The Wordsmith

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 :):)

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!! :-\

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

"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!! :))