novel and a lady of some thirty-five years, who had evidently come straight from a shopping spree to the airport and charmed her way past security with half a dozen duty free bags, a carry-all…
-
The risk of seeking remedy on Internet
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Most of us are compu-Doctors. We feel so good when we are unwell. To compound this felony we have, thanks to the Net become experts. I turned into a compudoc about three years ago and am now convinced that I have the symptoms of at least 37 ailments of the exotic…
-
DID YOU TAKE THE RIGHT ROAD?
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra It doesn’t matter how wealthy, healthy, successful or on top of the heap you are. In all our lives there was one turning we did not take, one that would have changed our lives completely. I don’t think there is anyone who hasn’t come to that crossroad and made that…
-
WHO REMEMBERS LIFE
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra Isn’t it sad that we live most of our lives without any recall of what happened over the years. Like I am 65 and if I bundled all my memories together it would come to about two or three years max. The rest is all a blur, just white noise…
-
THE GREEK JUSTICE
—
It sounds like Greek to you but it doesn’t sound like that to the Greeks. To them this is justice. Never have the scales of justice been so blindsided as they were yesterday when a Greek court set free four countrymen who were accused of shooting (with real guns) 28 Bangladeshi workers who were protesting…
-
THE AFTER PARTY AFTERMATH
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra See that car. At the STOP light. Next to yours. With the man and the woman in it. She is leaning to the left. He to the right like disjointed windshield wipers. They are a husband and wife and they are returning from a party. You can see the ice…
-
Cotton-wool Children
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra This is the world we live in. A woman sent her 7-year-old son to the nearby park to play and because he was ‘unsupervised’ adults at the park called the police and the mother has been arrested in the USA. She is fighting back and saying, “We pay enough taxes…
-
Daily Dose – INTIMIDATED
—
DAILY DOSE by Bikram Vohra I am so totally intimidated by certain things. Cutlery and sit down dinners. Five star hotel staff who have that supercilious sneer. Expensive stores like you know where they sell their cheapest watch for $5000. A gold shop because they know you are the disco necklace type what are you…
-
PEACE IN PLASTER
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra This is just the sort of stuff nobody reads because nobody wants to face their role (or complete lack of it) in doing nothing to make the world a better place…ergo ,the satire sails into the distant horizon unnoticed and unsung. Went visit Peace in the ICU. He was all…
-
WHEN TV FEEDS INDIA’S FOOLS
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra I have come to a conclusion. Indian TV provides a platform for crackpots and encourages them to bask in 15 minutes of fame, however sour the limelight. Take that BJP twit in Telengana, Dr K.Laxman who made some absurd remarks about Sania Mirza being a Pakistani daughter in law and,…
-
DON’T BLAME THE WIFE
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra Why is it when a young man marries a woman and stops stepping up to the plate as a son and brother everyone in the family blames the minted wife. A distant relative of mine has done the dirty to his aging parents and being a complete pratt which is…
-
DOWN WITH ENGLISH!
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra Now that we have this hostility to English as a language in India, soon, very soon, English will be a mark against you socially and we will explode our bridges over the rivers of the world and isolate ourselves because, like it or not, English as we have reworked it…
-
HEY, WHERE ARE THERE?
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra Every now and then I get a little bit angry. But it is not because of an eclipse of the heart. More because I feel like that guy in the boat who was left stranded midstream. That is what Indian media does, they leave you grasping for oars to get…
-
WAIT TILL DAD GETS HOME
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra When we were kids and we misbehaved my Mum would say, wait till your father gets home. It was like the biggest threat going, the sharpest knife in the toolbox and we would then sit in delicious dread waiting for the Man to come home and set us right.It counted.…
-
FRIGHTFUL STUFF
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra So I am catching up with my email having left it all unplugged these past four days and there is the usual dross and spam and I notice that my old friend Joanna who wants to meet me terribly has been joined by Esmerelda and Ibo, both of whom share…
-
BACK TO NORMAL…WELL, ALMOST
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra You know the part about being ill is that you get well and then all the sympathy you have been garnering disappears like a mist. Zip, gone. Misery is addictive. You were wallowing in it. Everyone was at your beck and call. They asked you what you felt like eating.…
-
HOW TO STEM SPORTS DEPRESSION?
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra All this hype about sports has a downside. For the past three months it has been running our lives, isolating the men and some of the women, the whole texture of normal family life disrupted, even socializing predicated to the timing. IPL. Wimbledon. The World Cup. Suddenly, it is all…
-
FAMILY WARS – Indian Style
—
Daily Dose BY BIKRAM VOHRA Have you noticed how we spend most of our children’s early years teaching them to walk and talk and then the rest of it telling them to shut up and sit down. In thousands of home these wars are fought every day. Why? Why what? Why should I sit down.…
-
FINDING NAMO – An Open Letter to Modi
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra I remember the good old days in Ahmedabad when I was editor of Indian Express and Narendra Modi was a fledgling politician and we were old buddies and we would meet and chew the fat and eat dhoklas and bhajiyas and go to the club to play tennis and all…
-
MIDDLE AGED SWINGER
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra Have you noticed how when wives say I don’t want to upset you to their husbands that is precisely what they intend to do. I don’t want to upset you, says my wife, but I have something to say. Go ahead, I say, I won’t be upset. You have become…
-
TROUBLE IN THE TOILET
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra Most men have five or six items in their bathrooms. Toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving foam, a razor and a ragged towel and maybe a talc and a cologne. These could all fit into a travel bag. The stuff women have could fit into a tent and still there’d be some sans…
-
THE BIG SLEEP OH DON’T BE FATUOUS
—
DAILY DOSE BY Bikram Vohra You’d think it was the betrayal of the state, that India had been sabotaged because Rahul Gandhi closed his eyes for 22 seconds during the price line debate in parliament. The way the TV channels have blasted into him you’d think he’d led an attack on the house. Arnab Goswami,…
-
THE GREAT INDIAN PROBLEM IS US
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra Everyone in India is either a philosopher, a mentor, a critic, a cynic or an opinionated twit. The last come on TV in panels where they are royally screwed over by the anchor or so called mediator and yet they keep on coming and making fools of themselves and being…
-
WHAT A COWARDLY THING
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra So I am reading this book in which the hero is being given a lie detector test before he joins the FBI or the CIA and the question is: have you ever been a coward? And I think to myself, hmmm, interesting, have I ever been one? Not in the…
-
MIXING WITH THE MONEY MANDARINS
—
DAILY DOSE BY Bikram Vohra I wasn’t very good at money matters when I was a youngster. And I wasn’t very good with money matters when I was middle aged. Now, as I totter into antiquity I am still not very good with money matters. Guess I am constant. In fact, I was well into…
-
MEMSAHIBS AND MANNERS
—
It is one of those ‘we live abroad so when we visit we notice it’ things for which us NRIs get a lot of stick. But some things do sort of hit us differently. Like whenever I come home to Delhi I am appalled at the way people speak to domestic help, part time, full…
-
NOT READY FOR DEPARTURE
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra So we are in the holding area and the boarding for the flight is announced and the disembodied voice says rows 15 to 30 please board first, the rest please await the next announcement.Naturally, this is ignored. What part of that do passengers fail to understand? It is 15 to…
-
DON’T GET EVEN, GET SMART
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra A friend of mine wants revenge. Someone he trusted has done the dirty on him and he is hoping mad because he feels cheated, betrayed, let down and that is just for starters. Told him, waste of time and energy, enjoy the scenarios but don’t carry them out. Why not,…
-
ENGLISH IS NO CRIMINAL
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra The current brouhaha that is being witnessed in India over downgrading English is one fraught with danger. English is not a language in India. It is a caste. It is also a free pass to the best of jobs. And anyone tells you differently they are hypocrites. This hypocrisy raises…
-
HEAVY STUFF FOR A MONDAY MORNING
—
Daily Dose by Bikram Vohra “Leave the ones going away from the wicket,’ said this famous cricketer, “And just block the ones that are coming on the stumps.” Every now and again he would repeat the advisory. Don’t knock it till you have tried it. Not just good advice for cricket but also for life.…
-
HOW TO WRECK A CAREER ? Indian Style
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra This is the recording of a meeting between a corporate boss and two of his lieutenants held to discuss the probable promotion of a Manager to their level. The boss is very much in favour of upgrading the wunderkind but the two top executives are evidently not keen on getting…
-
HR & HATCHET JOBS,THE BIG CON GAME
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra The big bully in the corporate world today is HR. Where did this lot come from? Knowing very little about the job and functions of the staff there they are pruning and cutting and snipping away at the bottom line like berserk gardeners bent on destruction. Their only aim is…
-
WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra This is a slightly sensitive subject. But we will truly become civilized when we get over the social hang up of keeping silent over two conditions. Bad breath and body odour. I have never understood why we have to tolerate it or not mention it. The other party is not…
-
AND ANOTHER STAR IS BORN
—
DAILY DOSE By Bikram Vohra I am very impressed with myself. Right through yesterday till late in the evening when Nandini’s baby girl was born making us grandparents for the third time I was strong and commanding and so much ‘all there.’ It is a rare talent. You see men like us are made of…
-
THE BITTER FRUIT OF TOTAL NONSENSE
—
So much for the arrogance of power. This government promised Indians a service for the people. Less government, more governance. Reflect that sentiment in a nine strong police force that has gathered in the home of Janata Dal (United) MP Mahendra Prasad in upscale New Delhi. When he went to sleep the night before there…