When there is a cool breeze outside, the best thing a man can do is to walk on the road instead of being a couch potato.

Of late I had really been a large such potato, though the sack of potatoes in my bank was something a sane person wouldn’t want to talk about. In spite of my association with the best software company of India (At least I’d like to believe it was) I was really earning peanuts – or potatoes in this case.

That didn’t defer me from purchasing a twenty nine inch Television. Its arrival marked the end of the healthy Venu.

The doctor, a US returned Desi, couldn’t come to terms with the reality that a man, 6 feet tall, could weigh only fifty kilograms. When he checked my blood pressure and the lab reports of my lipid profile – he had to report this as a peculiar case. Here was a man, twenty one years old and six feet tall – with severe hyper tension and an alarmingly high cholesterol level despite weighing only fifty kilograms.

He told me in no nonsense terms that I had to get rid of that television and if possible the couch too.

“Walk” He literally barked, “Four kilometers at a stretch – twice a day – Morning and Evening and stay away from all fried and oily foods. Reduce your salt intake.”

As mentioned earlier, there indeed was a cool breeze outside and I decided to alter my lifestyle by taking some hard decisions like following my doctor’s advice. I switched off the TV, got off from the couch and started walking down the road.

Before the arrival of couch potato, I used to be a regular walker. I liked walking in the nights because it gave me an opportunity to breathe in some fresh air; think about life in general; ponder over my mistakes; generally introspect; and kick any unsuspecting Pepsi cans lying on the road.

It gives me immense pleasure to kick such stray Pepsi cans. I cannot tell you why this act is so dear to me… It may be the sound made by those cans or the interesting trajectory followed by them after I kick them out of sight.

This “out of sight” is a figure of speech of course. Couch potatoes in the making do not and cannot kick things out of sight. Period.

On that particular day, I didn’t see any Pepsi cans on the road. Don’t infer anything from this piece of information and publish a hypothesis that Indians had overnight become aware of their social responsibility to keep their roads clean.

The previous year, Coca Cola made a grand entry into the Indian market looking to steal a considerable portion of Pepsi’s market share. However the first year’s performance was quite dismal. They had to write off nearly four hundred million dollars.

As a result, they pounced on the Indian market with a vengeance. Their marketing campaign was aggressive… so aggressive that a local newspaper published a cartoon featuring a Coca Cola representative threatening yet another couch potato at gun point to buy a can of Coca Cola.

The result was pretty apparent that night. Instead of Pepsi, I could see quite a few coke cans on the road.

Being a staunch follower of Pepsi, I hesitated a bit before kicking the Coke can. My hero, Sachin Tendulkar would not have even thought about it. He would have bought a Pepsi – drunk it; thrown it on the road and then kicked it off with all his might. Such was his loyalty towards Pepsi.

But then, here we are talking about Venu Vedam, not Sachin Tendulkar. And Venu Vedam is not loyal to anything in this world. (Save the couch!) So he hesitated only for a second before kicking that coke can out of his sight.

A word or two should go here about the remarkable abilities of Venu Vedam. He thinks he is Ben Johnson when he runs; Sachin Tendulkar when he bats; Glenn McGrath when he bowls… and well! George Bush when he is doing nothing at all.

He knows only Ronaldo in the field of football. So when kicking cans, he normally assumes that he is Ronaldo. However reality does bite and he definitely is not Ronaldo. So the can, which should have gone out of sight – landed only about five meters away on an unsuspecting stray dog.

The sleeping dog woke up with a jolt and barked at me ferociously. I took two steps backwards and thought of becoming a Jesse Owens. But such an act might actually provoke the dog. So I maintained eye contact with the beast and slowly walked back towards a restaurant whose only customers at this hour of the night were those chased by ferocious dogs with shiny white teeth.

The helper there waited patiently for about a minute to take the order. When the gentleman who entered the café seemed to have no intentions of ordering anything, he looked outside and tried to whistle the dog in.

“Ok. Ok. One Coffee, No Sugar” I was quick to adapt myself.

He smiled and vanished from there.

The coffee was very refreshing. When there is a cool breeze outside and a determined dog ten meters away, the best thing a man can do is to sip the fuming coffee.

I loved that experience. I didn’t want to leave the fast food joint at all. My friends later raised a theory that it was the dog rather than the coffee which made me stay back in the hotel. We had a bitter altercation on this issue and finally agreed to disagree on this matter.

Eventually I had to come out of the restaurant. I cautiously stepped out ready to run back if situation demanded so.

The dog looked at me seriously. It was now fully prepared. There were ten more dogs – all looking at me seriously.

Then reality dawned upon me. I had to cross them to go home. I could see my lane about hundred meters from there but I didn’t have the guts to take the risk. I thought of spending the night on the footpath there and going home in the morning. But the patrol party might question me a lot. The dogs had no plans of going away from there.

Then I saw light at the end of the cave.

An auto driver was smoking his pipe a few meters away. I went to him slowly and told him in my broken Hindi…

“5th B Cross chalna hai”

“Hindi gotthilla” he told me without any delay.

I wanted to tell him that I too didn’t know any hindi except for that sentence but I feared that such a sentence might actually lead us both into a strange conversation about Hindi and Its Dictatorship.

“Telugu ya Tamil goththa?” I asked him.

“English gotthu.” He said trying to form a vortex ring with his cigarette smoke.

“Take me to 5th B Cross, BTM Layout” I told him after recovering from that shock.

He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face and pointed to the end of the road.

“That’s 5^th B Cross”

“I know. Can you take me there?” I impatiently asked him.

His first reaction was to check my legs. They were in perfect. He then looked at my face. It wasn’t perfect but he knew that a face shouldn’t be a matter of concern here. He then started examining my hands. I raised one of those hands and showed him the dogs. He understood my problem immediately.

“Twenty five rupees.” He said.

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Twenty five?”

“Yes Twenty five.”

“For hundred meters?”

“Yes for hundred meters.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No I am not.”

“Seven rupees.”

“Twenty five.”

“Ten.”

“Twenty five.”

“This is shear exploitation.”

“Perhaps.”

“So what do you say?”

“Twenty five.”

“OK. Start the auto.”

The dogs started barking and they ran with the auto, five in the front and the remaining forming a tail. I was reminded of Buck and his troupe. The auto sped to 5th B Cross and stopped right in front of my house. I got down, paid him the twenty-five bucks and noticed a strange thing. The dogs didn’t enter 5th B Cross.

For a few moments I couldn’t understand why they were hesitating to enter that gully. Then I knew. There were fifteen dogs in my gully ready to attack them in the unlikely event of their entering 5th B cross.

For the first time in my life, I bowed to those fifteen home team stray dogs and entered my house. I call them now “The ‘Buck’ Eyes”. They may not be from Ohio… but they are as ferocious and courageous as Buck, DA dog!

Now, I bought a mini fridge so that I don’t have to leave my couch even for beer. Walking sucks! TV rocks! To hell with the cholesterol.