So, I shed a few tears when you left.

Center: With love, from Kabul.

I met a phenomenon from Afghanistan in college.

What Mr. Wardak gave us, we will forever be grateful for.

Sometimes a badass American teenager (something to do with the international school he went to) and sometimes quite the wandering Sufi poet with an uncanny liking for the words fuck, ass, shit, ass-wipe, ass-clown(?) and the phrase 'suck my left ball and make the right one jealous' , said with a face that had no idea that these words were escaping his mouth, he only reminded us that his Afghani blood boiled most when an unsuspecting auto driver asked for obnoxious amounts of money. He then yelled 'Someone give me a fucking hand grenade!', followed by a range of curse words that he picked up so efficiently through the 10 months at college, some enough to put the kaka-shop owner from UP to shame.

Straight out of high school, he landed in Chennai to do a post-graduate in Journalism. Watching him see the beach for the first time was heartwarming only till the time he threw my brand new slippers into the sea.

Murtaza like I said is a phenomenon only witnessed by a privileged and well, resilient few. He is the only person who can sit on your face (okay, mine) to shut you up and get away with it. Currently continuing to traumatize many others in Kabul, before he will hopefully land in India to talk about baked-potatoes from his province, guns, mutton, and hanging stars, I am certain he is washing down his kebabs with endless bottles of Pepsi, his one and only vice. (If you discount the rest of his unusual habits as eccentricities of a boy from a war-torn country. Heh.)

What Mr. Wardak also introduced me to is another phenomenon available on youtube. His Mac notebook was infested with it among other mindless downloading endeavours.

Happy Tree Friends, my friends, Happy Tree Friends.

There is no happiness, barely any trees and certainly NO friends in this sick, dysfunctional, sordid 40-second cartoon series, that i pray your children or mine will not watch in their formative years.

Watch it, nevertheless, for education, for a laugh, and for that little, gory, sadistic gnome in you that sneaks out when you watch someone fall and do nothing, but stand by and laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVx0zQBDMh8

This one is called 'Spare Me'. The makers (Mondo Mini Prodcutions or something) have a great sense of irony.

Note: Handy's got no hands.