The Residency

I watched a homeless woman as she crossed the road ahead of me. She was carrying all her worldly possessions with her -

A couple of bags and a long flex-board advertisement that she probably slept on, neatly folded, which read -

"For sale - Luxurious 3BHK apartments with modern amenities yet affordable ..."

The Towel Lovers

A 5yo turned up today after taking his shower and had an important question-

"Appa, we always use the towel on clean body washed with fresh water. Why should we ever wash it then, isn't it always clean??"

I mumbled something along the lines of "erm..you know ..wet towels are.. well, bacteria and germs like to grown on wet towels, so we should wash and dry them in the sun!". He listened but seemed unconvinced.

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Some 20 years ago, in my bachelor apartment, my roommate tortured me with the same logic and I had to live with a large slumbering presence of a bluish-grey humid towel in the room, which could easily go unwashed for months, and looked like mushrooms could sprout out of it any moment!

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There exists this small but thought-provoking tribe of people scattered across the world, who refuse to wash their towels due to the above-mentioned rationale -

The Towel Lovers - who cannot stand a day's separation from their favourite towels and would not let them undergo a rigorous wash!

The Curious case of the Misplaced items

I have a used SIM-card, a file of document-photocopies and some imported snack goodies that were left behind and need to pass on to an aunt. 

Just today, I left my spare car keys in my cousin's home that we were visiting and my uncle had forgotten to take back his purse that he gave me for safe-keeping during a outdoor ritual. It's still very safe with me, but only 150km away. Planning to meet them again soon enough to return those.

My humble suggestion to improve one's social life - Leave Stuff Behind!

Not in random places, but in your friend's or relative's homes.

Then you realise it or they find the item that's left behind after your visit.

Then you plan another visit (or they do) to return the objects to its owner - a perfect excuse to meet them again, depending upon the criticality or urgency of that item.

Lost and Found items can help in Finding Lost connections!

The Midlander

There is this permanent resident in the mid-section of my middle-aged body, applying for citizenship. It's case has come up for hearing today.

Name: Tummy

 "I moved in here long ago, contributing to the overall well-being, a certain look of prosperity and draught-resilience for the host body, and planning to settle down for good. 

How can you still be ashamed of me and wish I go away? Please make fat-shaming a punishable offense. I'm not any illegal migrant, but it was you who allowed me in, during times of dietary excess and let me grow and prosper! You should instead think of integrating me with the rest of the body and make me feel included, and give me voting rights (over what we need to eat in the next meal) considering what I bring to the (dining) table!" 

Highly Indiscriminate Terminator - HIT 3 movie

What would be an appropriate movie to watch during an old-boys get-together? A fast paced action-thriller/police investigation of serial killers, would be a good default candidate, right?

This is how we chose to watch the movie HIT-3.

I'm not going to delve deeper into the plot involving a ruthless cop, who is hell-bent on tracing a notorious cult of depraved misfits and rebels who like to sever their victims with surgical precision and harvest endocrine organs for entertainment, in a heady mixture of dark web and pharmaceutical conspiracies, about which ordinary people would not know anything, anyway.

What really impressed (depressed?) me was finale - action sequences that lasted for about an hour. First, a few innocent victims had to be sacrificed with gruesome deaths. Then some bystanders had to be gored to death, to demonstrate the level of evil of the group of Psychotic Villains. Then, a fight-club style brutal elimination of few characters in a boxing ring.

Then started the spectacle of how the hero-cop facilitates the escape of innocents, by eliminating about a few hundred of those psychotic villains(PVs), one by one. It was like watching an iteration of the Final Destination series, except that Death takes a human form. 

The sequence was thrilling and comical at the same time, resembling some video game where zombies are killed without much thought. Imagine the few hundred actors who played the PVs, walking into the movie audition only to hear a one-liner role description -

"You will be running into the hero, one-by-one, in a narrow corridor of a dilapidated palace set, where he will kill you in one of the 250 methods we could think of, and your average total screen time is about 3.5 seconds"

Prop request -

"We may run out of fake blood during the shoot since we would pour it all on the hero's white blazer, shirt and even underwear banian, so please BYOD (bring your own death-make-up) like some sachets of tomato ketchup diluted in water for your chosen gruesome injury leading to a swift death. 

What actually happened was, while watching all this carnage on-screen, my friends were falling victim to the mindless violence by falling asleep and finally, only two of us were left as the last men couch-ing - myself and the dude who recommended the movie in the first place.

'Overkill' - would have been a perfect movie-title for this production that pretended to be an investigative thriller initially, but ended up as an exploration of the 250 weak-points in the human body by which one could be fractured/bled/maimed/amputated/guillotined on-screen.

The movie is highly recommended - only if you are in a murderous mood for your own reasons, on a random weekday. For all others, look elsewhere!