42

What are 42?
What the heck are 42? Who is Arthur Dent? Oh freak. Where’s my drink?

“Why-*burp*- don’t we name this fucking condom condom. I mean we call a man by the name of ‘Manav’ or ‘Adam’ then there is that saying, “Call a spade, a spade. Or something like that”. Heck I call my dog Dog.

Kaptain Kantaap had named his dog Dog. Dog was a nice dog except that it hated it’s name and used to show its displeasure to it by barking a lot whenever he was called out and at times when playing with Kaptain Kantaap seizing every occasion to bite him. Dog, being a nice-hearted dog couldn’t ever bite the hand that fed him and therefore as a result was quite frustrated with his life. His fellow dogs made fun of him. Kaptain Kantaap never understood this incessant barking of Dog and therefore presumed that dog was perennially hungry and thus gave him loads of food to eat everyday. As a result Dog was a fat dog. Dog didn’t know that Kaptain Kantaap would soon be bringing another dog and would call it ‘Fight’ thus practically living the phrase “It’s not about the size of the dog in the fight but about the size of the fight in the dog”.

Mailer Demon, his boss said, “Are you crazy? How can we name a product on the category?” as he gulped down his whisky.

Kaptain Kantaap replied, “Look, in this industry a staggering 84.8% of people just ask for a condom. They don’t say a brand. Now in any case we will a launching a retailer scheme to ensure our product gets pushed the most, I am just saying if we call it ‘condom’ then it will have maximum brand recall in all the surveys, more visibility, we will even advertised for by other companies when they say xyz condoms. What else do you want? And slowly when we have registered on the minds of the people, it will from a push strategy move to a pull strategy. Everyone will still continue to say ‘give me condom’ and it will mean he is asking our brand. Bingo!

Frustrated with rants of Kaptain Kantaap his boss said ‘Ok. Make a presentation”

This was Kaptain Kantaap’s way of ensuring that his company fires him - cause he knew the idea will fail- and therefore he can get rid of it.

And that’s how Kaptain Kantaap went on to build a brand that everyone talked bout for years. It catapulted Kaptain Kantaap into a league where many a people of his age only dream of achieving at 42! Kaptain Kantaap was however beyond it. He was a coward. He was looking of getting out while others were desperate to get in.

This is what happened post that drunk session.

Unfortunately for him, the top management had decided to resign the company in another few months and therefore when they saw that such a ridiculous idea was proposed to them, instead of kicking Kaptain Kantaap out, they happily agreed to go ahead with it. They all thought that the idea will fail and therefore they will get their revenge from the board of directors. They had decided to make Kaptain Kantaap the business head of this new product that would now be called ‘Condom’. They had also agreed among themselves to resign on the night just before the launch.

But Kaptain Kantaap didn’t know this plan of his top management. Frustrated at having to stay, he suggested the wild idea of sponsoring all the condoms used in adult movie with the brand name ‘condom’ being displayed on it big enough for everyone to see it.

Board of directors agreed to that also.

Kaptain Kantaap was disappointed but couldn’t do much. He went ahead with all the wild ideas he had.

Everything went according to plan. Kaptain Kantaap sponsored all the adult movies, Indian, American, latin, Czech, chile whatever he could lay his hands on. (He had spent enough money to ensure that company kicks him out)
Top Management too quit and all of a sudden Kaptain Kantaap was the senior most guy in the company.
The board of directors of the company was on a holiday but all of them said they are doing product testing and they are pretty happy with it.
However, one thing didn’t go as per the plans.

The product worked!

What more, it even led to many other businesses booming.

This is how it happened
The sponsoring of all the condoms ensured that all men and women implied that using ‘condom’ means being as fit and active in bed.
However more than men, women bought it. The sales skyrocketed.
Kaptain Kantaap was overnight the favorite of everyone in the company.

The adult films also ensured that the uneducated class who used to watch porn movies and magazines to satisfy their perversion inferred the same (i.e. being very active in bed) and therefore bought condoms for the first time. This led to fewer cases of aids all of a sudden. Government and NGO in turn adopted ‘Condom’ over ‘Nirodh’ and hence sales went even higher than the sky. The production (not reproduction) guys were working overtime in the factories.

The success of ‘Condom’ also resulted in a huge boom in the business of divorce lawyers. This was so because of most of the women who insisted on their partners using ‘Condom’ had high expectation of them in bed, most of the guys failed to live up to them while others who were already good suffered from performance anxiety.
This eventually led to strong reasons for divorce. And that’s where divorce lawyers came into play.

Kaptain Kantaap had become the poster boy for everyone!

In another world, Kaptain Kantaap would have been kicked out. In some another world Kaptain Kantaap would have left anyways. In again another world Kaptain Kantaap would have jumped outside the window of his flat at 42nd floor only to realize that he could fly.

But Kaptain Kantaap was coward. He did not know that those worlds existed nowhere else but here.

Kaptain Kantaap all these days was searching for something, something he did not know.
It must be some question.


(* Inspiration: Douglas Adams's Hitchiker's Guide to Galaxy *)

Life's a joke

Kaptain Kantaap was getting drowsy. He could barely manage to keep his eyes open.

“Irresistible Rascal!” Applause…

Kaptain Kantaap looked around. There were people. Lots of them. They weren’t sad. Somewhat happy though, which was opposite of sad so Kaptain Knataap told himself “well, they are sad in somewhat different way, only we can’t seem to see it that way!” This thought made Kaptain Kantaap happy as this made him feel good.

“Crazy Cock!” Applause…

“Born Cynical” looked at Kaptain Kantaap and gave him a smile. She was Kaptain Kantaap’s best friend and she was going now.

“Frikkin Fool” Applause…

Kaptain Kantaap looked at her as she walked towards the stage to receive her degree.
Some chemical deep within his body was all of a sudden born and it flew right towards his eyes.
Kaptain Kantaap raised his left eyebrow as he looked at her with. This made his right eyebrow jealous that why wasn’t she raised and why the left eyebrow was the favored one. The stats of left eyebrow versus right eyebrow (i.e. who got raised how many times) were now 193753 to 67082. She knew it was a lost game now and therefore; she had become depressed, which led some of the hair of the eyebrow fall down. This in turn led to a small streak of missing hair in Kaptain Kantaap’s right eyebrow. The missing hair made Kaptain Kantaap look sexy in a quite different manner similar to the way a non-existent dimpled chin made Tom Cruise look different.

Moving on to the left eyebrow that was raised right now, Kaptain Kantaap was reliving some of the old days when he was with Frikkin Fool. Thinking of her, Kaptain Kantaap felt like peeing. This was so because apparently that chemical which had sought its way out from the eye couldn’t do so (as Kaptain Kantaap has raised his left eyebrow to prevent the tears to fall) and therefore pissed off and disgusted at its own existence, it sought for the other exit route and this was the cause why Kaptain Kantaap felt like staring at the wall.

These things made Kaptain Kantaap feel that he had moved on and therefore made him conclude that he hates her now but that was not the case, as he hadn’t moved on cause he never had started to begin with. Kaptain Kantaap was quite confused when it came to love but then Kaptain Kantaap was confused about everything. Sometimes he was even confused if all the guys in the world are girls and all the girls are guys. However he concluded that the biological difference due to this would have been zero so he concluded that he could call himself a girl. This at times had led him to do many girly things one of which had resulted in an unthinkable but speakable act. (More of it later)

“Frikkin fool” walked past Kaptain Kantaap, looked at him in a passing glance and gave him a look that said “I understand!” but Kaptain Kantaap in his contempt for her understood it to be “Ha! Look who’s the fool now? Asshole!”

Nonetheless, names kept on being called and slowly but steadily everyone went barring our Kaptain Kantaap. Some of his friends came and stood by him, “Born Cynical” was holding his hands tightly now and when they all threw their graduation hats in air, Kaptain Kantaap looked at them with a sullen face.

“Born Cynical” said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be here next year. It happens for good, you know, whatever happens!” Then other friends consoled him.
All this while deep within Kaptain Kantaap’s heart, Kaptain Kantaap knew he was very happy. Happy not because he had flunked another year in b-school pursuing an mba he never wanted to pursue, not because he was alone now and terribly missed Frikkin Fool, not because Born Cynical, his best friend was leaving, not because “Arrogant Bastard”, his once good friend left without saying a word to him, and not because he had had his favorite breakfast (bacon and eggs with pineapple juice) that day; Kaptain Kantaap was happy because flunking another year in b-school meant he gets to spend another year away from work, another year of living life carelessly and another year of cheap booze and free dope. But Kaptain Kantaap, being the coward that he was, maintained a sullen face that made people- who are generally stupid- believe that he is sad. And then all friends came to him to shake hands and slowly all but Born Cynical went away. She was still holding his hand, and then she started crying. Kaptain Kantaap, being the fool that he is, didn’t know what to do. He walked her towards the parking lot and made her sit in her cab. And then told her “I want to eat lunch. Should we go to the mall?” Born Cynical said “Yeah!” And so they went.

As he extended his hands to open the door of the car, Kaptain Kantaap saw that the time on his watch was 7.15 a.m. and therefore he switched off the alarm.
Friday Morning.
He hated Friday mornings as it made him live through the most anxious hours of the week waiting for the clock to strike 6. Kaptain Kantaap was a very impatient person, you see!
He loved Mondays cause they were hopeless and there was no point looking forward to the weekend and therefore he had ample time to kill. No restlessness, no anxiety!
Thinking about his dream, he realized this was the third time in past two days he had the same dream (he saw the dream two times back to back as first time just before opening the door of the car in the dream he woke up for no reason and then when he slept again he saw the dream again)

Kaptain Kantaap hated that dream. Just for general knowledge, Kaptain Kantaap, however had gone on to enjoy the third year of his two year mba, gone on to get the same job in the same company only at different pay package. Kaptain Kantaap had got placed in a company in his 2nd year but due to his flunking he did not join it, next year the same company by some stroke of bad luck again selected Kaptain Kantaap and this time there pay package was more compared to that of last year.

It was more by a rupee.(This made Kaptain Kantaap feel 1 year for what? 1 rupee? Life's a joke!)

The company cited recession as the main reason for this. However, no one wondered how the sales of a condom company could drop in times of recession, in fact reports suggested that sex was the only good thing which made people believe in themselves and therefore do it more (well this wasn’t true completely as most of the men and women in the world had started faking orgasm even more just to please their partners who were depressed because of the recession)

So Kaptain Kantaap against all his wishes had managed to ensure that college throws him out by giving him passing marks, he had managed to get himself a job and he had managed to be friends with many other persons in his college, Born Cynical was one of them.

Kaptain Kantaap, however got up and as he walked towards his bathroom he realized his toothpaste was empty and this gave him a feeling of déjà vu!

Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw his right eyebrow raised (right eye brow was raised continuously for past 59 hours, this gave the right eye brow an added score of some thousands. Right eyebrow wanted to win the game against left eyebrow and therefore was doing it till had a healthy lead over the left eyebrow, but Kaptain Kantaap did not know this but then Kaptain Kantaap did not many things!)

Kaptain Kantaap tried to interpret his dream. He thought why exactly was he seeing it, i.e., what exactly was the point? But being a tedious job that it was, he left it midway and went on to prepare his breakfast.

Friday Mornings! I Hate them.
Convocation day. Bah.
What was frikkin fool wearing that day?
What was i wearing?
I need to buy some handkerchiefs today.
What's that smell?
Born cynical is getting married.
Gentle riddance frikkin fool. and so Kaptain Kantaap continued thinking.

However, in this mundane pointless existence where none of his acts made any sense, Kaptain Kantaap had hoped that love would help him see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, such high expectations from his partner crashed as she too had the same expectations from him.

Kaptain Kantaap thought, "It was like two people clinging to each other while falling into a bottomless pit all the while knowing that they are doomed but still holding on to hope."

Kaptain Kantaap knew this but didnt know what to make of it cause for him relationships were like that only. A psychological need to make oneself feel good about oneself.

Kaptain Kantaap however had been trying to fake himself into believing he was better off this ways. No one knew if he was. Only time would tell.

Meanwhile our Kaptain Kantaap shouted out aloud after pouring the milk in his frying pan and eggs in the cornflakes, "Life's a joke".

Great Expectations

Kaptain Kantaap wakes up.

Kaptain Kantaap wants to get up from the bed but for some biological problem stays there for some time. So, he starts counting.

After some time, he realizes it is fine to get up. He gets up.

He walks towards the window and like one of those movie scenes hopes to open the window in a true philmy style and then plans of spreading his hands, be delighted at the beauty of the world and then break into some humm…Hummmm. Hmmm.

So Kaptain Kantaap opens the window, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He also doesn’t forget to put on a fake smile to fake him self into happiness.
However, a stench resembling shit or the one he smells near railways racks early morning enters his olfactory cells which immediately puts his sensory neuron cells into action to retrieve his hands to mouth and he opens his eyes to find out where the cause for this change of plans is?

He also sneezes as he looks out to realize that he opened the wrong side of the room. Kaptain Kantaap blames Earth’s rotation for this and wonders if it would have been any different if Earth were rotating the other way round. He also wonders would he have been a woman if earth was rotating the other way. But he felt he was better off being a male (barring the biological problem every morning) and therefore didn’t probe further into the effects of counter rotation of earth.

Meanwhile, he closes the window and turns realizing that his idea of the philmy morning was gone.
Little dejected, he turns, only to see a slipper hurling towards his private parts.

As of that moment one of his nerve cells got ready and sends a command to the numerous body parts to turn left with immediate effect. However, another lazy and slightly damaged nerve cell also gets into action at the same time (it was damaged and was therefore, being recycled, or to put it simply was in the process of being thrown out via the common exit passages in Kaptain Kantaap’s body; This nerve cell had got highly agitated because of this rejection and therefore chewed off some innocent nearby nerve cells as a sign of protest. The far off nerve cells hadn’t yet received their newspaper because of the strike of vendors (red blood cells) and therefore didn’t know this. This lack of information to other nerve cells made our evil nerve cell very happy and it was using it’s memory to think of all the villains it resembled in one of those films his captor, Kaptain Kantaap saw.) Now this nerve cell also interprets the rescue signal and finds it extremely amusing. It was thinking of a movie “Saving Private Ryan”, and here is the Kaptain Kantaap in a situation apt to be called “Saving Ryan’s privates”. It laughed.
Then it sent some other signals to some other tissues in some other part of the Kaptain Kantaap’s body. It didn’t know exactly which signal was going where but just that he sent many instructions to many other parts of the Kaptain Kantaap’s body.

The end result of this internal confusion was that Kaptain Kantaap’s privates could not be saved as some of the signals from the damaged nerve cell went to the same tissues- to whom the previous nerve cell had sent instruction to move left; the message from the damaged nerve cell being to smile.

Since, those tissues didn’t know how to smile (as their primary responsibility was to expand and contract and some times also move here and there) got confused as to which command to follow. While some tissues in the concerned organ went with the first message, some went with the second one, a large minority said they didn’t want to be awake now and therefore decided to stay put. Some other maniacally depressed tissues started crying which led to an uneasy feeling, which was further aggravated by the kiss of the slipper.

The other signal of the damaged nerve cell went to Kaptain Kantaap’s lips, which were asked to move left which they did and therefore, when the slipper hit Kaptain Kantaap’s privates, he had a twitch on his lips which looked like a twisted evil smile.

Other nerve cells being confused as to how they failed to avert the crisis, were still debating about the cause of this catastrophe happily unaware that another community member had chewed some of their community members off.

Mean while, Kaptain Kantaap while still struggling with the pain in his private parts heard his room partner shout at him “Your respected mother’s private parts”, and then his room partner described those private parts to Kaptain Kantaap.
While the room partner kept on shouting and abusing and bending two of his fingers on the left and right corners of his hand, he was also shouting why Kaptain Kantaap had opened the window….

Now, Anyone else seeing this- that what happened now and what shall happen pretty soon- would have thought, Kaptain Kantaap was crazy; which would have been the right thought to think of, but then would have-like every pretentious rational being who like to think they are rational- judged himself to be too judgmental about Kaptain Kantaap and in general about everyone else and therefore would have let go of the accidentally true fact about Kaptain Kantaap that he was a crazy fellow. He however would have joked about this to other people over a round of drinks calling Kaptain Kantaap a fool, which again was true of Kaptain Kantaap but since it would have been discussed over a round of drinks in a joking manner, even those people -like every pretentious rational being who like to think they are rational- judged themselves to be too judgmental about Kaptain Kantaap, narrator and in general about everyone else and therefore would have let go of the accidentally true fact about Kaptain Kantaap that he was a fool. The same people would have later on told other people who would have later through a not so small a chain of Chinese whispers told the same to Kaptain Kantaap(like; you know this guy my friend knows, it so happened one morning that….and so on.) And Kaptain Kantaap would have thought to himself after listening this story “Interesting. Seems like an eccentric guy” but he too-like every pretentious rational being who like to think they are rational- judged himself to be too judgmental about the said person in the story and in general about everyone else and therefore would have let go of the accidentally true fact about himself that he was an interesting and eccentric guy.

Kaptain Kantaap didn’t know that about himself but then Kaptain Kantaap didn’t know many other things- for instance that Earth did rotate the other way round morning and he would have been a girl if earth was rotating the other way on the day he was conceived- and admitting ignorance made Kaptain Kantaap happy.


In the mean time, Kaptain Kantaap ignoring his room partner’s morning rants, was wondering whatever happened to his philmy beginning of morning.

And then he realized it was a philmy morning.

He was not the hero of the philm.
He was the side-hero.
He thought of Dr. Watson, he thought of Hiren Bhojani of Jo jeeta wohi sikandar, he thought of Hrithik Roshan in Koi Mil Gaya, he thought of Al Pacino in “The Godfather” but then he realized Al Pacino wasn’t the side-hero so he felt apologetic and let it be.
Kaptain Kantaap realized it was a philmy opening to his morning where everything was not going fine and how he would continue having a bad day. He felt he had the power to see the future, he knew his day wouldn’t improve at all and so he won’t even try. He’ll just be careless and be the perfect side-hero in this philmy day of his life.

As Kaptain Kantaap walked towards the bathroom, he remembered there was no toothpaste and just as he thought this, he was happy.

Kaptain Kantaap was happy.