The Wordsmith

You and Me

2011-09-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

You ask me if I am doing this because I didn't get any other job

You ask me if I like being sadistic and screwing my own career

You politely tell me that recession has affected a lot of people and all of them did find other jobs after a while, and you look pointedly at me

You ask me what my salary was four years back, what my salary was two years back and what my salary is now. I answer politely.

You wonder rather loudly if my chidlren's futures aren't doomed anyway

You ask me HOW i can see any kind of change happening in two years when no significant change has happened in 64 years.

You ask me how me, a compulsive pessismist, can be so optimistic about the lives of random children who would have ended up being criminals anyway

You say with a smirk, "well they would have been terrorists without you, now they will be small time criminals. big difference"

You tell me that my influence can never be so great that it will make the 7 hours that i spend with the children more important than the 17 hours they spend at home with abusive parents in broken homes, living in penury, listening to bad language and looking at people doing terrible things

Me?

I smile and say Sorry and Thank you.

Sorry for you that you can't see what I see

Sorry that you are positive about things like getting a raise, getting an auto, getting a pretty spouse but not positive about what I am extremely positive about

Sorry that you think I am a loser.

and Thank you.

A million times

Because this conversation just makes my resolve stronger

Makes me feel more positive

Makes me want to work so much harder to give my all to these children

Makes me want to work my posterior off, send my kids to college, come back to you in another 6 years and say "in your face bugger"

Makes me want to work harder, just so I can prove you wrong. (I know. I am cheap. And even if I fail I will know that I have tried)

Which wise man first discovered reverse psychology?

R.E.S.P.E.C.T Sir

An ode to a ten year old relationship.

2011-04-24T02:54:00.000-07:00

Chennai and me. We have a special story together. A love story. One which began ten years ago on a hot, humid and oppressive day in April 2001. And like all corny love stories it began with both of us hating the sight of each other and it ends with us professing undying love for each other. Oh well, at least me professing my undying love for Chennai.

I was 14. An enormously stupid, extremely immature, fat and lazy kid. The maximum Tamil I knew was 'pasikardhu' and 'naaye'. The former so I could tell relatives whose houses I visited when I came to Chennai that I was hungry and had to be fed and the latter reserved solely for cousins and the sibling when they cheated while playing UNO. Yes. I was painfully retarded, mentally and socially.
I had never felt the need to know more Tamil, and it was a blessing, as a grin and 'pasikardhu' was the maximum interaction I could have with relatives.

When I moved lock stock and barrel to Chennai in 2001, I hated it. With a fervor that would put the hate Jayalalitha feels for Karunanidhi to shame. I hated the weather. (ermm not that I had lived in Switzerland all along but Gujarat is less humid and has extremely pleasant evening and night temperatures). I hated the people. (Oh, what an Amit I was. 'What? People don't talk Hindi kya? abey yaar. kya yaar'). I hated my parents (I was 14 and at that age you are kind of programmed to hate your folks. It's the done thing. I thought since I was adopted my parents wanted to leave me in Chennai so they could live happily with my elder sister in Jamnagar). I hated the school I had just gotten admission in. (Sri Sankara Vidyashramam. 'nuff said). I hated my classmates. (Conversations like, "Hey yenna di. You are brahmin a? Why you are not wearing pottu. Does your father wear a white thread? Ayyo. You should not sit next to boys or talk to them" made no sense whatsoever to me). I pretty much hated life.

At nights I fantasised about catching a train and running away to Mumbai or something and become a blind beggar. "I hope my parents find me and see me begging on Mumbai station one day. That will teach them a lesson," I used to think. In my defense, I was enormously stupid. Really enormously so. I already mentioned that.

It was a slow transition. From a phase of absolute hatred to tolerance to indifference to a perfunctory like to an absolute and unconditional love for you we have come a long way haven't we Chennai? The 2001 me cannot believe that the 2011 me defends Chennai passionately and argues daily with people who say 'Chennai suxx yaar'.

Dear Chennai, You have given me so much I am not sure how I should start thanking you. You have made me what I am today. I have met all my best friends for life here. I have grown, as a person (ermm mentally and not physically). I am more patient, less short tempered and enjoy the heat so much so that if the mercury goes below 20 degrees I whine. I have found love. I have lost love. I have seen the depths of sorrow and the heights of happiness. Won some battles, lost some. Won some friends, lost few.

From not knowing a word of Tamil to saying, “Naan oru nermayaana pathrigayaalar. Yenna yedai poda paakadhenga” I have come a looooong long way. I can even read now. (Still halfway through mariyada raman in mahathaana kadhaigal)

I know you better the back of my hand. It is my modest boast that I know all the buses to all the routes in the city. From Stanley hospital in Royapuram to crocodile bank trust on ECR I know you. I really do. And the more I knew you the more I loved you. I continue to detest the smell of jasmine and the smell of fresh filter coffee but I identify you with that and tolerate it, just as you tolerate my sudden lapses into Hindi now and then, my odd #kogul jokes and my terrible Tamil pronunciation. I know the temples which give the best sakkarai pongal and the temples which give the best puliyodharai. I know the temples which have the lecherous sastrigal and advice people against going there.

It is here that I went from being a staunch believer who visited the temple every week and prayed every single day to an agnostic who was too scared to deny the existence of God to an almost evangelical atheist. From Sankara Vidyashramam, to engineering to information technology to journalism to a reporter not only have you defined my path from fervently religious to blatantly irreligious but also given me all the education which really matters. I feel a sense of stupid pride when I tell people that all the degrees I have, have been acquired in Chennai.

I love your beaches. They calm me down in ways that it is impossible to express. I have spent hours on your various beaches just staring into the sea and never wanting to leave. I love your kotthu parotta. I love your molagga bhajji and proudly took every new comer to the city to the beach so they could taste your mollaga bhajji. I keep telling people that a city without a sea shore is a city without character. In that sense I am glad I am not going to god awful Delhi or Bleaahhhangalore. I m going to a city which closely resembles you geographically but is light years ahead of you in all other senses. Mumbai. I hope you are half as good to me as Chennai has been.

Chennai. It's amazing how you have grown on me. From wanting to go back every single day to never wanting to leave this place it has been beautiful and wholly satisfying love story.
I love you Chennai and I always will. Hopelessly and compulsively. I go to Mumbai but my heart shall always remain with you. I might have an occasional fling with the city of Mumbai but do know that despite my infidelities I love you the most. My relationship with you will probably be the only long distance relationship I will ever have. One day I shall come back to you for I know that I belong in a city south of the Vindhyas and I hope it is you.

So long Chennai and on this lovely, overcast, rainy yet oppressive day in April 2011, this enormously stupid, slightly immature, rotund and still lazy woman bids you farewell. I haven't changed much have I? But, therein lies your beauty. Despite having changed me for the better in so many ways, you left my core untouched. And THAT is why I belong to you and you belong to me.

A tragedy called Life

2011-01-29T06:02:00.001-08:00

So I was waiting at the pathology lab in Apollo for my 70 year old grandmother's tumor's biopsy results. Anyone who has ever waited for the results of a biopsy or a bone marrow knows what an awfully tense time it is. You do NOT want it to be cancer. You wish the biopsy has not detected any malignancy. A part of you wishes they would give you the report soon so you can look at the reslt and yet another part wants time to freeze just then so you need not know the result ever and things can just continue the way they are WITHOUT the biopsy results.

So while I was pacing up and down the lab, the 8789743th time thinking all kind of pesimistic thoughts, I saw this young thin, twenty something woman walk in and ask for her report. She was asked to wait as well and we both stood in the crowded lab, two women, tension writ on our faces, silently hoping the report does not contain anything untoward causing us to go into hysterics in the lab. Her eyes meet mine and I smile. She smiles back. At that same instant the woman behind the counter calls our names. Our reports are ready.

She hands us the envelope and it takes everything in me to not rip open the envelope. With slow deliberate movements I open the report and I almost cry with relief as soon as I sight the word "benign". Nothing else in the report makes sense and nothing else needs to. I see the other woman looking at her report in a puzzled manner. Just as she looks up, she meets my eye again and I raise my eye brows, as if asking her what the problem is. I now wish I hadn't done it.

She comes to me and shows me her report and says, "Enna ezhudhirruku nu puriyardha?" (Can you understand what is written here?)

I take the report to read it. The woman's age is 30 and the report reads "acute myeloblastic leukaemia - end stage". For a moment I do not know how to react. I look at the woman who is still perplexed and waiting for me to say something.

I pause for a moment and say, "Ennaku therila.Neenga doctor kitta kelunga" (I do not know. You please ask the doctor)

She smiles and leaves and I feel devastated. In a chance encounter I now know something extremely vital about this woman's life that she herself does not know yet.

I wish there was something I could do, to give this woman more years to her life. She is 30 and married and probably has children and a whole life to look forward to. So many things to do, so many places to go, so many things to achieve. I wish I could give her some years from my life. It was so unfair, it was ridiculous. I do not even want to go into theological discourses now because it has been more than three years since I have rejected the concept of God and religion and have turned into an atheist.

Events in my life in the past one year haven't been what I would call perfect. It has been a very trying time for the me and also for the family. My resilience has been tested again and again and again. I have seen absolute highs and devastating lows and have striven hard to maintain my happy cheerful exterior through it all. It has not been easy and physically, mentally and emotionally it has been very draining and continues to be so. Not one to indulge in any kind of self pity I chose to lock everything that happened into the deep recesses of my memory, never to reach into that chamber again.

Though I have come out of all that has been happened to me a little stronger, a little wiser, I always thought given half a chance I would exchange my life with absolutely anyone's in this world. Always thought everyone I encountered was much happier and led a more normal life than I did. I craved for normalcy and routine.

For a million dollars and all the happiness in the world I would not want to be that woman.

Right when you think you have reached the lowest ebb in your existence, life comes along and gives you some perspective and makes you stronger again.

Stuppppid

2010-10-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

It’s been so long since I have written anything silly and inconsequential that I fear I may have lost the ability to be stupid, which if you ask me, is tragic. I think every human is defined by the amount of stupidity he/she possesses. Personally I think that a person who can get in touch with their stupid side even after the age of 18 is a person worthy of respect. Anyway I digress.
So I have been doing so much of serious writing that I thought it was time to stop and write about pure truths of life like why does the boss, who is a rather good looking man, not think of trimming hair coming out of his ears. I mean seriously, it’s rather hard to concentrate on what he is saying when you are grossed out by hair in his ears. I mean yeah sure being all hairy is a sign that you are masculine but hair sprouting from your ears is probably a sign that you are not only masculine but also simian.

He is a rather good man – the boss. Somehow all through my career (2.5 years) I have had excellent bosses who have given me a long leash and understood that I function best when left to my own devices. I hate people breathing down my neck telling me what to do when I am quite sure of exactly what I am doing. The boss understands and even listens and nods intelligently when I present rather impossible ideas and gives me leads I can follow up on. He knows I hate staying late in office so always clears my copies very promptly and praises me when I do a good job. I might be earning peanuts now (actually less. Like P says we probably earn less than an NREGS worker in the country) but I like the job, the boss and the working hours.

Talking about P, the other day we were having a serious discussion about our prospects of marriage were. While P maintained that I was hot property because I had done my engineering and was a “techie” as she kindly calls me (If you ask me I think it’s a racist term. Techie. Like calling someone blackie. eww) I thought men would easily be turned on by the fact that she had literature, political science and psychology as her majors. I mean seriously, question to all you guys out there. Would you rather marry a girl who went, “Myself Wordsmith, software developer at CTS/TCS/Infosys. I done my engineering. I can remove viruses from your computer” or someone who says, “Hi. I am P. I am a developmental journalist working with XYZ magazine. My majors include psychology, political science and literature and I think capitalism with the face of socialism is the way for the world to go.” The latter you all would agree is such a turn on that if I were a boy I would instantly marry P. P of course thinks that being a techie has its perks. Like getting paid an obscene amount as salary, having weekends off (I am not even sure what the terms means anymore. I get a measly one day off) and having techie friends, who work in Amazon, who have unlimited access to kindle and e books.

This brings us to J who is such a darling that knowing yourself you wonder if you deserve friends like these. J who works with Amazon (Yaaaas. Awesomely cool friends I possess) works for the kindle team and has generously loaned me his kindle to read books. Now if you know me, for me owning a kindle is my ultimate fantasy. I do not want cars, houses, jewels and private islands. I just want a kindle with unlimited access to Amazon’s e store to read whatever books I want to, whenever I want to. This is pretty much what I am doing right now and I cannot thank J enough. He of course being the loquacious and lucid guy he is always replies with a “Grmm.harrumph.hmmm.” when I gush about how exceedingly grateful I am that he has bestowed a kindle upon me. He is so much like a horse that way. So I have happily been spending sleepless nights reading for at least 4 hours every night to be able to finish as many books as I can

And this, ladeeej and gentlemens brings us to Steig Larsson. *Pause for effect* (If any of you went “Erm. Steig who?”, last heard, mortien is still an effective way to kill yourself.) Steig Larsson defies adjectives. He is probably the awesomest writer and story teller ever and never before have I felt sad about the death of an author. I have been hooked to the Millenium trilogy. The only books he wrote before he died an untimely death in 2004. If you love reading books and haven’t read the Millenium trilogy yet, PLEASE pick up a copy when you go to the bookstore next or mail me at wordsmith.writes@gmail.com and I shall send you pdfs of the book (Yaaaas. Highly scrupulous I yam!). I finished reading all three yesterday and I can’t believe there are no more books Larsson has written. It is such a loss to the world of crime thrillers that I can’t even bring myself to talk about it. After a long time I stayed up three nights in a row to finish all three books. Larsson may your soul rest in peace forever.

Soul reminds me that I have been doing a bit of soul searching. I have never been a very deep or philosophical person. I am rather shallow that way. But every human being has times in life when you start asking questions like, “What is the purpose of life”, “Is what I am doing something I really want to do”, “Is there some job in the world which would give me 100% job satisfaction?” and the likes. These moments are usually preceded by philosophical songs like Blowin’ in the wind, Mehfuz, dying in the sun, I believe in you, and the likes.
Songs have this effect of changing my thoughts. While I am equally capable of listening to “Mai tujhko chura laya hoon tere ghar se..tere baap ke darr se” and wondering about how funny Ponting’s face looks when he is about to lose, at the same time I can also listen to “I don’t believe in super stars, organic food or foreign cars. I don’t believe that heaven waits for only those who congregate.” and go into deep thought about the above questions. And I have realized that………..wait for it…..it’s gonna be……legen….dary (too much HIMYM yeah!)….. that what I am doing right now is also not what I REALLY want to do. I mean sure I am happy, sure I am good at what I do and have some kind of job satisfaction but I still think there is something else out there which I really ought to be doing. Something which probably makes a little more difference to the society than what I am doing right now. Maybe I am being too idealistic (have been blamed of this often) maybe I am the kind of person who needs constant change, maybe I just need to stick around longer than just quit things half way. But like I was telling G the other day what I really want to do right now is go to Nepal or sub Saharan Africa and live there, do some quality journalism, climb some mountains (in Nepal and not SSA), write a book and come back.

I think G and I get along well because we are constantly trying to outdo each other at being stupid and trying to gross the other person out. I am leading right now, by sending THAT video which made G almost throw up his lunch on his keyboard and swear to murder the people in the video. G and I have long discussions about things like, “how would a person who has cold and phlegm and snot coming out of his nose kiss a girl” or “is it better to have accidentally brushed your teeth with shaving cream or moov” or “why French women are much nicer and prettier that Indian women” (Women of India, this was an argument. I defended our brethren! :P). G being in France on an exchange programme is learning the language from a very petite and delicate looking girl and though doesn’t admit it has fallen head over heels with her. How else would you interpret these statements?

“Her eyes are blue man. So pretty and sea blue. Sighhhhhh”

“When she speaks English in that French accent of hers, she is the cutest thing ever man. Sighhhhhhh”

“She looks good in any clothes she wears man. Sighhhh”

“I have nothing to do today so I shall go and teach her some English”

If these, ladies and gentlemen are not signs of a man in love, pray tell me what it is then? :- G being G of course stoutly denies all these claims while continuing to lavish praises on her. The poor love sick puppy. :P :P

Ok. That’s enough stupidity for today. I hope to make this a habit. The writing I mean not the stupidity. That’s inherent. So long then!

Dunce at Dance

2010-08-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

So I have joined salsa classes....For people who don't know me the dots were to let people who know me finish laughing and wipe their tears so they can read the rest of the post.
Yes. Given that I have the grace of a hippopotamus wallowing in water, dance would be the last thing people would have expected me to learn. After cooking and singing of course. And java. and coding. and learning to wear a saree. and... ohh i digress

I don't want to say I cannot dance. If Vijaykanth can think he can dance, Sam Anderson can think he can dance (AND act) I can dance yes. And you will agree too, if you are willing to look beyond little technicalities like grace, form, synchronisation, style and rhythm of course.
So it was my first class (and a free class. so yayyy!) and there I stood looking at all the pretty women dancing, their bodies curving at the right places, their hands and legs in perfect synch with the music, a lot of feminine grace and charm and giggling petitely at the boys at just the right place and time.

"Hah, I can do this" I thought. Yes, I can be hopelessly optimistic that way.

Now there is a huuuuge difference looking at someone dance and actually dancing. Its like any other activity. Swimming, Cooking etc. It looks ridiculously easy till you actually start doing it. When you see the girls doing salsa the first reaction is to snort, at the ease with which they move.

Left leg in the front, tap your right leg and the bring your left leg back. That seemed easy and in les than 10 seconds I had done the step three times.

And I would have been an expert salsa dancer, only I am slightly dyslexic. So I cant really differentiate between left and right. No really. I cant. I am the worst pillion rider to have. While I will be saying "turn left" I will be frantically shaking my right hand and vice versa. For the longest time I would imitate my eating action/writing action to actually find out which one was my right hand (I kid you not). And then my cousin, who suffers from the same disease, taught me the perfect way to differentiate between left and right. "Make an L with your forefinger and thumb on each hand. The one which actually makes a straight L is your left hand," she told me triumphantly. And since then thats how I have been finding out which is left and right. Would have worked great in salsa too, if only my partner werent holding my hands.

So this is the conversation between Random Clueless Guy (RCG) who was cursed in his previous life to dance with me and me.

Me: Will you leave my hand already? I cant find out which one is my left leg and which one is right if you keep holding my hand.

RCG: instructor told me to hold your hand

Me: I know. But how do I find out which one is left/right then?

RCG: instructor told me to hold your hand

Me: could you not hold my hand till I get my leg moves right, you retarded hulk of a Brontosaurus.

RCG (almost whimpering): instructor told me to hold your hand

I swear, even if i get married tomorrow there will not be a man who would hold my hand with as much fervor as that guy did. In the words of the wise P G Wodehouse "If I had had to choose between him and a cockroach as a companion for a walking-tour (salsa), the cockroach would have had it by a short head"
So anyway with RCG unwilling to let go off my hand it took me quite a while to figure out the moves. Hardly had I sighed in relief thinking that was all there is to salsa that the instructor materialised and said "Ermm. dont stamp. Just tap your feet and there is no need to run. Just dance the way you would walk" said the not so cute instructor.

I am not sure how many of you have read Asterix (the comics) and know Obelix, who was dropped into the magical potion as a baby and hence has immense strength. Rumor has it that as a child I was dropped into a bucket full of glucose and have had never ending energy, enthusiasm and speed ever since. There is no activity which I can actually do slowly. While most people walk, I run. While they eat, I gobble. While they talk, I shoot. While they dance, I imitate an induction motor.
For the life of me I cannot be slow in anything I do. I finish everything in jet speed and grace, style, delicacy have been my nemesises since my inception. I say inception coz even before I was born I wanted to come out fast and was a premature baby. (yeah yeah. This would be the time to crack those stupid 3rd jokes about premature babies).

So coming back to salsa. Now the main thing about salsa for the girls is the right and left turn. If you think of them as just turns you would be very sadly mistaken and would be in for a rude shock. They involve a lot more than just turning. What with your hand being twisted out of shape by your partner, your legs stamping on each other and the fact that you have to pack in a twirl and a twist along with a stylish movement of the hands in the end, the turning part is probably the most cumbersome in salsa. A stress buster here would be to 'accidentally' stamp on your partner's feet rather forcefully and gasp and say sorry. rather interesting watching his face go from red to purple to green to normal within 20 seconds in his attempt to stop a scream. Ah yes. We live dangerously. :P (Most times it was not even an accident for me. I swear on Mamta Kulkarni.)

So after 3 classes of twisting and turning and stamping and screaming I was told very politely by my instructor that I should practise the steps I had been taught and enter only after I had mastered them, which is a euphemistic way of saying that I cannot enter ever. Sighhh.

But i refuse to give up and have been going left tap tap, right tap tap, left tap tap, turn, twirl everyday much to the consternation of the people around me. Even you would be irritated if someone kept asking you, "Which is left. No No. Not your left. My left. but thats your right. so it would ideally be my left eh?" :P

C'est la vie

2010-08-13T07:17:00.001-07:00

Joining journalism because you want to write is like painting "bump ahead" on road signs because you want to be a painter. In both the cases you are vaguely aware of the fact that you are technically doing what you intended to do and wanted to do but there is a little voice inside you which tells you that this is probably not the way you wanted to do it. And since the deed is already done and you are sitting in the middle of the road and painting yellow lines or writing "4 injured as bus crashes into tree" you start going into denial and start reassuring yourself that this is exactly what you wanted to do and that painting road signs is the closest you can get to being the next Van Gogh. You paint beautiful lines, use colors other than yellow, you hide little easter eggs in your lines which could have multiple interpretations, you stand back admire your handiwork and think "tomorrow the guy who will drive a car on this road is one lucky bastard because he is going to see all these beautiful lines and appreciate my creativity". In an almost arrogant way you go to your superior, throw your lines at his face and wait for his reaction, wait for him to dish out the Pulitzer (errrr. its equivalent for painting).
He gives you one look, erases all your lines, your beautiful lines each painted with so much love and care and creativity, draws one single straight yellow line and says "people driving on this road tomorrow just need to know their boundaries. No one has the time to appreciate the beauty of your lines," he says.
you stare mournfully as ugly looking yellow lines appear on the road with your name next to them and you promise yourself that this is what you wanted to do. ALWAYS.

Sighhh
Such is life

P.S: If you don't understand this and its relevance to my life..... you are a dork. yes, I am very polite. Thank you very much. Now I will go paint some beautiful lines.

Raavanan - a review

2010-07-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was in class 7, in a remote town in the west of Gujarat - yeah my father's job was such that we would go to the remotest corners of the country where my father being a mechanical engineer would build whatever it was that mechanical engineers built and when there was the sign of even a leeetle bit of development my dad would be transfered to the next undeveloped place. My childhood hence was spent studying in a lot of loser schools which had no teachers and mostly no
students - we had this HUGE and beautiful school with lovely classrooms, lots of playground area,
excellent infrastructural facilities, lovely swimming pool and the works but no teachers, because
everyone refused to come and work in such a godforsaken place. So I remember my dad commenting, "Your school is like a beautiful woman....... with no hair". Which was absolutely true coz in spite of the fantastic facilities and all that jazz, we had no teachers. Raavan, I would say is pretty much like that. Breathtaking locales, excellent cinematography BUT no story whatsoever, no logic whatsoever. I was so shocked the whole time I was watching the movie that I could just watch open mouthed and most people thought I was over awed by the movie.

Some random thoughts from the movie.

1. Suhasini's dialogues are EPIC blade! Madam I can barely understand poetic tamil but even i thought your dialogues were terrible. Especially the ones where Beera and Ragini are in front of this huge idol of some God. What the hell were you thinking? "Anyway Mani has taken care of finding a picture perfect sexy location for the scene. So while people Wow at the scenery let me fit in some shitty dialogues"?
The dialogues are so run off the mill and fail to touch a chord except probably the chord which makes u squirm in your seat. JUVENILE dialogues!

2. Some, a teeny weeny bit of credit could have been given to the audience. We are Indians. We KNOW our Ramayan. We KNOW Hanuman was a monkey and that he found Sita. We KNOW Jatayu was the first person to give news of where Sita is and was injured by Raavanan. We KNOW Raavanan had 2 brothers, one full of brains (Vibhishan) and the other full of brawans (Kumbhakarna). We KNOW Raavan had 10 heads.
I do not have a problem with people adapting from epics. Hell, Dalapathi is one of my favoritestest movies ever. The extremely subtle references to Mahabharatha made Dalapathi so beautiful. Which is why I found Mani's in your face reference to Ramayana in Raavan very jarring. And the scene where the policeman pulls Beera's sister's nose and asks "Shall I cut it?". Not.At.All.Suggestive.Of.Any.Epic. Eeeeeks.
And like a friend of mine commented, maybe Priyamani demands that there be a gang rape scene in the movie she stars in or she refuses to act.

3. Ok. So they base the entire movie on the premise that police is searching for Ragini who has been
kidnapped by Beera and taken into the heart of the forest where no one can find her because Beera keeps moving from one place to another etc. And in the end Ragini gets down from the train in the middle of nowhere with deep valley on both sides of the train track and 20 seconds later she is front of Beera. I can understand that they could not have shown her trekking through the jungles up the mountains, across the rivers to find Beera but her face, her pearly white dress show absolutely no signs of having lumbered through deep dense forests to find Beera. She looks like she is fresh out of a bath and going to a temple. :-\

4. And whats with the IRRITATING camera work, Mr.Mani. I do NOT want to see Abhishek Bacchan's left bicep's nerve or Aishwarya Rai's cornea. Neither do I want to know how close can u come to Aishwarya Rai's boobs without actually touching them physically. I am equally uninterested in the brand of sunglasses worn by Prithiviraj and in Ragini's heaving bosoms. I would have liked to see entire humans, walking, talking etc but all I could see was snatches of flesh here and there.

5. And my complete sympathies with Vikram. I am sure he loathed Suhasini's dialogues so much that he decided to improvise and say extremely profound stuff like, "chaka chaka chak chuka bak. dandanakka. danakanaka" instead of mouthing the insipid dialogues. I really cant think of any other reason why such gibberish would be present in the movie.

6. I think the EPIC WTF moment of the movie for me was when Dev tells Ragini, "Are you willing to take a lie detector test?". Eeeeeeeeks. We get it. Ramayan. yes. Agni Pariksha. Yes Yes. WE GET IT. ok? You didnt have to go out of your way to adapt Ramayan to modern times and in SUCH a lousy fashion Mr.Mani.
I had GREAT expectations of you. I am one of the many people who can watch your movies again and again and again and not get tired. But I think that is 3 agains more than what I would employ for Raavan. I have some advice for you - actually one

a. Stop teaming up with your wife. Please! :-

7. A lot of my friends are going, "tch. you just don't know how to appreciate art man. What stunning locales, what breathtaking cinematogrpahy. and the climax. Ooooh! What a place to shoot it". Ermmm. I could get ALL this and MORE just by sitting at home and watching National Geographic or Discovery Channels and plus I get the added benefit of not having to look at Aishwarya Rai's disgusting face. I also do not GET a lot of other things which people are talking about. I see what is there on the screen. I do not try to guess stuff like, "what could Ragini and Dev's relationship before her abduction be". "Whats going to happen after the end of the movie" (I think it was a feat that I survived the movie so I am not going to torture myself further by thinking what could have happened after it). Hell! I GET Mani's movies. I always have. But Raavan. I am glad I did not GET it or maybe my "getting" the movie was lost in Mani repeatedly nudging me saying, "Get it? huh? huh? Ramayan. Get it?"
Enough of "getting" there and I would not surprised if you don't get me! :P

8. In the words of my dad, the wisest man I know and who NEVER watches movies but watched Raavan AND Raavanan by mistake, "Mani Ratnam made Raavanan after he underwent a lobotomy". You can NOT argue with logic like that.

Looney Tunes

2010-06-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

With the family having a veritable baby boom in the year 2000 suddenly the house is filled with a lot of 10 year old children, boys in particular who have arrived from different parts of the world to finally get inducted into brahmin hood by having the upanayanam (sacred thread ceremony). While I believe in things like upanayanams and brahmin hood and sacred thread as much as I believe that India will one day win the FIFA world cup the elderly folks in the house think that unless a thread is worn around a young boy's neck and unless lots of money is spent on feeding already well fed priests the boy will be impure and will be *GASP* considered a non-brahmin. Oh the horror!

Anyway I digress. The one good thing of having inane functions which have about as much significance as Aishwarya rai does in Hollywood is that it helps the family gather and meet and a chance for me to meet cousins after a really long time. It is fun to have cousins over, especially when you are meeting them after a long time and MORE especially (can u say more especially?) when they come to the same house in which you grew up and spent a major part of your childhood summer vacations in. Showing them the secret passageways to the house so they can quiety sneak outside the house and go play after 6 in the evening, the place where paati hides the murukku and home made chocolates and how you can reach it by precariously balancing a stool on a top of a chair. I also taught them how to play a lot of cool games like dark room, earth-water-air etc.

Dark room is a game where you make a fairly big room pitch dark and play hide and seek inside the room. not blind man buff mind you.it used to be one of my favorite games when I was a kid coz at the end of the game there would be at least 5 scraped knees, 1 broken teeth, 2 crying children, a few clumps of hair in each child's hand and some fantastic memories. Similarly it is my modest boast that earth-water-air was a game which i devised when i was a kid. basically there would be one person who would get to shout earth, air or water and the rest would have to move within 5 seconds to earth (the floor), water (any elevated surface like a bed or a chair) or air (suspend themselves in mid air). This usually resulted in the breakage of a lot of rather flimsy furniture and generally put us in the bad books of the adults. Actually till date I don't remember being in the good books of any of the adults in my family. The last time I got even remotely close was when I went to the shop and bought milk for paati, only to be cheated by the shopkeeper who sold 2 days old milk and which resulted in a lot of adults competing with each other to occupy the bathroom the next day.

Though my process of imparting this knowledge to the next generation was frowned upon by the adults, personally i feel that what is childhood if u havent endured a few spankings, broken some furniture and been in disgrace 70% of the times. Though I find it rather disconcerting that kids nowadays do not want to be naughty. This is about as shocking a discovery for me as finding out George Clooney is gay. To say that I would be shocked would be such a gross understatement.So my cousins consider playing on the PSP, watching cartoon network and surfing the internet more fun and interesting than *GASP* my sister and me. Agreed that the sibling is not very interesting but ME??? I am the fun-nest person I know (and nobody else knows! :P). So i got quite a shock when my cousins in their american accent went "You are B-O-R-I-N-G man."

Though it broke my heart when they said that, I had to accept the fact that I had no clue how to operate a PSP (and had no interest in learning), i couldnt recognize a single cartoon that they watched on TV. I don't even remember when i stopped reading Nancy Drews and Sweet Valley High (Shan't mention archies and enid blyton. I still read them voraciously). I am O-L-D. At my age my mother had two kids, my grandmother had 3 and my great grandmother had 4. I am constantly reminded of this fact by my mom when I say I don't want to get married. According to her, women lose their reproductive capacities by 27 and become menopausal after that. My grandmother thinks I have child bearing hips and should get married and have children. The child bearing hips part by the way isnt a compliment. It means you are so round around your waist that it is almost possible that you could be carrying a child.

Man, I ramble a lot. Coming back to what this entire post was all about..Hmmm. So what was the entire post all about? Ah yes. The cousins are here, the relatives are here, loads of family functions are here and the pressure to be married is here again and has reared it ugly head. When you are as old as I am the references to the M word stop being subtle. No longer am I asked "So what plans now" but unknown people directly ask me, "So when is the wedding?" or "When will I get my next kalyana saapadu" (A rather greedy person this. If i married every time my relatives wanted to be fed I would have had to be severely polygamous). One elderly relative even came to me said "See that boy over there? You like him? You can marry him". Oh thank you magnanimous aged relative. You sure are kind. :-\. Of course there is the odd "progressive" relative who comes and says, "Punjabi, Muslim, Malayali, Bengali a mattum kalyanam pannikadhe. Brahmanan a paathuko. Iyengar kuda parvailla". I have learnt the art of evading such questions by acting so busy at family functions that what relatives see, is not me but a blur of green, blue or whatever it is that I am wearing. Faster movements will ensure that the relative does not even recognize your gender and will concentrate on attacking the grape juice in hand.

With that wise piece of advice I shall now leave you and attend to trivial things like work, boss and the likes.

College Diaries - 3

2009-08-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

1. So while the rest of the journalist community has been capturing the unveiling of the statue of Sarvajna yours truly and a friend have had the unique distinction of covering the unveiling (Sheeesh!! That’s such an oxymoron. As journalists we "cover" the unveiling :P) of Sarvajna's bum. Yeahh!! You read it right. We have extremely aesthetic shots of his bum and the skimpily clad dhoti covering it. Why? Well because there were so many other "propah" journalists covering it that we students were pushed to a corner and when you are a student with an assignment deadline to submit a story the next day even Sarvajna's backside makes an interesting story. :P

2. I LOVE ALL the lectures at college (with the exception of a series of lectures by the 'N' brothers - N.Ram, N.Ravi and N.Murali of Hindu. It’s amazing how they can be soooo like their newspapers. BORING and INSIPID!! Bah!!). We are supposed to listen to all the lectures and make an "informed" choice about what subjects we want to take as an elective. My problem is I want to take ALL the electives, which is surprising given that when I was doing my engineering I had trouble picking one coz all sounded equally uninteresting. I am not sure if I should take gender issues or environment issues or arts and culture or cinema or urban studies or sooooo many other electives being offered.

3. For the first time ever I cried during a lecture. I mean yeah lectures during engineering made me cry but in a totally different sense. The lecture on environment issues moved me so much that I just sat there on the second row silently shedding tears listening to the havoc which we humans have unleashed on the planet

4. I am perpetually busy, perennially rushed, always on the run and always breathless finishing some assignment or the other or covering some inane activity in some corner of the city and this long weekend (Yeah. we got both Saturday and Sunday off which is like a blessing) comes as a breath of fresh. Two days of laziness - here I come :)

5. Quite surprisingly I don't miss my life in "IT" AT ALL. I thought I would miss my former employer a teeny weensy bit but I don't. I dunno if it’s the lack of time or what but I don't miss one single aspect of that life. A part of me is glad coz I had heard horror stories about how people cannot go back to studies after two years of work but the transition in my case has been pretty smooth and I am extremely happy here but strangely I CAN'T believe that having spent two complete years in a place and having made so many memories I don't miss a single thing. I mean I SORELY miss college (all said and done I liked engineering for the four years I spent in hostel and the friends I made), I still wish I could go back to college but I just don’t miss the last two years. It’s as if they didn’t happen at all. And the best part - I don't even miss receiving a salary at the end of the month coz quite honestly I never knew what to do with all that money and now I am kind of glad I am again living a life of penury :P

6. I am glad that propah Tam-Brahm boys have enough sense nowadays to say No to journalists as wives :P. I am ecstatic because two prospective "alliances" got "rejected" when they learnt that I was going to be a journalist. "Journalist na yengalukku vendaam". In times of recession most boys apparently prefer a working woman drawing a five figure salary and not someone who is studying ughhh journalism. Yayyyy!! I love you guys and thank god I chose to study journalism now :).

7. When I told a not-so-near-but-still-forced-to-keep-in-touch relative that I was doing journalism she said "Journalism??" in pretty much the same tone that someone would say "Syphilis???", "Gonorrhea". :P. It was quite funny when she came to me and asked in a conspiratorial whisper "Have you lost your job?" and probably meant "Have you lost your mind". :D.

The more the number of people who look at me like I have some contagious disease just because I quit a decently paying job to join "Journalism" the surer I am that I have made the right decision! :)

8. Two good friends of mine broke up last week and it makes me question the fickleness of human relationships once again. I don't think I will ever understand relationships. I don't think I will ever understand why people would want to be in a relationship just to get hurt and come out saying "I am hurt but I am at least a wiser, better person". I don't think I ever will. Sighhhh!! H and M - *HUGS*

Paki? (errr not the tamil Pakhi but Paki as in Pakistani!! :P)

2009-08-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

So the other day two of my friends and I were trudging along carrying a heavy camera rushing to catch the metro at light house after spending a capital time interviewing some hawkers on Marina beach about inconsequential things just to get a decent "story" (That's what journalism is all about by the way!! :P)

Carrying a huge camera bag in one hand and a tripod in the other I agree we were an uncommon sight on a busy road but the following comments by the kids on the street playing cricket were uncalled for :P

Kid 1(pointing to my tripod): Deiii paaruda, AK-47 (heyyy look, an AK-47)

Kid 2: Paatha Pakistani madri irrukanga!! Pakistani a irrupanga da (They look like Pakistanis. I am sure they are pakistanis)

Kid 1 (addressing me): Ayyayo neenga Pakistani a? Please yengla konnudadhanga. Andha bag la yenna bomb vechirukengla? (OMG!! Are you pakistanis? Please dont kill us!! What do u have in that bag? Bombs??)

Kid 3 (the smart kid): Ada chiii. Padam pidika vandhurkanga da! (They have just come to shoot a movie)

Do i look like a terrorist? Do i look like a Pakistani?

No!! wait. don't answer that question!! :-\

College Diaries - 2 (This time really a College Diary!! :P)

2009-08-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

1. Wandering all over Chennai, carrying a 6 kg camera bag in search of "news", making and doctoring news when you dont find one, forcing and literally threatening the slum dwellers to lament about their woes is what the whole of last week has been about!!

Me: ungalukku yedhavdhu problems irruka? (Do u have any problems)

Slum Dwellers: Ilenga. yellam nalla dhaan irruku (No. Everything is fine)

Me: Ila. Yedhavdhu prachanai irrukum. yosichu sollunga (No!! You must have some problem. Please think and let me know)

SD: Moonu naala thanni varala!! (Oh well!! We havent had water for the past 3 days)

Me: Super. Adha pathi pesunga (Good. Talk about that)

And then make a story on how the slum dwellers struggle to get water and take their interviews and make it seem like an issue as important as terrorism/global warming and end it as "Along with S and P this is Wordsmith reporting for ACJ news"!! :D:D
I don't know if i am actually doing anything worthwhile but I sure am having fun in the process :-)

2. After class 6th this is the first time in life I am actually listening to class. I mean when you have classes on subjects like "The world of Cinema", "Srilankan issues", "Critical International issues", "Bay of Bengal communities", "Gender Issues" etc. you do tend to listen because for the first time in life i feel like i am actually studying something which is relevant to me and which will be of use to me later in life and I know that this is stuff which i NEED to know.
I have never felt this during engineering when i would study subjects like "Semi conductor physics and opto electronics" or "Probability and Queuing Theory" and wonder why the hell was I studying totally irrelevant and inconsequential things.

3. I feel horrendously stupid and painfully inadequate when I look at HOW much some people have read and how they can hold an intelligent conversation without staring stupidly into space after 10 mins like yours truly. I just realized there is so much out there to read, to know and that reading fiction DOES NOT help. But i can't read non fiction. Sighhhh. we have been given a mile long reading list and none of the books even remotely interest me but I am going to try.

4. I started off my reading "The Age of Kali" by William Dalrymple and I LOVE THE BOOK!! one of the best books i have read it is to india what maximum city by suketu mehta is to bombay. Lovely bit of writing and its amazing how a foreigner can write such an extensively researched book about india. Wow!!! I love the language and the simple style of writing. none of the lah-di-dah stuff for me Thank you very much
Do suggest some good non fiction books!! :)

5. For a campus which is supposed to be "Smoke free", "Alcohol Free" and "Drug Free" I have seen more alcohol and smoke and people in compromising positions in the past 3 weeks than I have in the past 23 years.
I am trying to be broad minded about it :)
Its a new experience and I am meeting all sorts of people and I realise that with age does come maturity. I look at the l'il 20 year olds all excited about being in a hostel one instant, then crying because they are homesick the next instant, jumping up and down in class to answer the questions or to ask questions or vying to be in the professor's good books and i feel like going "Awwwwwwwwwww" :D
But seriously for the first time in life i feel "Whoaaaa!! I AM mature" when I look at the crowd around me.

6. It feels great to be a student again in my favorite city. Not that i was unhappy when i was employed and heyy the money at the end of the month did feel good but it feels great to be irresponsible, be a student, be perenially broke, attend classes, cry about mess food, sit up till 3 in the morning chatting, running around finishing assignments etc..

7. Now that I am not earning I think its a huge advantage that I have friends who earn coz whenever we go out and I have eaten to my hearts fill and take my wallet out to pay they say "Nooo. You arent earning we will pay" and I just pretend to protest and pretend to pay. :P
Ahhh!! Unemployment is bliss if you leave hostel with 200 bucks and come back with the same amount :P
Shameless you think? Oh well sue me :P

8. My last post seems to have triggered quite a furore and would result in the partition of India into north and south india, I think. :P
I have had quite a number of friends calling me and advising me not to fly off the handle and asking me not to generalise and caling me "Racist" and "Really Racist". So much so that I was almost inclined to pull down the post and would have done so, if not for the supporter(s) (one) i had. Thanks Goofy :D
I agree that I have generalised quite a bit and have been irrational at times and have stereotyped northies quite a bit (though not without reason i personally feel :P - Here I go again :P) but i just had to get it off my chest.

Last Day as an "IT professional" :)

2009-07-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

So today was my last day at Cognizant. I went to the main office, submitted my id cards, got my relieving letter and experience certificate. Whoever named it relieving letter named it rightly i think. I felt strangely relieved, like a weight off my shoulders but felt suddenly vulnerable and alone at the same time. Mixed emotions actually. Maybe I got into such a comfort zone in Cognizant because honestly getting decently paid every month for moderately challenging work is everyone's dream. So i had gotten into a nice comfortable groove, doing little work, chatting, blogging, trekking and had become resistant to any of kind of change. though realising frequently that my heart wasnt in what i was doing. A strange case of Stockholm syndrome. Hmmm.

So today for the first time I came home at 1 on a weekday had a nice heavy lunch, went home, put on the AC (ok!! all ye proponents of global warming I dont do this often but if you are a software engineer you will know how precious it is to be able to sleep on a weekday afternoon and you want the moment to be perfect) and slept like nobody's business without a care in the world, without worrying about errant java code, about pending work and the faces of anally retentive bosses. I slept as an unemployed person but felt strangely remorseless about it :P:P

Went and saw the college/hostel in the evening and came back with my apprehensions multiplied by hundred times. I know I shouldnt judge people by the clothes they wear and their apperances but as I looked at the girls who looked like they took fashion tips from Kareena Kapoor and Paris Hilton and boys who who showed liberal amounts of skin(???) and undergarments, with loads of gel on their hair and attitude that would put Raghu of Roadies fame to shame I gulped twice and asked myself what i was getting myself into. With my jeans and dirty black shirt I looked like an alien from Mars.

I know I am being unnecessarily paranoid about inconsequential things but heyy this is my blog
:P

Anyway tomorrow my first day at college begins. Orientation. Wish me luck :-)

And finally....

2009-06-28T23:06:00.001-07:00

When I was little kid/adolescent/ difficult teenager there were times when in a fit of anger and rage I would wish for unspeakable things. For the school building to burn down, for my teachers to die so i wouldnt have to go to school (til class 3 i HATED going to school), for my parents to get lost somewhere so they wouldnt trouble me, for my sister to lose her eyesight so she wouldnt be able to see me and pick on me, fantasize about running away thinking that is the only way my parents would repent their sins and cry for years trying to find their lovely daughter who run away because of the untold atrocities meted out on her and eventually discover that she has become a blind beggar in Surat railway station (errr..Their sins/atrocities being asking me to study, not to fight with my sister, not to slam doors etc) and imagine and wish for many such equally gory things.

My grandmother would tell me not to wish for such things because sometimes they have an uncannily eerie way of coming true. Say only good things when you are in the house she would say coz in the corners of the house lurk the "Vaasthu" gods who keep saying "Thathasthu Thathasthu" (So be it, So be it) for everything that you say.

I never did believe her till the day my school ACTUALLY did get burnt down and principal did ACTUALLY die in the Babri Masjid riots in 1992 when Hindu extremists burnt down a part of the muslim missionary school which i used to attend then.

After that I have always been careful about the things I have said taking care to go to some open ground or toilet (I figured Vaasthus wouldnt reside in toilets to say Thathsthu to what i said :roll:)and scream my gory desires out.

Well i guess i let down my guard when sometime last month during a particularly stressful period in the project I went home and screamed to a friend of mine on the phone "OMG!! I wish I didnt have to do Java coding. I sooo hate it. I wish I could just quit. I don’t care if lose my job. I don’t give a damn about the salary or anything, I just want to do something I like. if i see another computer screen which says 'NullPointerException' I SWEAR i will quit"

Well the Vaasthus at home who were sitting idle suddenly perked up their ears and unanimously said "Thathsthu"

Yes!! The time has come for me to quit IT and seek my fortune elsewhere.

Right now if there was an emotions meter which could guage my feelings with two extremes one which said "deliriously happy" and the other which said "extremely sad" I think the meter would fluctuate ike CRAZY between the two extremes stopping for some time in the middle at a point called "apprehensive"

Yes! I am deliriously happy because I am going on to do something which I LOVE doing and which i know will give me immense happiness and job satisfaction if not a fat pay check

Yes! I am extremely sad because i HONESTLY adore cognizant. I have never had any complaints with the organization, I love the work atmosphere, I love the transparency, I have made a lotttttttttttt of friends here, I have honed my writing skills here, I have fallen in love repeatedly with different aspects of the internal blogging syste,, I wouId like to think I have matured (Yeah right!! P), I have worked with an amazing team and extremely nice superiors for the past two years and for that i will ALWAYS be indebted to cognizant. If I had chosen to be in IT I genuinely wouldn’t want to be in any other company except cognizant.

But Java got to me. Every time i looked at a java code I had about as much affinity to it as Bajji does for Symonds or Pam Anderson does for clothes. Nil.

Every time I looked at the computer to read a blog or a mail from the umpteen friends i have made here at cognizant, my face would brighten up, my eyes would light up, a smile would be pasted on my face and the minute I did Alt+Tab to look at a bug in my Java code it was as if after treating me to a six course meal in a wonderful place someone had given me a plate with just one idly from the cafeteria. I would be morose till I somehow fixed the bug. At the end of the day except for the time I had spent on ch1 I felt like I had spent the day chewing a piece of rubber dipped in milk (*pukes*)

Yes! I am apprehensive because all said and done I am leaving a job and a place which I love which gives me a decent salary to lead a luxurious life to do something which I have always wanted to do, but which i KNOW will pay me much less and I don’t know how it will be like in a new place with new people. Its like being in a cozy cocoon for 2 years and suddenly stepping out into the darkness with a vain hope that I might turn into a butterfly while there are also equal chances that I perish the moment I step out of the cocoon.

With such a motley of emotions playing around inside me I leave you with the hope that someday I shall be proud of this decision that i have taken and not regret it.

I am going on to pursue a degree in Journalism from Asian College of Journalism here in Chennai. After an year I will hopefully have a job which will pay me to write. Being paid to write. I cant think of a better profession but that’s just my opinion now. Lets see what life brings on. I don’t know if I have taken the right decision but I DO know that if I don’t go now and don’t take up this opportunity I will forever regret not having tried to get out of IT at all.

Please wish me luck as I venture into strange waters.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! :-) :-)

2009-06-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

I love to crib

I am a woman after all. I love to crib at long about the food in the cafeteria, about my boss who cant comumunicate, about my on site co-ord who cant talk, about my life which is taking a course which i soooooooo dont want it to take, about the weather, about too few books to read, about having too many books to read. basically crib about anything that deserves to be spoken about

So maybe someone up there got super tired of my cribbing and decided to make a day in life sooooo perfect that even me, l'il old complain box, unsaisfied with everything except the keyboard - honestly if there is one thing which i truly like about my daily life its my keyboard. its beautiful. nahi sachi. lovely smooth keys, easy to type and in a perfect shape. I mean most people would get turned on by some member of the oppsoite sex (or rather some member of the same sex in cases. it is a free world after all) but i can get turned on every morning just by looking at my keyboard.

Anyway this post isnt about my keyboard. Its about how someone decided to please someone as unsatisfied like me by giving me a day - a complete day which was so perfect from the minute it started to the minute it ended that I was like "If i died right now it would be the best time to die because I would just die happy and contented without a care in the world, a worry in my head"

it was my 23rd birthday (finishing 23 actually. gosh i feel old!!) a couple of days back. Now I love birthdays. I dont know why but given that almost quarter my life is over i am still a sucker for a cake with candles on top a few people singing happy birthday and me blowing the candle and making a wish. It might seem childish to some but I know that the day I dont feel thrilled to see a cake with my name written on top of it that is the day I would probably really age in the true sense of the word

Anyway where was I? Yeah. 23rd birthday.

On the eve of my birthday a docile, l'il unsuspecting me went to bed early with a cold in my head, expecting the usual people to call at 12 to wish me and then crash again to face a looooong day in office attending them KTs

So I slept off at 10.30 after making three futile attempts to read a book and stay awake till 12. When you are holding a book by your favorite writer and yet the words swim before you, you are either drunk or goddamned sleepy. Obviously I was the latter (duh-huh!!) and so went to bed.

I was woken up at around 11.45 by a missed call from a friend followed by a message from her saying "Just wanted to check if your this was the number you were still using. Will call in 15 mins"

Arghhhh I swore and went back to bed.

In another 5 minutes my cousin woke me saying "Come to the hall and close your eyes".

"Whaa" i replied groggily

"Come" she said and dragged me out of bed putting blindfolding my eyes

"Huh" i said as i trudged along with her

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY" approximately 70 voices (or so it seemed) screamed and I first saw J's face lit only by a candle (If you have seen J you will know that his face ummm..looks rather scary when lit by just a candle) holding a camera. HONESTLY i dont think I have ever seen him without his camera. I think he has seen and experienced most events in life only through his camera thereby missing out on the actual event. And the sad part is that unlike Sam who is an excellent photographer J is a rather errrr..ummm (what can i say without hurting l'il J's feelings :P) abstract photographer and it will take you some time to figure out exactly what it is that he has captured using his camera and most times you will be stumped till he actually mentions what he has taken himself. Aw le le le J, aw le le le le :D

Anyway I am digressing

So as I looked around I saw moti, F and H holding the yummiest cake ever with a candle on top
My hair kept bothering me and as i bruhsed it i realized it was Sam standing behind pulling it.

5 friends at 12 in the night of my birthday at my grandmothers place with my cousin as a willing accomplice to the whole plan!! Wow!!!

I dont think words in any language could actually do justice to what i felt that moment.

I dunno how many of you have jumped inside freezing waters
I dunno how many of you have actually held a totally new born baby in ur hands
I dunno how many of you have been to this ride in MGM (the name eludes me. A or M can you please help?) where the ride swings you so high that at one point you are completely hanging upside down, your blood rushes to your head, your arms ache with the pressure of your entire body on them and you cant even scream. the most thrilling ride i have been to.

if you have done any of the above you will know how it is like to be totally out of breath when your breath just leaves your lungs with a whooooooosh and you strive for balance and the whole world kinda swims before you.
Yes! I think thats pretty much how i felt that day and i was quite incapable of saying anything except eeeeeee for quite some time.

I cut the cake in a dazed state, ate it and fed it to everyone (while J continued to take pictures and more pictures in different angles of the cake and us. What ultimately did come out in the pictures was a part of Sam's helmet, a part of F's dupatta, a part of H's face etc and many such equally errr aesthetically pleasing pictures :P)

And then came the gifts

First was my virus free laptop (This is a very profound statement. Right from the summer of 2006 since when I have been having my laptop there never has been a time w hen it has been free of viruses. from the deadliest trojans to brontok, to many harmless worms my laptop had seen it all. No anti viruses worked and 95% of the applications didt work. About a week back i decided that enough was enough and gave it to J to clean it up. Now J is also a geek whose idea of fun involves coding at 12 in the night and he did a thorough and complete job of killing and eating then bugs :P)

Then came THE book. THE book which I have been meaning to buy for ages. THE book whose price i had negotiated in a number of shops, THE book which I have been wanting to read ever since I read one part of it a couple of years back. The BAAP of all funny books.
OK thats enough build up. I got the complete hitchhikers guide the the galaxy - unabridged edition by Douglas Adams

If happiness were pink chaddis I would have been Pramod Muthalik that day
If happiness were silicon I would be errrr Silicon Valley today (hah!! you so expected me to say Pamela Anderson didnt you?:P)
If happiness were false promises I would have been the Indian politicians that day
If happiness were websites I would have been google that day (This geek analogy is for u J :P)
If happiness were food I would have been H that day
If happiness were tripod + camera lens + paneer pav bhaji in sangeetha I would have been sam that day
If happiness were chocolates and lazing around I would have been Moti that day
If happiness were nutty butter scotch with caramel sauce in baskin robbers I would have been F that day

And then we sat and talked for 2 solid hours most of which was spent making of J while he tried his best to a few decent pictures, while F tried her best to irritate J by repeatedly calling hiim baby names (All of us joined her soon. If you know J then 'plizz to send one baby msg to him' like "cooochie cooo", "abloo babloo" etc. He lovves it ya!! :P). just talking meaninglessly :)

After they left at 2.30 I couldnt sleep till 6.30 the next day when I had to get up to go to office. It was as if the molecules in my body were in such an excited state that it took them quite some time to get back to normal state and sleep seemed impossible now. I kept thinking about the cake, their faces, the gifts, the crazy banter for two hours in the middle of the night,aimlessly pulling J's leg while his only reaction was a nod of his head
and a smile.

It was so surreal, so magical, so exciting that it was almost too good to be true.

There are times when I wonder if I really did deserve such an excellent surprise or such amazing friends like these and the words of my favorite song "Edelweiss" from Sound of music ring in my ears
"In my youth or my childhood I must have done something gooooood" to actually deserve all that I got on my birthday

J, Moti, F,Sam and H - I LOVE YOU GUYS :)
You are the besteststststst!!! :-)

Psssst J, inspite of your pathetic photography skills, pathetic defense to most of our barbs, pathetic grasp of things I think you are THE nicest babloo that ever walked this planet. Thanks so much for the collage of my pajamas, H's stubble, S' hand, Moti's hair and F's dupatta and oh yeah the cake too!! LOVED IT :):)

Quick Notes

2009-06-14T21:20:00.001-07:00

1.Went to meet M yesterday after a looooooong time and angel that she is she gave me a gift.

me: Eeeeeeeee.. what is it. what is it??

she: well!! its something you hinted at and i bought

me: *tearing open the cover*

me: Sea of Poppies!!!! by Amitav Ghosh!! OMG! can u like read my mind!! Wowwwww!!!

she: Mmm hmmm. And i can also read your blogs and didnt miss your not-so-subtle hint!!

me: Sheeeeeeeeeeesh!!! that was sooooo not a hint. I was just you know letting the world know of my desires!! :P

she: Yeah yeah!! sure!! :)

me: (cheekily) but sheeesh!! what if someone else read my blog and bought me the same book!!

she: ahhh!! dont fret!! No one is as thoughtful as me!! :P

Me: :rolling eyes:

Thanks M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And thank you so much for absolutely errrr profound poetry written inside the book!! :P

Totally touched!! :D:D (Lets forget the fact that I had shamelessly asked for the book? Ok? :P:P)

2.A got my card!!!!!!!!!!! Yayyyyy!! And after reading her post about it I am assuming that she was kind of thrilled to receive it!! :P

Uh oh!! A little confusion here. I sent a card to two of my friends both A's (rolling eyes) and both of them received the card on the same day!!

While one A was thrilled (the A who lives in Phoren!! Love ya A :)) the other A(k) couldnt stop cursing M and me for the kind of card we sent her for her birthday!! Aw le le le A(k)!! Aw le le le!! :P

Anyway w.r.t the A who lives in phoren I am completely surprised at how such a small gesture can thrill someone so much. I mean after all i d sent her nothing but a measly card with a letter written in my scrawly handwriting (another bane of the IT industry. My beautiful cursive writing has now become like the handwriting of a person with epilepsy. Terrible) about some of the most inconsequential things in my life and a totally sad poetry at the end of it but it still made her day and I am sooooooooooo happy!! :)

Come back to India A and then maybe I will give you better gifts!! ;)

3.In spite of it being a Monday, I am in a great mood today. So much so that if my current boss, one terribly khadoos fellow who doesn’t believe in prepositions, conjunctions, articles and the like. The other day he comes to me and says "You please get engaged with B and finish this work (B being a teammate of mine)" and I am like WHAT!!! SIghhh!! Anyway even if he came and loaded me with lots of work i would just grin and say "Sure sure my good man! Is that all? Maybe I will do some of your work also :P"

I have great friends, some great books to read, had some great food in the morning, had some great conversation

Ahhhh!! Life is Bliss!! :)

Hmmmm

2009-06-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

1. On a totally selfish note if there is one good thing which has come out of all these racist attacks by Australians on Indians it is the fact that i can now confidently reject "alliances" from Australia saying "Sheeesh!! Amma would u rather have an unmarried daughter who is safe or a married daughter who has acid thrown on her face" :P or something like that.

2. I dont think I will ever get over my morbid fear of traveling alone in closed elevators. The minute the elevator doors close I dunno why but it feels like I am trapped in a dungeon and suddenly the opening of the dungeon is closing and it will be opened only after millions and millions of years by which time i would be fossil. The old elevators where you could see outside and see each floor didnt rankle me much but these ones give me the creeps. Brrr

3. Talking of elevators yesterday I did an audacious thing. I got into a elevator and just as the doors were about to shut a person who i totally loathe entered it. Now i totally totally loathe this guy for several reasons one of the main ones being trying to get fresh with a good friend of mine.
I didnt react and pretended like i didnt know him. So this was the conversation between us

LG (Loser guy): Heyyy!! You are from ABC aren't u (ABC being the name of a club to which i belong to. LG also was in the same club once and as luck would have it works in the same office as mine. Sheer misfortune. Sighhh)

Me: (putting on the dumbest stupidest expression I could manage): Eh?? ABC? Sorry?

LG: heyy!! Don't you remember that time when the whole group went out to Tada? You and your friend F had come?

Me: (desperately trying to hide my id card so he wouldnt see my name) I am sorry. I think you have the wrong person. I dont know any ABC

and i fled outta the elevator and called F and had a good laugh!! Since F was the one he hit on she was thrilled with my "acting dumb" with LG!! ;)

4. Despite having nonsensical KT sessions every evening from 6-7, one good thing is the fact that the conference room where I sit has there HUGE french windows which face the west and hence you can see the sunset and i have seem some Beautiful, Awe inspiring, Breath Taking sunsets in the past 2 weeks. The vibrant colors, the hues, the clouds, the sky AWESOME all of them. So much better than sitting and listening to something which makes no sense to you!! :-\

5. Finished reading Jeffery Archer's 'Paths of Glory' on Saturday and John Grisham's 'Associate' on Sunday. Two of my favorite writers for the amazing plots they weave. Just awesome. Archer has DEFINITELY written better stuff but I kind of liked Paths of Glory because its about a man who wants to climb the Everest (much like Yours Truly!! Ahem!! :P) and Associate is much like all other Grisham novels with some insight on the kind of life which law school grads and lawyers in general in the US lead. Nice time pass both books :).
Been trying to acquire Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (Fallen in love with his writings after Hungry Tide and Glass Palace) but finances are extremely poor this month what with the deluge of birthdays. Why oh Why are Amitav Ghosh's books priced at 600 bucks? :-\
Hmmmm. And anyway I have a lot of books which I have bought but still haven't read (Catch 22 and Fyodor I promise you are next on my to read list :P)

6. I find the 140 characters rule in Twitter irritating. I usually have so much more than 140 words to say and being restricted to just 140 seems cruel. More often than not I cross the word limit and only half my tweet is posted. And the worst part is twitter in office doesn't show me the number of character so i just keep typing. For eg. The other day I had tweeted saying "I do not envy the job of security guards in office. Imagine having a job where you have to stare at everyone's chest every morning to see if they have id cards around their neck or not" and the tweet stopped with the word chest and I had everyone asking me what the hell it was that i meant by that tweet!! Gah!! :-\

B-O-R-E-D

2009-06-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

Ok!!!
I am terribly terribly bored and for a change I have NO repeat NO work AT ALL. After being released from my previous project where eyebrows would be raised if you left at 6.30 (and if you didnt have eyebrows you would raise your entire self and stare stupidly at the person leaving at 7) where I had strict deadlines and where every day was full of defects and bugs and other such inconsequential things I have suddenly been put in a project where i have NO work. And they are KILLING me with KT (Knowledge Transition for the uninformed) sessions

I for one have NEVER been able to understand the need/ use of KT sessions. I originally thought KT stood for Kill the Trainee because ideally thats what is done throughout the "session".

You are locked into a room and bombarded with totally and ABSOLUTELY useless information 99.9999% of which you will NEVER use and the 0.0001% when you will use it, you will actually be doing a reverse KT or in other words vomiting stuff which was vomitted AT you (Ewwwwwww!!)

I mean WHAT is the point. exactly 20 seconds after the KT session I dont remember what was said having happily whiled away time looking out of the window or laughing at the accent of the onsite guy who being Mandairin of origin cant speak English to save his life (The other day at a KT session he said "So..ummmm...when you..ahhh seee...aaaaa..surprise mark...errr..you...hmmmm will know thaaaaaat its ummmm full of errrrrors" and i was like surprise mark?? whoa?? whats that. turns out he was talking about our good ol' exclamation mark!! LOL) and generally trying to supress a yawn and doodle in my notepad. No sir!! Not the way to listen to a KT at all. The whole concept boggles my mind. Not only do they gimme KT but they also bombard me with document after document to read and raise questions during KT. Bah!! The only question that has been raised by me till now is "Is it over?" at the fag end of the KT. Sighhhh

:-) :-)

2009-06-03T00:06:00.001-07:00

"They dont have candles here man" said L to me on the phone

"No candles? What kind of a shop is it that doesnt..."

"Chil!! I mean they dont have birthday candles. Just the ordinary candles and the number candles and they dont have the numbers 2 and 3"

"Oh well what DO they have"

"Hmm. They have 0. yeah. and 5"

"Ahhh!! Get 0. Given F's 0 IQ and 0 level of maturity and 0 malice in her heart ideally 0 oughta be the right number"

"Heh Sure" said L and hung up.

Its soooo easy to make someone happy. Sooo easy. Soo easy to make someone's birthday a little special. You dont need event "management" skills, you dont need big plans, you dont need money, you dont need candles, hell!! you dont even need a birthday cake. All you need is a huge group of friends who havent met for a long time to go the office of the person whose birthday it is and totally totally surprise her.

I dont think I will forget the expression on F's face till the day i die when she saw the whole group casually waiting to have lunch with like it was THE most natural thing in the world to do.

I dont think the cake which we bought really mattered to her. And Oh yeah!! she did blow the "0" candle (she didnt even ask why 0. Sheeeesh!!) and she did cut the cake and all that but frankly cake or no cake I dont think it really made a difference to her. She was just so glad to see us. (Welll!! This does seem like we were a bunch of super humans or incarnate of God who had come to earth just to have lunch with F the way i keep going she was thrilled to see us but honestly she was :P)

It just feels so great to surprise a really good and totally sweet friend

Happy Birthday F. You are without doubt the nicest and sweetest person I have ever met and u deserved the little surprise we planned for you (I maaaaybe a tad too late with this post but hey its the thought which matters right!! :))

Graham Bell..

2009-05-28T05:09:00.001-07:00

Its been 3 days since my grandmother came back home and I have still not spoken a word to her. No sir!! Not a word!!

Our only means of communication are the wild gestures which my grandmother makes. if she swings her hand in circles above her head and points to a room I am to understand that she wants me to switch off the fan in a particular room. If she turns her fist in a clockwise direction it means i need to switch off the gas, if its anticlockwise it means I need to put it to sim. If she points a hand to her mouth and shakes her fist it means she is asking me if I am hungry, if she point to her head and then to the main door it means she is asking me to wear a cap and go out of the house because its very hot, if she makes a C around her eyes it means she wants me to fetch her glasses and so on and so forth

Before you guys start imagining that she is suffering from some severe disease which has rendered her speechless let me hasten to reassure you that the only disease she is suffering from is chronic talking on the phone caused due to abstaining from talking on the phone for 40 days.

Now my grandmother, the youngest of the 9 siblings of the NI family is THE hub of information of the family. Any kind of information, gossip, news which any member of the 1000 member family wants to know, they know the one person to contact. My grandmother.

The way she keeps tracks of birthdays, anniversaries, deaths, births etc is just astounding. Its a standard joke at home that had she been born 40 years later she would have been in one of those IIMs for the kind of analytical and management skills that she possesses, not to mention her shakuntala devi like mathematical skills wherein she can multiply 2 four digit numbers in her mind and give us the answer in under 30 seconds :O:O

So basically because of not having access to her main office (her house here in Chennai at which at any given point of time she will be seen talking to some random relative) for a month she had missed out on a lot of important family stuff and once she came to Chennai her behavior was not unlike a Somalian kid which has not been fed for 40 days and is suddenly let into a room full of world famous delicacies and the lady who started talking 3 days back has not yet stopped.

Right from the Cheenu mama who is celebrating his 80th birthday, to Lakshmi Maami whose grand daughter is marrying a *GASP* Nair to Babu who lost his job to Meera whose husband has been diagnosed with cancer there is a dizzying amount of information about my family which is right now being processed in my grandmothers head and being stored in different locations in her medulla oblongata. The very scope of the whole thing leaves me breathless. 10 children who in turn gave birth to a minimum of 4 children who in turn married and continued the process of giving birth and generally supplying the world with more of the NI clan, which now makes the NI family a formidable family with a whooping 1000 odd relatives spanning across 4 generations and 5 continents, the hub of information being not yahoo groups, not google groups but a frail old lady about 4 and a half feet high cradling a phone between her ear and shoulder in Adyar Chennai.

So basically for the past three days when she has been so much on the phone catching up with and filling in people that we have still not had a chance to talk about her trip, my mom, my home town and such and I have a feeling I will have to learn sign language if I have to understand her.
Sample this.

The other day I got up in the morning to find her talking to someone (not unusual). I causually picked up my paper, my mug of horlicks and was browsing through the paper when I suddenly saw her gesturing wildly. (not unusual)

Paati (gesturing): moving hands violently in circles, points to her clothes, points to the balcony while nodding her head furiously apparenlty acknoledging the person on the other end (I for one have never been able to understand how the other person would see her vigorous and earnest nodding but she doesnt agree)

Me (thinking): Maybe she wants me to take the clothes in the balcony from the clothes line because its windy

Proceeding to take the clothes (wet) from the clothes line and wondering why paati wanted me to take them off when there is no wind

Suddenly she gestures even more wildly and I stand there with a witless expression on my face while she continues to move her hands wildly. I proceed to take off all the clothes from the clothes line quickly thinking she is irked by my lethargic pace.

Suddenly she asks the person to hold (very very unusual) and says "Yenna di pandra" (what are you doing?)

"Nee yenna paati solla try pandra?" (What are you saying paati?)

"Ayyoo. Nimadhiya phone pesa vida maata. yenna pandra?" (you wont let me talk on the phone in peace. What are you doing?)

"Nee dhaane paati rhombha kaathu adikardhu so clothes balcony lendhu eduthuru nu sonna?" (Well, you asked me to take the clothes off the clothes line coz it was windy)

"Ayyyo, na washing machine lendhu clothes edukka sonnen. Kadavule" (I asked you to take the clothes from the washing machine in the balcony)

*looking extremely sheepish*

"Seri seri. nee phone pesu."

So everyday from now till all the give and take of information from the hub has been done is going to be the same and to make matters worse we have two phones at home and more often than not I see paati running between one phone and another playing her role of a hub to a T.
I am not sure when I will be able to talk to her in next so I am doing the next best thing. I come to office and call her while I am having breakfast and talk to her for about 15 minutes ON THE PHONE.

If not for you Sir Graham Bell I would still be able to talk to my grandmother in person!! :-

P.S: Yeah yeah!! I know the title doesnt make sense. Sue me!! :-

Nostalgia!!

2009-05-26T04:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday this school friend of mine (from the one school where i
spent the maximum time - 3 years of schooling) messaged me and said
"Heyyy, how come you write about college, work, family but never about
school. It would be fun for all of us to read about school"

And it set me thinking about school (the 6 schools that i have studied
in till 12th) and a wave of nostalgia swept over me!!

This post is a result of that!! Quite a long and mostly boring post
but just felt like writing it! :-)

Life was so much simpler when we were kids.

Ironical isnt it? When i was a kid the ONLY thing i wanted to do was
to grow up as soon as possible and whenever someone asked me what it
was that i aspired to be i would say "I want to be big jaldi se".

But as you grow you realise you were much better off when you were 10
years old, going to school, going to siwmming classes, music classes,
dance classes and tennis classes, playing with friends, homework

when life was soooooooo busy and so full that you didnt have time to
think and were so tired at night that you slept the deepest and most
peaceful sleep and slept off the moment your head hit the pillow or
dozed off in front of the TV itself and had no recollection of appa
gently lifting you and putting you on your bed

When being the star player of the school kabaddi team was the only
thing that mattered to you

When you HONESTLY didnt know what was wrong in pulling down a girl's
skirt accidentally while passionately playing kabaddi (errr...maybe i
shouldnt have used the word passionately)

When you thought boys were icky creatures whose noses ran (oh!! mine
did too but at least they did so daintily), whose shirts were dirty
and socks smelly, whose favorite pastime was to pull the pigtails of
the class girls, whose laugh ressembled the noise which is produced
when you shake a hundred stones in a tin box. BASICALLY ewwww

When getting a 'Very good' on a term paper from a favorite teacher was
ALMOST equivalent to winning the nobel prize. who am i kidding?? it
WAS winning the nobel prize and you smiled and grinned till your jaws
ached

When you sat in recess with four close friends and giggled and *giggle
giggle* 'dekh dekh uski ek ribbon choti hai, ek ribbon badi hai' 'pata
hai usko sirf 16 out of 20 mila test mein' qualified as high quality,
most sought after gossip

When you thought getting up in the middle of class and raising issues
like "Miss, she is take outing my pencil" or "Miss she is put outing
the fan" qualified as speaking oxford certified english

When you had not more than 5-6 dresses besides your school uniform and
you never really cared about how you looked and what you wore

When being friends meant doing "katti" to each other at least 20 times
a day and yet talking to each other in class the very next day and you
made friends as easily as u made trouble in school, when the concept
of best friend was alien to you and every one who came to play with
you in the evening qualified as friend

When saturday meant half day in school, wearing a color dress,
attending art class and messing around with the paints

When the most exciting day of the week of Sunday because you were
allowed to get up a little late, because that was the ONE day when
around 20 kids would gather in the central park and play treasure
hunt, leaving clues, marking direction and confusing the other team
and shrieking like banshees when the treasure was found, because of
the weekly visit to the library to explore a whole world of enid
blyton, agatha christies, richard cromptons, archies, tintins,
asterix, because of the ice cream which we would have after dinner..

And then BOOM!!!

Adolescence hit you like the Hurricane Rita and with a face full of
acne, a mouth full of braces and loads of fat on your self you
suddenly developed inhibitions and a bashfulness alien to you.

Suddenly you only went to swimming classes in special "ladies timings"

Suddenly playing kabaddi and getting yourself dirty were "uncool" things to do

Suddenly the boys didnt seem that icky and you found yourself
uncomfortable in their presence and things like soiling their white
shirts by shaking yoru fountain pen and tying their shoelaces together
in the morning prayer didnt hold much charm.

Suddenly you threw away all champaks and tinkles but started reading
Nancy Drewwwww and Hardy *uvaaack* Boys and everyone who read those
were considered cool!!

Suddenly you found yourself confused troubled angry and egoistic all
at the same time

Suddenly you stopped telling your mother about that girl who pinched
you, the boy who pulled your pigtails and from a person who spoke
incessantly you became a silent quiet and morose person

Suddenly you hated your parents because they didnt let you stay out
after 9 in the night, because they worried about your dropping grades,
because they refused to buy you the 999 rupees jeans saying it was
atrocious waste of money since you d outgrow it in just 6 months

Suddenly you cried for silly things like a good friend not talking to
you for 4 hours.

Suddenly your wardrobe (errrr the one shelf in the cuoboard which was
generously given to you) seemed highly malnourished and you thought
your sister had more clothes than you did

Suddenly you started being choosy about your friends not hanging
around with everyone but a select few

Suddenly, RIGHT in front of your blackhead prone nose life just
changed without asking for your persmission without wondering if you
would be able to handle it.

It was an unwelcome change and you tried hard to come to terms with
it. As soon as you did and were able to handle it you were sent to
college!!

Whoooosh!!!
College!! Freedom!! Hostel!! Friends!! Fun!!
It opened a pandora's box of opportunities.
But that deserves a separate post in itself me thinks!! :)

Kya zamaana aa gaya hai!! Ghor Kalyug!!!!

2009-05-25T06:25:00.001-07:00

No!!
This post is not about IPL and how Chennai lost
I am not going to talk about how a very enthusiastic girl sat down to follow the semi finals bewteen bangalore and chennai on saturday night
I am not going to talk about how a very shocked girl watched in disbelief as hayden walked out after his wicket was taken away cruelly
I am not going to talk about how a very worried and agnostic girl prayed like hell for ross taylor to get out
I am not going to talk about how a devastated girl looked forlornly at the running fan and a strong dupatta and contemplated the unspeakable
I am not going to talk about how a shameless girl unabashedly supported the deccan chargers and whooped with joy when DC won over RCB
I am not going to talk about how an EXTREMELY racist girl thought "I am glad a south indian team won the IPL this time"

No sir!! I am not going to talk about any of those because personally i feel that the IPL is nothing but a disgusting money making scheme where human beings are stored like livestock and no self respecting human being should demean himself/herself by watching it!!
.
.
.
Why didnt Chennai win the IPL???!!
waaaaaaaaaah!! :(:(

So one of my school friends err acquaintances errr sowrn enemy rather is getting married on a reality show or rather trying to find a partner on a reality show!! :-O :-O
I mean I have never heard of anything THIS ridiculous in ages!!! I never credited her with much intelligence but this is heights!!!
How can you choose your life partner in front of 2 billion people??
How can you showcase your "life partner preferences" and the "kind of guy/girl" to the whole country???
How can you portray your desperation to the entire country??
and finally HOW CAN YOU MARRY SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN CONSIDERED BY EVERY OTHER PERSON IN THE COUNTRY AS A PROSPECTIVE LIFE PARTNER!!! Jeeeeeeeeez!!!

and the article says

"Star Vivaah is earning brownie points also because of its format. While earlier shows looked at showing the entire process of matchmaking on screen, this one just advertises the profile of the respective girl or boy"

Waah waah!! how magnanimous. Which means you only make the boy and the girl meet on the show but dont actually zoom in the camera each time they go out thereby giving them "full privacy"
Hah!!!
Just imagine the plight of a boy and girl who met on such a show
They are sitting in a restaurant holding hands, looking into each others eyes and generally doing all the gooey stuff that young lovers do and are expected to do and suddenly someone comes up and says "Sir, aap wohi ho na jisne Star Vivaah pe ladki dekhi thi. Yehi aapki item hai? Mast. mai bhi soch raha hoon ussi show pe shaadi karoon" *blushes*

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

Every time you step out of the house, every person who has a TV and a cable connection and watches soppy reality shows in India would know who you chose, where you met, when u got engaged and got married, when you first held hands...
Whatever happened to privacy and personal space!!!!!!!!

Reality shows for singing - ok - showcases talent
Reality shows for dancing - fine
Reality shows for losing weight - errrr
but Reality shows for finding your "soul mate" - HEIGHTS!!!

oh BTW here is the article
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/wedding-planner/465366/

Sob..Sniff...Waaaaaaaaaaaaah

2009-05-19T07:23:00.001-07:00

I am sleepy, I am tired and I am in a terribly terribly crabby mood today.
I cant believe I stayed up till 12 yesterday to watch THAT (you know what I am talking about) match
I cant believe that after CSK finished batting I called my friend and said "I think KKR will be all out at 90 man. Wanna bet?" and placed a LOUSY bet
I CANT believe Dhoni played L Balaji in the death overs
OMG!!! I CANT BELIEVE CSK LOST TO KKR of all the teams in the goddamned IPL
*sob*
They are my favorite team. If ever I had a baby I think I would love it as much (or maybe a leeeetle less) as I love CSK. And errr..ummm I dont think mothers would like their babies to lose to teh worst in the race (Not that KKR is worst mind you but definitely the unluckiest and I cant believe their luck worked on the day of their match against us)

And if you like cricket as much as I do you will not go "Hawwww. Chiiiiii" when I tell you that my eyes became just a teensy weensy bit moist after Hodge hit a four off that last ball and Chennai lost, but you will probably sympathize with me and tell me how your throat also got constricted and how you were also overcome by emotion.

Anyway!! We have lost, which makes our next match with Punjab a do or die match.

I am being released from my project of 2 years. For the past 2 years I have been sitting at the same office, same place, same desk and same team mates. And now I am moving.
Ideally, IDEALLY I should be feeling senti and be sad about leaving this project which has become like a second home to me. (Errrr)
But I feel strangely numb.
My boss came to me today and said "Ohhh!! I am going to miss you and inspite of you being so sarcastic and a person who has 0 respect for process and rules I am going to miss you" and I intelligently replied "Ahhh!!"
I am gladly moving on to the next project which I know will be no different or no more interesting than this one is (more boring maybe!!)
My old team was an excellent team, I had a swell manager, a decent team lead but yet I am totally unmoved and going "Ok!! What next!"
Sighhhh!! There is something wrong with all that wiring inside of me. I get emotional for a cricket match but not in places where people expect me to show some emotion.

So this cousin of mine who is going to the US dropped by this weekend and dropped off a whole carton full of his childhood books. A WHOLE CARTON FULL of malory towers, st clares, naughtiest girl, archies, tinkle and asterix comics to be passed on to my kutti 9 year old nephews.
Needless to say no "passing on" has been done by me. I have been having a completely lovely time reading the whole malory towers, st clares series again. Reading in the bus, reading in the train, reading in the balcony, reading in the loo (Errr yes!! One bad habit I havent been able to get over!!) and basically reading whenever I can find a little bit of time.
Dostovesky, Amitav Ghosh, John Grisham, O henry move over please. Aap Kataar mein hain in my reading list till I finish off that whole carton

Ice Cream for two people in Baskin Robbins costs 195 friggin bucks. Jeeeeeeeeez!! Thats the price of one wodehouse book, 2 RK Narayan's books, one nice top, four days lunch....Sighhh!!! I am never going to that place again. NEVER
How much ever F tempts me with the "Nutty ButterScotch with hot caramel sauce on top", how much ever I have an ice cream craving, how much ever money I have in my purse (Hell!! next time I have money and see Baskin Robbins Adyar I think I will just walk another 100 steps and go to Odyssey and buy some books!!)
I am not stepping inside another Baskin Robbins.
Bloody Baskin "ROBBERS"!!

Yawn!!

2009-05-15T04:44:00.001-07:00

Reclining on a couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon after a good(and heavy) lunch with a couple of Archie comics in hand (Sighh!! Yeah!! I still read Archies, Tinkle, Tintin, Asterix and Enid Blyton!! :rolling eyes:), the sambhar and potato slowly work their spell and sleep overcomes you, the book slips and falls down and your eyelids droop heavy with sleep, your mouth slightly open and in this state there is nothing in this world which would induce you to leave that state of inertia and move your posterior (except of course chocolate ice cream, chennai super kings match or date with george clooeny in that order)
You are in heaven!! Ahhh Bliss
And then suddenly "Kuch khaas hai hum sabhi mein...." your phone rings jarring your senses. You are very very rudely shaken out of your state of inertia and you frantically try to locate the source of the infernal sound while cursing under your breath. You look at the caller id and find that the caller is one pesky aunt or rather an aunt who is normally ok but is decidedly pesky when she calls you at 1 in the afternoon on a sunday. But duty beckons and relatives' calls ought not to be cut and you pick it up making it a point to sound groggy and sleepy.

You : 'Lo
PA(Pesky Aunt):Ayyayo. You were sleeping? Did i wake you up?? I am soooo sorry.
You: Errr. 'ats ok chitti. what 'appened?
PA: Well.. Are u listening
Me: Mm hmm
PA: Amma told me that she has started looking for you
Me: Whaaaa??!!!
PA: There is this nice boy who has done his MS and is working in Texas..

I am not generally a person who is rude to elders but I just cut the call, put my phone in offline mode and went to sleep.
Nice boys doing their MS and working in Texas and pesky aunts disturbing people at 1 in the afternoon on a Sunday can wait till I finish sleeping.
I mean seriously what is it with the nice boy/nice girl definition. Obviously no relative of mine is going to call me up and say "There is a boy who has passed class 5, kills 70 year old ladies for a hobby, molests kids and has peculiar habits like beating wives". Every boy/girl who ever hopes to be married will call themselves nice.
I mean gimme a break. how do u know the boy is "nice"? You have never met him. You only vaguely know his parents and you assume that because they have had a good education and belong to the same caste (ewwwww) as you the boy is 'nice' :-|
Sighhhh!!
India ko koi badlo yaaar!!

P.S: CSK lost against RCB!! Sheeeeeeeesh!! What next? Losing to KKR. *shudder* I hope not

Kya Bakwaas ki koi Hadh hoti hai? Ya koi title hoti hai? Naaaah!!

2009-05-11T05:47:00.001-07:00

>>> Inspite of people on TV screaming "Agar Aap vote nahi kar rahe ho to aap so rahe ho (Kiske saath?? :P)" and newspapers calling me a Pappu (a person from the upper middle class who doesnt vote) and a lot of other unflattering names I am not voting this time.
I dont have a voters id card. I tried registering on jaago re and being a good citizen, but though they send me loads of useless messages and mails I have still not been able to figure out how they will help me vote and have still not received a voters id card.
Gujarat state refused to accept me as its domicile because i hadnt done my 11th and 12th there
Tamil Nadu state refused to accpet me as it domicile because I hadnt done my 10th here

So basically I am a citizen of nowhere who can vote nowhere but yet I tried to get a voters ID card and havent got one. Someone told me any kind of id card would do but I need to register myself. I did. and I still cant find my name. I could have tried harder but after a research on the people standing from my contituency I have decided against voting for anyone.
Sighhh!! And they accuse me of sleeping.
Pappu I am!!

>>> I have realized that just in case I committ a huge crime like murdering my dumb on site coordinator or shooting the Prime Minister and saying "heyyyy you!! I am a juvenile. You cant hang me" and they put me into solitary confinement for like say an year - letting me speak to just one person and eat only twice a day and see only light coming from a single source the whole day, I think I will be chill about it and say "Bas!! Its over?? So soon??" after one year of it got over because thats pretty much the kind of life I am leading now.
I eat breakfast and lunch, look at the light coming from a computer for 14 hours, speak only to my mom She is the only one I call voluntarily and thats because she is the only one who wants to know if i am alive or not, talk to no one else (except saying good morning to all my teammates who I think wouldnt committ suicide if i didnt wish them) and generally have a demeanor as pleasant as Muhammed Ali. Oh BTW there STILL are people who think of me, call me and are kind enough to talk to me even though I am about as responsive as a wall made out of Ambuja Cement and as interesting as speeches made by PV Narasimha Rao (I have heard he himself falls asleep when giving those speeches!! honest!!).
I know how solitary confinement feels like!!

>>> Someone said something today which hurt. Now I am generally the kind of person who doesnt feel bad for anything. Very thick skinned, yes I am. Sensitive is just not me. And generally it takes more than insults and harsh words and sudden emotional outbursts by obviously strung people to rankle me. I take most things in life with a 'I care a damn' attitude and though I am not sure if thats the way to live it has worked just fine for me or so i thought.
So the other day someone who is a good friend and whose opinion matters to me said something which inwardly made me go "Ouch!! R-U-D-E" but outwardly ofcourse i feigned ignorance and let it pass.
The problem is I cant stop thinking about it because a small part of me is like "OMG!! Was that person right? maybe what he said about me is what most people think. Maybe I need to change and stop being this indifferent/insensitive person that I am"
My problem is How do u go about being a new person.
how do people change? Does it happen overnight? Do u read self help books? (Ewwwww), do u practise meditation and yoga? (Yawnn!!), Do u do a SWOT analysis (double Ewwww)?
I dont know. I know I need to change but I dont know how to go about doing it.
But couple of lessons learnt are

1. Sarcasm is NOT taken the way you want it to be taken by some people. Especially if you are a girl being sarcastic is a complete No No. (what a gender biased world this is)

2. Just because people dont say anything to you when you talk to them flippantly DOES NOT mean they dont mind. They are bitching about you to another person while you naively or rather vainly think they enjoy and appreciate your sense of humor.

3. Dont talk too much. Its ALWAYS a bane!! Now I talk at the rate of 1000 wpm and can talk talk talk and still not get bored. legend has it that I even talk when I am sleeping. Most of the times though there is no need to talk I talk pointlessly, endlessly, aimlessly, relentlessly. This doesnt go down well with most people so curbing my tongue (this IS going to be tough) is on my to do list

4. Not everyone is a friend. Dont talk to everyone the way you would talk to a good friend. Really good friends would let your gibberish pass knowing you dont mean most of what you say and were born with only half a brain. Not so with not so good friends with whom u run the risk of them taking offence to what you say.

5. 50% of the people you know will misunderstand you, 40% wont even try to understand you (they couldnt care less), 5% will make an effort but give up and only 5% will actually understand you. Treasure the last 5%.

I am going to change. Not phenomenally but slowly and steadily. Will keep you guys (errrr..the 4 people who read this blog) posted!! :-)

Hmmmmm

2009-05-10T03:40:00.001-07:00

1. Yesterday I said 'SHIT' to my on site coordinator while talking to him on phone. Now though I swear quite a little bit this was the first instance where I swore at a superior at work (the fact that i have ALWAYS wanted to swear, scream and shout at them for their incompetency and curse them for sitting at on site without knowing how to read basic english is not the point here. The point is I generally dont use foul language when I am talking to someone professionally. ahem!!!)
So this was the conversation between DOC (Dumb Onsite Coordinator) and me

DOC: So please make the following changes and send it in the next build.
Me: But the same scenario occurs in 7 other tables in the DB
DOC: yeah? Really?
Me: (thinking): errrr. ideally you are supposed to be the DB guy, analysing reuiqrements and all that. YOU are supposed to know.
Me: yeah
DOC: So make the changes in those 7 tables also
Me: SHIT!!!
DOC:...... (speechless)
DOC: Errr. what
Me: Show... Could you please show me how I need to go about doing these changes?

Sheeesh!! So basically because the bozos at onsite screwed up here I am sitting and working on Saturdays and Sundays and working till 10.30 everyday for the past one week. Not exactly my definition of a perfect weekend (Hah!! weekend my foot!!). My life in the past one week has revolved around working in office for 14 hours and then coming back home and crashing,getting up at 7 and so on and so forth!! Sighhhh!!

2. The Chennai Super Kings are on a roll. 5 consecutive wins later they sit smugly on top of the chart. Just amazing the way Hayden and Raina play but very seriously I think it is because S and I watch it together that they win. I mean before we started watching it together they were losing all their matches and since the day we have been watching CSK's mathces they have been doing a great job and come what may S and I have been religiously watching all of CSK's matches and I promised S I would come to banaglore for the finals and watch it with him if CSK came to the finals (Errrr yeah!! by watching together I mean he sits in banaglore and I sit in Chennai and we follow the match 'together' on the phone. His wife F who likes cricket as much Prabhakaran likes Rajapaksa isnt very pleased and has threatened me with dire consequences if I so much as come within 1 km radius of her house on the day of the finals!! :P:P)

3. I dont understand the concept of social networking sites. Dont get me wrong. I am on ALL of them. I am on orkut, facebook, twitter, blogger and every other site which can remotely be classified as social networking but frankly I just dont get it. I mean my point is, that people whom I want to stay in touch with I anyway will, social netwoking sites or NO social networking sites and as for the others if I dont want to stay in touch with them why take the effort of creating a profile and adding them on and "staying in touch". In college it was like a status symbol. "You dont have an orkut account? Hawwwwwwwwwww. Chiiiii" and in college I spent the better part of my time scrapping that girl who sat next to me in class 3 and stole my blue color rubber, that boy whose water bottle i threw out of the auto in class 4, that boy whose dog i tortured by pouring ink all over its white fur and so on and so forth and now i realise that their significance in my life is zilch. And come to think of it 4 of my closest friends who have been with me through thick and thin are not there on my friends list in orkut and facebook.
If I dont write a testimonial for you, if i dont "poke" you or rate you "sexy" and "cool" (two of THE most over used words on social netweorking sites. Hi. I am cool and sexy and I am looks for decent fraanship!! eeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!), if I dont become your "fan" does it mean I am any less your friend than I was? I dunno!!
Nowadays every time I see an alert saying someone has added me on orkut or facebook I wait till about 9-10 requests accumalate and accept all of them at once.

4. I have always thought about HOW proud Irfan and Yusuf Pathan's parents must feel every time they see their sons on TV one batting like there is no tomorrow (Every time Yusuf Pathan comes to bat I quiver and feel sorry for all the bowlers. Mean Machine) and the other taking wickets left right and center- Wow!!.
I mean one son doing them proud is cool but both of them!! Wowwwww!! Times of India seems to share my sentiments and they had a one page Mother's Day Article about both the Pathans and their mother. Makes me think, there isnt a single thing which I have done that my parents can... ahem!! be proud of. An extermely extremely naughty child, an average student, a difficult teenager and a miserable daughter is all that I have been. Hmmmm

5. Jug Suraiya is one of my FAVORITE columnists on Times of India. I love the way he writes, love the humor in his posts and the way he can make me read about politics (NO ONE can make me do that). I have always thought humor is the only thing which he is good at. The following article in Times of India completely changed my perspective. Loved the article, Loved the way he has written it, completely loved the way he has ended it and my respect for him has grown multifold. Do read it if you find the time

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Subverse/Travels-to-myself/articleshow/4500464.cms

2009-05-04T05:59:00.001-07:00

After watching Chennai super kings win two consecutive matches, after
an excellent 5 days spent roaming all over lower tamilnadu, after 5
days of eating good food, after 5 days of spending good quality time
with good friends I am on a high.
And after coming to office on a monday morning, after watching a
vijaykanth movie (mariyadai) on the bus journey back home, after
puking my entire lunch after watching the movie and after checking my
mails and learning that saturday is working because of "business
exgiency" I am on an all time low!! Sighh

I mean why do they have to play Vijaykanth movies on the bus?
and the movie had not one but two Vijaykanths. Sighhh
Everyone in the movie looked so humongous that at any given point of
time it was not possible to the one actor's face fully on screen
I mean meena occupied one and a half screens, meera jasmine occupied
one, dear ol' captain liberally occupied two and the last scene was a
cinematographic miracle when two Vijakanths's, meera jasmine, meena
and Ambika were all shown on one screen.
I was fine till they started playing the movie and then i started
getting nauseous and though it was because of the AC i would like to
think it was because of the movie. Hmmmm

I have decided. I am going to marry a farmer in Kanyakumari, own a
cashew farm and live happily ever after. I visited Kanyakumari,
Nagercoil, Thiruchendur, Tirunelveli, Paabanaasam, Coutrallam,
Udankudi and I like all these places better than Chennai in terms of
weather. Such beautiful lush green fields, virgin waterfalls, lovely
rivers and streams and such nice people. I just didnt feel like coming
back

Every time i see mountains or something which remotely ressembles a
mountain i do not look at its natural beauty but I only think of
climbing it or guessing how tall it would be and how tough the climb
would be. Such primate like behavior from my side must be curbed if I
have any hopes of becoming human.

There is no other better way to spend a weekend than aimlessly
driving, randomly talking, endlessly eating, helplessly laughing and
stupidly grinning at pictures. And if it is with a couple of your best
friends it is bliss. Though a small (very small) part of me wishes I
had gone on a trip to Kodaikanal with a trekking club a HUGE (very
huge) part of me would not trade the weekend for anything in this
world. This weekend reminded me of the pondicherry chidambaram
pichavaram trip last year where we just got onto the first bus out of
Chennai to Pondicherry and had a capital time not having an agenda or
a plan. Ahhh!! Wanderlust!! :)

Its amazing how all mothers and grandmothers are just the same. I mean
you can have any kind of mother or grandmother. tall, thin, short,
fat, stout, dark, fair but the ONE thing common to them all is their
absolute obsession with feeding their kids. When i go home my mother
enters the kitchen the day i enter home and leaves it the day i leave.
Nothing gives her more pleasure than pottering around in the kitchen,
cooking for an entire family, extended family, friends, friends of
children, friends of friends..basically everyone.
Sighhh!! I want to go home!! :(

So the Super Kings clash with the Deccan Chargers today!! Go super kings!! :)

2009-04-24T07:47:00.001-07:00

The Chennai Super Kings have lost again to Delhi.
Sighh!! The way they were going I really really thought the match was ours. I mean c'mon you make 110 in ten overs. How difficult is to make 80 in another 10?
And what is this horror that we have bought that likes to call itself Flint-off. I mean they named him right i think. Bowling off the mark, Batting way off, fielding equally off. no wonder he is called flintoff.
Eeeeeeee!! Sad joke and Sad player we have bought after paying a bomb!!
Jeeez they could have paid me much much less than 1.55 million and i swear i d have batted better!! Bah!!

So much for sending messages to my friends after 10 overs who are Delhi-ites saying

Kya karte rehte ho dilli dilli
Chennai ko dekh ke bhaag rahe ho, jaise kutte ko dekh ke billi

and going Ha ha ha ha ha for good measure.

They of course had the last laugh after 20 overs replying

Chennai Super Kings bade shaan se rakha hai naam
Bermuda bhi tumse accha khelti hai, ho gaye badnaam!!

Sighhhhh!! Naak katwa di Chennai ne!! :-|

And Harsha Bhogle WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU??
I liked you. I always thought u looked dignified, spoke sense, had a lot of cricketing knowledge despite not being a player.
Now with your new..ummm. what could i call it without hurting your feelings?
That mop of something black on your head isnt very becoming to say the least. Do us all and yourself a favor and go bald again please. Seriously it would give you much more credibility. Somehow you look so much like a clown with this new hair style i just dont feel like taking you seriously. I mean you look too much like Himesh Reshammiya for me to do anything but laugh when u come on screen.

The cost of an Aloo Parantha (or several doxen given the way S and R ate like they had last seen food when Dev Anand was actually young - i mean not proclaiming that he was young but you know ACTUALLY young. That long back) is a nice looking black color sports watch!! :(
I left it on the table and forgot to pick it up later after the aloo parantha eating binge.
So if you frequent this place called Treat in Adyar and if you see some waiter wearing a black color sports watch catch hold of his collar and say "Kutte!!! Agar Maa ka doodh peeya hai to Wordsmith ki ghadi waapas de de."
Ok!! You dont really have to go till cussing his mother. Just tell him you will go personally and spit on all tables in the hotel if he doesnt give u back the watch. and please do it!! :P
Now a moot point is "Why did i leave the watch on the table"
Oh well. Murphy strikes again. I suddenly felt an itching sensation on the part of my wrist which lies under my watch and removed it to scratch with peace. and there. I lost my nice black watch and I am sporting a lady like titan watch which I dont fancy much!! Sighh

If you like reading humor please please pick up this writer called Erma Bombeck. She is a delightful writer. Simple language, everyday humor and adorable sarcasm. I have been struggling to finish Emma and catch 22 but i finished reading Bombeck's "If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits" in about 3 hours. i devoured it, to be precise.
I would rate her after PGW, Gerald durrell, James Herriott and Roald Dahl for humor writing. And though I might sound sexist it is refreshing to read such great humor from a woman. She is the female Dave Barry or Bill Cosby!! :)

Ok!! So thats enough nonsense spewed for today. Bus beckons, I shall leave and sighhh!! I am working tomorrow so expect a glum and depressing post!! :P

2009-04-22T07:03:00.001-07:00

Right now I am trying to read three books at a time and not doing justice to any one of them.
Catch - 22 lies open, so does a collection of short stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Emma by Austen (which I have more or less given up on. No classics for me Thank you. Been reading Emma for 3 months now and successfully finished 22 pages).
Dostoevsky errrr. let me say is not for light reading. I mean I begged for it from R of mine who rather graciously "gifted" the book to me (He already had it, didnt like it and gave it me and signed it "To the creature, with loathing :-|.". Thanks R. someone ever told ya you are the politest person there ever was??)
I have been trying to read it slowly and I DO like it but it is soooo slow at times that it bores me.
Catch 22 again started off well, with a lot of promising humor but again it lost pace midway and now i find myself struggling to complete the book something which I have never done before.
But somehow I have this warm and nice feeling inside that I have so many books which I can fall back and nowadays that I am home alone I am having quite a capital time reading and reading without caring a damn about the time.
I dont think anything in this world could give me more pleasure than a good book after a great dinner!!

Great dinner reminds me that after reading my last post I had both S and R asking me if I would like to have Aloo Paranthas. And before I could go "Awwwwwww, you guys are the best" they were quick to remind me that I would be the one treating them for accompanying me to eat Aloo Paranthas.

R: Yaar. Aloo Parantha khane chalegi?
Me: Huh!! How did u know I have an Aloo Parantha craving
R: I can read minds
Me: My blog!! Sheeesh! Of course. Thanks man!! I would love to eat.
R: Cool!! Chal mujhe treat de de.
Me: Sighhhh

THANKS guys!! :-\

Tomorrow is a holiday (For now let me not think of the fact that we will be compensating by working Saturday). Just the fact that tomorrow is not working is quite thrilling!! Yayyy!!

2009-04-21T07:38:00.001-07:00

With my grandmother gone out of station for a month and me being alone every day I am having the problem of 'what-to-have-for-dinner' everyday. My cooking skills being nil, my grandmother's in my cooking skills being nil (she has actually locked the kitchen and gone so i dont try my 'culinary' skills in there), my liking for outside food being nil, and my appetite and love for food being infinite I have been wondering what to do for food and I have devised an ingenious method!! (Take a bow Wordsmith, Take a bow!! :))
For the past 3 days I have been having salads and raw vegetables!! Cool huh??
Thanks to A who told me about the time she would make salads to fill herself up I have been having one cucumber, one beetroot, one tomato and couple of lettuce leaves for dinner everyday garnished with salt, pepper lemon and this amazing salad dressing that i got called the 'Thousand Island' salad dressing. (Good stuff!!) and no!! I have been looking at myself in the mirror daily and I havent been turning into a goat because of eating all those leaves and veggies!! :P
And I must say I am loving it and feeling very good about myself because I am actually eating healthy stuff and if I am to believe the newspapers I will not get cancer, hypertension, glaucoma, trachoma, arterial blocks for another 50 years and neither will I age fast!! So yayyy!!
Mom of course is super thrilled and acting all smug and going "Hah!! When i asked you to eat these things 10 years back the faces you made would make the faces of accident victims look good and now you are being forced to eat them. Good Good. Good for health!!"

On a totally unrelated note I read this article somewhere which said people in England are fostering dogs and taking care of stray dogs because they were bored and I was like "Whaaaat?? what the hell. Save the human race first man. The dog race can save itself".
For crying out loud, There are children in Somalia and Uganda and Srilanka who die because of lack of food and proper nourishment and you want to foster and save the life of a DOG????
I mean the GDP of Uganda would be equal to the money these guys spend on buying biscuits for their dogs and preening their dogs!!
Leave a 4 month old baby on the streets and a four month old dog on the streets. Trust me the dog WILL survive and even if it doesnt i dont care. Truly I dont. I d rather kill 20 stray dogs and save the life of one child than have children elsewhere in the world die and foster dogs.
Now mind you I love dogs. Yeah they are good pets and fun to be with but frankly I d rather say I saved a human than say I saved a dog proudly.
Now you might argue that your not fostering dogs is not going to improve the situation in Uganda and Somalia and you might as well derive some pleasure while doing good.
fair enough. Do good but do some good for the human race first and THEN for the dog race!! Bah!!
You can completely disagree but this is just my opinion

Coming back to food I have this sudden craving for Aloo Parantha now. I mean proper Amma made Aloo parantha with a lot of ghee on the sides and a dollop of butter on the top and cold cold dahi and some mango pickle to go along with it!! Ahhhh!! Bliss!!
Sighhh!! I want aloo parantha RIGHT now!! Salad be damned. I am going out and eating aloo parantha today!! :P

2009-04-20T07:21:00.001-07:00

- I cant believe the lousy Mumbai Indians beat the Super Kings. I am still in shock. We pay a whoooping 1.55 million and "buy" Flintoff and what does he do? Lose the match for us. Sheeesh!! Anyway. I think the fact that my dad was supporting Mumbai Indians and then they won has me all the more irritated!! :P
So the other day dad calls and he is like "Yayyyy!! Our Sethji and Bhabhiji's team won" and i am like what??
and he is like "Mukesh Ambani's team won". If u havent guessed already my dad works for one of Mukesh Ambani's umpteen concerns and i was like Sheeesh, Dhoni so deserved to win!!
Lets hope CSK does better in future and how i wish they were playing here. Could have gone and watched the matches!! :)

- I wish people in office would use deodorants. I mean ok I am not asking you to douse yourself in perfume and choke and asphyxiate all living beings withing 4 feet distance but you can you know just smell pleasant. Especially since Chennai summers are so cruel and anybody who has been out in the sun for more than 10 minutes sweats like crazy and stinks worse than an Onyx van (if you have not driven past an Onyx van on your way to office in the morning lemme tell you that you are missing out on one of the best scents in life!! :P) the least they can do is use some deo and then enter the lift or go to get coffee or stand in the lunch queue.
Sighh!! They probably should have an odometer in every reception which checks the odor levels of each individual and if it is below permissible levels he/ she shouldnt be allowed to enter.
Gross you think. Well then try standing next to an Onyx van!! :-\

- I dunno if oughta feel bad when I am teased mercilessly but HONESTLY i only feel like laughing and I would rather be teased mercilessly than have people treat me in a sophisticated and nice manner. That would be so bleaaahh. Sometimes i wonder if i should feel bad coz this weekend we had a small get together - a coupla friends and as usual i was the butt of all jokes being teased mercilessly about my lack of IQ, stinking feet, loud voice, incessant chatter and inability to just keep quiet etc and I just laughed coz i seriously was not offended even one bit. And then after i went home i had two friends msg me asking me if all that teasing rankled me and if they had gone over the board and i was like "eh??" which is the most intelligent expression i can give and i was like "sheeesh. i dont even remember what you guys told me"

Maybe i should change. Maybe I should be more of a girl, Maybe I should cry when people tease me, Maybe I shouldnt talk much, maybe i should just laugh delicately and not guffaw hee haw hee haw everytime i am teased, MAYBE then i would get married and my parents would be in peace!! :P

Note to self: Maybe i should stop writing such silly posts!! :roll:

2009-04-17T05:24:00.001-07:00

So after i wrote my last post I had a couple of people mailing me and
messaging me saying stuff like "Suicide is a crime. You always have a
choice, Take counselling" etc and I am pretty sure the only reason
they didnt call me was because they feared I would be dead already!!
:P

So yeah basically my last post was a sad morose and dull rigmarole on
this thing called my life and it kinda shocked the wits outta the few
people who read this blog.

Rest assured guys I am nowhere close to committing suicide, I have not
bought a sturdy looking rope and I am NOT looking at the fan
longingly. Neither have I bought that bottle of pills conveniently
named "Poison" in big capital letters which heroines in Hindi movies
look at longingly and more often than not consume when they realise
that they are "paalo-ing kisi aur ka paap" in their stomach, mortein
at home is ONLY being used to kill them rodents, knives and blades at
home are not lingering close to my wrist and actually I would be
surprised if the knives at home could even cut through vegetables let
alone human skin and a really thick one like mine at that.

So basically yeah back to normal after having been in a bleaaaah state
for quite some time. All thanks to A and M who gave me some good
advice mostly consisting of a lot of unparliamentary words and
clutching their heads and telling me "Woman!! decide what you want in
life" when I poured out my heart to them and saying profound things
like "This too shall pass" and sending me virtual hugs and sharing
their own experiences and asking me to just hang in there (errr..hang
as in not hang to death but hang as in you know just keep my cool) and
telling me time and again that I am special (guys!! did u really mean
it or were u just u know gassing to cheer me up?? :P or maybe u meant
special in a totally different sense!! :P Whatever)

Thanks a lot guys. I owe you one!! :)

Sometimes i feel glad that at least the closest circle of friends that
I have who know me inside out are sensible and though they will listen
patiently to how i would love to get lost in the forest and become a
cave woman and how I am going to take all my life savings and just go
to the Himalayas and become a monk they will also be the first people
to gimme a tight slap or send me a stern mail and ask me to come back
to earth and face reality and help me do so.

You dont choose your family. That just happens but yes, you DO have
the choice of choosing your friends and I am mighty glad that though I
may have screwed up a lot of times in life, done a lot of things which
i regret and hurt a lot of people and done a lot of wrong things at
least the one thing which i did right was choosing my friends.
Ok!! So this post is becoming entirely too senti for my taste. Thanks
A and M for being stupid enough to befriend me.

So yeah cry as much as u like for I am back. A little wiser but
loonier than ever. This time I am here to stay!! :)

I wish....

2009-04-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

So for a couple of days, weeks rather it has been the same old shit at home just the days being different. Suddenly i realize that i am tired. Tired of having to defend myself, tired of having to prove to people who should know me well that i am not doing any nefarious activities or "inviting" trouble, tired of having to portray an image of what i am NOT to complete strangers, tired of returning home from work daily to a house whose inmates look at me with worry/suspicion/anger/disgust/pity, basically everything except a normal and friendly smile or meaningless banter. Never before have i looked forward to meaningless banter more. I try and talk to people to whom i can say anything without being judged or talk anything without being misunderstood or talk aimlessly on mundane topics.

Maybe it helps me forget reality and go to a place of temporary comfort, maybe i am cheating myself, maybe i am running away from my troubles, maybe I am tired of people's pitiful glances, worried expressions and their "effort" to understand me. Frankly i would rather not be understood at all. That is such a heavy word. "Understand". Does everyone even understand themselves to actually go about understanding others? I dont know.

I wish I could just laugh and push my troubles to the morrow
I wish I could just sleep in peace without having to worry about who I am hurting by my actions
I wish I could just sleep daily and not cry myself to sleep daily
I wish people wouldn't take me on a guilt trip everyday, day after day...
I wish I could be 18 again and be in college where my biggest worry was the exams and most important need was food
I wish I was a teenager again when my biggest fear was public speaking and the most sleepless night was the night before my last exam before the much awaited summer holidays
I wish I had never grown up
I wish I could just wake up tommorrow to find out that the past month has only been a nightmare and things are actually the way i want them to be
I wish I was mature enough to understand relationships and marriage and understand that everyone, EVERYONE does it and most of them are pretty happy about it
I wish I wasn't so confused all the time
I wish I knew what I wanted from life and how to go about achieving it
I wish I could just fly and go to the Himalayas and spend the rest of my life trekking and leading the life of a nomad without caring two hoots about "society"
I wish I was a better daughter, sister, friend - a better human being
I wish I wasn't such a bitch and one striving for perfection to be one at that!! :-|
I wish I had fallen in love so I would know what it is like think about one person ALL the time
I wish I had fallen in love so I would NOT be going through what I am going through now
I wish people wouldn't judge me or have preconceived notions about me especially people who have known me for more than 2 decades.
I wish people wouldnt break my trust or at least give me a warning when they do so
I wish I loved to cry so I wouldnt feel bad for doing it so frequently
I wish I could get back my sense of humor which seems to have deserted me at a time when i need it most
I wish I wouldnt write such sad posts!!

Aaaaaaaah!!!

I wish I would quit wishing for things which will never happen!!

Second Innings

2009-03-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

So I start my second innings on blogspot today after my fairly decent first innings was cruelly nipped in its nascent stages by a no ball!!

So you cry, you fret, you fume and you curse the entire world which you think is always conspiring against you and trying to make life miserable for you and then in a moment of realization you understand that it is up to you to make the best of what you have and quit cribbing. If the world throws shit at you make manure and fertlilizers, if the world throws swear words at you make a dictionary for the adults :P, if the world throws advice and righteousness at you start an anonymous blog!! :)

So the criminal inside me arose and told the errr other criminal inside me that finding loopholes in a value system is as easy as finding and counting the ribs on a Somalian kid's chest. So if one door shuts out, you coolly go and open the other one albeit with care lest someone shuts this one too.

So i start again in this avatar not as a girl, not as a software engineer, not as a daughter, not as a sister, not as a friend but just as a wordsmith who loves to play with words, loves the way you can put 26 alphabets in a gazillion different combinations to express the myriad emotions of the human mind, loves to write and loves to express herself.

So read and if you think i am not making any sense remember that to make sense was never my intention!! :)

P.S: I just realised that I have started every paragraph with a So.. Ewwwwwwww!!