Bheja Fry's

Angelina Jolie once said “I felt beautiful when I was in Cambodia [for Tomb Raider]. I was sweaty, and my hair was matted and all over the place. And I was happy and hot and accomplishing a lot and running around, and I could feel my heart beating, and I felt beautiful.” The United States may not be able to boast of such orgasmic satisfaction to its tourists, but herculean efforts are made to keep the residents of this country happy. One such effort saw the birth of a chain of stores called Fry's Electronics in select cities across the country. The cities that were selected are proven to be the hot pockets of nerdy activity, according to demographic data. I have the great fortune of living in the hottest pocket of them all - Silicon Valley and needless to say the stores here, and the characters one meet there, are extra special.

As you pull up to any of these stores, it becomes very clear from the onset that the owners mean strict business and nothing else. Accompanying the enormous Fry's sign on the store is an equally enormous sinusoidal curve, with the middle wave being of the highest amplitude, signifying the heightened pleasure customers receive when they walk in. This logo ensures that no glutton ever mistakes this for a fast food joint, and the lack of a cutesy furry animal, which pretty much monopolizes all logos, keeps off the hot, dumb, superficial women, even if they err and end up there somehow. The parking lot is equipped with special security, armed with an alarm from the store itself no doubt. If any car that is not a Toyota or Honda make gets as close as twenty feet to the building, the alarm radiates a supersonic wave that propels the infidel cars out of the parking lot. If you manage to sneak in in a friend's Toyota or Honda, there are more surprises awaiting you at the entrance. There is a retina and feeler scan test that allows only entry to customers who pass either of two tests. The first test allows only people with less than two centimeter square of retina showing entry. The second test searches the customer's upper lip for more than twenty centimeter square of bushy growth. A few steps ahead an employee asks simple and basic science questions like the definition of Einstein's relativity theory and other such world changing phenomenon. I hear a question bank of such questions is now available on Ebay.

Once you enter the store, begins an Alician journey through a maze of cornucopia of electronic gadgets, ipods and tripods, wires of all species mating with each other to produce more interracial breeds, and of course the famed piano in the middle of the maze played by the epitome of female beauty, robotic that is - Screw. Screw is surrounded by giant LCD and Plasma screens hooked up to the latest versions of man toys. Young nerds, started out early in this noble way of life by their parents can be seen peering onto these giant screen through glasses whose power dominate their ages and holding wannabe mini guitars and 'dancing' with intense aerobic fervor that would shame even the khatiya used by Govinda and Karishma in their famous song. If you listen very closely, you can hear proud parents gloating about how many kills their wards have amassed on the latest mindless violence games. The kid's sections of Fry's can boast of a lot of cute things on display, like the robotic Barbies and energy saving light sabers. Around a few aisles, you might meet smiling young mustached Indian men. Do not fall for their charming smiles. No, they are not Agents, but worse - they are Ambay folks, and before you know it, they will trap you in their inclusive love and pyramidal money making schemes with long winded talks which start innocuously about things like homesickness and end up with you handing them blank checks, like a gay spider that terminates its victims by first seducing it and then devouring it.

Fry's has as stringent a hiring policy as Microsoft, except that they do not compromise unlike Microsoft. All the candidates are chosen from the MENSA pool - the rejected lot from the superhero schools, presidents of chess clubs in Ivy League colleges, and of course, the members of the 4.0 club. Inside sources claim that your chances of landing a job there increases exponentially if you are armed with a unibrow and poor communication skills and lack any kind of knowledge other than in the technical field. If you meet all of the above criteria and still manage to turn out hot, you are instantly rejected. The working environment is as productive as that of Dilbert's with the same dress code. The tie has to be tight enough to make you squeak and your shirt has to be tucked in either at the back or in the front, not in both places.

The best time to visit Fry's is during Thanksgiving. It is full of vibrant, colorful, sleep deprived 'people', literally fighting over handicrafts made by little hands in China, India or some other Asian country that has to deal with the ethics of child labor. Last year, Wired Magazine reported that the Engineer brothers - Shahrukh and Sagar, found each other there after being separated in the same exact spot twenty four years earlier. Incidentally, both of them had tattoos of capacitors inscribed on their left arms. Amit and Rekha (names changed) met here five years ago. Amit says he fell madly in love when he saw Rekha running past valleys of discounted DVD's to grab the last 12-feet S-Video cable in the store. Three years back, Nirupa Roy (name changed) went into labor while waiting in line to checkout her purchased goods, and the line took so long to move that she delivered by the time she got to a cashier. Ms. Roy also holds the distinction of having given birth in the parking lot in a shopping cart during a different Thanksgiving. While this wonderland has given life, it has also taken some. Every year, about 25% of shoppers lose their lives in the ensuing stampede on this fateful day leading historians to name it Black Friday. I do not know if Mars has life, but all I can say is that, if Fry's was another planet, it would have the ability to not only sustain life, but also recycle it, thus producing a thriving environment for generations of nerds.