Can moonbathing Madrasis fit into the Hindi heartland?

I am someone who has always had one eye firmly fixed on tomorrow. Which may be why I have depth-perception issues, and bump into people. But that’s a small price to pay for being prepared.

I have changed my entire routine, and so should you. If you don’t want to be left out, that is.

My day starts when the moon hasn’t disappeared fully from the sky yet. On waking up, without so much as brushing my teeth, I strip fully. While my wife goes to the bathroom to retch, I apply a smooth, even coat of an entire tube of Fair & Lovely all over my Dark & Repulsive naked South Indian body, and then proceed to my terrace.

That is usually the cue for our neighbour, Mrs Gupta, to let out a surprisingly girlish yelp for a woman of her stature, and cut short her morning yoga. Unperturbed, I lie down on the terrace like a smooth black seal and moonbathe, as recommended by my swadesi medical practitioner. “If sunbathing makes you dark, won’t moonbathing make you fair,” he says. The brilliance of it.

After a good hour, when the other neighbours begin throwing things at me, I go downstairs, say a small prayer to my goddess, Pujya Yami Gautam Deviji. It goes, “Yami-Yami fair-aya namaha, vinashakale dark-aya charmeha, tathastu, tathastu.’

I follow this up with a light breakfast made of wholly North-Indian ingredients, and a dash of spices from the Hindi heartland, listening all the while to a soothing selection of Mehmood’s musical hits. I start and end with his most effective number, ‘Hum Kale Hain To Kya Hua, Dilwale Hain’. A truer word was never said.

Next, I make my way to the Raghu Thatha Institute of Spoken Hindi. I have managed to get a seat, in spite of a waiting list, thanks to a letter from Sri Alok Nath-ji. Which I forged.

There, we learn by rote to say ‘Hahn, hahn, kyun nahin?’, ‘Tumhare aankhon me aasoon?’, ‘Chale jao, varna goli maar doonga’ and my personal favourite, ‘Main tumhara bachche ki maa ban-ne waali hoon’.

On my way back home, I always stop at the closest Shuddh Desi Vaidyalaya. Two large glasses of pasteurised bovine urine, and I feel fresh and totally detoxified of any anti-national feelings.

I am ready for the rest of my day with renewed vigour.

At home, I revise my NCERT textbooks. I tell myself that unlike my South Indian ancestors, the Cholas, the Cheras, the Hoysalas, the Pallavas, the Satavahanas, et al, whose entire history fits into a paragraph, I will duly North-ify myself and save myself from obscurity.

From time to time, I discreetly check the availability of cheap tickets to a certain neighbouring country. For, what if I fail? Because, being South Indian, there is every chance I could, like Chiranjeevi, Rajini, Vishnuvardhan and Mohanlal before me, unable to meet the exacting requirements of North India.

I then retire to my bedroom and binge-watch Tarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, so I can learn to be like the scientist, Mr Krishnan Subramaniam Iyer, and integrate with the sophisticated inhabitants of my North Indian dreamland. But we can’t all be scientists, right? So I watch Agneepath, too (the old one). Just so I can lower my sights a bit, and observe Mithun-da in his brilliantly authentic portrayal of the Madrasi narial-pani wallah, Krishnan Iyer, Yem. Yae.

Just like I do every day, I then write in cursive hand “I Love My Hindia” a thousand times.

Before I go to sleep, the last thing I do is practise saying “dhanyavaad, parantu, jyeshta bratha” and, above all, “Mat maaro, mitr, mat maro, ouch, ouch, ouch!”

Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist and humour writer. He is the author of How To Be A Literary Sensation.