Allo World
As much as I dislike wordpress and am a google loyalist, my own impulsive action has forced me to shift my blog to wordpress, so here I am. Welcome to me.
Why I had to shift, is because an empty blog was not very inspiring. Sigh. This is it.
My Ice Cream Man
I love the the corner shop ice cream man. There has never been a day when I do not stop by his shop, spend time with him while he attends to other kids and plays with them. Though I know that he loves me, a teeny weeny bit of me feels jealous when he plays with other kids and entertains them. I know I am just a little part of his world, and that his world is incomplete without the other kids he plays with everyday. Yet, I wish I could have my corner shop ice cream man all to myself just for a day.
Walking down a winding lane bathed in moonlight, w…
Walking down a winding lane bathed in moonlight, when I stumbled up on you. The night froze right then, right there. The lamps that lit up homes are slowing dying out, the night is about to end. The realization hits me hard. As the moon gives way to the sun he whispers to me saying he will be back, back for longer.
Days just slip by with nothing said or even done. …
Days just slip by with nothing said or even done. I wish I had just another day with you. In the hope that another day will never end. Hoping you will never leave me. I find myself hoping time would just freeze. Another day. Have I ever told you that I love you? Would it even matter to you if I did? Another day. Just so that I could sit by you, words may not be exchanged; in your company I find peace. Another day.
Another day and just the two of us.
Biwi ne tag kiya
I lou my wifey.The only reason why I agree to take up this tag. I also understand that Business Ethics Lou has tagged me, so this is also for Harini Honey.
One thing you are very much afraid of?
Water overflowing from buckets. The concern makes sense these days due to the acute water crisis out State faces.
Two incidents you can never forget in your life?
Just two? Unfair yet.
HOD’s reaction to mutinous letter demanding reduction of workload.
My marriage with Akx. Next time when you meet me, do remind me to show you my shaadi ki tasveer.
Three Books you love reading again and again?
The Five People you meet in Heaven, The English Teacher, The Alchemist
Four Women who are most beautiful?
Why restrict beauty to women when there are Karan Johar, Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan.
Five of your favourite food items?
Brownie with ice cream, veg macaroni salad, Fresh Cream Pineapple Cake, anuything Sweet C.
Six words you use very often, – oral/written?
Ei what ya
Bleddy
Joy
Awww
Slightly
Muchly
Seven things you like about yourself?
The fact that I can pfaff with ease.
You can’t stop me, unless I decide to stop.
The fact that I can entertain myself when I need to.
Quarters.
Innate ability to ignore people when I have to.
Honest and humble person that I am.
And I still do not know to wink.
Eight film personalities who are your all time favourites?
Shahrukh Khan – here is a man who is proud of being a woman.
Amithab Bachchan – This guy ruined his son’s life, bleddy.
Abishek Bachchan – Ei I pity this one ya.
Madhavan – He is a cute boy.
Julia Roberts – Ei, she is belddy brilliant.
Hugh Grant – Go watch Music and Lyrics
Dhanush – Ei, he gives me inspiration ya.
Nine movies you will not mind watching again and again.
Nine is too large a number. Though I can watch any movie n number of times, everytime I have a new perspective.
Ten songs you would like to listen to everyday
Bleddy this feels like I am learning to count. Ei wife, what ya? Okay I will do this last one.
Kahin Door Jab Din Dhal Jaaye
Aane wala pal
Jeevan Ke safar mein rahi
Tu Bin bataye
Way Back into love
Mitwa
Kal ho na ho
Kyun Hawa aaj yun
Mandram vandha
Ei Kishore Kumar if he sings nursery rhyme also I will listen to it everyday.
I tag none, if you are vetti, this is a good way to spend twenty minutes.
Sigh, bye.
It is natural that relationships come to an end, either gradually or abruptly due to some altercation. But what hurts the most is a mutual exclusion of one another from their respective social circles with no hassles at all. A formal goodbye is never exchanged; one does not have the hope of meeting the other ever again, life goes on. You cease to miss the other person who was so much a part of your life at one time with ease. A certain interdependence disappears and there is no necessity to communicate with each other anymore.
Its a pity that a good bye never uttered is taken for granted and I quietly excuse myself from the lives of people I have known so closely for a pretty long time.
Tears well up But I force myself to smile You I wa…
Tears well up
But I force myself to smile
You I want to spend more time with
We have spoken into the night
Hours on end
I still have a lot left unsaid
That bench, that pen
That swing off which you fell
Would remind me of ‘our’ times
A collector or memories I am today
Treasuring my little assets
As I go in search of more…
Somethings can’t be suppressed for too long for on…
Somethings can’t be suppressed for too long for one, they are inevitable and two how much ever you try, it is obvious. And when you are faced with the looming reality towering tall, all you can possibly think of doing is allowing life to take its natural course…
Post, bleddy Post ya!
This is an open appeal to Anna, Divya, Nina, Lakshmi and Kavya (if you are reading that is) and finally Gits (do you remember the url of your blog?) to post something, anything, on their respective blogs. And those of you who are reading this post of mine ( I hope), if you are a blogger too, POST! The reason you have a blog, is so that you can post, entertain others, sound off and vent out.
And I consider it to be imminent on the part of the Journo Bloggers to blog ONE LAST TIME before we all leave college and grow up, grow up so much that even commenting and reply to those silly comments looks childish. At least Divya and Nina owe the blogdom one post on account of Bombay Shopping.
Anna, you owe the world a post on ummm… I dunno, something.
Lak, you owe, Div and Nina post for the sake Thebromas and Chappals.
Kavya, you just elaborate your post on the whole Queen thing, and how you may land up in the Big Brother House!
Sigh, I hope that was appealing. If not, I stick my tongue out at you.
The Gardener
For about a year now I have been visiting a garden of roses. The gardener over a period of time I have come to know from close quarters. His roses are beautiful, their smile is contagious and addictive. Their charm never fades; I love to walk by the garden everyday and listen to the gardener narrate stories about each of his priced roses. In such awe he is of his roses that he skips around like a little boy who just figured that five added five times is just as five multiplied by five.
The Gardener recently invited me to tend to his roses. I felt a special warmth in the invitation, I felt included. I felt elated that I could now contribute to the beauty of the roses that I only admired till very recently.
At some point in life one does get used to a gradu…
At some point in life one does get used to a gradual alienation from people. It does not hurt so much once you realize that isolation was imminent and in some way also necessary. But then there does arise some discomfort when the people move so far apart that it kind of becomes impossible to be even able to spread joy in each others life, indirectly even. But the hope that the other is happy keeps you going…
Mumbai se aayi main, mujhko salaam karo!
It would be unfair if I did not chronicle my last weekend on my blog. It is very special to me considering the admission it landed me into.
Well, so I had been to Bombay and Pune to attend my final interview at Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication. Divya who shall hereafter be referred to as D for simplicity sake and Nina, N, for the same reason were my fellow interviewees. Though the Symbi Bimbi bonding began when we started doing our assignments, it was the early morning flight to Bombay that really got us talking about our deepest concerns of life. Shrugging shoulders as we refer to it is our prime concern. Well, thats our secret and if you really want to know what it is about, you need to do the Symbi assignments and also make to us (a panel of three) an innovative self-introduction, then we will stress you out in a stress interview then put you through a session where you will bond (read ragged) by random strangers and finally if we have at least four people wanting to know what shrugging shoulders is, you will also have to face a Group Discussion.
D and N, for your kind information are GIRLS, while I find it difficult to classify myself as a girl. They set out shopping on Day 1 of trip, blowing huge sums of money on little stones hanging from metal. Amusing. I bought myself two pairs of Kolhapuris and two skirts as they were feeling very guilty that I was not shopping.
Day 2 was quite uneventful but for the blasted interview. N and I were sent for a peer interface but suffered a rude shock when we realized that we were facing a stress interview first thing in the morning. We survive it. N was asked if she knew some random Parsi Man and I was asked what I thought of Matrimony. They had a queer sense of stress I tell you. After which N and I bonded with Buddha. He is a nice man, in Black and White, he is like R K Laxman’s Common Man.
Day 3. D missed quite a bit on Day 3. We were traveling back to Bombay in a Volvo bus that was complete paisa vasool. As we entered the Express Highway, the bus man pulled out a CD and inserted it into the player, the movie we were to watch for the rest of the journey was Bhagam Bhag! A very very very sad adaptation of Snehithiye in Tamil. D missed the climax which was hilarious, to a level of repulsion.
Day 4. We again went shopping. Don’t ask why. N and D will be able to answer that question better. Then of course, food. Theobroma! And Ganne ka Ras, and we forgot to pay him. I hope Shradha paid him the next day.
Btw, D is a very nice sister. She shopped a lot for her brother, she wanted to bring some happiness into his life. He is having his board exams. N is again a nice girl, she shrugs her shoulders and also eats a lot. Her Uncle’s home in Bombay is like heaven. It is equipped with the barest of minimum. Fans, tube lights, loo, fridge and most importantly Tata Sky. For people like me who are starved of TV, I loved the Tata Sky experience.
Bombay finally is a dirty place. People just live there because they have to earn money and are alive. Pune is a pseudo place.
It hits you hard when you realise that, you will n…
It hits you hard when you realise that, you will no longer go back to that class, sit at that desk and message from under the table. I may not miss individuals, but I will surely miss the experience. College to me was really not about bunking classes, gossip and assignments; it was beyond the obvious. It made life feel complete in a way, now when I know that college is over and I do not have a job or an admission to any educational institution, I feel unanchored.
Plant Girl Speaks…
Some people touch you so deeply, that you sometimes begin to wonder what life could have been without them. Some relationships are beautiful when they are not confined and defined, they at times mean a lot more than those with defined boundaries. There are times when you know that if you do want to cross a choked road, a tender hand will hold yours and take you right up to the pavement. There are moments when you just smile reminiscing some sweet nothings.
Ei, what ya!
Warning: Do not read if you are not a quarter
Ei, that eli kutti wanted me to put post ya… Thats why this vetti post ya… Ei, first one big keeeep for that round shaped thing ya, it is jealous of our fullness ya… Ei, miss me while I am gone ya, when you are in the lab no, please keep one chair for me ya, my aura will occupy it ya…
Ei, what ya, we dont have pictures in sesky waitress skirts ya… Ei, lets do photo shoot in FPS style ya… Ei, put the comment ya… When i come back I will beam with delight ya…
No Title
The chances that I have contracted partial Alzheimer’s disease is very high. It has only affected my linguistic abilities, I don’t remember words. It scares me as I wonder what would happen if I really did forget, say, English. To begin with I would not be able to blog, as lame as it maybe, I am quite concerned about such trivial things. Then, I would have to speak in a mixture of Telugu, Tamil, Bengali and Hindi; because I don’t have a huge vocabulary in any of those languages it will be a mixture. And only those who know all those languages would be able to communicate with me. Not so tough actually, even if people understand just two of those four some minimalistic conversation can be managed.
That apart, I also think I am suffering from schizophrenia, I am seeing and feeling things that may not exist in the real world.
Ei, quarters, I will miss you all ya. I say shift this MOP, Google, DLM and Symbi to one place. Like maybe Lab!
Lyrics and Music
These mushy movies have weird effects on people. Till last week I was referring a refill for a pen as a revolver and today I was unable to find the right ‘lyrics’ (read words) to express my angst.
And now I think I have found my way back into love.
Sigh, why do I watch these movies?
Why does Hugh Grant have to be as old as my father?
Why am I confused?
Why do I not know how to move on?
Why do I have to do assignments and be ragged before even joining college?
Why do people team black with lavender?
Why do I want to watch Music and Lyrics all over again?
Why do I wish I had never known Pinto and Pinty?
Why o Why o Why
The Storm
When there is a storm, the wind blows so violently that mighty trees sway murderously. That furious sway could also be mistaken for a passionate dance, until the tree is either uprooted or left hollow. The passion is momentary, but the tree is left in a state of comatose for ever before a whiff of cold breeze adds life to it.
Sniff…
I will miss the council. A lot. The orange shell room on the third floor beside the water cooler – The Council Room. Beyond Convention, the green brigade, the maternity clothes and more importantly, the judges ditching us; these would be the main highlights of SC 06-07.
Even after all the bitching, the petty grudges I will still miss my council. The cave painting trend that Akx and I started (now the council room is more or less green, we used water colours on walls), the gossip, the terrace meetings, the dressing up, the early morning waking and decking up, the late nights in council room, the ice tea in guest room; Nimmi’s pep talk, much fun these things were.
Also this council was beyond convention by all means. We got a man to decorate our college in Lavender and Pink for money. We got a man to watch our girls wear ethnic clothes and also judge them, for money. Finally, we hurt an old man who did not deserve any of it, for money.
Still. I will miss you all.
Rivers of Kheer and Mountains of Ice cream – Parzania
My parents rarely take the pains of going to Sathyam to watch a movie. The drive is too much for three hours of entertainment is their contention. But today we watched a movie at Sathyam, no it was not Salaam-e-Ishq but Parzaania. If you think that only Karan Johar can create tearjerkers, you are wrong! Rahul Dholakia can do that too.
Watching this movie was an experience. I have seen Kamal Hassan depict riots and violence in Hey Ram, but this movie was different. It did not make me cringe or turn away from the screen. I was glad that the movie did not focus on the violence, but also on human emotions.
It was tough to digest. I have lost erasers, pencils, pens but the thought of losing a person sent a chill down my spine. There is no evidence that a person is lost, neither is the person found, you don’t want to lose hope, but just wait for the person to return. You live with the hope that the person is alright wherever he is. The violence or the divide between the religions was a small issue before this loss.
Just about 80-100 people must have turned up for the movie, everyone of them just sat in silence through the intermission. And after the movie ended some continued to sit and wipe tears off their face. An old couple sitting next to me cried through out the movie!
Some powerful performances by Naseeruddin Shah and Sarika also the Kids.
Still Alive
Its been a long time. Hello and Hi to those few loyal readers that I have. This is to tell you that I am still alive and kicking.
I feel wise today.
- Men who don’t justify their pieces of writing and who don’t use punctuation marks should not be trusted.
- Mathematically inclined humans should not be taught the English alphabet; I assume knowledge of one letter is enough, considering they know enough numbers to qualify the one letter.
- I don’t want to generalize, but I agree with Akx’s notion of Men.
- Anupam Kher is a cute man
- Police men are such happy beings
- Never make any statements in interviews, the interviewer just rapes you. Even if you convince them that you want to be studying in their institute they would have a problem with your choice.
- If you can, try never to fall in love. It feels like stepping into shit, even if you wash it off, the stench remains.
2006 – Annual Report
It’s the New Year. Now really I have no clue why that’s such a big deal, but it is. Time to take stock of 2006.
It began with being a new year. It hit the high to early and hence the fall came early too. And after that, life fluctuated between high and low as if it were some sine curve. Though somewhere the sine curve defied all sciences and hit an abnormal high in a tangential plane.
And then came December. Wow! That was fast. And in December I was cut off from the virtual world that makes up about 40% of my life. With that gone, I had time for a lot of things. Life felt beautiful.
It still does. I am enjoying it while it lasts.
Birthmonth and Dhoom
Happy Birthmonth to me and my Blog. It was the same time last year that I started this blog of mine to serve no particular purpose. It was another avenue for me to write, rant, ramble on with no censorship, no editors, no code of ethics to follow. It was a journalist’s dream come true.
Now , my blog is a year old, and I am a year old blogger. And a lot of things have happened meanwhile. My blog has witnessed my best and worst phases. The last month being the worst-est of them all, as I did not blog at all. This post though is to celebrate the birthmonth, it is also to all those bloggers who are kind enough to read me; I am alive…. I am not very sure if I am going to write as frequently, but I am back…
Btw, all you girls reading my blog(are there any?), you should watch Dhoom 2. Hrithik and Abishek are Heavenly. With such men around, I wonder who would fall for a Jeyam Ravi, Rajnikant, Vikram!!! Let me also tell you that Ash is the one girl every girl should hate. She KISSES Hrithik (in reel life) and then also gets to marry Abishek (real life)! Thats how unfair the world is to us girls.
And boys, you can watch Dhoom 2 too. You can watch Ash, but she kisses Hrithik! And Bipasha too, though her role is just as good as the coke that Hrithik drinks through out the movie. The coke can pops in and out with no reason what so ever. But she is there too (in swimsuits). There are bikes, skateboards, action, graphics, gizmos and girls. A review will follow. I am being good to the movie for just another day. The movie is complete ‘paisa vasool’. But this is one movie I will never say, ‘Dont Watch’. Everyone should watch it.
Nobody forget Johnny Man, Watch Dhoom.
On rains, and why I hate them.
Rains! I hate the rains. For just two reasons, a non-existent drainage system, and an existent respiratory problem. The latter though does not bother me much; I have learnt to live with it.
But the drainage system! I can’t find the right words to express my misery. I want to get out of my home. But I have to wade through ankle deep water, which is mixed with onyx garbage to get to the road! Ewww is all I have to say! And today if I am going to watch Dark Horse crossing the mini pond in front of my home, you can picture my craze for theatre arts!
And the corporation guys should be made to wade in all the pools around the city. You call them and ask to do something about the situation and they quip, “We are in-charge of the other side of the road”! Screw you! The widest road in Chennai is the 100 ft road and the other roads are anything between 10-60ft and you deny owner ship of a whole road! If there is someone who follows the median, it is the corporation.
Here you can see a car on nearly the right lane of the road while it should be on the left and a banana stem floating in the pool… Ew.
I cant resist myself from talking about my college when it comes to rains. The whole campus looks like a pool of blood when it rains. The ground is of red mud, so we have a rather murky pool to wade through during the rains. Saved are those who don’t have bikes, they have nothing to do with the pool. But I am among those children of god who have to park the bike and wade through red muddy water! My footwear must be weeping, but since I wade through water, I can’t see their tears. Gaaah!
Home then college and now school. Every time it rained, a heart shaped puddle would be formed about three four feet away from the place where the mike used to placed for the morning assembly. Throughout the four years that I studied in that school, that puddle would be formed right there. If I could, I would like to go and see for myself if that puddle still forms in that very place, but alas… The pool in my home does not permit me to take up such happy expeditions.
ewwww
Public display of Affection is not something I take to very kindly. So today I was at CCD and there were three couples I was noticing with great intent.
Couple 1: These people were the wannabe couple. They wanted their picture to appear in Deccan Chronicle’s Party Whirl. Unfortunately, the photographer does not come to places to CCD. The guy was putting his arm around the neck of the girl like he would kill her any moment. The girl was finding this rather romantic! Ew! And they were holding hands like there would be no tomorrow. The best was the way the guy the fed the girl. “Beta.. tu khale, agar tu nahin kahygaa toh monster uncle aake tumhe pakadke lejaayega”, that was his basic intention. And he understood that I was keenly observing his actions and recreating those moments with my friend. He must have thought that my friend and I were jealous of his girl because that girl has a guy and we don’t! They also were nearly sitting on each other’s lap; it was not a pretty sight.
Couple 2: The man was a 30year old divorcee. How do I know? Experience of people watching. The girl, a BPO employee. They were not on each other’s lap but were feeding each other and were probably talking about how to save money after marriage. I could not see the man, he was hidden behind a pillar otherwise I could have given a better description.
The third was damn interesting. Kutti girl, with kutti payyan in shorts. They were cozying up in a couch and indulging in something I cant describe. She was ruffling his hair to dry it. She was also scratching him on his arm. She was sitting on his lap. They were feeding each other. They also seemed to think that we were jealous of their love story.
WHY DO PEOPLE DO SUCH CRAP IN PUBLIC???? WHY WHY WHY? IF INDULGING IN UNNATURAL SEX IS A CRIME, THIS IS ALSO A CRIME!
Bloody Noise!
The festival of lights brought me great enlightenment. I realized after having received some 40 odd Happy Diwali messages that, Deepavali was the biggest among all festivals. I always was of the thought that Kolu/Durga Puja/Navratri was the major festival of Hindus. I for some reason want to attribute this status of Deepavali to the firecrackers. The more the festival annoys people the greater it is. Nobody wishes you “Happy Varalakshmi Vratam” do they? It does not annoy the public or disrupt public life much; hence nobody bothers to wish one another. The more bothersome the festival is the more people wish one another to make each other happy before infuriating each other.
That theory of mine aside, I have an urge to recite my 6th standard Deepavali essay whose first line expresses what the festival is essentially about. An array of lamps. Over the years the meaning of the festival has been misinterpreted and now it stands for, an activity to pollute the atmosphere.
Gaaaah.
Excuse me for my anti-festival celebration stand. But consider staying at home all day and only indulging in watching Diwali Special movies with noise in the background. I miss all the important dialogues of the movie and end up writing such indifferent posts about happy festivals.
Yeh DON Nahin Hai
Arre deewano ise pehechano, Kahan se aayaa yeh hai KOUN???
I love to indulge in character assassination.
Why Shahrukh? For the only reason that He is the King of Bollywood and there is no place in the world where he is not known (But for Darfur, Timbaktu and some other obscure places). I would have liked AB Baby as DON. When Narang realizes that DON is not actually DON in the prison cell, you really have to notice the way SRK says, “Main DON hoon”. He was imploring the audience to relate to him as DON. But SRK my man, you are Rahul, you can never be DON or Vijay or Jay or Devdas. He is gay. I am telling you, he really is. Notice his tie-style-statement in the movie. I have not seen any man flaunting his non-existent cleavage and making sure that every woman notices it. And the Purple velvet clothes that he sports are anything but slick and suave. The man though pulls it off really well. I hate the character of DON and would also tell a police officer on the road that “Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, Namumkin hai”. Shahrukh is the Best and no doubt.
Priyanka Chopra (Roma). I have no qualms about her; Zeenat Aman should be a happy lady now.
Kareena my Kameeni. Why was she dancing like THAT? And please, all you guys out there, her legs are like Kaddu! And who told Farhan Akhtar that Kareena could ever essay Helen’s role? And the best was when her mouth was tied up; she looked like a goldfish out of water!
Isha Kopikar. My driver woman. She did not have a great role, but yeah, whatever she had to do, she did it well. Her clothes are something one should look at.
Boman Irani (DCP Saheb (De Silva)/Vardhan). This guy was a rather funny man. But the way he pulled off action scenes with panache is worth watching. The thing with this guy was that right from the beginning, he did not appear to be a man who could be liked. But Iftekar was likeable. Sorry for making the comparison, it is unavoidable at times.
Arjun Rampal (Jasjeet). He is perfect father material. His feat of carrying his son on his back on the roof of the corridor that connects the two tallest buildings of the world is awesome; just that the most risky part was never shown.
Narang and Mac. These men were very funny. Specially Mac, he resembled a sidekick of Lion (Sonia). He was cute in his own way, he was a man.
Om Purie. He is my favorite character. He was just perfect.
These are just some characters of the movie that I remember now, approximately, three hours after watching the movie. There are so many characters, so many twists that my brain refused to register any unwanted details.
You all should watch this movie if you ve not watched Matrix, it will give you a fair idea of what Matrix was like. The stunts were out of this world. And the climax was ultimate stuff. Though, by the time the climax had come, the movie stopped being DON and was becoming like Kal Ho Na Ho. You want the police to come, catch Vardhan, Don to escape. But the pace is like that of Dilip Kumar directing a movie.
There is one thing that I learnt from this movie though; Hindi is not only rashtriya bhasha, but also antarashtriya bhasha. Every cop in Malaysia knows hindi. All thanks to Bollywood, hindi is gaining popularity.
While in Devdas, Sanjay Leela Bhansali did not have any scope of using high funda technology, this movie broke all barriers. I was looking for Vijay to carry a Laal Notebook to De Silva Saheb, instead he handed over a diskette to him. And DON endorses Motorola mobiles.
A movie I will not stop my enemy from watching. He needs to know that I am good and did not force him to watch Paarijaatam or Lage Raho Munna Bhai. And all my friends DO watch the movie for all the special effects, sounds, and SRK.
Finally I managed not to draw any comparisons between Big B and SRK. I am glad.
Wisdom
Computers teach a person manners and patience. I call it the computer revolution.
It is never too tough to get a waiter to take your order if you are polite enough to walk up to him and call him to your table.
If a journalism student from my college does not become a journalist she would be slogging as a layout editor in some publication.
Men are losing their identity.
When colleges declare holidays, they mean, “we will be working but we would be unpredictable”.
When boredom beckons, disfigure pictures of people. And send it to them too; it has quite a deep impact.
Being on the defencive is not the best stand ever.
Other than pessimists one should keep away from old depressed men. They annoy you to a point of no return.
An Adult’s day out…
Children have always fascinated me, though the ones that throw tantrums get the worst of me. And considering I am 19 now, I have realized that the best days of my life were when I was a kid. And these days I have a growing urge to do stuff I never did when I was a child.
And the other day at Adyar Bakery with my bushman friend (Nixau) was a very happy experience. I basically wanted to drink Iced tea, but it was not available and so I had to have something else. And none of the pastries were as appealing and Nixau suggested the idea of having chocolate to me. And Dairy Milk is not something I can say NO to. There was this array of chocolates and I had to pick one. The sweet shop uncle now asked me which one I wanted, so I pointed at one placed in those sweet shop glass cabinets, which was quite a long process. He seemed to pick up everything other than what I wanted! That added to the experience though. These glass cabinets are very enchanting. But the ones at Sweet C are scary! And the trepidation with which I was waiting for sweet shop uncle to get me my chocolate was divine.
At the end of the day it felt like joyful day out with a brother/father. Bliss. Now, I wonder if my father and I have had any sweet shop day outs together… Fade out…
Gimme way dude….
Noise is one thing that annoys me a lot. And more so the abnormal noises. What I mean by abnormal is the sound of a typewriter in a hospital. I ve been driving a lot recently, thanks to print journal.
So I was on my way to my friend’s place and most of the travel is on Mount Road. I was a nice unsuspecting trivial element of the traffic until one wannabe with hideous hair, baggy pants with pockets hanging much below his arse, a T-Shirt that resembled some mechanic’s cleaning cloth on an Enticer. I love the shape of this bike. But I did not know I would hate it ever. I completely understood the need of Mr. Wannabe, he must have had a girlfriend waiting for him somewhere and was in a hurry. But he HONKED! He should not have done that. The noise that the horn produced was a cross between an infant wailing and that of an ambulance siren. I freaked, and lost balance, was a mini circus on road.
I decided to keep away from him, but no respite, he continued to honk, like it was his duty and he was obsessed. I for some reason felt it was the noise the girlfriend would make when he arrived late for the date. The girlfriend of such a wannabe would be another wannabe, so I thought, she would better say, “Why are you late yaaaa??” than grunting.
All that aside, I now have a lot of respect for the “pom pom” sound of most horns.
Music me and tears
Music has really never been my cup of tea. Some people who tried teaching me music were very candid and told my parents that they were wasting money on me. Ah! As sad as that is, today another blunt person was teaching me to sing. And I did not volunteer to learn; I had to learn. After bearing with me for some time, he very minimally raised his hand in complete Bharatnatyam style and signaled me to STOP!
Sacrilege.
And to top it all he makes us sing a song with such beautiful lyrics, that I was beginning to feel that Gulzar was the second best in the world. Gaaaah, these songs do weird things to me. While everyone was singing the song, I felt a tear roll down my cheek. Damn, now I hated it.
I am not singing songs ever in public and especially in a gathering of musically aware souls. And as for songs with beautiful lyrics, I will still cry I guess.
Macaroni ala AjSus
This is something that NO cookbook will ever carry. It’s Aj’s and my very novel recipe. Allow us to present to you, Macaroni ala AjSus.
Ingredients:
One plate of consumed brownie with ice cream
One plate of consumed Vegetable Macaroni Salad ala Sweet C
One plate of 78% consumed Vegetable Macaroni ala Sweet C
Modus operandi:
Once you are done with the brownie with ice cream, play around with your fork and spoon on the plate. Pick up the lettuce leaf from the bowl of Vegetable Macaroni Salad (you possibly would not have consumed it, considering it does not go well with the dish), place the leaf such that the stem of the leaf is directed away from you. Now pick up the two-orphaned cold boiled beans from the Vegetable Macaroni, place them in a V-shape at the stem of the lettuce leaf. Then, pick up one tablespoon of Macaroni gravy from the 78% consumed Vegetable Macaroni and place in right on the lettuce leaf creating an effect of Vegetable al fungi (ask the amethyst guys what I mean by that).
Tada!
Macaroni ala AjSus is ready to relish.
Aint it a beauty?
Warning: Do not consume it. It is only meant to make you happy in a gathering of three when one is a sadly retarded child, another is a sadist creating a Hit List while the third receives messages saying, “Okay, I chuck out”, meaning – ‘Okay chuck me’!
And yes,
Potographer – Aj.
Contributors of remains – Aj and Sus
Brainchild of – Sus
See…
It be me
I not let you be
Dont come near me
I say to thee
Still you come to see?
Let us go pee
Did I hear you say ‘chee’?
Teee heee
I was supposed to be studying for corporate communication, dont blame me. Semester exams do funny things to me.
Gay Rights
Women! How can a man marry a woman? I don’t find any reason why men should not be gay. I mean who likes to spend half of his life with a gossipmonger, an instrument that drains out his money, a person who knows not what peace means and yet thinks she is perfect.
I support the cause of Gay Rights. At the same time I pray for all the lesbians of the world, I hope the laws for Lesbian Divorces are framed soon.
Pointless but still…
I am bored, hence this very pointless post. But since you my dear reader have dropped in to read this pointless post, here goes :
That is Ma Durga with Lord Ganesh out of frame. Here is a better one
A gay ride…
So today we had to show our second draft of the play (Meet… On the rocks) to Bala. And we were supposed to wear prototype costume and stuff. So I have this funky character of an old Muslim man with a family. So I have a white kurta and pyjama with a walking stick and that Muslim topi.
I did not have a white full hand kurta for myself, so had to borrow my father’s kurta. Poor man he lent it to me for the sake of the play. He loves me so much! Anyway, it was BIG for me. Like the XXXL ones. Anyway I decided to wear it, and for the pyjama I used my own pyjama.
So, I was all over the city with these oversized clothes. And it is especially very amusing to go to a Durga Puja like THAT! I am known to have a very bad sense of clothing so anything that I wear is weird, so people normally don’t care much. There I was, with clothes that were bought as if I was the government and my clothes were bought by the planning commission. I was amusing myself by looking at the expressions and repelling reactions of all the people who saw me. I was ALL over the place.
Oh! And my mother did not see me in full form, so in the evening a lady who saw me in the afternoon told my mom that I was looking bootiful in the afternoon. I really do wonder why she did that. She either did not see me or wanted to indicate to my mom that my sexual orientation was changing and that my mother should be on the guard.
The best though was this:
I took an auto to M’s place from college. Once I got into the auto, the auto man asked what the stick was; I told him that it was a ‘walking stick’. Anyway, M stays near ‘aoydhya mandapam’, so when I got off at Ayodhya Mandapam, the auto man asked me a question I ll never forget.
Neenga foster aa?? He meant to ask if I was a priest at a church or something, I looked like THAT!
I was amused beyond words.
Desire
I have not got what I desired,
But I got what I don’t deserve.
What we desire and we eventually get are so far apart. Fairy tales should be banned. They dont depict the reality.
?!
An over-reacting dimwit. Sorry for indulging in self-depreciation. I don’t do it often, but today is that day for it. For how long can I carry the cross of immature beliefs? But, the cross is so precious to me, that I cant stop on the road and abandon it. But I sure can disguise the cross. Carry it as if it were a basket full of roses. Yes, a self-depreciating over-reacting dimwit.
Relationships move on, so has life. It is me who i…
Relationships move on, so has life. It is me who is refusing to budge.
A new me
Our reactions to people and situations contribute to a large portion of our character.
And the manner in which people behave with you, brings out a new you. An angle of yourself that you never know existed in you.
Memories are hard to deal with. They pop at times …
Memories are hard to deal with. They pop at times when you want them to pop up the least and stare at you in the face and ridicule you. You want to get away but they hold you back. They don’t let go. Time really never does help heal.
The supreme being is hearing impaired??
Does god have a hearing problem? Maybe his followers should present him with hearing aid rather than using those loudspeakers and turning us normal people hearing-impaired!
And what do the poojaris think they are??? SPB or Sonu Nigam? And the pronunciation!!!! Good lord! Chiva Chiva, Namagha… Sacrilege!
On a rather serious note. Why cant prayers to god be more subtle? Do people think that by using embellishments like loudspeakers and drums and what not, they can please god? I don’t think god will fall for such petty dramabazi!
OM SHAKTI!
P.S: I realise that I have said things that should not be uttered. God, this is a public apology to you. My friend says I may burn in hell for making such statements. Hope, you have access to internet…
Out of the trash can!
When I am under pressure is when I perform and give my best. But the kind of pressure I am talking about is really not something that got the best out of me. To say the least I existed in the dumps, survived on trash and found strange pleasure in doing so. I seemed to feel that the trash can was my protective shield. While some say, “Sus, you are losing yourself”, others don’t have a clue as to what the normal me used to be like.
Life is limping back to normalcy. The shield will soon be gone. And I have realized that, if you don’t completely comprehend what is happening in your life, rather than trying to comprehend it, reconcile with the fact and move on.
wannabe? get a life!
Who said that drinking alcohol and getting high was an ‘IN’ thing? I have not been able to understand the connection between the two hitherto. Before I get to that, this is to all my friends who disliked or my idea of getting drunk. Guys, I don’t appreciate the idea even a tad bit; I wanted to know what it was all about. And today I know what it tastes/feels like and I dislike it.
Now coming to the point, why do people indulge in getting drunk when they cant manage themselves? And that too the kid (read adult) lands up in costume that would fit a 2 year old? When you don’t even have a control over your body, and mind. This kid seemed to feel that she was the “item” for the night I presume. But let me tell you, the night has passed and the mornings to come are grim for her. Unless she realizes that a wannabe status will take her nowhere.
Alvida….
Thankfully I did not say Alvida while I left the theatre after watching this movie for the fist time. I happened to see it again today.
All K Jo movies without any doubt whatsoever make me cry. Yes, I do cry when SRK cries. But Kabhi Alvida Na Kehana was different. To begin with I saw this movie with my friends (first day first show, and I am proud of that). We were a sadistic bunch. The moments when SRK was on screen was most important to us and hence that’s when I had some peace and could listen to the dialogues. Otherwise it was noise, noise and more noise. I hated the movie when I saw it for the first time. I did not cry even when Priety slapped him.
Having seen it again, I think I appreciate the movie. I sympathize with Priety and Abishek. And understand the circumstances under which SRK and Rani went awry.
On second thoughts, it was a good movie.
Bole toh! Apun saala vinamra hai!
Apun jabse woh picture dekhela hai, tabse apun ko Bapu dikhraila hai. Bole toh, kya mast picture hai bidu. Shuru se end tak, Sanjuda apni alag ishtyle meinich baat karta hai aur mirinda botal ki mafik kameez pehenta hai. Arre bidu, bole toh who chikni mast waat lagati hai. Uski goooooooooooooooooooooooddd morrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrnig Mumbai ne toh mere demaag mein khalbali machadi.
Gawd! That was movie. If I ever do suggest anybody to go watch the movie, it would be for the sake of Arshad Warsi. That guy really has given his best. Sanju baba was out of place as Munna this time. He looked jaded. And Vidhya Balan, is insufferable. As for Boman Irani the “beemar” builder, he looks manly through his flowery shirts and girly coloured turbans. I had nothing against those senior citizens, arre, bole toh umar bhi koi cheez hoti hai… Apun phull ‘vinamra’ hai…
I really have no clue what the movie intended on doing. To make Gandhi popular as The Father of the Nation or to make him a laughing stock. Considering that the censor board would not have passed this film if it were mocking at Gandhi and his principles, the idea must have been noble. If Gandhi were to view this movie, he would be turning in his grave.
Out of the theatre, I could see Gandhi everywhere and he was talking to me about ahimsa! I had half a mind to slap Vidhu Vinod Chopra but then, ahimsa!
Bole toh, bidu picture kamaal ka laughter riot hai. Lekin pheelings ko deel mein bandh karne ka aur dekhne ka… Samjaha Kya?
Unrythmic rythm….
I have two left feet! And also a body as rigid as a rock, to make me move in a graceful manner is outright sacrilege. Nonetheless today on account of teachers’ day celebrations in my college, I DANCED.
I learnt the dance in like one hour and performed two hours subsequent to that. It was an achievement. I was scandalized to see Sweta Gandhi jive and make every part of her body move gracefully. They actually wanted me to move my arse from left to right and back with hand and leg movements! Coordination of the body is something that does not come to me easily.
All that was okay with me, it was a part of the deal. But I could not hold myself together when I was to dance for “Ooh aah Let the music play”. Here it’s a complicated combo of movements. First the hand draws an imaginary circle whose diameter is nearly ¾ of arm length while the hand is completely stretched out. Simultaneously the corresponding leg is to move a tad bit from “attention position” in the same direction, as are the hand and leg. This worked well with me. Next was the “shaking” part. I was then told to bend a little forward and “Now Shake”. So I promptly shook my whole rigid body as if it was an exercise for constipation. Seeing that the whole crowd burst into laughter and tried telling me, “Sus, you have to shake ‘that’”! That was the limit! Now how do I shake that? I am shaking the arse, head, legs and hand with great pain already! The job was made easier when I was told to simply shake my shoulders, which would give an illusion of ‘that’ shaking.
Anyway, after this and that and everything else, my HOD was shocked with me dancing hence came up to me and said; “ I was surprised to see YOU dance ma”. She did not bother to know how surprised I was with myself!
Sibling wherefore art thou?
If I am going to crib about one thing for the whole of my life, that would be – not having a sibling. I really don’t like it. Kids are such sweet things and they can really make one happy with those innocent looks/remarks/questions et al. I cant exactly be wild at my parents cause they being from huge families thought it would be simpler to have just one child.
I have cribbed about this on my blog earlier; hence will refrain from doing so once again. 
But I want a sibling! NOW!
I really do think I have the weirdest ideas ever, …
I really do think I have the weirdest ideas ever, and reckon that Ram was just too right when he christened me – Weirdo.
I have always thought that to maintain a happy disposition, it helps at times to pretend to be happy and as time progresses, the happiness becomes a part of your alter ego which is very predominant.
But I don’t feel very weird today; I just saw a movie in which the protagonist makes a similar statement.
This is me…
I talk philosophy at times… I really do, but never am aware of when I am making those profound statements. Akx, was attaching a file while she put up a couple of posts(one that I posted) that reveals my profound thoughts…
Saari State…
Sari Day in my college is an Annual Ritual… So today was Sari Day, and we all had to go to college in Saris. I decided to shock my friends, and hence enterend college in Maha Sari Day mode. Huge, long, big, bling, earrings (which i fondly refer to as droppings), a Sari(Bengal Cotton) of course, a thing aroung my neck, which made me feel like my neck would give in and would hang from the shoulders and a BINDI (a RED one). It felt like i was attending some wedding. Everybody who looked at me had just two things to say, “You look Bong”, “You look like a politician”.
I swear, I did not look illiterate/brash/corrupt/illogical or filthy rich, it was the cotton sari that made people say that I looked like a politician.
Anyway, all that aside, I always end up in the funkiest situation possible. I judged a fashion parade! So girls had to be titled as Miss Something and Miss Someother thing and I was one of the judges! 68 girls, walking on stage as if they were advertising for Miranda or maybe heroines for forthcoming Govinda movies, I dont know what! Each one of them seemed to think that saris had to be worn with MATCHING MATCHING jewellery. Maybe it is expected to be so, but orange droppings??? Not my idea of fashion and style. I nearly went blind trying to judge those girls, but was not too bad at marking them. My minimum was 8 on 20…
Maybe I am not the fashion parade judge material! Nonthless, I am bong politician…
The Bloggers: From L to R: Gitanjali, Anna, Divya Nair, Kavya, Nina
Below From L to R: Susmita and Lakshmi
Joi Bangla!
When my friend did not turn out to be SRK…
With IM coming of age and options of pictures accompanying names of friends on Gtalk, Yahoo and the like, I realised how much impact a picture can have on one’s mind.
It was recently that I was profile hopping on Orkut(Actually not very recently, I am no more on Orkut) and realised that my friend looked like herself and not like Shahrukh or Kamal Hassan. Since her display picture often shuttles between that of SRK and Kamal Hassan my brain had nearly registered that she looked like either one of them! Its a dangerous thought, like you just put up the picture of maybe Danniel Radcliffe and when a friend you have not seen in a long time meets you, he/she is shocked to see you rather than Danniel Radcliffe!
If one does put up pictures and they are not of people I am comfortable cause I know for a fact that Anna will not look like fire or Aparna will not look like chocolate cake. But when I see Kamal Hasans. SRKs and Sirius Black, I really do hope to see them!
Tayir sadam and urga
Today has been a very eventful day… Actually eventful from the afternoon…
I began the day with trying to do something constructive with my comp, but its weird how my comp behaves with me,, The chemistry is as bad as Govinda and maybe Sushmita Sen… Mukund knows what i am talking about! The yahoo window used to pop up for no reason and I could see no text on the screen! I type, but when I ‘enter’, the text just disappers. That reminded me of Mr. India. But I did not have ‘lal’ shades… That was about the comp,,, The day got better…
I set out to the beach and while i was on my way got to know that Akx was there waiting for a girl who was unaware of the ‘P’ of punctuality. People watching! This was what kept Akx and me busy for a long time, till her friend (asst director of X) and cast of X (one person) with the Manager of the cast landed up. It was audition time,, for the kicks only, cause they did not have a line of aspiring actors anyway! So the idea was to go the Bala way and I wanted him to say “I decree you” with the action “I surrender to you”… He did not like it, rather he did not understand it, so we stuck to the good ol’ “Catch me. If. You can.” with the action “I tease you”… That did not work too well either, but Akx and myself reckoned with some nostalgic moments and had good fun. (If you dont know what X is, which you obviously dont know, it is the movie that Akx and G are directing)
We were bored, it was time to look at the sky and go all philosophical. But it is a weird day, remember? So I looked at the sky and said “It looks like thair sadam with urga”. Then on another side it looked like a dupatta, and on a third side it looked like a table on which buttermilk was spilt! gawd, i forgot to click pictures, nonetheless, i am sure you guys can visualise what i mean…
The weird day ended in very eventful manner, I watched this video on youtube. Readers are to watch it and have fun.. I am not saying anything…
Infliction of pain
Having posted a comment on Ram’s post I realised how much addicted I am to inflicting pain(more often mental than physical) upon myself.
Sometimes, though I am completely aware that what I maybe indulging in may hurt me, I still go ahead. Whether it is mere addiction or stupidity on my part is a grey area…
Cooking is not an art
The cooking chronicles! That’s what I would name a cookbook written by be. The only difference would be that my cookbook would be a compilation of my tryst with the kitchen and allied stuff…
I take this opportunity to tell the world that I recently cooked and my first victim is alive and in a pretty healthy state.
Now cooking is NOT an art! A misconception that is being nurtured in the cooking society. It is as simple as following a rulebook and doing what the rulebook says without any deviation. If the book says 250gms take a weighing machine and weigh the precise amount. If the book says 1/4tsp add the correct measure of the ingredient to the dish. I know there are people who would decry this as sacrilege, but I am of the school of thought that believes that cooking is NOT an art.
All those of you who say, “I don’t know cooking”, guys no issues at all. Go to a bookstore buy a cookbook and take charge of the kitchen.
Follow the rulebook and nothing can go wrong at all.
Bhanjans and me
My parents seem to have come to the conclusion that I am capable of managing myself in this big bad world without them. And so for the second time, I am home alone… Just when I was thinking that it is going to be just another boring weekend, considering my computer has a weird virus (I would dedicate another post to that) leaving me at a loss of any pastime, I had lost all hopes.
But good things happen to good people… So Ram‘s sister(K) had this high funda singing competetion today. I did not mind joining him in going to an obscure place in Adyar and having some out of my world experience.
Day starts at 10.40am at the Vadapalani Bus depot. We have to go to Adyar, so we plan to take a bus to Valluvarkottam and another bus from there to the final destination. And as we all know sitting a bus which is doubtful of starting is not too interesting a prepositon. So we decide to hop into a bus that was going via the depot. We get off nearly 1.5 kms away from Valluvarkottam, and just as I proposed walking to Valluvarkottam a bus arrives, we get into the bus only to realise that this was the bus that we had originally got into… Its a small world. And so we finally reached Valluvarkottam.
The second leg of the trip was longer, hence more ‘happening’. It was crowded to begin with, and the passengers had just one aim in life – reach Ranganathan theru, T Nagar.. That ll give you a vague idea as to ‘what’ exactly the people were like… When the whole gumbal alighted at Ranganathan theru, I caught a glimpse of a small girl who was maybe 2 years old, 2.5 ft in height, the queer thing was that she was carrying a jahkaas blue hand bag! Now I really did not get the point of such frivolous needs of kids being met by parents. I was aghast. And Ram was of the idea that my trip was turning out just as bad as it could get. The day was actually shaping up to be ‘blogworthy’… When the conductor blew his whistle and I received a missed call from Ram, I realised that the second leg of the trpi had come to an end… But we had the third and final trip by an auto to the destination. Talking about the auto, I was just amazed by Ram’s bragaining skills…
And so, we reached the ‘place’ where the competion was in progress. It was a bhanjan competetion organized by the Tamizh Nadu Brahmin Association. About 40 schools were participating, (the inside story though is that it is a competetion between 10 schools). This place was full of ‘mamas’, ‘maamis’, kutti mamas (with kudumis) and cute kutti maamis. After ages I was listening to bahjans and songs that invoked the almighty. Some of the bhajans completely put me off. The kids for some weird reason ended up singing for the sake of the judges and not to invoke the god, which made the recital emotionless. Not that I understood the nuances of the recitals but some were bad! Other than all this there were some people whose characteristsics were so intimidating that I made it a point to watch them keeny. There was ‘brick’ mama who was wearing a brick colour shirt, kept swaying to the music and sometimes when the crowd stopped clapping he would put his hands together high up in the air, indicating that the audience should clap. And there was ‘bindi’ maami, who had a rather huge bindi, must be 1.5 inches in diameter and a funky hairstyle, a face that seemed like she was suffrening from jaundice. Now she had a son (kutti maam with kudumi) who i presume loved collecting pamphlets, so he collected them, when his hands were full he trasnfered his load to his mother.
The purpose of the visit was not people watching, but to see K perform. And I had a feeling that the organizers had comfortably forgotten the existence of my school. So, we were waiting for the lady to say “The next school on stage, PSBB KK Nagar’… But everytime we were disappointed. The moment of glory came at 17.30hours. And I let out a loud ‘Wow’ and also had an urge to clap but the looks I received from the audience was not too encouraging. At last K was on stage, and I could not clap. What a morose audience! The girls were great, I dont know the names of all the girls but a few of them were smiling all the while and that was what I could understand and relate to.
Added to all this I learnt a lot about corruption and terrorism from K’s social text book, which amused me.
My day ended at 19.10 hours when I got back home in a not so happening bus.
Volia! I just got to know that K’s team bagged the first prize! I can clap now! Congratulations to her…
The feel good factor
I have never called people names, and now I wonder WHY. I should have done it, it helps venting out emotions. And so today for the first time, I am going public and calling an anon on Orkut a BLOODY BITCH and to everyone else who has ever hurt me, this goes out to you too!
Wow, it feels good. The next time, I am hurt by any peron, I am tapping the person and using words that are a degree higher than stupid/idiot.
Chingaaree koee bhadake
Beautiful lyrics which I just wanted to share with my readers.
chingaaree koee bhadake, to saawan use buzaayesaawan jo agan lagaaye, use kaun buzaaye?patazad jo baag ujaade, wo baag bahaar khilaayejo baag bahaar mein ujade, use kaun khilaaye?
hum se mat poochho kaise, mandir tootaa sapanon kaalogon kee baat naheen hai, ye kissaa hain apanon kaakoee dushman thhens lagaaye, to meet jiyaa bahalaayemanameet jo ghaanw lagaaye, use kaun mitaye?
naa jaane kyaa ho jaataa, jaane hum kyaa kar jaatepeete hain to jindaa hai, naa pite to mar jaateduniyaa jo pyaasaa rakhe, to madiraa pyaas buzaayemadiraa jo pyaas lagaaye, use kaun buzaaye?
maanaa toofaan ke aage, naheen chalataa jor kisee kaamaujon kaa dosh naheen hai, ye dosh hain aaur kisee kaamazadhaar mein naiyyaa dole, to maanzee paar lagaayemaanzee jo naaw dooboye use kaun bachaaye?
Futile Friendship??
I have by now made it clear to you all that I am bored. So dont question my posts tonight.
Kavya’s status on gtalk reads – Futile Friendship.
Friendship, is it a relation that can be termed as futile? I really did not understand what she meant by that. It was a nice alliteration, and nothing beyond.
Futile- If you think something is futile, you think is has no chance of acheiving what you want; if you say something is futile, it sounds foolish and has no value.
Thats the dictionary meaning of futile.
Try relating the first meaning to friendship. Is friendship a realation that exists because it is meant to achieve something? (Material/physical/emotional)
And relating to the second, had me in splits.
What really is friendship about? What if at a certain point in time, a friend turns futile?
Ramble!
I am bored, and I have no better thing to do.
I am bored, and I have nobody to talk to.
I am bored, and I have a blog.
I am bored, and my computer does not have Microsoft Office!
I am bored, and I love blogging.
I know you are annoyed by my post, but, I am …
It does not matter to you, actually if you realised, I dont matter to anybody but myself.
The world becomes selfish at a certain level.
I am happy with my boredom, because I can rant and I have a blog!
I am bored, why am I “I am bored”ing everytime?
Like it even matters?
Bloody hell! Why does SRK have to play DON???
Have you ever wondered why you visit this blog?
Do you think I have better things to do at this very moment? Please leave your ideas for this bored child…
I attended classes today in college and figured that, I was not missing much.
This post is real bad.
But if you are still reading, you must be vetti too! Wheee heee….
Why do people send fwds? For simple sadistic pleasure?
Why why why???
ah! what a life!
Pessimism is contagious. I don’t know if that is a proven fact, but I have experienced too much to look for the factual correctness of the statement I have just made.
- A happy person should be wary of pessimists.
- They don’t like to maintain a happy disposition and unknowingly transfer their disease to you.
- Do not even attempt to make such a person happy, because he just does not want to be happy.
- He will have a counter sad moment for every happy moment you remind him of.
- He feels like his life is not meant to be lived. Like god made a grave mistake by not sending him to the grave. (That was bad, I know)
- A uniform characteristic of such people is that, they just don’t want to know that it is just them who are feeling that way and that the feeling could be eliminated in order to see the light of life.
Just beware, and be happy.
If you are a pessimist and are reading this, I have just one thing to say, spare me!!!
The judge in me!
This story is something I would narrate to my kids whenever they say, “Amma, you are a good cook”.
So, there is this Gujju community school in an obscure place which smells worse than ‘peach and mango’ body mist where kids go to study and cultural events are just as much a tradition like in all other schools. I always though that my college was a “tee petti” (match box), but this school was a fourth of my college! Let me establish the place better, it was on Mint Street in Parrys! Now you get the complete picture, don’t you…?
So, I was here to judge an event which was named thus – Tongue Ticklers. I was briefed to go prepared for a event where kids will be given tongue twisters and I had to say who was the best. I landed up there, and the teacher in-charge of the event came up to me, to figure out my credentials etc,,, As a part of asking me what I am good at, she asked if I was into cooking. I really found that question out of place. Anyway, I replied, Nay… She quipped, “Then how will you judge the event ma?” That’s when I realized that it was an event to do with cooking. I was there to judge a cookery event! I had to manage the crisis, saying “Oh, yes, I am a good critique”. The irony of the matter is that, I can’t event identify if salt is missing in a particular dish!
After the initial session of embarrassment, I was taken to the venue of the event. Six teams had on display their food. I began by tasting each. I was then told what the criteria for judging were; nutrition value, taste and appeal. Like anything other than taste mattered to me! I being a Bong was all praises for one team that made bread rasmalai! I know I am biased. But anyway, they really did deserve it, it rocked. The other stuff was cold and soggy.
I even gave my expert opinion on each and every item! It was a beyond the world experience!
I got into a cycle rickshaw from there to the Central Station, which was again fun. A day spent well, and I can add this sentence to my resume now “Have judged inter school cookery competitions” and who knows I may just be one of those women who review food in the newspapers!
And I am sure my kids would be proud of me!
Dead! its dead! its dead!
Ta ra ra ra… My blog is dead!!! Ra ra ra… Thats the dead song, if you did not realise… Does anybody care anyway? As if somebody out there reads my rant on my not so happening life…
Da ra ra ra… Its dead, its dead…
Boo.. Hoo… Sniff.. sniff…
Romba raasiyana Mogham?????
Just when I was cribbing that nothing blogworthy was happening in my life, I decided to go to the beach for some inspiration, I found it.
God, palmistry, astrology, pariharas are things I have never been able to believe in.. But today out of sheer whim, I had a lady on the beach read my hand…
As she made herself comfortable on the ground, I dusted my palm and stretched out my right hand! Immediately, Amma indicated that I should show her my left hand and not my right. I guess the lady was pretty amused.
Then she went on to mumble something, which I did not make any sense of. I thought it was something like “whatever I am going to say is god’s own truth and I am the messenger from the gods above, keep your ears open and listen to me with utmost attention!’ Whatever that was, she said that it did not matter much and what follows is the prediction.
I was all ears, and considering my average knowledge of tamil, I had to at times stop her and ask Amma to translate what she was saying. The stuff she said was too accurate to be random statements. Of course she said some stuff like “Oh! You do so much of good deeds but you get no recognition for all that…” I presume she says that to everybody. Maybe for customer satisfaction. She also mentioned that I ll buy a ‘vahanam’ and a ‘veedu’ by 2008! I felt like saying “Keep in the mouth, lady!” I may buy a tri-cycle and a barbie doll house! The most important prediction of all, I ll have three kids!
If that really does happen, I ll for sure remember this lady and make trips to the beach not for the sundal/bajji but only for the sake of palmistry.
What intrigues me is HOW! How could she make certain accurate statements about my character and life by only looking at my face, hand and of course my name? Was she making arbitrary statements? Was she really trying to predict my most probable future/present/past? If so, how? How scientific a subject is palmistry?
What does one do when he/she sees her/his friend g…
What does one do when he/she sees her/his friend go wrong in making a decision or chosing a wrong path? What does one do when he/she tells the friend that what the individual is doing is not the right thing to do, but the person yet continues to do so?
It is painful to see a close one go wrong such that he/she can’t be corrected…
Realisation is a state of mind, one very often refuses to reach that state…
I survived it!
After being blank and screaming out to restrain me not and being stranded on a highway, I only find it justified to tell you my faithful readers as to why I have been writing such posts.
I saw a movie, Parijaatam. I regret it. I also suggest that you don’t watch the movie unless you can bear with bad story lines, which are incomplete in their own way; a guy who is dumb to the extent that his performance will leave you speechless; a girl who is just too decked up to be a servant; an ungle( that’s how the hero refers to him) who is so intelligent that you ll feel like digging up a grave for yourself and special effects that will freak you out.
Why I went to see the movie? For one particular song and not the whole song that too, only for ‘Ma Pa Ma Pa Ma Ni Dha Ni Ma Pa ….. Yaaaatraaaaaa a journeyyyyyyy,,, Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttttttraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a jourrrrrrrneeeyyyyyyyyyyy eeeeeee’ Unless you are an MOP-ian you don’t know how crazy we are about Yatra. Anyway, Ma Pa was the theme music for our inter department cultural fest two years ago whose theme was Yatra. And the same music was used in a single song in this movie; hence I had been to watch this movie. Also considering that Sharanya (the heroine) was a pass out from my college, I was dragged to watch this movie.
What a movie! I nearly had an internal brain hemorrhage.
Well…
A well to do family comes to stay in a village as the couple is getting old and their son will soon get married and go to US or to some white man’s land. But only the mother of the son comes first, to set up the home for her husband and son (MCPs!). And as a servant to this lady comes the heroine of the movie, Sharanya! Everybody clap at her intro… She looks more like some girl who is an extra in song-dance sequences but has appropriated the outfits of a heroine. Anyway, the yajamaani amma is very impressed with her maid and they bond over the home arranging sessions. Also, the lady of the house is scared of sleeping alone, so she invites the maid to sleep with her. As they get to know each other well, the lady tells the maid all about her son. And the lady also understands the maid is a very good girl, who could be her daughter-in-law.
The girl turns out to be a novelist. And she narrates her first story to her yajamani amma who visualizes her son as the hero of the novel and the maid as the heroine. And somewhere in the middle of the novel when the girl and boy separate, the lady gives out a wild scream followed by illlllaaaaaa… Which nearly freaked me out…. And why does she scream, because, she cant imagine her son and the maid separating! The maid is very happy that the yajamani amma is so impressed with her, that she wants her son to marry her(maid).
I really don’t know what I was doing there. And the worst part, the song was yet to come…
This yajamani amma fancied secrets, she tells her husband and son that she has found the right match for the son, but does not tell them who the girl is. The son and husband arrive in the town. But unfortunately, the lady slips from a ladder and falls to the ground and finally dies. The reaction of the maid in such a sequence is worth mentioning. The lady is on the first floor, she hands over a sari and flowers for the girl to get decked up. As the girl reaches the ground floor, she hears the lady fall *thud* to the ground and let out a loud yell. Instantaneously, the maid, drops her plate, screams simultaneously. Then screams “ammaaaaa”; about turn; runs up to the first floor; screams “ayyooo ammmaaa”. The next scene is the hospital, where the son and husband arrive only to hear that the lady cant survive.
Interval… The next half is full of investigation, forensic sciences and major special effects. All that is used by the son and the ‘ungle’ to figure out who was the girl that the mother had chosen for her son. Since the maid does not want to reveal it becuase she thinks that the son and husband might suspect that she has vested interests…
What a movie! I was moved by the movie. But I really sat through the whole movie in the hope that the maid will complete the novel that she left half-way though. But, alas, the novel even got published during the course of the movie, but that was at the climax, so I did not get to know the soga kadhai…
There are more note worthy instances in the latter half, but I am not going to mention all that, I don’t take pleasure in spoiling the fun of watching the movie for those who have not…
Out of the hall, I wondered why I did not die before I watched the movie. All my life I thought that “Raja Ki Aayegi baarat” was the sickest and funniest and crappiest movie ever, but now, my opinions have changed. Parijaatham tops the list of sickest movies ever made.
Moving on
At the very moment I feel like I am standing on a highway right at the median and vehicles are zooming past me. Feels like I am trapped in a tempest. The world is moving ahead, but I am stuck in a position from where I am unable to move on. But it is imminent that one moves on, the fear of being run over by a speeding vehicle is always there…
My tryst with loos
I was having this very random conversation with Ram, when I realized that I have had a lot of fun in life hitherto and that if I move on, I will not regret it ever. The moving on aside, I have decided to jot down all those memories that I can reckon with someday and laugh aloud.
Warning: If you find subjects like defecating gross, this post is full of shit and pee and is about loos. You may prefer not to read the post in that case. If you do, don’t blame me.
To begin with, I have always had this doubt, why do girls always want company when they need to visit the loo? “Hey, will you come along? I want to pee.” If you want to pee, you sure can, but I don’t want to come along, has been my consistent reply to such proposals. Especially in school, I have seen girls forming this huge convoy sort of a thing when they set out to pee. It’s been a mystery to me, never been able to crack it. Personally, I prefer not to visit public loos but when it is “urgent”, I relieve myself.
This is one audition for a play that I can’t forget. It was some college culturals and we had to stage a play. For the auditions, Nina found an amazing place. The loo. And she wanted me to deliver the dialogues of Prince Charming to Cinderella. “Roses are red; violets are blue… and something”. I just could not do it. Every time I went down on my knees, somebody would enter the loo or even better we could hear somebody pee! I did not make it as prince charming; nevertheless I was the Big Bad Wolf. The auditions for that were held in class.
Long ago, I had been on a Mensa camp to an obscure place near Pune. We were lodged in a Bungalow right on the beach. It was a huge place. But all that it lacked was a proper loo, like the ones we civilized people are aware of.
The loo was a queer place. It had three walls and a roof, on the floor was an Indian style defecating arena. That was all. There was no door. I am not exaggerating. It really had no door. The idea was alien to me. Why would anybody construct a loo without a door? Anyway, we came with make shift doors. Whenever a girl would have the need to visit the doorless loo, she would be accompanied by two other girls and a dupatta. The two girls would stand on either side of the loo and hold this dupatta which would serve as a curtain. But this was not all.
The place to bathe was even beyond all civilized notions that I had. This too had no door. But to add to the agony of the absence of the door, there was a wall with a huge gap, which was made for a window I presume. So, this was a loo without a door and with an eternally open window. I took bath very rarely, maybe twice in ten days with all kind of possible protection.
This is last among my memories of the loo. I had once been to Kancheepuram and it was a long day, the pressure was building up, I had to relieve myself. So, my mother and I trouped off to a nearby household and explained to the lady of the house in very few words( I did not want to embarrass myself by peeing in my pants) that I had to pee. The lady showed us to the loo of her house. It was exceptionally clean and well maintained. This one had a door, but no roof! I was very apprehensive about doing it there; the lady tried telling me that it was no big issue and that I could pee with no worries at all. The pressure was mounting so I decided to do it, if anybody was watching; it was his worry and not mine.
That’s it. I am not going to go any further; I love my readers and don’t want to lose them.
Restrain me Not
Ever felt like the world is going ahead and you are being pulled back, dragged back and that something/somebody is inhibiting your progress? Progress in all spheres.
Blank
I think I am losing control on my emotions. It’s a weird feeling. For how long can one try to act as if everything were normal in life, when it really is not so. When in solitude, the emotions flow without any inhibitions. Those moments of unrestricted flow of emotions is a very small fraction of the time I spend in a state of complete consciousness. This results in bottling up of emotions and a very small orifice to vent it all out.
Jurassic Crocodiles
The age old art forms, languages, music, bacteria have all survived the test of time. And so have Crocodiles. They are believed to be of very ancient lineage, from the Jurassic era. Why am I talking about crocks? I have been through too much of mental trauma and blogging is my only respite.
My stars are ill positioned and hence I got to be a silent spectator to a series of events that made me turn into an emotional animal’s unfair treatment sympathizer. I have been making frequent trips to the madras crock bank recently and have been witnessing the crocks being noosed; blind-folded, dumped into gunny bags, tied up ruthlessly with nylon ropes and not just all this, the vital statistics of the crock are noted by placing it in precarious positions. They literally rape the crock. Five bulky men who look like they have just sweated it all out at some village “pahalwaan” competition hop skip and jump and victoriously land on this poor crock. The look on their faces is something comparable to that elation a person feels when he relieves his bladder after holding on to it after an hour or so. That moment of glory is worth a “Kodak moment”.
Now this crock was either drugged as a friend suggested or I think this crock was not the rebellious kind. I have hitherto not been able to understand why that crock gave in to these five men. It was as meek as water. Did not retaliate, nothing at all. I found that really weird. The other thing was this, while this crock was being raped, there were at least 30 other crocks around basking in the sun with mouths wide open and acting dead. None of those crocks came to the rescue of this poor crock. So morbid. I felt like slapping those crocks. How unsociable they are was beyond my comprehension. And somebody said they are reptiles, would somebody show me where their vertebra is? It needs to be set right. They should be strong and deal with such manhandling.
I am right now inclined on having some personality development programs for crocks. Or something that would help them deal with situations. It’s imminent. Nobody denies that crocks have survived the worst of situations, but they need to be educated about the Homo sapiens. We are the bad guys.
When Nostalgia gets Nauseous
Amnesia: Thats one disorder which has been abused by Bollywood and Hollywood alike.
I have always wished my HOD in college suffers from selective amnesia. Makes things easier for us students, she forgets the projects she assigns and we comfortably don’t remind her either.
Lately, I have been considering what it would be like if I could forget a few incidents that occured in my life and nobody reminded me all that. Specially, my board marks, that scary accident with a cab ( I was not hurt much, the first thing I was worried about was my phone, which was in order too 
), those school days when shcool was more of a nightmare than fun and a lot of other stuff. Considering, I am not going to suffer from anything of the sort, I have even tried to tear off pages from my diary in which I have documented these not so happy moments in life.
Damn! Whatever I do, I seem to remember it all in perfect detail. The more I try to forget, the more I am haunted by those memories. And its that irritating cackle that inspires me to get a hold on all those memories and turn them into pulp.
And as a part of that memory loss thingy I hope I also forget that I came up with a not-worthy post as this one…
The First Kiss… Mmmuuaahhh…
My first kiss- Ah that is something I can’t describe to this date, but I can tell you it must have been when I was around three.
From the day I met him, I knew that he would never let me down. He would be by me for ever and ever. And to this day his demeanor makes my faith, trust and belief in him stronger. He came into my life sixteen years ago. He was not what every girl wanted. Not the typical tall, dark and handsome hunk. His physical appearance was over ridden by the strength of his character. He was the tempest, but living with the tempest is not fun always. My life got scattered. I loved him too much to realize the damage that he had caused. I refused to wean myself away from him…
I was a patient of chronic bronchitis, to put it in simple words – asthma. That was when I was prescribed to use Asthalin, a drug I got hooked on to gradually. The love of my life, or even better – My Life.
When I came to Madras and the road in front of my home was laid with red moram sand. To those who don’t know what that looks like, it’s a road laid with vermilion. My white canvas shoes were white only on Monday mornings; a walk on that road for a kilometer and my shoes would look like red shoes that Govinda used in some movie with matching red trousers. Anyway, that was enough of a detour from the topic of discussion.
So inhaling all that fine red sand, led to me using an inhaler to keep my lungs in order. Everybody swallowed capsules and pills but I used a canister placed in a white plastic body with a deep blue cap to cover the portion of the white outer plastic that goes into my mouth. Now that I have described how my life savior looks, what follows the change in character of the life savior.
As my parents and the doc realized that I was getting addicted to the inhaler I was introduced to another, which would cure me better and wean me away from Asthalin, Becalate. But this one was not as elegant as Asthalin. I mean, who likes a chocolate brown plastic outer cover with a “death by chocolate” colour cap for the mouthpiece? Yuck! And looks can be really deceptive, the whole dose never really gets into the wind pipe, some nano part of it settles on the tongue, and holy shit, Becalate was bitter. Now everything fell into place the over dosage of chocolate colour. It was a warning; it meant “Listen, its cocoa, not chocolate, it going to be bitter”. A kiss that turned bitter.
But the alternative was too bitter and hence I continued to use asthalin, as per the prescription. It was a silent killer. I was getting hooked on to it.
The condition only escalated, I would feel breathless after speaking non-stop for three minutes at a debate and to get over it, run to my inhaler, *puff* *puff*. This was bad. When I would forget my inhaler at home, the knowledge of its absence would send tremors through my body. So after those bad experiences of forgetfulness, I began stocking the inhaler at home. At any point of time I would have one in my school bag and another lying on my bed. The more the merrier.
Many who are concerned about my well being have tried to tell me that I am on the wrong track and that I need to exercise control…
Me: Bah! Humbug…
When I look at my inhaler and say “Darling, you are my lifeline, I mean it”. And till the time I have about hundred bucks in my pocket, nobody can separate the two of us. But the darling has turned me into a kid sucking one of those pacifiers.
Despo or Dumb?
During the past 15 days I have tried everything from talking to myself in the mirror, sending myself blank sms-es, blog hopping, and I even counted the number of teeth that I have. Thankfully I have 28 in all. But nothing to entertain me for more than 5 minutes. It was today that I realized how blind I was. Orkut, a place where all the vetti people of the entire world congregate.
More than bumping into old school mates, what I found intersting were the despo vetti people. Arbitrary people would scrap you saying “you are cho cheweet, I want to be your friend”. Shit! I had put up a picture of myself when I was three, and there was a person who wanted to be my friend because of my passport size faded snap! Pathetic. I have always ignored such scraps and maybe even deleted a couple of them to indicate that “I am genuinely not interested”.
Today was different. Here follows an excerpt of my conversation with a despo vetti while I was vetti.
DV: Hi sush h r u
V: I am doing very good, but do I know you?
DV: I am Asdf friend
DV:then howz ur life goin….nd tell me bout u..
I ignore the scraps.
DV: r u ter
V: I am very much there, and I have nothing to tell you about myself (is that not a big hint that I am least intrested?)
DV:am i seem to be a alien for u
V: You dont seem anything to me. But if you are an alien, I dont talk to aliens. (thats cruel and blatant, he still does not get the point)
DV:so fighting is ur favourite sport ah????but dont ever fight wid an alen seems to be awkward….vungala pathen pidichi erunthu thu adhan pesunene ethula enaku thapu adhum tereyala….
V: i have nothing against you.. but i seriously have no inclination to tell strangers anything about myself. (Thats all I cant stand)
DV:incline is sumthin which always bend towards others might u have studied in physics i expect u might talk nd add me in ur list!!!!
I have not been able to make any sense of this scrap. If I continued to reply to his scraps I was sure I would be in for more such cryptic replies, and I was not in the Da Vinci mood..
DV: dont treat me as a stranger may be a good stranger in the upcoming days
I guess he did not know that punctuations exist in the english language. Nonetheless I had entertained myself for about 20 minutes. The first time I realized how much of fun Orkut can be. So all you vetti people, Orkut is the place for you. And if you are romba vetti, then create an account with a girl’s name, age around 20, and most importantly single.
A squirrel, music and Me…
I am feeling really good about the weather after a very long time. And as I was making myself some breakfast this morning, I considered opening the windows of the kitchen so I could feel the pleasant atmosphere. As I opened them, with a gush of cold breeze a cute little squirrel unobtrusively slipped in. Caught unawares, the first thing I did was close the windows afraid a whole battalion would enter and overthrow my absolute rule on my home. Having done that, I was now spying on that little one that was trapped inside my territory. It found the attic in the kitchen to be a very comfortable resting place and decided to settle there.
Once I prepared my breakfast I was back to my room, reading and eating. Breakfast was done; it was time to listen to the radio. I should tell you that the Farishta channel on Worldspace rocks. Anyway, I was humming zindagi ke safar with Kishiore on the radio, when I realized that it was just not Kishore and I who were singing but my little visitor too. I stopped singing. The squirrel continued. Now Asha was singing churaliya hai tumne, the squirrel continued. And when the RJ was ranting something about the song and the lyricists my visitor gave due respect to the RJ and kept silent. I can’t but praise the rhythm in the squeals of the squirrel. I was stunned by my visitor’s flair for music. I have never been rhythmically inclined it’s the lyrics of a song that have mattered to me the most always. But my visitor taught me something. It sure did not understand what the song zindagi ke safar meant, nonetheless it seemed to connect with the tune of the song.
The simplicity and universal nature of music amazed me.
The squirrel was exhausted with that entire taxing concert by lunch time. I decided to turn off the radio so it could have a peaceful nap. But to my astonishment, the moment I turned off the radio it began to croak. Making the most irritating and weirdest of noises. I was forced to turn on the radio and only then did that tantrum stop. I am not sure how I am going to get that out my home. Suggestions are welcome.
Of sacrifice, pain and gods
I have always wondered if God (whoever, or whatever that is) found pleasure in the pain of others. He is supposed to be the Supreme Being, all powerful, then why does he have a need to be sadistic?
Those who have absolute faith in god will be out with stones in there hands waiting to hurl them at me for making such sacrilegious statements. I just have one question for you my friend, why do you indulge in walking barefoot over burning coal? Why do you wish to walk barefoot to the seven hills et al? I even heard one man beat his chest and say “I walked all the way to Tirumala from Mysore”. Does God base his decisions as to whom to bless and who not to bless based on how much pain they undergo to pay him a visit? I hope not. That’s not what I expect of a God.
If it the God which does not expect all this exhibition of pain, then why do his devotees indulge in such exhibitionism? Does it give them pride in saying that I am a grade 1 devotee and you are a grade lower than me??? Is that not odd? Devotees of the same god trying to acquire a higher rank among each other? Why does God encourage this?
Are these sacrifices mere equivalents of bribe? Does God demand bribes or do his followers spoil him by bribing him? Is God that corrupt that he has to be bribed to get oneself blessed? Or do we have a hand in making him corrupt? This means we are corrupt. But if God is such a sacred phenomena why are his followers applying their corrupt means to such holy affairs?
Last word: If I were God, I would only breed non-believers.
To spin or not to spin
It was ten at night, and as i am all alone at home, i have taken to watching TV, listening to the radio, blog-hopping all simultaneously. and in all this my phone has taken the back burner. But last night i could hear a faint “la la lala la la” buzz in some corner of my home. I was sprinting around trying to figure where my phone was, phew! i found it atlast, lying under my pillow. Before the la la lala la la loses its voice i answer the phone, my conversation is as follows:
Sus: Hello! Whos this?
M: Hello sush, this is M ..
Sus: Oh! Yes maa’m please tell me *i wonder why she called me up* (M by the way is my Class Techer in College)
M: I have something to tell you..
Sus: Yes maa’m… *I know! just get to the point now*
M:Some freshies want to know about the course, I have given them your number
Sus: Ummm… *Wrong persron!*
M: Just brief them when they call you..
Sus: Sure *How can I lie to those innocent kids?*
M: Goodnight..
Sus: Goodnight, take care
I go back to blog hopping, but everything is blurred.. Cant read a thing. I fail to understand what prompted her to give those kids my number. Did she really want me to ruin the image of the college by telling them the truth? Or spin a yarn? Does she have complete faith on spinning the yarn ability? Or does she want to take revenge on the college for not giving her a good pay-check by asking prospective students to contact me so that I can reveal the truth to them?
In any case, she is only appreciating my abilities. So i should not complain about it. In case she expects me to do the latter, I have penned down a script from which I will read when any kid calls me up. I will not deviate from the script or I might make the unforgivable mistake. No, I should stick to the script and follow it to the T.
May the heavens be with my juniors to be.
But here is the real problem, should I against my will show the kids a rosy picture or should show them the real picture? It really would be better if they join an English Literarture course instead and do a Post Grad in Journalism I feel. I hit a dead end…
Draconian Evil
The da Vinci Code. Religious sentiments my foot. Why is it that people do not understand that a work of fiction is not an authoritative journal which proposes to malign a religion? Is it very difficult to understand that?
It is left to the discretion of the readers/audience to distinguish between right and wrong. But unless they are exposed to both right and wrong, how will they distinguish? And if a particular section of the society feels that they disagree with the book they have the freedom to keep away from the book and the theatre. Nobody is here to force them into watching the movie.
And who grants the I&B ministry to decide anything?? I guess it is another gimmick to accommodate the interests of the minorities. To hell with it. I really want to watch this movie. I loved the book and I think Tom Hanks is amazing. I feel that if I believe that Christ was never married and his holy blood does not survive to this date, I will believe so even after I watch the movie. If my faith is unshakable why can’t I watch the movie?
On the lighter side, I think it is justa positive thing if Christ was indeed married, at least nobody can brand him gay!
Anyway, did Pakistan or muslims for that matter stage such protests when movies like Border, LoC were made and released in India? Don’t such movies portray a whole country in bad light? Then why is it that today a work of fiction which is supposedly hurting religious sentiments being aborted? Does our censor board have a skewed up vision about hurting sentiments of people be it religious or regional?
The censor board I feel needs to set its priorities right.
Is India intolerant to creative forms of expression? Or is it just vote bank politics? We just want to pamper a bunch of kids throwing tantrums?
Ah! Some relief at last, the movie will have a disclamer lingering for maybe the whole of two hours waring the viewers that the movie is only a work of fiction and will be passed with an “A” certificate.
Yet all the questions don’t lose their significance…
Auditions on for the spooky voice
It is on those lonely nights when I know that there is not a single person I want badly by my side is nowhere in the vicinity, that I want to cry out loud and wish those closest to my heart are immortal. That roughly means that I am being selfish.
I have never experienced pure love from any person alive or dead other than my parents. Today they are there, by my side, to guide me, to teach me, to love me, but I know that there will come one day when they may not be around, who do lean on then? One may dismiss me as being childish; I don’t care much about what the world feels.
Maybe I have been unlucky and ill fated to come across people with whom I have been unable to strike a chord. Maybe I was not wrong always, maybe I was never wrong, but I am the victim in both cases. It is at these times when I feel that maybe I was unable to get along with people or they could not get along with me because of the difference between them and I was at the ethical level. I sure would not have an ethical dispute with a sibling.
Tonight I want a sibling. A soul on whose shoulder I could lean and express my thoughts without any censorship. Many souls have offered to lend a shoulder, but when you need them the most they are just not there.
One may argue that sibling rivalry can do enough damage to the relationship, I negate it. If nurtured well, no relation can go wrong.
The night is long and lonely, I am longing for a shoulder to rest my head on, a hand to hold mine, a voice to sing along with me… my search for that voice my never end, but the hope to find it will keep me going.
Wat d hell
It is after Lakshmi wrote this that I was inspired to pour out my thoughts about how technology has not spared the english language even.
Using acronyms is one thing, but omitting the crucial vowels in words while writing e-mails and SMS-es is revolting. I receive many “tnx da” msgs, my only contention is, if the person is actually thankful to me, why can’t (s)he just type it out completely? What really does stop him? Is it mere negligence, a busy schedule or am I expexting too much? If the “tnx da” is one thing, the era of “K” is nerve racking. I spend a couple of minutes tying out an elaborate plan or decision and wait for a reply eagerly, and my mobile goes *beep beep*, I leap, pick up my mobile, *show msg fast*, and the Msg: K. Wow! Even an OK would be fine with me, but K? What does that mean? Maybe it is not supposed to mean anything or means, “Yeah right! I care a damn anyway.”
Sometimes I have wondered, if people use “4″ to denote “for”, what will they use to denote “fore”? Considering that the pronunciation of fore is much closer to 4 than for, it is only right if 4 is used to denote fore. But the whole world thinks otherwise.
A classmate of mine warned me long back, do not trust anyone who does not punctuate his /her msgs. May sound like we are some people living in the vitorian era and using SMS technology to communicate.
Phulleezz “Hi da hru wru ur stuff wit me d prof callin u” is not 2006! It is ridiculous and disgusting. It seems like some unrelated letters have been juxtaposed and its some kinda jumble contest.
I as a rule even provide space after a comma and a full stop. But many shy away from the usage of punctuations. Is it just because one does not have the time to type out elaborate msgs or is it because the person really does not care much if or not the receiving entity understands the msg sent to him. Many a time I have not understood a msg and stared blankly at the screen of my mobile. There is one instance I would not mind sharing with blogdom.
I received a msg, “Hey wru”. I was a novice with the mobile literature then. I could make no sense of it. I was stitting next to a persron who did not even caryy a mobile, I showed her the msg and she returned the same “I wonder what language that is ” look to me. unable to crack the code, I called my friend up and asked her what she meant, she scream, “&*$% I mean Where are you, anyway, where the hell are you?”. Since then I have made a special attempt to familiarize myself with the mobile lit and keep myself up to date with the newest lingo in town.
My effecient maid
Recently, I was staying along with a couple of girls in NOIDA and at home we had a servant maid who would do all the household chores. Now, this girl was maybe 13yeard old, frail malnourished and everything else that a girl from a poor economic background. She as many others pursuing household chores must have got into the arena with the thought that “Ah! This will not require any intellectual sweat”. But my dear maid was mistaken.
That poor soul was wiping the floor one day; to increase the efficiency of her work she had to make room on the floor to work on. She very intelligently picked up all our footwear and placed them on a platform which is used to store vegetables, cut vegetables and other edible stuff. The maid must have been upbeat about her performance. But when we woke up, the three of us could only pity the girl for not using common sense.
It is a misconception that menial jobs require lesser use of grey matter. It is unfortunately not so. Right from a mason, servant maid, dhobi to the COO of a company need to use his head. The day when this realization dawns upon all levels of workers. Some progress can be seen in the quality of work.
Need
Many a time I have come across a very weird used of the expression “I don’t need it”. Whenever I heard it, I excused it as wrong expression and corrected the individual. When children come home, I as a custom offer chocolates, biscuits, or any fun eateries. When I do so, kids quip “I don’t need it.”! What on earth does one mean by, I don’t need chocolates? Who needs a chocolate? I never understood the inspiration behind this expression.
Today, I realized that maybe kids actually do understand the subtle difference between “need” and “want”. When you need something, you actually feel it’s absence when you don’t have it. But if it only a mere want, then the absence of the object/person is not felt as much.
In this context I began to think about relationships. All kinds, parents-child, husband-wife, that between and of course girl-boy. When some rift occurs in the relation, either of the people involved in the relation will miss or feel low only if they needed the other in their life. This means that when the person who is needed by one is separated for some reason from the other, finding a substitute or finding a better person to fill in for that void is tough. Because the need is defined and satiated by that specific person, and a replica can’t be found but for a clone. Provided that both the persons involved need each other the possibility of the rift dissolving is minute.
Why do some relations have to be such that one needs the other while the latter is not in need of the first?
the other day as I was chatting with a friend, i m…
the other day as I was chatting with a friend, i mentioned that I may quit blogging. I for a flash felt that my emotiones are mine and I need not share them with the world. Thank the heavens the flash vanished.
But my friend who started blogging had taken me as an inspiration to blog, and expressed her concern about the survival of her blog when mine ceases to exist. I quipped “an inspiration should only help kick start, if the inspiration keeps you going, then it is not inspiration but a pair of crtutches”.
Later i realised that i made a profound statement. many a time inspiration does turn out to be a pair of crutches and nothing more substantial.
luxruy
Trust these days is a luxury. I never doubted the authenticity of any individual till lately, when I learnt that it does not do good to trust blindly. Today I fear to believe any statement made by anybody. I feel ashamed to learn that I am hesitant to trust people.
Transparency in thoughts and deeds is one thing, but how are you sure that what’s being made transparent is not the truth?
Its my life- but do i care?
Value for life is decreasing. Why do I say that? This is something that I have observed on our Indian roads with very few exceptions. Parents with kids or infants traveling on two wheelers care very little for the innocent’s life. Holding the child in a precarious position and gossiping with the spouse or entertaining themselves to the roadside view makes my blood boil. The child is yours for heaven’s sake! Not George Bush’s. Even if it were his child I would be concerned.
And of course those footboard travelers. They seem to be vying with destiny and show off that they have survived or evaded death this time. Is the adrenalin rush so much more enticing than concern for one’s own life?
The first and last love is self love. But I see a completely different picture with these footboard guys. Maybe that’s what makes them what they are. And the fact that they do not die only tells me that God is there somewhere, saving all the fools of the world and teaching them jack ass!
A month wasted
I am done with my month long internship at a premier 24 hour national news channel. My first internship at a leading national daily was mind-blowing. The kind of work I got to do, the exposure I got can’t be paralleled to any other. And at times when I had no work, I was free to (mis)use a computer. But what I have been through was less of an internship and more of cribbing because I had no work and no play either.
The first day. The Exec Editor assigns me to the business desk. Phew! I am in known territory. At least I have full knowledge that I don’t know an thing and am brave enough to flaunt it to the business desk. I am asked if I am aware of the corporate world, I nod in disgrace as if I were a wind chime being man handled by a five year old. I sit like a chettiar doll (porcelain doll) observing the desk work for the 1530 bulletin. Then a guy drops in, seems like he is also on the business desk. And his name – Suresh Ramaswamy*. I wish I could greet him in Tamil. Sms my friend on the feature desk informing her of the new arrival. I am excited. And he seemed to feel a bonding when he got to know that I am from madras. Day one ended just with getting acquainted with people and .. And of course the highlight of the day. I was lucky to be 50ft away from the Man himself, God (let me refer to him as god, cant use the name). And the rest of the day was spent trying to get a peek into his cabin, as if it had some treasure in it, or he is what he is because of that cabin of his.
Day two: Given minimal work. God glares at me.
Day three: Ditto
A week passes by…
Day six: Suresh teaches me to edit tapes and injesting and stuff. I have work. God still glowers at me.
Week passes by…
The same routine continues, but God gets evil. Stares at me as if I were some rag picker devouring his bed spread, curtains, table cloth and the like. Hell! If I am given work I don’t mind working. But stop looking at me as if I am a worthless lump of flesh.
Week three:
I get intelligent. I begin to utilize my time. Pen down my thoughts (using pens available in the office). Could not get paper or, I would have used that too.
Another week passes by: The last week.
I work, I report, I am satisfied. Feels like a three year old who has got his alphabets right in the first try.
The last day: I go as close to God that I can see the colour of his pupil. He gives me an “I appreciate you” look. I am kicked. I am all josh, I shake hands with known colleagues. And I bid good bye to my workplace and prepare to get back home.
Chennai Calling…
Home. It means everything to me. The reek from the Onyx garbage bin right opposite my home, the royal rickety thirty year old flight of stairs that lead to the main door of my home, that wooden two panel door with an al-drop which serves no purpose etcetera… It is all this that I missed during my month long stay at NOIDA and very obviously my parents.
What made life worse at NOIDA was the hapless “village” atmosphere around. I mean, in the whole of NOIDA, not a single supermarket was to be found. And the available departmental stores believed in turning in early but waking up when the day’s newspaper is worth toilet paper. That is NOIDA in short.
In long.
The climate is like, God forgot that we humans are endowed with pores and can sweat it out to reduce body temperature. Maybe God was busy with designing the deserts of Rajasthan, and some how forgot the humidity element in NOIDA. For the first time in 19 years I used Krack crème. Now you know what I mean. Susmita who cares a damn for her skin and complexion took to applying Sun Screen Lotion quite often. Not too sure if my often worked, cause I bear some tell tale signs of my stay at NOIDA. Sweating it out in Madras with the Agni Nakshatram around is more fun than getting baked without vanilla essence and raisins.
Now comes a problem that is much more serious than the Karck crème. Power cuts. Effectively electricity is available for residents of Delhi/NOIDA for 12 hours a day. I am not exaggerating. It is hence advisable to attend your workplace everyday so you can escape the power cuts during the day. The power cuts are worse because one is left with no other source of time pass than sleeping. And sleeping during the day has never been too enticing for me.
There is one little element of joy that a Madrasi will have when he travels in the cycle rickshaws of NOIDA. They are cheap and comfortable, but the only hazard is that you have to mumble the Mritunjay Shlok as you get out of home to step into a cycle rickshaw. Its not that the roads are too bad, just that they are punctuated with a couple of negative speed breakers every 100 meters. That’s not very bad, or is it? That was about the roads, but I am yet to talk about the epidemic that NOIDA-ites as a rule suffer from, colour blindness. Be it red, amber or green, it all looks like parrot green to NOIDA drivers. You as a person who does not suffer from colour blindness are safe if the signal is red. When it is red, the normal person applies his brakes. But when it is green, the normal person has to cross the stop line, and you can be rest assured that the colour blind NOIDA-ite will care a damn about his signal being red. He will surge ahead and so will you… The conflict of vehicles is inevitable and that’s when you should drive with faith in God.
The food now. Let me tell you, Basmati rice with sabji tastes like gruel. However tasty the sabji maybe, the basmati rice will without doubt spoil the taste of the sabji. And another problem I faced with basmati rice was that the amount of water that was required to cook the rice was tough to predict. The rice turned out like glue available in post offices a couple of times and otherwise the rice only got burnt. Oh! The rotis, they were not bad at all. But boring to eat rotis day in and day out. For some weird reason I felt like a dog being fed pedigree. Not undermining pedigree, considering it is very expensive, but that’s what came to my mind while gorging on rotis everyday.
One thing that impressed me was the sector system of NOIDA, atleats you dont have a thousand MG Roads and a million Ambedkar Statues.
In conclusion I would like to comment on the knowledge of English. Let me just stick to saying that I was forced to speak in hindi for a whole month. Even at stores such as Palnet M and Archies where the shopkeepers are expected to know English considering the customers they target.
Phew! That was that. A stay my mom sure loved. I washed my clothes and tried my hand at non-cookbook cooking, some improvement!
God bless Audience
Comic movies, now I really do want to know who calls movies like Pyaare Mohan and Shaadi se Pehele comedies. Okay! Stop glaring at the monitor! I am in a god forsaken place and movies is my only mode of time pass and hence the deplorable pitaable selection of movies. Anyway, it is my duty to caution blogdom. A strict NO NO, dont even think about watching these movies if someboy threatens you to a day of Himesh’s Songs.
In the first place, the movies are violent to say the least. The comic DON in Pyaare Mohan murders about four people cold blood-ed-ly using a baseball bat and a very strong swing motion which leaves the victim’s head cracked as if it were a pumpkin on Madras roads on “good days” and the victim swimming in that very blood. I genuinely do ont find this comical. And who do film makers make movies for? Infants? Comedy is supposed to be subtle, not explicit like, showing an aircraft losing altitude and a pilot screaming “Oh God, it is out of control, what to do now?” Shit Man! Get a life! Your audience has evolved and can understand motion pictures. Even our ancestors would have made sense of it.
And as for Shaadi se Pehele, where the protagonist loves to thrive on his non-well-being status, and a side kick character whose sense of rhyme sucks “Mera naam Anna, 24 ghante chokanna”. What on earth was that? An underworld Anna, who speaks as if he had Gahlib’s blood flowing in him. That was tragic.
What is happening to good film making? And Akshaye Khanna also was heard saying that Shaadi Se Pehele is one of the best comedies of the decade. Akshaye, have you watched movies like Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, Padosan and the like? I suspect not.
May god put some sense into the film makers of the present day…
A Bloody post
Religious people at times can get GROSS. I ll get to what I mean by gross as I pursue this post.
This is something that has been on my mind for long now. The way certain people/ customs treat the menstrual cycle of women is unreasonable to say the least. In early days I have been told that girls were kept away from religious activities and the kitchen and were locked up in rooms for the joy of being dirty or unclean! Inhuman.
That I believe is for the sake of hygiene and so that women and young girls who used to work like dogs could get rest for three long days in a month at a stretch. But in the present scenario all these customs and traditions as people would like to refer to it seems out of place and completely repulsive and dogmatic.
I have hitherto not been able to understand how a monthly period is unclean. Since the inception of the female sexuality it has been so. That’s how women are. It is a very natural and biological process that is the premise of procreation. If the menstrual cycle is unclean, so is the female sexuality, there is something catastrophically wrong with the anatomy then! If we can urinate, and defecate why not menstruate normally??? It’s only a process of letting out toxins and unwanted wastes in the body. But the customs indicate something completely the converse. There is another contradictory element about the menstrual cycle in the Hindu custom which is out of my understanding. When a girl attains her puberty, a “function” as it is called is held to celebrate the occasion and then the girl is shunned subsequently during her period.
What’s more is that the shiva-linga is an illustration of the male sexual organ and the female vagiana. And I have also heard that a particular shiva-linga in a temple goes through its menstrual cycle every month! And the period of the shiva-linga is celebrated with all pomp and show! The Hindu rituals are just a bunch of contradictions as I see it.
Here I would like to enunciate my recent encounter with a religious soul who nearly wanted me to pull my pant down and check if I was on my monthly period.
I had to descend upon the holy premises of Mr. T(very close relative) as it was his birthday. Being fully aware that Mrs. T was a religious conformist I did not enter the kitchen/prayer room of the house and kept myself to the drawing room and a specific chair even, as I was on my monthly period. The whole day passes and Mrs. T now wanted me to go to the prayer room for some reason, but I refrained from doing so as it may hurt her religious sentiments. But she seemed to insist, and when the persistence of Mrs. T was at its peak I had to give in and tell her that I can’t go to the prayer room. At the utterance of that, Oh! the lady just freaked and expressed a deep sigh and was highly disappointed that I did not tell her that I was on my period. The first thing she wanted me to do was to tell her I guess, and then she would also keep track of it maybe! Blasphemy.
I was spellbound.
This being the state of affairs I am forced to dislike and loath these traditions and customs of the Hindu religion. Do not stop me from referring to it as a religion as that is what Hinduism now has come to be.
The Park Bench
The park bench on my blog’s template is one place i would love to sit. Sit in solitude, with snow flakes gently falling and creating a white layer over the trees. With a wisp of cold breeze kissing me tenderly. On the virgin land, in introspection I would indulge. Into the deep woods, far beyond, I would love get lost. Co-exist with nature in all its element. Learn from nature the beauty of simplicity, the magic of love, the fury of conflict and the ruins of ego. Thats where I want to be.
Kabhi lust Kabhi love
I have been thinking of writing about this movie for a very long time, but it really did not materialize.
It is a realization that struck me a while ago that — NO Man can be portrayed to be a “thinking out of the box” kind of man when it comes to women and we for one should not try to deny that. All that seem to crave for is lust. [Guys reading this, I am not making a GENERAL statement, but talking about the majority of men, no offence meant]
On the Surface: The movie seems to be an “Archie meets Bollywood” story.
Archie- Rahul
Veronica-Tina
Betty-Kajol
Mr. Malhotra- Mr Weatherbee
But there is more to this sweet mushy romantic one of a kind debut movie of the King of “K”, Karan Johar.
Rahul believes that “Love is Friendship”, now, how clichéd can one get?! But anyways we should excuse Rahul of his immaturity. Little was he aware that his one liner could put thoughts into the mind of his “bestest” friend, Anjali. Not only does Anjali take the cue, so does the gorgeous Tina. What exactly did Karan think when he made the movie? It beats me. He has tried to show the whole world how boys are merely attracted to the opposite sex by only the looks and the amount of flesh they get to see. Rahul first loves Tina, I can’t see why, other than the fact that she wears teeny-meeny clothes. Then later she dies of childbirth and he falls in love of the sari clad Anjali who in college could not carry herself in a skirt and khol eyes! All that I see here is a boy who judges a girl by the beauty she radiates outwardly.
Is that all that men want in women, is that women are all about? Flesh and skin? I am not holding men responsible for this hostile situation that I am portraying here. To what extent are they responsible? It is of course the women who tempt them sometimes. It though can’t be denied that men find the female anatomy damn interesting and intriguing. Hell. And this movie just seems to reiterate that, which makes my abhorrence towards the men folk skyrocket. So what if it is SRK romancing a lady in georgette, whose pallu flies away. It’s a man and only flesh fascinates him.
Love at first sight- what’s that all about? It is not love but lust. Most often people mistake one for another. What in heaven’s name does a person find in another person at first sight? I am of strong belief that love can’t dawn upon a person in just a couple of meetings. In a great number of cases, I have found lust being mistaken for love and has gotten girls into deep shit.
Is the human anatomy so stimulating that men cant resist their desire to experience it? Or is it basic human instinct and men indulge in satiating their lesser desires?
Though it’s another story as to how women try to lure men. I ll delve upon that sometime later.
Bottom line: Men will be men.
My traffic signal companions
Beggars on Indian roads are commonplace, but their antics I tell you are as novel as can be! And these beggars for all you know may also be pass outs from National School of Drama, they would give King Khan a run for his money for sure if given the opportunity.
You can find a lot of people going gaga over the “garibi hatao aandolan” and all other such movements to uplift the poor and those who are lazy enough not to work and earn for themselves. The faster the un/under- privileged understand that Darwin’s theory of “Origin of Species”, where he mentions “Survival of the fittest” is the mantra of life, these guys will never refrain from beggary. The problem is that they find it far easier an act to stand at traffic signals, places of worship, bus stops, wearing a mask of sadness with a stretched out arm, which would move up and down like a lever, than to look for a job. I don’t mean they find themselves white collared jobs, but physical labour is one avenue they sure can try.
All that aside, these days beggars indeed wear a new look. I commend their ingenuity. The hawkers at traffic signals are a sight. Today I found a girl who sold a yellow piece of wipe cloth to a man sitting in a bus! Her marketing skills I envy. I don’t exactly know how she convinced him, but it sure did look like she told him use it as a face towel (if not for a handkerchief!), its summer in Chennai and we do need such powerful absorbents.
These disguised beggars are a zillion times more bothering than the normal ones! And whats more, their acting skills are something I completely admire. The other day at a traffic signal once again, I was victim to a flower-seller. This boy was 7-8 years old, a basin full of flowers at 2100 hours at night. His contention went thus “Madam, if you buy some flowers I can go home, I need to study, have an exam tomorrow”. My immediate response would have been “Yaar kaadu le poo suttare?”, ( In whose ears are you meandering flowers?), but I instead just zoomed past him when the signal turned green. He was highly convincing I must add. If not for Ms. Doubtfire, Ms. Cynic, Ms. I give you a damn who are my alter egos, I would have fallen for the ploy of the young boy.
That’s about the beggars but there is something that bothers me furthermore.
I no more question the government about the measures it has taken to curb the growing rate of beggars (poor) but I rather worry about this increasing divide between the have’s and the have not’s. The rich only seem to be getting richer and the poor poorer. The poor seem to be happy with their jobless nature and the rich are happy hoarding their money. I do know for a fact that a SINGLE CLASS of people is impossible to exist. There have to be some rich and some poor, but the attitudes of the classes worry me.
Tagged!
Time of starting? 20:18 hours
1. Were you named after anyone? Nope
2. Do you wish on stars? Naah
3. When did you last cry? A month ago…
4. Do you like your handwriting? Err…yeah..
5. What is your favourite meat? Naah…
6. What is your most embarrassing CD on your shelf? Minoo.. I dont even have the slightest idea as to what the kid Minoo is upto…
7. If you were another person, would YOU be friends with you? Without a doubt, Yes.
8. Are you a daredevil? Yes ofcourse…
9. How do you release anger? Write! Vandalism
10. Where is your second home? YS Room!!!
11. Do you trust others easily? Yes..
12. What was your favourite toy as a child? I guess my glow doll
13. What class in school/college do you think is totally useless? EVS ofcourse, the others are useless too..
14. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Oh yes!
15. Have you ever been in a mosh pit? No…
16. What do you look for in a guy/girl? Lotsa things…
17. Would you bungee jump? For Sure
18. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Ummm… Not always
19. What’s your favourite ice cream? Butterscotch… Yummm, slurp…
20.What are your favourite colours? Black
21. What are your least favourite things? Hypocrites, Dug up roads, forwards, materialistic morons, slefishness, humid summer, lack of social awareness… and lots more
22. How many people do you have a crush on right now? Hmmm… Lets see,, SRK,, Abishek Bachchan, George Clooney…
23. Who do you miss most right now? A sibling
24. What are you listening to right now? Dil Aisa Kisine mera toda… (Amaanush)
25. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be? BLACK
26. What is the weather like right now? Pleasent breeze blowing yet my room is HOT…
27. Last person you talked to on the phone? BSNL linesman!!!!!
28. The “first” thing you notice about the opposite sex? Thought process, voice, level of clenliness…
29. Do you like the person who sent you this? Yeah, she is mad, but still a nice girl nonethless..
30.How are you today? Unemployed! Bored!
31. Favourite non alcoholic drink? Water
32. Favourite alcoholic drink? Naah.. But water does give me a kick a times… when dehydrated!
33. Natural hair colour? Brown-black
34. Eye colour? Dark shade of brown
35. Wear contacts? No
36. Siblings? Sadly, no
37. Favourite month? March- end of academic year…
38. Favourite food? Nothing specific really
39. Favourite day of the year? Ummm,,,, no particular day, the four days of Durga Puja are fun though
40.Have you ever been too shy to ask someone out? Well, well… I am not saying much on that…
41. Scary movies or happy endings? Feel good factor appeals to me better…
42. Summer or winter? Known devil is better than the unknown devil, summer.
43. Do you want your friends to write back? All my friends have been tagged!
44. Who is most likely to respond? Hah!!
45. What book/magazine are you reading? The English Teacher (RKN)
46. What’s on your mouse pad? I dont have a mouse pad, got irritated with it and flung it away to some faraway land..
47. What did you watch on TV last night? Long time since I ve watched the TV
48. Favourite Smell? Petrichor…
49. Have you ever regretted breaking up with someone? If I ever do, I sure will regret it.
50. Most tiresome thing you’ve ever experienced/done? Enrolling myself at MOP
Time of finishing? 21:41 hours
I just realized i can tag a couple of people,
Pingu and MM.. you are tagged!
Thats enough testimony to my employment scenario.
Buzzz…
For once in my life, I am kinda grateful to our Indian system of work ethics.
Before I go any further, Indian work ethics:
(1) We do not work, come what may
(2) The Tsunami struck us, we still will not work for the benefit of ourselves forget about others (I wonder why we are so obessed with the Tsunami offlate)
(3) We have no ethics
My BSNL broadband line for some unknown reason was not in working condition for the past three-four days. And after repeated registry of complaint we still did not receive any significant help from the BSNL guys, and I am happy. I had time for a lot of things, though my parents would still complain that I did not lend a helping hand in the household chores, I still did find time for other things.
I realized that I was spending much of my time on non-consequential activities which were not taking me anywhere. I spend very little time with my parents, activities which I enjoy most doing and the like. (Anyways this does not mean that I am not going to utilize my time in indulging in those non-consequential pursuits of mine…)
Some things are better said than done.
The realization was thus, these days people tend to give increasingly more importance to a person miles away (read, a click or a key away) than a person sitting right next to you. Technology has become so overwhelming that we no more respect homo sapiens in blood and flesh. I am happier chatting with a qwer_tyu at hell dot com or 9876045678!! What the hell??? Where am I heading? Where is the world heading? “Ghar ki murgi daal samet“
There is another angle to it, we use technology, enjoy it, at the cost of something. The aforementioned being one of them. The other is, we have allowed ourselves to be enslaved. We have allowed intruders free entry to our private space. Gets bugging at times. “Hello maa’m, We are calling from Ghjts Ltd. would you…”, nonsense, you ve got my number from some damned database does not imply that you blody well call me up and sell your good-for-nothing commodity to me! I am not going to buy it dude, “teri daal mere paas pakne waali nahin hai“.
I am seriously considering giving my mobile phone… But lets see how far I get with that notion…
Technology ka laddo khao toh pachtao, na khao toh bhi pachtao…
There are a very few sane people in the world, and they do not use invasive technology.
The love-hate relationship
Phoolon ka taarron ka sabka kehana hain…
Ek hazzaron mein merin behena hain…
Saari umar hamein sang jeena hain…
Roughly translates to:
The flowers and stars say that my sister is one in a thousand, we need to live together for life…
My friends and acquaintances who are not single (as in single child) have never understood why I crave for a sibling. I don’t think they will ever appreciate it either. Most only look at those petty quarrels for a pen, a bar of chocolate and the vantage seat to view the TV.
But there is more to it than all those trifling acts. Recently a friend of mine who went through a bad patch in her life opened up to her younger brother, he sure might not have been able to give her any better outlook to the situation but the comfort she must have found in telling him must have given her a lot of equanimity. That’s something I know for a fact I ll never have. Some people who tend to live in an ideal world sometimes tell me, “Main hoon na yaar”. NO! I totally disagree with that assertion. It’s a great deal of difference between a sibling and a friend. One may call me cynical, to make such contemptible statements when somebody actually saying that she ll be there for me for life.
For this very reason I am an open book to my parents. And my friends once again have a problem with that! I mean, on one hand I don’t have a sibling and my parents try to fill in for that and people also have a problem with that!!!
Its something that hits me hard. I may sound silly but sometimes when I ve bottled up my emotions looking out for some soul to talk to, I ve found none and cried to myself. You can maintain a daily journal, but that really is not vent to all your thoughts, one requires a reaction, an opinion a different viewpoint at times. Parents may not be able to satiate all the needs of their child sometimes, how much ever-good parents they may be.
Its just not about having a person to talk to. It’s about being a complete person. I realize lately that I have become closed person. I just can’t accept any person other than my parents very easily. An outsider’s thought-process is something I take time to relate to. Co-existence with friends in my space is arduous. I can’t come to terms with the kinda things people do at times. Sharing is basically what I am coming to. And being a nuclear family with practically no visitors at all, I am selfish when it comes to – time of my parents, their love and the like.
I would yearn for a sibling for ages to come… I miss the experience.
The bottom line: If you have a sibling, you are blessed. If not, main hoon na…
Impulsive revolt
Hatred. Displeasure. Detest. Dislike. Abhor. Loath. Despise.
I did not want to start this post on these lines. But it so happens that I am overtaken by a wave of hatred at this very moment. It’s no great deal really, but I was just wondering as to why and how just the reference to a certain name, incident, issue can enrage a person to such a great extent that he/she is completely overcome by the emotion and stops being rational.
Personally, I do not hate many people, just a couple of them to be precise. And I am of the idea of the presence of a gray area between absolute love and absolute hatred. There are a few individuals I categorize under the dislike subhead rather than, loathe or hate.
But by impulse, as today, I am unable to control my emotions. The sensation is something I am unable to grapple with. It has cost me some very precious time, which I had planned to spend in an absolute happy state of mind. Tough to wrestle with it. It’s taking its toll. I can feel the negative-ness slowly creep into me. It gives you this feeling like a dementor is sucking out all your happiness.
Is it alright to fall for the ploy of these petty instincts? Not at the cost of my joy. The worst being I do not hate X as much as I as I even dislike Barkha Dutt! But its today that things are going haywire. And hence this post.
I am feeling a little better at the end of the post. All hail blogger! Unlimited space all for me to crap about my life, its ups and downs… What more do I ask for? Unlimited happiness. The ability to take charge of my heart at times.
Are the mind and the heart tow completely independent entities? Is there an interface?
Honey, I love you…
This post is going to delve into a grey area. I ve been unable to strictly declare one thing to be right and the other wrong. Its basically a brainstorming session.
It was a couple of days ago that I was at the beach with a friend of mine (male). And when I told my father that I would be going to the beach with him, my dad quipped “Be careful, there is lot of moral policing around”. What the hell, I am just going to sit on the beach and talk to a guy!!! Who is anybody to stop me from doing anything but talk? I am not indulging in any obscene activity. Why should I be under the eyes of these scrutinizing “moral” policing?? It beats me. The recent incident in a park in Meerut was completely immoral, considering that the couples were only in the comapny of each other. And the fact that nearly 30 couples were beaten up was outrageuous. This not how laws are implemented. Operation Majnu(or laila)!!! Ridiculous.
But there are instances when certain people have no idea of their surroundings and imagine themselves to be in a closet where nobody can see them. Unfortunately for the viewers, either the couple are not in a closet or the viewers are wearing X-ray shades.
I was with a group of friends in Marybrown one afternoon and what we saw is this:
Man and girl, walk slyly into Marybrown, occupy the table juxtaposed to ours and start their “I love you soo much session”. I presume this was the conversation:
Man: I love your finger, let me eat it will you?
Girl: No, no, no… (the tussle begins)
Man: Hey! Dont do this to me my sweetheart.
Girl: Okay, I guess we can have a mutual pact, you eat mine and I ll eat yours.
Man: Thats fine with me.
(Ah! the food has arrived!)
Girl: Shall I feed you darling?
Man: Would I mind??
Girl: Oopsie! look its spilt all over your shirt, let me tidy it up for you.
Man and Girl do some nonsense which I am incapable of putting in words.
Thats the kind of PDA which is not acceptable. You may argue saying that why we had to look at them, its your eyes and you can control what you want to see. Sorry, but if somebody blatanly does unacceptable deeds in public, it ofcourse catches the eye of the public. Yet, I dont mean that this Man and Girl should be beaten up. That will be of no consequence. I seriously do not understand as to why couples indulge in experessing their affection for each other in public. The problem though is that the affection expressed is of a very high degree and is simple obscene.
The reasons why people take to PDA may be :
They do not get an opportunity to express themselves if not in public. Which is pretty understandable, but if thats the constraint I guess they should control themselves because they are in public and they should not try to attract undue attention.
They actually want to attract public attention by their antics, in which case I have nothing to say but “Guys! Grow up!”
The other being that they are not aware they are in public, they are soo lost in each others eyes that they just care a damn about the public. Thats not right either. When in public, it is imperative that people follow certain code of ethics.
Thats about unmarried people who do not have a bedroom to themselves, what beats me is married couples also find pleasure in PDA!!! Guys, do whatever you want to in your bedroom, I seriously do not get any vouyeristic pleasure by watching you guys. Its gross.
This is to all my loyal readers, *mmuuaah*, *bear hug*… What do you call PDA at this level? Is it World Wide Display of Affection??? ROFL
Beauty???
Before I start my post I would describe to all you my faithful readers my sense of dressing and what exactly fueled this post. Let me start from the head, the hair is somewhere close to a mop placed strategically such that the forehead is always burdened with hair. To avoid the forehead from taking a large of my hair I symbolically tie up my tresses. To say the least all you can feel is an inch of my tresses peeping out of an extra large hair fastener. The clothes now– a bottle green ull sleeved kameez, maroon salwar teamed up with blue socks (the socks kinda shout out that I am a pisceian), to go with black nike floaters. Thats the look, however repulsive it may be I find it damn comfortable.
The post now.
Having a lot of concern for her students my english lecturer called me upto her desk to give me some of her invaluable advice.
Her: Being a young teenage girl, how come you dont care much about beauty and your looks?
Me: Thats basically not my priority.
Her: Still, you should try to look beautiful.
Me: (Are you going to marry me you ass?- look) The beauty lies here ma’am.(pointing to the heart)
So where exactly does beauty lie? In the clothes one adorns, the colour of the lipstick, or the long tresses which are permed, streaked and what not! I am of firm belief that beauty lies in being clean, internally and externally. Beauty lies in thinking good, being positive about things and spreading cheer. But is it that most are carried away by these inconsequential trivialities of life? How the hell does it matter if my clothes are matched or not? I am not telling you that you look ugly and cursing you. I am happy doing what I want to. I am not doing any bloody harm to anybody. Beauty lies in accepting people as they are. If you are going to expect them to change they do not remain the same person. And beauty lies in not being too intrusive into people’s lives.
Ofcourse I am not saying that keeping your nails long and dirty because you are lazy is beauty! Thats gross.
Beauty lies in one’s thought process. Beauty lies in the mind and the heart. Beauty lies in innocence. This kid for example is beautiful.
Compared to this:
You may pass a decree that I must be out of my senses to find somebody much more beautiful than this greek goddess herself. I beg to disagree, considering circumstancial evidence this lady is nothing but an ogress.
Beauty as I said hence lies in the heart.
Random Ramblings
This is what i basically revel at. Rambling. Random thoughts. Lots of trivial things in everyday life intrigue me to say the least.
On my way to college today on a route different from what i normally take, my father pointed to a particular road we were driving on and said “Guess what?”. Guess what? as in?, the road was not dug up, no accidents, people perfromong their normal chores, naked kids running up and down the street, vehicles driving on the left of the road, everything was perfectly NORMAL. But guess what!, the road was a one way. And yet I found everything from mid-sized cars to cycles plying on the wrong side of the road with a well blown up chest. What the hell was happening? Do citizens not respect rules? Ofcourse they dont, its a glaring fact. Why has the administration not done anything to instill in citizens fear for violating rules if not respect. The administration is not sure itself. It has a statutary rule book, for what damned joy? Unless the law makers have complete faith and respect in the rule book, the rul-ed will never follow the rules. And the executors should be an autonomous body which is all powerful to enforce the rules.
Yesterday, I was returning home from a place about 10kms away from home by bus. Which means that I spent an hour on travel. This post my friend will not talk about the trivial stuff i mentioned in my first post. Its serious. Men are leachrous. Thats all they do. Its not about physically raping a girl, men are pros at doing it visually too. They can seem to think beyond satiating their basic instincts. In their eyes you can see the spastic thoughts and desires. Many blame the girl for wearing provocative clothes. Let me tell you, I was clad in a cotton pant and a shirt which covers my zip and back pockets. What was so provocative about it? Beats me. Dont tell me that women clad in burkhas dont get raped. And refering to men passing dirty comments and feeling a girl up her body as eve-teasing is like saying X raped a girls and hence X is a bad boy! Its ridiculous. And I recently heard in a conversation that 90% of men when they meet women the first thing they do is virtually undress her! Outrageous. Disgraceful to the men folk. What i am coming to say is that even if a girl walks down a road wearing a burkha or naked, it does not make a differnce to men. Its a person of the opposite sex, and thats about it. I dont think the case of girls wearing provocative clothes really is defence for the men. My mother has been a victim of eve-teasing as they call it by young boys, maybe between the age 17-20! My mother does not wear short skirts and body hugging tops! Whats do the men have to say about that? The sari is not a safe attire either? I personally think its not about the attire, its about the minds of people. And anyways, why i am talking about the perpetartors. At the end of the distasteful incident a girl feels violated, and she is taught and advised to put up with such uncouth behaviour and ignore it all. Ignorance is NOT bliss.
The government has done little about the issue. Men are tried and sentence after 14 years and at times aquitted becasue of the lack of evidence. And the worst decision the judiciary has ever made is getting the girl married to the man who she is a victim of. The worst is actually to come, RAPE INSURANCE! Yes, an insurance against rape.
Permanent disability arising out of rape would gross compensation of Rs. 25000.
What the hell does that mean?? Please figure it out for yourselves as to what the government makes and thinks of women. Is the government at fault, is the man at fault or is it the woman, or the society at large?
Death
When I was kid, crying was a regular feature during my home work sessions. Dont laugh guys, I was a kid, okay! So as I was saying, I used to cry, copious amounts of tears wouldwell up and flow down my ckeeks leaving their tear prints all over my cheeks. This was one scene that used to infuriate my mother and all that she used to tell me then was — “cry when I am dead”. Period. As a kid, all that I knew of death was that it was an incident that leaves a person devastated, i dont know a stronger a word.
Recently when I was having a “food for thought” discussion with a friend, I mentioned this. She asked me as to why I would cry when one of my parents is no more. I gave a very simple reply, “All my life, they are the only two people I know who will stand by be come what may, they are my parents!”. I thought I made sense, then I realised that she does not have her father and that she is just as happy as me or maybe better too. Yes, she must be having her moments of grief but that has not taken over her life and she does not walk around like some person who has lost a reason to live and stuff, which I thought would happen if i lost a loved one.
But I learnt that you learn to grow out of it. Rather you find a reason to live. A reason to be happy, a trival reason, but yet that may just turn out to be the premise of your existence. Recently I also saw the movie Saranksh, where Anupam Kher looses his son in riots in the US and practically begins to lose his sanity. He finds no reason to live, he is old, retired, has an ailing wife and a son who is no more… But in his prime, Anupam Kher makes a suggestion to his friend who lost his wife to cancer, which roughly translates to “Jeena toh padega, koi wajah dhoondo”, and the reason that the friend finds is something that touched me. His reason to live is to bring a bottle of milk and flowers for offering to the god at Anupam Kher’s home.
Thats as trival a reason one can find. If you have thr desire to live you would. I strongly believe that nobody can make one angry, scared, intimidated, unless the person himself gives in. Do not give in, fight it. Be is death or a dog on the road…
Death is inevitable, the earlier we learn to cope with the fact the better… Death is no issue to brood over for ages and keep sulking… It is a phase in life we invariably come across and have to get over.
And for all those who still freak on hearing the word, Die, death, mortal, I suggest you read the book “Many Lives, many Masters” by Dr. Brain Weiss..
Read it only if:
You believe in rebirth
Life after death
Hypnosis
Love
God
A review of the book will follow soon.
Of noise, roads and the Mahatma
I remember watching a movie called PUSHPAK starring Kamal Hasan and Amala(not too sure of that). It was a movie which was purely based on acting and devoid of audio. Check it out, you sure will not regret watching it.
Aah, in the movie I reckon Kamal Hasan kind of kidnaps a rich man staying in a suite of a Hotel named Pushpak. Kamal Hasan then camps in the hotel having restricted his victim in his “paradise”. Here is what is funny, the paradise happens to be a portion of some kinda artisan plot which is located very close to a road which harbours heavy traffic and also has a market place and all other possible elements that add to the noise factor. And fortunately or not the hotel is peaceful in very sense of the word. This leads to a problem, the noise factor that I just mentioned is synonymous to a lullaby for Kamal Hasan! He realizes the problem, records the ambient sounds and plays it at night in the suite to catch up on some sleep!
Coming to why I was remined of this. I realized recently that I am kinda turning deaf and insensitive and am growing so used to noise that I cant live without noise . I mean my room is strategically located in my home. Exactly similar to that of kamal hasan’s. The other day I happened to spend a night at my friend’s place for some apparent combined studies. The intentions were noble, but circumstances and situational changes are liabilities. Yeah, so i was at her place, which is so devoid of noise that I for one had the urge to drag my pillow onto the main road and sleep on the footpath! It was that peaceful!
Are our raods immune to such heavy traffic? Before every election I notice that a micron thickness of a mixture of garvel and bitumen is layed which gets worn out by the time the election results are announced. Not only that the road laying department has some kind of deal with the road digging department, the two invariably make sure that the road is dug up right after it has been layed or the road is dug up and no laying is done. It is the result of perfect cooperation, I now wonder what happened to the Mahatma’s non-cooperation movement. Have we forgotten the naked fakir? Am I digressing too much from the issue? I guess not, the bottom line is this – we cooperate when the need is to create inconvenience.
Customer satisfaction is something no management institute in India can drill down the heads of us Indians.
Tengali
Where do I belong? When I was a kid, somebody asked me “What are you?” (regarding my mother tongue, and the state I hailed from), I quipped “I am a tengali “. Thats where the confusion began. I am Venkata Susmita Biswas. I have two mother tongues(Telugu and Bengali), and I stay in a state I dont belong to.
Whats belongingness? It is something that I identify with. I identify with MGR, Rabindranath Tagore, NTR, Kamal Hasan, idli, maach, spicy food, durga pooja, pongal, venkateshwaraswamy.. and many many more… But does that mean I belong everywhere? I dont know for a fact. Do I need to have a strong liking towards a particular place, clulture? Maybe not, I am happy with identifying with everybody around.
I get very kicked to meet bongs at social gatherings, or even if I get to hear some telugu in some shopping mall… And I get am just too excited if I do get to meet tams when I am on a tour and love to ramble in tamil with them… I love it to be as unique as can be. I am special, but sometimes being special you need to pay for it. Everything comes at a cost.
I have now grown out of the damned society, actually its ages since I grew out of it. Thanks to the society I grew out of the dirty murky world we live in. Those were days when my name attracted undue attention, making heads turn to look at this weird girl with an even more peculiar name. Most kids never spoke to me because I guess their parents must have given a picture of me being some kinda alien! The worst though used to be a question I always hated to be asked and to answer. “How did your parents meet and get married?”!! How the hell did it matter to them? Has anyone had the urge to ask any other normal couple this question? Sometimes I ve given real rude replies to such questions, where as sometimes when in the mood for fun I ve even told people that my parents held hands in the park and sang duets around trees and bushes!! That must have left those kids gaping at me with mouths wide open, but I had fun at their expense. And this was the heights, a teacher of mine in the fifth grade asked me as to how my parents got married!!!!! Blasphemy!
And that’s when I was very young, maybe in the third or fourth grade. And this is another small incident that totally cracked me up, after my admission into college we were asked to fill in some form for official purposes and under the head mother tongue I specified telugu and Bengali, and later I got a call from my HOD saying I could specify just ONE!!!! Craziness. It took me a while to convince her that I have two mother tongues and that I WILL specify both come what may.
But the society never does change does it? I had a 45-year-old lady comment month ago, “Hmm so you speak good Bengali huh?” Hell! If I don’t speak Bengali who the hell will??? A tamil Iyengar Brahmin??? Give me a break people, if your kids can speak their mother tongue, so can I speak (just that I have two).
Why do I have a feeling that we Indians have not grown up? Why are many still living in a world where they are scared to accept reality and face change?
But I must say, my parents were always by me and I learnt to face the big bad world rather early and now I care a damn about what the world think about me and my parents.
Happiness
It seems like ages since I blogged. Its infact exactly a week. I am addicted to blogging.
But the last week has been pretty eventful must say. With all those damned exams which do not connect to me the least, and the trip to pondy getting cancelled because of the sheer number of people disinteredted has spilled water on all my efforts to do something nice for my class(guys I love you). And also most importantly me doing well in one of exams considering that all I understood about the subject was that while writing a business story you need to talk money! Is that not a learning, how many people actually know that? Not only all this even my birthday was such a wach out. With exams around the corner I could not even invite people home. Thats been the saddest of all. A day I spent completing notes instead of cutting a cake and with utmost care opening gifts and watching a movie(for the second or third time maybe) and some little gossip too..
And I can also add here that my internship is hanging in mid air, I guess I ll have to talk to Prannoy Roy or Rajdeep sardesai only now! The channels I am using do not seem to yield any results. How much of consequence does that have in you my loyal readers? Even if it does not I will not stop rambling about how bad my life is.
Actually its not as bad as it seems. Its rocking. I am having very happy times and I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who have made my life joyous. Did that sound like I won some academy award???
I dont care much, I am happy. And guess what, I can even make coffee now. I am now confident of living alone during my post grad and surving it. Cheers to me!
Yeh Pyaar kya hai??
I struggled a lot last night to write something about love but all in vain. I just could not come up with anything nice. All I could think of was – “I wonder how much money that rose shop guy made?” “What was his profit margin?”, “What is the market for roses like?”, “The rose market is experiencing a boom today.”…
Gawd, I have lost it. I can’t seem to think beyond economics, it’s maddening. I need to write three more articles for the journal. The one on Blogging is done, for obvious reasons. I do not want my blog to be a vent for all academic stress but everything in my life just seems to somehow relate to acads. Our lives are governed by numbers. Right from marks, attendance percentage, pocket money, even the subjects are conspiring against us this semester. I ll sure reach the gates of hell by the end of this sem.
Okay I wanted to talk about LOVE.
Is love blind really? I don’t think so. Unless you know the person well and understand him/her inside out, you cant for sure say that you love him/her and can live the rest of your life with that person. It is not blind, it is unconditional though. There is a thin line which differentiates the absence of vision to unconditional love. I for one cannot discretely draw the line but there is a slight difference. Need help on that front, (comments are invited).
How do you realize you love somebody? As madhuri dixit says in DTPH “woh tumhe ek ishaara dikahyega…” (He will show you one indication, He-God). I ve read about reading omens in “The Alchemist”, but I am not sure how effective and fool proof these indicators will be. I mean we normal people need to read them, not an Andalusian Shepherd!! Please God, make the pointers very blatant and vivid, so that we do not mistake one for another.
As you all can see for yourselves, I am writing crap. Maybe I should embark on writing about, on or whatever love sometime later, when I am aware of the fullest meaning of the emotion.
This is taking me nowhere.
Marinating my stress
I really cant take this any longer.
I survived the publication of my college fortnightly paper, but i really am not sure of surviving the publication of my Business Journal. and when i say publication i mean it in every sense of the word, right from writing articles, placing them on the pages, editing them, adding all crappy graphics and photograps and the grand finale- grtting it printed. Its a tough job, we are being trained to be journalists, but my institution believes in holistic education. And we end up learning pagemaking, printing and morphing pictures too.
Thats my academics, my personal life has always been down in the dumps. This week was the worst of all. I got balsted from my parents on everyday of the week (Dad if you are reading, I am seriously attempting change, and i am not that bad afterall). As a part of this change, I cooked for the first time today, all by myself. I made aaloo curry! To start with i could not differentiate between sambar, rasam and chilli powder. And Kavya helped me figure of stuff(thanks babe). And for all those who are wondering where I got the recipe from – I hail to Mallika Badrinath’s recipe books. My mom follows them and so do I. Must say, its not as tough as i thought it would be. I am damn sure i can repeat this masterpiece of mine. And to add to my success, I did not burn up anything, neither cut my finger nor burn any of the vessles used and avoided other possible disasters. And i also cooked with a limited supply of water.
Money mantra
I am not an atheist, nor do I believe in god like most people do. To me god is something or somebody who comes into the picture when I am in a situation where I cant help to improve the situation or control the situation. God is something I fall back on. No! when I say situation I am not referring to the “God I have an exam today, help me” types. I am talking about larger issues on which I have no control at all. When my friend was in the hospital for example undergoing a major surgery, I could do nothing but tell god to help her and see to it that she is back in good shape.
Wait… I am not going to talk about god here, I wanted to talk about the industry that god runs. God can be reserved for a later post.
The TTD, tirumala tirupati devasthanam. Mann that’s the power of god! He is the source of employment for a whole city! That’s god for you. Millions of people thronging the temple to get a nano second glimpse of the god. Even nano second is an exaggeration.
The city down below(tirumala) has grown all due to the temple on top(tirupathi). Right from pujaris, auto and taxi wallahs, hotels, tea stalls, bangle stalls, head gear, holy threads, portraits of god, accessories, beggars, civil engineers, geologists, and god knows what other kinda professionals have secured employment in this holy place due to the godliness of the place.
Must say the place looses its sactity once people start making financial gains. I agree that Venkateshwara Swamy himself has taken the avtar in Tirumala to repay the loans taken from Kubera for his marriage but we his followers generating money as if today is the last day to make money is sheer callousness. But I guess this place is exceptional, followers still throng the sanctum sanctorum, come hail, thunder, tsunami “Yedukondala vada, venkataramana, govinda, govinda”, the resounding immortal characteristic of the place will ring in your ears.
I must commend the TTD for not allowing private organizations to use the place to make financial gains though. Tirumala is monopolized by TTD and that somewhat reduces the troubles to an extent, but the problem actually lies in the fact that TTD is not very efficient to handle the large crowd. Kudos to TTD for maintaining a high standard of clenliness and sanitation at Tirumala nonetheless.
Whatever it be at the end of the day what I deduce goes this way—everything is money, everything is business, and GOD is the largest industry.
considering a change
A friend of mine today asked me as to why i named my blog “Living on the edge”,, so i am going to justify myself in this post.
On face value it seems as if i am some kinda endangered species and am writing blogs to further the cause of my species and pleading for preserving my dynasty. Thats one way of looking at it, but what basically was on my mind when i typed that out was this—
“Damn my life is such a mess and i am walking on a double edged sword(as cliched as it can sound), that i might walk into the marina beach and end my life”(considering that i cant swim). Thats the thinking that went behind the name of my blog, but now on second thoughts, i am contemplating a change…
The top contendors being the following:
Attacked by a Dementor
my bleak future
frustration kills
am i living?
Death Eater ate me
Kindly help me change the name, and suggestions are welcome too,,, i ll be glad to receive more such names on the same lines…
conservative-chennai???
this post is written out of frustration. it is inspired from the recent episode of We the People(NDTV).
i ll brief my loyal readers about my frustration in the next post.
Is chennai really the most conservative city of the country. Chennai in the recent past has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, to begin with the Khusboo controversy then the incident where police accompanied by media stormed into a restaurant where couples were taken to task for displaying affection in public.
Though the above mentioned incidents do not sum up the word conservative in the context of Chennai, the incidents have placed chennai on the national map. To a teen the word conservative means conservatism in dress code, its not new to see academic institutions imposing certain dress codes which the student has to follow when he/she is attending college. But there is more to conservatism than just that. The other aspects which also determine conservativeness of a large population; conservativeness in education, spending money, culture, and the like.
The necessity of good quality higher education was realized long back by the whole country and not just Chennai. But Chennai differs from the other cities because, students of Chennai once passed out standard 12 invariably join a professional course or a medical course which has been the perfect recipe of success for ages now. Chennai-ites still have not been able to think out of the box when it comes to education, and present trend of increasing number of private colleges, deemed institutions is a testimony to this.
Spencer plaza, lifestyle, Pothys, music world, planet yumm, subway and the list is endless. The fact that all these stores have survived in the city of Chennai proves that Chennai is not far behind the rest of the cities when it comes to spending money on material, food or entertainment. Not only does this prove that Chennai-ites are open when it comes to spending money, it also shows that Chennai-ites are ready to invest money in such business.
The extent to which Chennai-ites follow traditions and perform all rituals come what may only suggests that Chennai-ites still are carrying on the traditions handed over to them from their forefathers. But the style of celebration; the festival related sales, pomp and glory with which the festivals are celebrated shows that we Chennai-ites are becoming open to changes.
Having pointed out a few conservativeness determinants, it is essential to know how to measure conservativeness. It is not the few board members of a college who decide the dress code to be imposed on children that measures conservativeness, but the huge protests by the children, parents and concerned citizens that measures the degree of conservativeness.
With incidents of moral policing on the rise and evident protests against such actions of the police by the public, and these demonstrations give us a hint that Chennai-ites are fighting the conservativeness of the society and will fight till they win the war against the narrow minded society.
A manufacturing unit called IIT
24-29 Jan the Indian Institute of Technology cultural annual fest SAARANG(read BE-RANG). yes I have a slight problem with this deemed institution. I do not deny the fact that the IITs are the best institutes in India whose products can compete with international brands, but I fail to understand why these institutes have a strange notion that the world begins and ends at their IN and OUT gates!
With due respect to the Institution and its products, I would like to say that all the inmates of this deemed campus are as narrow minded as a capillary tube. May god lead them towards the light.
I am writing this blog to vent out my frustration that has bottled up with in subsequent to my visit to IIT yesterday. My college publishes a newspaper and since SAARANG is the big even in the month of Jan, my group which is in-charge of publishing the Feb 1st issue decided to give it a good coverage and lead story status. We only wanted to know if we could enter their pro shows concerts using a press pass. And we spoke to X (who is some big shot among the core group that organizes the events, I guess), he told us we can enter. But when we actually do show up things went wrong, we were not permitted. And to add to that a faculty member of very high order, was not even aware of the existence of my college and that it publishes a paper. I here would like to say that I am proud of my college that it publishes a paper and also is the only college in the country to run a FM channel. Yes I don’t study in a professional college, and nor am I a student of a college where students only pay money but never acquire education, but that does not mean I am a lesser mortal. I deserve to be respected for what I am and not because I am not something else. It simply does not work that way. The entry to the concert is not my issue here, let me make that very clear. The issue is of treating people outside IIT as normal people and not as a lower grade of people.
And anyways, why do I have to consider the institute to be very great?? It is providing
education of international standard, for what joy?? For the products to be exported??? I am sorry to say, but that’s not what the Indian Institute of Technology should be doing. There are couple of my friends who have told me “IIT is really not the place for me”, I would like to ask them as to why they are in IIT then. To be polished and sold to some firang??
The system beats me. I study in IIT and then push off to a white mans land to earn big money. Looks like these guys love to serve as slaves to them. Then why in the first place did we strive hard to achieve independence? We would have flourished under them..
Get a life guys!
what is LIFE???
Technical advancements will soon give amoebic reproduction a run for its money. With a mobile in your possession you know one thing for sure; you can be disturbed at anytime, you can disturb (I call it communicate) with anybody at anytime. And for about a month now I’ve been having very thought provoking conversations with a friend of mine when India sleeps and America is up and about.
And yesterday I made a very profound statement “Dude I don’t find life worth living”. It was in connection with my acads and that I am not doing anything productive these days. She shot back a reply which read- “understand that life is a real big word”. She thought I was talking about trivial stuff. How trivial a matter is my academics? I now got to thinking serious stuff. Now had just about five questions to answer:
What is life?
Where is life?
Who is life?
When is life?
How is life?
I was a loss. I realized that I was just performing some activities religiously and calling that life. That’s not done. Life should have more to it. I was looking for a philosophy, a theory or an equation that would answer my questions.
I started out by thinking beyond college; I figured out that everything was stringed to college in some manner. I had to create watertight compartments to analyze what my life is all about. I then came up with this picture
Family
Friends
Academics
Profession
Society
It is my interaction with all these spheres that makes u my life as I live it today. Now I had to decide to what magnitude each one of the afore mentioned spheres had an influence on me.
I took to ranking each one of them
Family, friends period. The profession is just to earn myself a living that need not surface in this list and the society, I am a part of the society but so what? I have virtually no interactions with the people in the society.
Where was all this leading me? I am reminded of Stephen Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People where he talks of money centric people, god centric people and their like.
Am I on the right track to understand my life? I don’t know.
I had read book on life after death, books on how to handle death, books on positive attitude, books on not losing your identity etc. but never did I read anything on life as such.
I felt like the whole world was swimming around me. I was just existing with no meaning at all for 19 long years????
I turned to the dictionary for the technical meaning of life
Condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter
The existence of an individual human being or animal
Period between birth and death
It then struck me hard on the head that life in itself is lifeless; I should give it the vigour and vitality. It’s all about me doing and seeing things how I want them to be, I am life. I give meaning to life.
ushering the new year with a forecast???
Yay!! It’s the New Year!!! But what really is new about it? To a college student like me, its only about remembering to write the right date at the top of every page when I start a new set of notes. The earth has completed one revolution around the Sun, now what really is so merry about that?
Every year on the intervening night between December 31 and January 1, I wonder WHAT would be better/new/interesting in the coming year. And this year too I indulged in the pursuit of “what does this year have in store for me”.
And I did find some really interesting predictions, advices and their like.
“Though yo’ ll have “enemies working out of sight, yet happily, many things will fall into place for you.”
If I remember rightly, something on the same lines was predicted for me last year and the year before that too. Needless to say things did fall in place (or I should say, I have a strong faith in destiny, and took whatever came my way in my stride). God bless my enemies, because once I do get to know who they are, they might have to seek shelter with bin Laden.
To achieve the kind of success you desire, you’ll have to be like an artist, preparing the canvas and the colours according to your own special needs and vision. Do that and you ll find many outcomes to your liking.
I am just hoping that I don’t loose my vision even in the worst of circumstances, as I don’t really want to splash black on the canvas instead of yellow; that would spell doomsday for me. I always thought astro predictions used metaphorical language, but this statement was damn easy to understand; I can paint what I want to only if I have the right tools, now how obvious is that???
Of course if I do something my way it will be to my liking!!! Gawd, these astrologers have some knack of making out of some superfluous predictions.
Working on some special plans will bring you a range of advantages, and that will bring you a range of advantages.
Seriously tell me, don’t you know that to be recognized for what you are worth you need to be a cut above the rest?? What I want to know is, HOW to be a cut above the rest. If somebody would tell me that I would be ever indebted to him.
Love, romance and happiness: Be more expressive both by way of words and gestures.
Long ago my parents advised me about speaking out what I felt (in the context of bully’s in school);“Don’t say yes when you want to say No”. And they also told me that I ll find happiness only if I make my views clear to others and tell them what I want of them and what I am capable of doing. Can it be that my parents are greater than Nostradamus??
I only end up digging flesh with my nails and biting my teeth hard. These predictions are such a farce and millions of people around the world are pulling off a great act trying to “predict” lives of people, natural calamities, who will win the elections and what not.
So much for astro predictions… belated new year wishes…
after bus, its now air travel
It’s been a long time since I visited my grandparents, a short visit was due and with holidays on the cards, a trip to the city of the Nawabs was imminent. My parents packed me off to Hyderabad for four days (which later due to technical reasons became five long days).
The trip started on a bad note, with my flight getting delayed due to the weather conditions. But by gods grace most flights flying out of Chennai on Saturday were delayed, and Saumya’s flight too was delayed. We met up at the airport spent a great deal of time loafing around the airport, contemplating pushing each other on the trolleys and their like. More than loitering, which got a tad bit uninteresting after a while; we took to observing co-sufferers and airport employees.
Among the co-sufferers I found a lot of look alikes of celebrities, one man resembled Kabir Bedi to such a great extent that I had the urge of walking up to him to solicit his comment on his most recent movie Taj Mahal (in which he for some mysterious reason looks gay). The combing action proved to be great entertainment; there was a Govinda at the Kingfisher check in counter and a Parthiban mopping the floor. Wow, that was fun. Saumya got her call for the security check as I proceeded towards the check in.
Now comes the best part. I completed my security check after a big deal of discussion between the airport authorities about my inhaler, which is a canister in a plastic covering. The canister gave them doubts about my identity and I had to convince them that the canister did not house anything harmful and dangerous. Having completed that ordeal, I proceeded to the passengers lounge. Did somebody say, the world is a small place? I met Nina. Her flight though was flying as per schedule, but she was praying that it gets cancelled. Our flights were scheduled to leave at the same time nearly, so the two of us had time to crib about college and assignments and discuss how the two of us would spend the New Year eve.
The flights arrived and we were off. But it was when I was out of the lounge that I realized that we were sitting right next to Vaiko (Jaya put him in jail under the POTA).
I am now compelled to mention that I had booked tickets on Air Deccan. And what an experience it was. The model of the flight seemed to be inspired from a MTC bus structure and the ride was just as good. The Airhostess (the cabin crew) resembled the hawkers on trains (chai garam, garam chai…). I really cant recollect anything beyond this of my approx three hour flight, the ride was good enough to put me to sleep and I floated freely among the clouds…
wither public transport
