If I rub it really hard will Magic Happen?

I am not well respected in my neighbourhood. (with statements like the one above did you have any doubts?)

Let's list the reasons.

I am not married.

At 40 I sold off the family business and started 'playing (How I hate that term) the stock market' from Home.

I tend to come home at weird hours of the night. And let's not even get into the matter of the odd hours that I leave the house at.

For the last few years I have been taking part in the Annual Colony Festival of Spring taking on the craziest roles on stage. I have at different times played the role of a fag Arab, a Bhappi Lahiri look alike, a lisping Baawa Gossipmonger.

An absolute cross-section of the rainbow - I am that talented and I think some of the lesser mortals of the colony are jealous of the fact.

I won a fancy dress competition in the colony where I dressed up as a Sumo in a Sumo. Part of the routine involved driving around the colony perched on the bonnet with only a very loosely tied sari covering the essentials.

I have also done such "unmanly" things as taking part in and winning prizes in Cookery competitions.

I do such "blasphemous" things as bang up my car. The guys in my lane take bets on how many new dents I pick up every month.

I have brought shame to the colony by such treasonable acts as joining a Club and a Gym in Chembur rather than the crappy jokes that try to pass themselves off as Gyms in the Colony. (When will they ever realise that one squeaky treadmill and twenty dumbbells do NOT a Gym make)

Once every couple of months I tend to have a party with loud guests and late night revelry.

Yesterday however I think I outdid myself. Nothing that I have every done in the past could ever have prepared them for the First Bombay Hash House Harriers run from a residence in the Colony.

Most of the early morning walkers at 5 Gardens were shocked to see me out there at 6:30 in the morning. This is the time that they normally see me threatening to mow them down as they leisurely walk and I am driving off to the club for my swimming.

So when I start walking along with them they know that things are NOT OK.

As if to validate their apprehensions I pull out a roll of blue ribbon and start tying bits of it on the gates and lamp-posts all over the place.

At 10 mayhem strikes. Ketki, who if she was not SOOOO!! much older than me, would be a perfect Fag-Hag, comes and takes over the boot of my car as her temporary registration desk. In less than 20 minutes there is mayhem spread by a whole bunch of vocally and visually loud maniacs raring to escape. Which they do after a blast of the Hash Horn by someone who suddenly realised it feels great to blow hard on someone's trumpet. (Straight people are SO ignorant about these things). On a Sunday Morning, when most of them have been up half the night watching Football - that was Cruel. (and I loved it!!)

For the next hour or so most of the Dadar Matunga area was unsafe for all normal Human Life. Taken over by alien creatures running in search of the elusive blue ribbon and giving out the exuberant victory cry on locating it, ultimately they all ended up on the terrace where the noisy party continued.

Good Beer, Great Biryani, Amazingly cute little boys fresh on ice and a bunch of people who know how to let their hair down and go wild for a day.

What more could I have asked for?

I could have asked for neighbours who do not complain and more importantly neighbours that do NOT JUDGE.

But then I realised that I have already run out of my wishes from the genie so I guess I will have to live with the bunch I have. Look at it this way – They now have one more solid piece of evidence to prove that I am crazy.

If my idiosyncrasies can brighten up their grey lives I will consider my work on this Earth well done.