You know the type. The sort that thinks girls bring rape upon themselves by dressing ‘inappropriately’. Who think sex education in schools is a bad idea and will only encourage more promiscuous behaviour. Who think moral policing is all that is keeping this country from going to the dogs. Etcetera.

A close friend of mine fits the description. Let’s call him Pratap (since that is his name). We agreed to disagree a long time ago. Yet, certain days find us at each other’s throats, throwing opinions and ideas at each other and dodging cruel blows to our egos.

I tortured myself with the Govinda-Salman starrer Partner this Saturday. Govinda is wasted and Salman can’t act even if someone held a gun to his head. Feeling violated, I walked weakly out of the theatre in Andheri. The one who took us there denied it was his idea.

I considered settling down at a coffee shop or something with my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows but my phone rings and my evening plans are set. I took my leave from one disillusioned group of friends to join another, somewhere in Bandra.

If I had to count the number of times I have succeeded in my life, I would… well… fail. It continues to happen, several times a day, all week, all year. Nobody hears of these successes because conventional wisdom has a limited understanding of what success really is.

Commercialised and glitz-driven as our world is, it does not overrate success. Instead, it seriously underrates it. The thousand little smiles you earn by doing something you love or by making a tiny little difference in a friend’s or stranger’s life don’t count as successes, but a paycheck does.

Have you noticed how the whole shameful-shameless equation makes no sense? A shameless person, by definition, is without any shame. Now, shameless may not be a swearword, but as far as I know, it is definitely not a compliment. Oddly, nor is the concept of shame.

By that logic, if shame is an undesirable, shouldn’t shameless be the opposite?

Try this. Pick up a copy of Po Bronson’s ‘What should I do with my life?‘ and go sit somewhere you can’t go unnoticed. Pretend to be extremely interested in the book. Actually, after a few minutes, you wouldn’t really be pretending, but that is beside the point.

You will soon find that passers-by can’t help trying to spy the name of the book. Make it easy for them. Hold the book out a little, making the cover more accessible to prying eyes. But don’t be too obvious about it.

I will always remember the first time I flew. I remember it as if it happened yesterday — even though it was actually a week or so ago.

Ten minutes into the flight, I had decided I was never going to fly again. I hated the heights and I hated looking out of the window. Why couldn’t everyone just close their windows? I had closed mine!

There is a joke in the movie Hollow Man that involves Superman, Wonder Woman and a certain invisible man. I understand it is amusing but I have never quite been able to laugh at it. There are some things I don’t make fun of (mostly) and Superman is one of them.