Bombs and bimbos

Bombs and bimbos… Hmm…so what is the apparent connection between the two? Well, if I could just shun political correctness for the moment I would candidly say that they both entertain! Some eyebrows would be raised, some foreheads would wrinkle, and some faint hearts would cringe at such a pathetic statement. But this sad truth stared me right in the face when I was sitting around in the hostel canteen last evening over a cup of coffee. I was in the company of another guy who had the prerogative to decide which television channel was to be watched since he had come before me. And he was making good use of it, intermittently switching between a news channel and a music channel through the remote-control in his hand.

It so happened that a car full of bombs had been recovered in Surat that day following successive series explosions in Bangalore and Ahmedabad on previous days. A bearded fellow from the news channel with wide eyes and quivering voice was trying to get across this horror message to his viewers. He had made his point that bombs could pop out of nowhere so well that out of discretion I checked underneath my chair, while a tremor of fear ran down my spine. No sooner had I satisfied myself about my security and lifted my eyes back on the screen that a bomb of another kind hit me. Thanks to my ‘remote-friend’ we were now watching Malaika Arora Khan on a music channel gyrating seductively to the tunes of ‘Honth rasile tere honth rasile’ (Your lips are juicy). In a flash the horror of the terrorists and their bombs had given way to the killing gestures of this bimbo armed with all the weaponry to torment a man’s soul. However this detour into the fanciful world of Malaika’s womanly beauty was cut short by my companion after about three minutes. He decided to go back to the thriller show of the news channel.

There the same bearded journo was now going gaga about how his channel had exclusively deciphered the master plan behind the terror attacks. Respectively nine and eighteen bombs had been planted in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and thirty three had been found in Surat till that time according to the channel. Thus they were convinced that three more explosives would be hidden at other places in Surat taking the total to thirty six which would be in keeping with a strategy of geometric progression (doubling the number of bombs each day). A scary thought crossed my mind – if seventy two blasts were to take place in our city, Kanpur the very next day what are the chances of our campus staying safe? I was just beginning to estimate the number of days our country would survive if bombs went off in geometric progression and wondering about the magnitude of devastation when I was suddenly shaken back to reality by a shrill female voice screaming “Yaaaay, Khallas!” (Yaaay, you are finished!) It was the sultry item girl Isha Kopikar on the screen - water dripping down her minimal garb – sounding out a fatal warning to those who surrender to her charms. At this point I was at my wits' end as to how to react.

Within this short span I had already experienced, though in condensed form, the amusing rollercoaster of a Bollywood potboiler with all its bombs and bimbos (read violence and sex). As I finished my coffee and got up to leave I thought to myself: Bombs are entertaining as long as you aren’t sitting on top of one and seductive bimbos are entertaining as long as you aren’t married to one! Well, at least those are the principles on which television channels are fighting out their TRP war…

Footnote: The number thirty-six was nowhere to be found in any news reports the next morning in the context of bombs recovered or defused in Surat. Boring!