Of Mechanics and Mental Mathematics

A khichidi post.

Just got my two wheeler back from the mechanic and i am looking for any excuse to shoot. To kill. Those of you with two wheelers must have guessed why. But for the rest, a before-after.

Before
Jammed break
Jammed stand
Silent horn
Dead battery
A seat that wouldn't lock
Superfast blinking indicators

After
Break okay
Stand okay
Silent horn
Dead battery
A seat that wont lock
Superfast blinking indicators
- PUC certificate
- Half a tank of petrol
- 412 rupees

Is an honest mechanic really such an oxymoron? In all these years of owning vehicles and getting them serviced, i haven't come across a single one i could trust. What gets to me most is the petrol stealing. I could have avoided it oh soo easily! The mother has been warning us for years about this petrol fetish that mechanics as a breed seem to have. But that is what i always took it as, one of mother's warnings. To be fair though, mine doesn't have too many. But you know how it is. You assume none of those things you have been warned about will actually happen to you. Until one day you actually miss that train because you forgot to take the ticket, and then, you open your little book titled "Wisdom i should pass on to my young ones - Part VIII" and write down:

Thou shalt strive to become a mechanic in life. No, getting married to one is not an option. Thy mother knows mechanics scam their spouses too. If that fails, thou shalt rely on public transport for thy transportation needs. But if, ever, in spite of thy mother's best laid plans, thou do find thyself in the position of owning a two wheeler and having to give it to a mechanic, thou shalt rather hand over the keys of thy house to a certified thief than give thy two wheeler to a mechanic with more than a teaspoonful of petrol.

On a totally unrelated note, i don't understand how people make statements like - Its been 5 years since i passed out of college? I mean, how do they keep track of the passage of years? Do they increment the number in their memory every year on the appropriate day? Or do they do the math afresh every time they make such statements? Common sense tells me they must be doing the math, and yet, it doesn't show. Maybe they are all mental math geniuses. Or maybe, they have another little notebook in which they write down the dates for everything that ever happened in their lives. And revise it every morning while brushing their teeth.

How may years since I moved to this city?
5
How many years since I last met xzy?
3
How many years since I got this toothbrush?
1.5

Yuck. Mental math not being an option, I'd rather be caught counting on my fingers.

How many years since you passed out of school?
1,2,3... God help me, i don't have that many fingers!

Break, please!

I love throwing parties at my house. I love having people over, food, drinks, dance, the works. And the next day, of course there is a mess. I cant live with the mess. And I hate to clean up. Maybe i should have someone to do the cleaning. But I don't like handing over my house to some stranger. Maybe i should not have parties at home. But i love having parties at home. But, but i hate the mess...

Very unlike the real me, i dont like parties, i dont mind the mess and i will never say no to help! But you get the point.

Will someone please do a Control-C?

What would i be?

I've often wondered what kings and great warriors must be like. Should they be truly passionate to be able to rise above their fears, doubts, sometimes even morals and do what they have to do? Or should they be truly dispassionate to be able to live with their actions, look upon it as simply their duty? It would not do at all, would it, if they crushed an opponent at war and spent the rest of their life feeling sorry for him?

I'd make a lousy warrior. Even assuming i am the bravest of the brave, i simply couldn't be bothered enough to go pick a fight with someone. And even if i did, the first scratch on his skin from my sword and i would have forgotten him and waged a war with myself. Over whether i should finish him off or rush for bandage.

Wonder what i would have done had i been living in the times of Kings. Warrior, no. Farmer no, they have to get up too early. Cook no, i'm bad at that too, plus not much of my efforts would reach the table. Trader no, cant bargain to save my life. Dancer no, singer no. Jester no. Birbal no. Those people who fan the king with peacock feathers no.
Wonder if they had career counseling back then.

Shopping we will go!

Another cousin story. A different one this time. This one has just started college. Asli college, not the fraud colleges one used to goto in 11th and 12th standard, schoolage would be a better name for which. Where timestables have lectures not periods, where lectures are bunkable, where canteens exist and professors covering the entire syllabus is unheard of. And she wanted to buy t shirts. And she wanted me to come shopping with her. Me. ME. Me. Me. And. I. Agreed.

Some background for those who did not feel the earth move beneath their feet. I DONT shop. I might agree if
- it is for me and
- you hold a gun to my head
but for someone else, i'd rather die. Much rather.

Back to the ishtory. Not only did i agree, i was the guide, the knowledgeable one! I guess all those yearly shopping expeditions with my mom left their mark. I found the place, i took her to shops, i asked them to show us stuff and, this is what i am most proud of, i even told them thanks, but you dont have anything we like. Twice. Or once. This was not just a step forward, this was evolution!

And it was fun too! 3 times out of four, we liked the same stuff. It did not result in a duel unto death because we are both nice people who belong to vastly different size classes. She belongs to the class for which they make clothes, i belong to the class for which they dont. I found her a shirt that says - "If you dont like the way i drive, get off the road".
(Her younger cousin tells her that she has a brush with at least one car driver every time she is on the road. And what do she do? Does she lecture the young one on road safety? Does she panic and call the young one's parents? Nooo, she buy the young one a t shirt that says "If you dont like the way i drive, get off the road". And lets the young one ride her bike. Some people, i tell you!)

We came back with stuff that was 17 rupees under budget and met with parental approval. Not bad for a first timer! No, i didnt bargain. That would not be evolution. That would be alien takeover!

My assignment

Scott Adams says in his blog today

Your assignment for today is to describe your own job in one sentence, preferably in a humorously derogatory way.
Go.

So i went. And on my way realized that though no one from my office reads my blog (not that i know of. If there are any of you out there, please come forward and declare yourself. Or, remain forever slient), this thing has the potential to someday come and bite me. So, i shall write about the former job of this person i know. I cant believe how evil a genius i can sometimes be! This will not only totally get to this person i know, but will also tell me how often this person i know reads my blog. Because if this person i know is the person i know, (s)he simple cannot let this go.

This person i know, his/her job was to produce the gems that someone could then call crap and spray paint all over.
Go.

Two Appliances

In this post, I pretend that a school teacher has asked me, me, who has now seen more of life outside school than in it, to write an essay on "Two appliances". Yes, any two appliances. Because, as much as i think, i cant come up with an essay title that covers the two appliances i want to write about. So, Two Appliances.

Appliance one is my blower. My former blower. A blower, for those of you unused to extreme climates (no sniggering, Kanpur is extreme) is an appliance that blows out hot air. De- freezes the frozen climate. Brings warmth, and equally importantly, makes a comforting fan like noise without which some people cannot sleep. The one i had i shall call Little Grey Blower. It came into my life from outside the campus gate on a particularly cold November evening. And the cold winter nights, and for that matter cold winter days were never the same again. Little Grey Blower would sit on the easy chair and watch over me as i slept. And my room would become a warmer place. Though it is no more with me, it did lead a full life. And went with a bang. All the lights in the wing went off a mark of respect. It might have been age but it might have been a little my fault for using it well past the official end of winter.
You are missed, my little friend, even in lesser winters.


Appliance two is my cooler. My former water cooler. My third hand water cooler. This i shall call Big Blue Cooler. It was a luxury i bought under extreme poverty because better times were promised. (And not that it is relevant to the story, but they did come. Better times. Much better times) Even though i had to transport buckets of water and fill it up everyday, even though it took up so much room that the easy chair had to sleep out, even though my bed had to be 6 feet high to make the best of the cool wind Big Blue Cooler generated, even though i woke up each summer morning to a drizzle, i never thought i had compromised. I would willingly spent hours every night adjusting and readjusting the position and orientation of my bed and Big Blue Cooler for maximum exposure. I would have loved to have passed it on to a fourth hand, but i guess age caught up with it. I left it with the clothes in the drying area, and never looked back. Rust in peace, my friend.

How did i do, miss?

Hurry up!

The movie for the 5th is coming out shortly.

I've revised the 6th one. Can you believe i couldn't even remember who the Half Blood Prince was, or what horcruxes were?

I'm ready. I'm soo ready for the 7th Harry Potter! Even if the name makes it sound like a cheap thriller. Even if it is the last one. Even if rumors say she is on a character killing spree. After this one, they are dead for us anyway. At least on paper. The ones in my imagination, she can never kill.

Hurry up!!!

Ram Rajya

I have become a night watchman. Err... woman. To be precise, less dramatic, closer to the truth and boring, my cousin is kind of alone at home and i have been appointed to protect her at night. My first night on duty, i went over with a movie. No, it was not an abuse of lack of parental supervision, movies made her feel safe. Halfway through, she felt too sleepy to worry about safety and so we decided to save the rest for the next day. I settled into my bed with Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and she, that kid i am supposed to protect, that girl i have seen grow from a bundle in the hospital to to the fine young girl who once gave me note to get out of office, went and locked the doors. She was fast asleep before i realized that as a night watchwoman, that was probably part of my job.
Instead of being shocked at my lack of responsibility and watch-womanability, i prefer to say that i don't believe in locks.

Conspiracy Theory

Society has been asking for it for a while now. What i would like to do more than anything else is to kick it in the backside. However, such physical display of affection being impractical, i have been brooding. And not without result. I have come up with a conspiracy theory! From the makers of society, no less!

Let me state at the outset that for this theory of mine, i have no proof whatsoever. Unless you can count the fact that i would have done it this way if i were one of the makers making up society as proof. When the wise men and women sat down to figure out the rules that they expected majority of mankind to obey, they settled on the strictest possible subset. Not because they were mean, frustrated people but because they realized the importance of the illusion of freedom. They knew there would be rebels, people trying to break free. And they designed the rules such that people could break free without too much damage either to themselves or to their precious society. Kind of like keeping a kid locked in a room, telling him it is to protect him from the dangers outside, so that even if he breaks out he is still within the the house. Free and safe. So, you don't have to actually fly in order to feel that you have broken away, just dancing in the middle of the road will do it.

(Now that I think of it, it seems more common sense than conspiracy. But what kind of a post tile would common sense be?)

Crawling in the dark

While I can run, I'll run
While I can walk, I'll walk
When I can only crawl, I'll crawl
But by the grace of God I'll always be moving forward

says a computer printout that mysteriously appeared in my room yesterday. People I think are trying to tell me something. Life does seem to have stagnated in most areas. If you look closely, you might even get to see the faint green moss that has grown over it. The only crawling i do, i do when i write.

But today, even that didn't seem enough. Today, I hit rock bottom. Today, I picked up Corman. Getting rid of my ignorance/dislike/fear of Data Structures has been on my "things i must do before i am 20" and "things i must do before i am 30" list and is currently in the lead for the "things i must do before i am 40" list. And ordinarily, this doesn't trouble me. I've accepted it as one of the minor irritants of life that one must learn to live with, much like raincoats. But on days like today, when i feel like a big gesture, I pick up Corman. Someday I hope to get what he and his friends want to say. I'm sure it is something beautiful. I can see it sometimes, when someone gives me a problem to solve. And the solution. Or when i get to see the difference between n and n^2 in real life. But mostly, it all appears as just a lot of maths, getting rid of a fear of which is also list material.

So I read Corman. Because 2 pages of that means I'm no longer crawling. And because someday I have to stop being such a kid and start taking interviews. Whichever way i look at it, growing up is not fun.

TV through the ages

From the days when we ran over to the neighbours to watch news coverage on Indira Gandhi's assassination

To the days when we drove over to ex-tenants to watch Ramayana because the light had literally gone out of our lives

To the lusting over the weekend movie shown on DD but being kicked out to play

To the days when we picked up a whole language just by watching serials made in it

To the invasion of cable TV and English movies and sitcoms

To the days when aimless channel surfing became an acknowledged hobby

To the days when life became too full of cares to stand and stare

To the days when the TV was in a room far far away and the competitors for the remote were no longer family

To the enlightenment that the PC was as good if not better

To now, when TV has been reduced to the thing I proudly say I haven't touched in 4 years

While I sometimes realize with a guilt that is more wished for than real, how hopelessly outdated that makes me on current affairs, the only thing I really miss are the ads. I hear they make them good there days.

FAQ

Fact
Did you know (why do all facts begin this way? No that was not what the did you know was for) that convenience was actually a philosophy of life? To put it more formally,

Thou shalt follow the path of maximum convenience.
(go to great lengths to do so, if needed)

No right and wrong, no opinion, no judgment, no ego. Just convenience. It is an art, seen to be believed.


Advice
Use with caution the power to tell people what they want to hear. You just might be setting free someone who by all accounts should be rotting in jail for the rest of her life.


Question
Can a chick ever get back into the egg? Having broken out of its safety, having experienced the joys of running barefoot in the grass, having discovered wings and flight, having found chick-buddies to share the world with, having learnt to hold its own against them, can a chick ever get back into the egg?

It aint over until its over

If you ask a man who is

- about to be hanged
- has the noose around his neck
- has the black cloth over his face

whether he would want to watch a movie by making two holes in his back cloth before the trapdoor is opened, recent experience shows that he will say yes.

Applies to women too.

Happy Convorsary!

The past. Sometimes you life now is so different from your life then that it all seems to have happened to someone else. As the memories flash by, you can look upon them as dispassionately as if you were watching a movie. Been watching one such movie all day today.

It a big day in the heroine's life. No, more like a ceremonious day. The day the last two years of her life become official. More than anything, she is excited by the black gown and the hat. A lot of formality and a lot of silence later, she has her degree in hand! Like in the movies, she throws her degree up when its all over, only to get her first and only dressing down by a professor for disrespectful behaviour! Smiles, photographs, late lunch at a dosa place called for some mysterious reason Ambi Baba (another first and only). Aimless roaming. Bullying. More roaming.

Seems like one of those art movies, doesn't it, where they show a fly doing pretty much nothing for a really long time? (No, i don't claim to be writing an art movie script, if they have such a thing.) As bland and faraway as it all seems, there are some moments in there that can never be contained in my past.

Added: Professor for disrespectful behaviour. Hehe!

I wish I was a bear

I've finally figured it all out. This part of my life i call hibernation. You know, the state where all activity but the ones essential for life cease, and you lie dormant, waiting for better times. I work. I eat. I sleep. And that keeps me alive. Pretty low maintenance, I'd say.

The trouble however, comes from the rest of the world. You see, when you are hibernating, it is understood that you are to be left alone. The only interaction you are supposed to have with the rest of the world is through your nose. But the rest of the world? Doesn't follow the protocol! It keeps disturbing me with stuff that hibernators are supposed to be unaware of. Like trips, and college festivals, and faraway trips, and weddings, and treats, and trips... All stuff designed to make me want to wakeup to life. Only i can't, see?

So now, i've come up with a way to shut up the rest of the world. The whole problem arises, as the astute reader must no doubt have grasped, because i let them get to me. Penetrate through my defenses. Make me want stuff i am not supposed to want. So, until i wake up, this is going to be my standard response to all all non-hibernation-standard questions. Ready?
:)
Yeah. A smiley.

A before-after scenario will show how powerful it can be.

Before:
rest of the world: We are going on a rafting trip!
me in hibernation: Cooooooooool! Hold on, without me?? How could you?? I hate you! I'm never going to talk to you again! Never, ever! I hope your raft topples in the wall. I hope you fall into the third blind mice. I hope... aah, whom am i kidding! It would still be the bestest fun...

After:
rest of the world: We are going on a rafting trip!
me in hibernation: :)

See? Devastating.

Wish me luck. What with the upcoming convocation and rafting trip and wedding, i am going to need it!

Gotcha!

Age creeps up on you and says boo at totally unexpected places. It could be while you were listening to the uncertainties of someone just setting out in the world, looking to find his spot. And you realize how secure you are. The smugness lasts for a while before you realize it also means you can see your whole damn life ahead of you. No uncertainty, no unknowns. Old.

It could be when you hear of someone going for higher studies. Unknowingly, you smile your been there done that smile. And then the shock - When did I cross over to the other side of that one!

It could be when you are showing off your cute nephew's photos. And someone refers to his mom. And you start to laugh, say- she is my cousin, not a mom! She is a kid, like I am. Boo. OMG! Am I an aunty like she is?

Then of course there are the obvious ones. Like there is no way you can click the 16-24 age group in online surveys and still be telling the truth. Or the fact that your classmates are getting married in large numbers. And of course, people who ask you your age and then look around to see where you have left your kids. (No, that hasnt happened, and i dont see how it could, but i also see how it could).

To whoever is trying to send me these signals. I get it, you know, i do. What i dont get is, what am i supposed to do about it?

In which Granny tells a story

(To make up for all the one liner posts. I confess that at this point all i have is a very vague idea of where i want this story to go. Let see if I can take it there)

Once upon a time, began Granny, adjusting her specs to look upon a bunch of interested faces, there were four Pandas. No, no, said the up-to-date granny before the kids could interrupt her, they were not called Ta, Ra Ma and Pa. They were called, well, it doesn't really matter what they were called, so lets call them Axe, Why, Zee and Aye, she said, preening a little at her variable naming skills. There were your regular little pandas, you know, the ones who eat shoots and leaves. They were happy, fulfilled pandas who spent their days climbing trees to eat shoots and leaves. Until one day. And here, granny took a dramatic pause, making sure the audience was with her. On that day, half way up his 23rd tree, Why was hit. No he did not die a gory death, said granny, to the great disappointment of the audience. What do you take my story for, some kind of revenge drama where the remaining three dress up as humans and track down the killer and fall in love with his daughter? As i was saying, she continued, on that day, half way up his 23rd tree, Why got hit. By what you ask? By... a... Question! Oh yeah, those things are dangerous, she told a skeptic audience, sometimes even more dangerous than a headshot.

Granny had them, she knew. She continued. Why bravely climbed down the tree with his Question and sat down to think. Axe, Zee and Aye, passing him on their way to their 25th, 28th and 32nd trees respectively, at once realized something was wrong. Why, whats the matter, they asked him. I have been hit, moaned Why. I don't see any wounds, said Axe in a very scared voice. Zee was too scared to speak. Only Aye was brave enough to ask - was it a Question? Aye, it was, said Why. Better tell us about it before it hits us too, said Aye. Why nodded. Gathering all his courage, he told them about the Question that hit him. Why, said Why, are leaves green?

They were all stunned. Zee even dropped the leaf she was eating and started at it like she had never seen it before. The Question was scary, but what was scarier was that it had been with them all along and they hadn't even noticed. There was only one thing that could save them now. The Answer, said granny to a wide eyed audience. The four of them picked one direction each, and went looking for the Answer.

Axe went North
Over the mountain, across the seas
Forgetting to eat shoots and leaves
Pausing just to tell the trees
How much for the Answer he grieves


Why went East
Looking high and low among the trees
For the Answer that would bring him peace
He found the answer with ease
but is still looking for the peace

Zee went West
Zee went looking determinedly
Some answer there was meant to be
She looked and looked until she found
There was no answer to be found


Aye went South
Skipping over hills and climbing trees
Looking for the answer to complete his peace
The Question still hurts him repeatedly
But never when he eats shoots and leaves

So, said Granny, peering at her audience through her specs, which one of them would you like to be?

(You may think I am lost, but this is where i wanted to be. Yippie!)

Wrong time

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.

Righ now, i do not want people to be nice. I do not want them to care. Not when I'm looking for an excuse to explode.

I wish I was a...

My suitcase has been to Singapore. My digital camera is on its way to London. In the words of Javed Akthar:

Socho tumne aur maine kya paaya insaan hoke

In an ideal world

- I will have work, not just a job
- I will have a life, and not just barely be alive
- Going to the gym will mean burning calories, not just money
- I will have concrete achievements, not just vague dreams
- I will have real stuff to write about, not just bulleted lists

And I will definitely not look upon my afternoon tea as a lifesaver.

Grow up!

Funny isn't it, when people behave like kids? So afraid of the injection, they'd rather remain sick?

Grow up. Grow up. Grow up!

Global warming, my foot!

Its all bakwaas, I tell you. All this global warming sharming. The globe is not getting warmer, its only this city of mine that is. Leave Pune out of the temperature calculations and you will see that the world is not a bad place to be in. (Of course there are people who insist the world will not be a bad place if we leave Pune out altogether. Though I shout myself hoarse defending the city of my birth, all this heat is not helping). Two years in Kanpur and thought i could come back here and turn my nose up at anyone who complained of the heat. All my "You call this hot?? Asli garmi to hamare Kanpur mein hoti hai" plans are now rotting in some damp, sweaty recess of my brain. It must be really bad, mustn't it, if someone who sits in an air conditioned office all day is cribbing so much about it? And its not just a matter of inconvenience, its affecting the basics, its changing who i am! Suddenly i have become one of those people who bathe daily. Sometimes twice. Shudder. what next? Will I become one of those umbrella carrying, dark glasses and sun-coat wearing, cool drink sipping people? No offense, but that is just not me!

You know you are a lost cause when...

• You get wisdom tooth at 24, and it is crooked.
• Crossword drives you crazy. Not because you don't have the money. Not because you have to choose. But because laziness forbids you from picking up a book without a reliable guarantee that the reading effort will be worth it.
• You get free food coupons every month and the only thing you have used them for is to buy ice cream for the neighbours.
• Its your first game of Foosball and you are the only one complaining of back pain.
• You still make plans involving people other than yourself climbing hills at 5 in the morning and believe they will work.

Born free

Some people are meant to be bred in captivity. Guarantee them the basic necessities of life, and they will flourish in a controlled environment. The uncertainties of the unknown, the dangers of the wild are not for them. Survival for them is not a struggle, it is a fundamental right. And as harmful as it could be to release such a person into the wild, it is equally harmful to hold captive someone meant for the wild.

The other side

Hard-hearted I may be
But silver tongued I am not
What you see is what you get
I beard the burden of destroyed lives
Of destroyed hope I can not.

Hard-hearted I may be
But with a silver tongue that heals
Telling you what you want to hear
So however deep the cut may be
Its my conscience that bleeds.

Shutup and feed me!

4.30 p.m.

[Stomach rumbles. Sends a HUNGRY message to Brain ]
Brain: Didn't we like just have tea?
Stomach: All part of the forgotten past, my dear fellow. Wonder what we will have for snacks today.
B: [grinning evilly] Poha
S: Oh, shut up!
B: Upma
S: Cant you ever think positive?
B: Health foo..
S: No! Don't say it! Unless you want me to flood you with HUNGRY messages for the rest of the evening.
B: Alright, alright. I take it back.
S: [dreamily] I hope its bhel. Or pav bhaji. Or...
[Brain has moved on to more productive tasks]

4.50
[Stomach sends a TIME message to Brain which it passes on to Eye]
Eye: 4.50. Oh, this must be S asking.
B: Who else? Sigh, its goodbye to all work until it is filled. I'd better pass on your message before S interrupts me again.
[to S]
4.50.
S: What?? 10 whole minutes? And thats only if He (the cook) is on time! Oh, i don't think i can take it anymore.
B: [rolling eyes. Not Eyes] Do you want a toffee?
S: Oh, how heartlessly it mocks. No one understands my troubles. Not even Nose, which has to be fed every 6 seconds. It has the memory of a goldfish, really, takes in a lungful, promptly forgets about it and starts all over again! Disgraceful, i tell you, this dependence...
B: [who by now knows the routine well enough to have asked Nose whether it has inhaled any smells] Nose says it smells onions
S: Really?? [Does a little jig] That could mean Bhel! Oh please let that goldfish be right. please. I'll never ever call it a goldfish again! I'll... are we there yet?
B: [sighs] I'll ask around.
[to Eye]
One of you look at the clock, only the clock and nothing but the clock until further notice. Interrupt me with the time every minute. And the other, look out for tray carrying office boys. Only they can save us now.
[to Ear]
Open doors. The clank of plates. Until further notice, everything else is noise. And keep me posted.
[to Nose]
I don't care if you don't take in air, but take in the smell. And for God's sake, not everything smells like onion. You'll break the poor fellow's heart if it turns out to be Poha.

[For the next how-many-ever minutes, they are all professionals. Eye, knowing that it is no good at parallel processing, multi tasks between the clock and passer-bys. Every passer-by who is not a tray carrying office boy gets the look. The look is the look that a drowning man would give a log that turns out to be a straw. Nose does not forget to breathe, but it analyzes every breath for clues. Ear hears every creak of the door, every footstep that follows, every hint of a clank. Brain is so busy with I/O, it has suspended all processing. Evolution never seems to have heard of DMA]

5.10
E: I spy an office boy! With a traaaaaaaaay!
B: Its here!! Stop rumbling, you idiot!
S: [with a weak smile] Cant believe i made it. Couldn't have done it with you, guys.
Eye, Ear, Nose, Brain: Awwww.
S: Shutup and feed me!

Life with directions?

Have you ever wished while wandering along life's roads, that some of them came with a danger sign? Skull and crossbones that say - Keep Away!

I don't. One, because i don't believe in danger. No, its not quite that. Danger as a distant, faraway possibility does not scare me. Like, if I ever come face to face with a tiger, I will
a. be terrified
b. faint
c. do something incredibly stupid like throw a stone at it and yell shoo
d. all of the above

But, my fear of tigers will not scare me from entering the jungle. I guess sometimes it pays to be unimaginative!

Secondly, no matter how hard a road is, no matter how much it hurts you, no matter how desperately you want it to end, you never come out the same person. Every road teaches you something about yourself, shows you the kind of person you are, the kind of person you want to be. And that to me is worth a few bruises any day.

Untitled

Like a rock she stands
Firm, unyielding
Throwing back whatever the world throws at her.

Oh why not be a lake instead?
Unprotesting, but unchanging
Swallowing whatever the world throws at you
With only a burp of a ripple to show for it.

The geek that never was

Sigh. Its time I admitted it. Although I've been to all the places they go to and spent two years among the best of them, I've come out remarkably unaffected. It can only mean one thing - i am not one of them. Technology does not excite me. What goes on behind the technology does not excite me. Don't get me wrong, I like my job, doing it well gives me a lot of satisfaction, But I think i can safely say that would have been true about any moderately challenging field fate would have pushed me into. And I doubt if such lukewarm sentiments can get me even a visitors pass into geekdom.

I've seen people go crazy about puzzles. They spend days trying to get to an answer, thesis pushed to an unobtrusive corner, discuss them over birthday dinners (birthday boy included!) I've seen whole groups of people obsessed with finding a better way of solving some obscure problem. I've seen them give up movies and sleep in order to participate in programming contents that for some inexplicable reason, always being at midnight (I tried it once, under influence, but didn't make it past 5 A.M. She never asked me again). I've seen people go crazy over games, mobile phones, Ipods, Macs, gaming consoles... But I've always watched from a distance, wanting to want to join in the fun, but not really wanting it.

Its like Phoebe's husband says in Episode 204 (yeah, big surprise, i quote from FRIENDS):

I thought I was supposed to be someone else, you know. I'm an ice dancer. All my friends are gay. I guess I was just trying to fit in. But you reach a point when you cant live a lie anymore. I guess at some level I always knew I was straight.

Addicted

Can you be addicted to multiple things at the same time? I seem to be! And instead of engaging in destructive competition where the winner takes all, they each seem to have chosen a sphere of my life that they aim to fill to the exclusion of everything else. In no particular order, these are:

F.R.I.E.N.D.S
Yes. Again. I don't even know whichth repetition of the series this is. It never seems to get old! Its so bad that i can watch an episode, laugh at all the jokes even though i know them all, immediately watch the same episode again and laugh all over again! I've tried alternatives, but they don't make 'em like that anymore.

Exercise
Yeah!! Even though it doesn't exactly show, its true. I cant go too many days without some form of exercise. I know its supposed to be a good thing and all, but the dependence is scary! I mean, what if someone kidnaps me someday? (Its not as ridiculous as it sounds. I'm in the software industry, I stay with my parents, I am what you get if you cross a monk with a miser). I will be torn between whether to appeal to my kidnapper's better nature to give me more food or ask him to let me run 10 rounds of the jungle.

Banana chips
This one is an old demon. They would occasionally be found in the pantry at my old workplace. My love for them was so famous, people from faraway lands would come and tell me that there were chips in the pantry. And 5 minuets later, they would be no chips in the pantry. Once one person asked me - Auntiji, how many do you eat? (That address is NOT a reflection on me, its not even a personal thing. Its just how people were addressed there. Part of the corporate culture. I thought calling people by names would be difficult, but this! I did get used to it over a period of time, stopped considering it an insult, even slipped into unclejis occasionally). My reply - As many as i can Uncleji, as many as I can.

Blogosphere
Work, or lack of it, is mainly to blame for this one. I can spend a whole day blogtrotting, skimming through some, going deeper than I'd like to admit into others. It is a lot of fun seeing a person emerge from the writings, shaped by your own views and prejudices. To find that I have yet again judged prematurely, that the person lies somewhere in between posts that make me frown in disapproval and posts that make me go awwww. But sometimes I get the feeling that I am a whole generation behind the youth of today (at least the ones who blog). Sigh. Maybe I am.

A prince. And then a pauper.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players

And the Director has lost it. All through rehearsal, he has groomed you for a certain part. You go on stage, you play it brilliantly, like you were born for it. Then suddenly, without warning, he thrusts you into another role. One you don't like, don't understand and were quite happy not playing.

The play is a big mess. The Queen, used to taking tough decisions and living with them, now has to live with someone else's decisions. The soldier, whose has not been responsible even for his own life, and has been quite content to be led, is suddenly responsible for the whole kingdom. The King is torn between the Queen and the Kingdom.

But, they are actors. They will manage. They might fumble for a while, forget lines, slip into their previous roles, but they will learn. Understand. Improvise. Some of them might someday get really good at their new role, like they were born for it. Some will always feel out of place. But all of them, for a long time to come, will curse the Director and wonder why He couldn't stick to the script.

My good deed for the day

I made someone happy yesterday. I gave him crap work in the morning and took it away in the afternoon.

Today I think I will threaten to kill someone and then let him go.

This day, last year

This day last year, my partner in shame (my thesis partner, just to be clear) and I were ordered by the Master to put an appearance in Delhi. He did this often. Since we served absolutely no purpose other than that of coolies carrying laptops and folders and cost a lot, i still haven't figured out why he did so. I also haven't figured out whether to look upon these trips as a punishment or as an opportunity to spread my wings and fly. Err... walk around the capital.

The first time we went, we were free of cooliegiri by about 4 and spent the rest of the day playing tourists. A couple of classmates who had spent the summer in the city started us off. Relying solely on public transport, we managed to cover an impressive list of places - Qutub Minar, Lotus Temple, India Gate and the mirage of Rashtrapati Bhawan. That India Gate and Rashtrapari bhawan lay on opposite sides of some road had been a part of our astute observations during the morning travel. We were Glad to observe that this was true even after the sun had set. Having done pretty much everything that can be done at a Gate and having lots of time to kill before Shramshaki Express made an appearance, we decided to pay the Rashtrapati a visit. We started to walk towards his house. We walked. And walked. And walked. Came across many crossings, but no Bhawan. At every crossing we were sure the next one was IT. We even attempted to telepathically tempt the owner, promising him a demo of our "this is the way they did it in the US 20 years ago" software. No use. The Bhawan simply wouldn't arrive. Finally, suspicious that we had walked into another city altogether, we gave up. Aah well, his loss. I don't think he can ever completely recover from having missed the demo, but for his sake i hope he has moved on.

Then there was the time i went alone and haunted Connaught place and more specifically Saravana Bhawan. That place brings out the South Indian in me like nothing else! And the fact that a hopelessly direction impaired person like me can find my way from Connaught place to the Railway Station makes it to the top ten achievements in my life.

Then there was the time we had go leaving behind two crippled cricket teams (he was the all rounder of his, i the non performing captain of mine). We imagined all sorts of disasters. Reality of course, disagreed. His team's match got cancelled and mine recorded its best performance ever.

Which brings us to the visit that inspired this post. We knew it would be our last (And it was, unless you count ghar basaofying on the New Delhi Railway platform for 6 hours waiting for a train as a visit). And we wanted to conquer that last remaining spot - the Red Fort. I also wanted to have parathas at the Paratha Gully i had heard so much about. I discovered while trying to locate the place, that i was in Chandni Chowk! Like in the movies!! Only, the place looked nothing like what Karan Johar had led me to believe. The parathas also disappointed. Frankly, I've had better at apna Chaitanya in Pune. On our way back i remembered that it was the partners birthday the next day and he would miss the customary midnight celebrations, since we would be in the train. So i bought some pastries that we could celebrate with at midnight. Of course, i couldn't resist stuffing myself with a few sweets while i was being such a sweet girl. After the light and sound show at the Red Fort (which is amazing!) we paid our respects at Saravana Bhawan. He didn't particularly want to, but i wouldn't hear of it! And the end of it all, when we finally got into the train we were
1. exhausted
2. full beyond capacity

I set the alarm for midnight, for i knew that even though it was just half an hour away, there was no chance either of us would be awake till then. And i was right. The alarm rang at 12. We got up, i wished him, we stuffed down the pastries and were snoring by 12.02.

Happy birthday, Thurupmukka!

And the award for the best actor at silly point goes to...

Much too much fuss is being made of the whole match fixing thing, I think. So what if matches are fixed? Is it really an insult to the viewer? Are they really playing with your love for the game? If you think it is rather like watching puppets perform, whats wrong with that, I ask you? Haven't you ever watched a movie, where rich puppets dance to the directors tunes and unseen hands make money? Does the fact that the director can end it any way he wants take anything away from your movie watching experience?

Hereafter, look at every match as a movie, the ground a giant movie screen, the stadium as the theater, the players as actors who act as players, the director as always an unseen presence. Enjoy the show. Endlessly argue about the casting, the storyline, the ending. And if you don't like it, make enough money to produce your own cricket match!

The desktop wars

The son likes it simple. Minimalistic, no icons (thats right, none) cluttering up the screen. The wall paper? Spartan, with some small figure somewhere the only respite from monotony. Sometimes a cartoon of some rock band that has caught his fancy (the cartoon, not the rock band). Being a young man with unblemished eyesight (marred of course by the mandatory driving glasses) he also likes it small. As a rule, he rules, being the most frequent user of the machine. But he has certain well documented distractions. The mother, nature and his cell phone, which can only be answered pacing in the garden, eating leaves off random plants (a feature his phone has passed on to the daughter's phone).

The old man. Ever patient and ever ready to take over. He likes it obvious. Big. He doesn't need much but he is willing to adjust, to learn to reach out to unmentionable parts of windows to get it. The wallpaper? He wont even notice if one day it packs up and leaves.

The daughter. She always needs it for just 2 minutes. Sometimes its actually true. With taste belying her age, she likes it "4-icons-cover-the-desktop" big. But of course, there are no icons and the 2 minutes are too precious to be spent messing around with the resolution. She squirms, she squints, she winks, but she gets the job done.

The old lady, in typical "you-can-have-my-share-of-the-ice-cream" fashion, keeps away.

With the arrival of his new toy, the son has moved away from the old one. But the icons are still missing, the wallpaper is still white, she still has to squint. A colonial hangover? Long live the king? Naaah. Just old habits die hard.

Thats the way it is?

There is something about the calm acceptance of one's destiny. No fight, no protest, no banging your head against a wall, at most an unacknowledged wish somewhere that things could have been different. Cool, calm, composed, moving on to bigger things. Carrying no scars because really, there never was a battle.
Yes, there certainly is something!

(May sound monkish, but it isn't. Not that you don't care, but you care only so much)

Something in between

I don't like grey. It is too much of choice. It is this shapeless, flexible mass that I can mould any way I want. And without any absolutes to guide me, I am lost. The mass ends up as a little bit of everything, a mirror of my confusions.
And as if I don't have enough of grey matter of my own to mess around with, some one's black mixes with my white to give, yes, more grey! So much so that I have given up hope of seeing anything in black and white again.

Its coming to get me

Like an expensive vase. Every fleck of dust wiped, every possibility of a crack guarded against. Placed in a corner, watching life go by.

That is exactly how i imagine old age would feel.

It terrifies me every time i brush against it. This time it was bought about by a talk with a grandparent. Just a few days ago she had surrendered her house to the house owner. As she was explaining to me - I am too old to go and live there all by myself. Whats the point of keeping it locked? I nodded. Of course. Very sensible. Until i realized she was talking about her house of 49 years! It is where she lived, where her kids were born, bought up, had kids of their own... It is the only thing in the world she can call her own.

It was.

About a ball...

You might call it a ball, but that would be like calling Azim Permji a dalda maker. Those of you fortunate enough to have experienced its magic will understand. It came into my life about a year ago, and well, what can i say, life was never the same again.

Happy birthday, Yellow Smiley!

How many times I had seen you around
But not really cared to look
All i had to do was to hold you once
And i knew, i just knew, i was hooked

How many times did we play in my room
Before we ventured out
And how long did it take for you to become
The thing i didn't leave without

How many times did I greet fellow mates
By aiming you at their head
And how many times did miss completely
And hit a professor instead

How many times did i whip you out
Just to fiddle around
And how long would it take for the mad ones to join
And no one working could be found

How many times have I chased people down
To get you back, cos your mine
And how many wars have i started and won
By throwing you across the border line

How many times have I held you close
Before you were licked by a dog
And how many times since have i refused
To allow you to be washed

The answer, alas,
Is lost in my past
The answer is lost in my past.

The Mac and I

There is nothing like change to tell you how old you are. If you look upon it as a challenge, as a source of excitement and growth, you are young. If you look upon it as an intruder come to disrupt your careful, comfortable routine, if you judge a thing just because it is different, you are old.

If that hypothesis isn't clear enough, if you need more proof, here it is. I recently measured myself on the change scale and guess what it said? OLD. No hesitation, no second thoughts. OLD.

It all started with the MacBook. I'm a little wary of laptops as it is. Give me one, and I time travel back to the days when I was a computer novice, when typing double quotes was the biggest challenge because it involved pressing two keys simultaneously. I remember my lab pardner and me coming up with a novel solution - I press shift she presses quote. On count of three. We got quite good at it, actually. Teamwork, i believe it is called. And don't even get me started on the laptop mouse. That takes me back several generations, i remind myself of my grandmother struggling with the mouse. Not being able to co-relate the movement of the mouse with the movement of the cursor, tracing crazy patterns all over the screen. Thankfully, my company does not give laptops, at least not to novices. I work in what i like to call a third world company, but that's another story.

But the Macbook is not just a laptop. It is a Mac laptop. Its different. What makes it especially bad is that it is unexpected. I mean, having seen two and a half operating systems, you think you have seen it all. How different can this one be, you think. And while no one in their right mind will call me a geek, calling me technologically challenged is an insult to our temple of education. And, its not like I wanted to change the world. All I was after were the basic functions.

First, i thought i would to watch a movie. It all started well. I got a head start because the knowledgeable one told me that two fingers on the mouse area meant a right click. So i could select the player i wanted and all was right with the world. Until the first interrupt. I decided to minimize the movie and service the interrupt. When i got back, the movie was gone! I looked everywhere, but all i could find was the icon of the player. Clicked on it, got the entire menu of the player, but not the movie screen.

I decided to move on. To blog my frustration on the lost movie screen. But i couldn't find anyplace where i could enter text! And believe me, i searched! No list of applications anywhere. No command line kind of thing. Things could have gotten unpleasant for the Mac had i been slightly more egoistic. The knowledgeable one to the rescue again. I reluctantly got introduced to the finder.

My journey to enlightenment was accompanied by incessant cribbing, partly because i really hated being so helpless around a computer, but mostly because the knowledgeable one has a short fuse and i love fireworks!

Anyway, now i have made my peace with the Mac. I still lose movie screens occasionally, but now i simply restart the movie. And as for text documents, part of this post was typed on the Mac.

You may now clap.

42!

I am not there yet, but the hope is that someday all the pieces of my life will magically fit together to form a beautiful pattern. (Beauty of course, lying in the eyes of the beholder, in this case, me). But why is that not enough anymore? Why are moments no longer adding up to life? Why am I after the bigger picture?

I know the answer to that one. And it goes like this. Ahem. Lets say, optimistically speaking, that i am dead 50 years from now. Again optimistically speaking, I go to heaven. And still optimi... you know what, from now on, i speak optimistically unless explicitly stated otherwise. So I'm in heaven. There being nothing much to do in heaven i get to travel, meet other souls, exchange life stories and in general, eat a lot. (Souls do not put up weight, do they?) During my travels lets say I bump into one of those factory fresh, starry eyed wanna be souls and it wants to know what life is all about. What do i tell it? That its about climbing tress and jumping into rivers and in general being yourself? Or that its about touching other lives and letting yours be touched? Or that its about pushing yourself to be the best you can be? All good, none good enough. What is that one thing I can tell the rookie that will make it want to sell itself for a slice of life?

Those of you who thought I actually had an answer, shame on you!

There are some days...

- when rearranging your CD collection gives you a sense of purpose in life

- when wearing a sweater makes you feel protected

- when shared laughter over a silly joke bridges over the deepest divide

- when a song sets you free

David wins over Goliath. And you live to see another day.

How to cvw a nbd in ten days

(I write the story with a she. Feel free to substitute with a pronoun of your choice.)

Day 10: You notice her for the first time. A colleague is working with her. You know you are not supposed to stare, but you cant help it. She is so perfect, you don't even want to find out if she is for real.

Night 10: She is all over your dreams.

Day 9: You cant believe how utterly blind you've been all these years. A different kind of blindness takes over now, the right kind. Like Arjuna, you have eyes for nothing else.

Day 8: You work up the courage to go ask your colleague for an introduction. He knows the symptoms only too well. With a wicked grin, he says yes.

Day 7: You notice the competition. Suddenly, everyone is smitten. Doubts creep in. Do I have a chance in hell?

Day 6: You are ruined. Nothing will ever be as good. The half an hour you spend with her convinces you of that.

Day 5: You cook up dozens of elaborate plots all with same end - you spending 5 minutes with her. Some of them actually work.

Day 4: Everyone knows. You couldn't care less. Up in seventh heaven, other people don't really exist.

Day 3: Its tearing you apart. You cannot ask her, you cannot not ask. In a mad moment you blurt out everything. She doesn't mind.

Day 2: But the world does. Everyone sees a problem, everyone has an opinion. You pick the genuine ones and deal with them.

Day 1: D-day. All clear. You have paid the price. You cant wait to get her home. The macbook is yours!

Like Barney says, true story.

(Apologies to the Apple clan for the calling the macbook a she. Please do not kill me.)

Gimme your lunch, or else...

Human beings expand to fill the space available. Not physically, like gases, but terrirotially. What i want to say can be best expressed in Hindi. Jahan chalti hai chalate hain. Imagine each of us as a goon (complete with a oily bald head and a twirlable moustache, if it helps) out to spread our influence. We crush until we get crushed. What stops us is not a sense of right and wrong, not boundaries, not fences but simply a bigger bully.

Do we ever grow up?

A nursery rhyme with inappropriate words

99 red balloons
Released into the summer sky
See how they stick together
Looks like they are a little shy
The brave ones float apart
Experiencing what it is to fly
Soon the others follow
Grinning, shouting, all eager to try!

99 red balloons
Spread out in the open sky
Each leaving the other behind
In a race to a new high
And when one red balloon
Bumps into another flying by
They rub a little off each other
And go their way with a merry cry!

(What? Big words are inappropriate for a nursery rhyme. Something tells me I will do well in journalistic position with TOI.)

Too much democracy?

Its a duel to death. You fight his strength with skill, his skill with strategy. But what decides in the end is not how well you fought, nor your cause. What decides is whether people see you as a murderer or a martyr.

I want

To be responsible, but have no responsibilities.

To spread my wings and fly, not fly away.

To grow up, not grow old.

To give in if I must, but never give up.

To use the mother of all cliches, I want to have my cake, eat it too and lost some weight in the process!

Yours is not to reason why

If you tell me to go jump in the well, I will do it. Somewhere along my way down, I might casually wonder why you asked me to. If I am in a deep mood, I might even get to wondering why I am doing it.

That I am alive and kicking is testimony to the fact that my life is filled with nice people.

Who am I?

Am I a log floating in the river
Flowing where the water flows
Going where the wind blows
Convinced that higher powers are on my side
Content to sit back and enjoy the ride
Knowing but not caring that one day I will end up in the sea?

or

Am I a fighter with an axe
Making my way as I go
Meeting everything that comes with a blow
Getting bruised along the way
Hurt and hurting because that is the game
Knowing but not caring that I my end before the fight does?

Why

Like there aren't enough already, i come up with yet another basis on which to classify people.
- those who ask why before the act
- those who ask why after the act
- those uncomplicated, carefree souls who do not bother

I, of course, do not bother.

But, having been subjected to several post dated whys recently (Yaaay! I'm at the top of the tree. Now why did want to climb it? Or more interestingly, this is the secret password that will give you access to all my millions. Now why did i tell you that?), i decided to ask myself one. Just to see how the other half, err... third of the world lives.

Why do I write.

Sometimes it is because i want to. (Earth shattering, isn't it?) Some interesting event or idea that i would like to put to words. The words are as important as the idea, if not more. (The beauty of language, that kind of thing) A friend says I end up being a tad artificial. I think he is being polite. But the whole point there is to show off! I may be the only one being impressed, but hey, I count a lot with me.

At other times I write because i have to. The thing just wont stay inside me. Writing it down makes it more real, somehow. Like it has been engraved on stone or something. Also, there is always the hope that someone reads it and it rings a bell. I wont hear the bell, but i like the idea of being connected to invisible people. (Hmm. I thought i had more sense than that.)

Hah! Post dated whys are fun. Provided of course, they affirm what you have already done.

Much ado about nothing

Spoiler - If the whole thing seems like a lot of noise about nothing, it is because that is exactly what it is.

A parent and a grandparent were to leave on a trip to the Motherland, to oversee additions to the family. Partly due to the Great Indian RailwayTamasha, it so happened that the parent had to catch a bus from Pune to Bombay to catch a train, that, left to its own devices, would have anyway made its way to Pune. So, it fell on the kids to deposit the grandparent at Pune Railway Station. At 3 in the night. Since the family car was not yet part of the family, they had to stoop to a rick. And thus started the hunt for the Great Indian Looter. After several atrocious candidates who left them laughing with tears, they stumbled across one who seemed too reasonable to be true. Desperation won over suspicion however, and an exchange of mobile numbers later, the kids were home. The next day being a regular working dayand the kids being, at least in the outside world, responsible working professionals, bed time that day was Calvinistic. (Calvinoian?) She slept to the sound of Karan Thapar droning about a racist calling Shilpa Shetty a Big Brother. He slept. With two mobiles and an old fashioned alarm clock set to signal the end of the world at 2 a.m.

Everything went off at 2 a.m. and they wished the world could have ended instead. They spread the morning cheer by waking up therickshawala . The grandparent of course was all packed and ready to go. There is something about the people of that generation. Sometimes, the seem more alive at 80 than you did at 20. Dressed forAntarctica , they stepped into the surprisingly warm January night. The journey to the railway station passed in relative silence because before they could really get down and dirty aboutrickshawalas, the specimen driving them confessed to being a Tamilain. She could not have been entirely awake during the journey because later she distinctly remembered feeling envious of the sleeping homeless, all tucked in and comfortable on the footpath. The railway station was surprisingly full of life. The train was surprisingly on time. A brief family reunion and the kids were off, with warnings about eating food offered bystrangers and footboard travel. All this work had made her hungry. A midnight snack and a motorcycle ride later, they were back in bed and fast asleep. The world had not ended, after all.

(Nope. No forgotten tickets. No wrong station, no wrong platform, no wrong train, no wrong grandparent... Me and the Indian Railway come together and the world does not end! Almost makes a believer out of me.)

Who yells wins

To the silent ones,

The world listens to the one who yells loudest. If you do not speak up, it means you do not have an opinion. If you do not yell, it means you do not respect your opinion enough.

Eat or be eaten. Its that simple.
(Thanks B, for that and for a million other things)

Pop goes the New Year

It may be to a different beat,
But march I do.

Those were the days...

I have been told (and can see for myself) that I have been weeping all over my blog. So, in the spirit of the new year, I have decided to post positive. And to give the past years their due, nostalgic.
Me and three other people met for an hour of badminton yesterday. Its surprising how cooperative , efficient, pushy, fearless and utterly devoid of responsibility that one word makes people! And of course the memories had to follow. We've had such wonderfully nonsensical times on the court all that's to a bunch of crazy, super enthusiastic and most importantly, quirky individuals. Before I elaborate, a note to the folks this is about. Kindly do not take offence. Writing about how excellently you play would be infinitely boring. A good story is my only motivation.

Its 6 p.m. Snacks have travelled far enough for it to be unlikely for any physical activity to make them come out the way they went in. As if on cue, pairs of eyes all over the building go to the rackets kept on the desks. A few owners of the pair of eyes (not necessarily same as the owner of the rackets) valiantly try to get the pair back on the computer screen. Wiser ones simply pick up the racket and leave for the indoor badminton court. (Which, along with the sofa at the reception transform the office building from a place of work to a place of well being). Sitting, standing, lying all over the court are other PEOs (pair of eyes owners).

The narrative now shifts focus to a particular group of PEOs, identified by seemingly random letters of the alphabet.

R, by far the most talented of this particular bunch of PEOs, is dancing on the court. He just cant wait for the game to begin. Impossible to guess that this impatient guy has truckloads of patience for those less gifted. Also impossible to guess that this newcomer's dream hides a mercurial temperament that goes from boiling to grinning with the span of a shot.

Giving him company is D, the queen of quick returns. While the audience may be pardoned for occasionally thinking she is one of them, even though she is standing on the court with a racket in hand while a game is in progress, anyone who has ever made the mistake of placing the shuttle in the vicinity of her racket has lived to regret it.

On the other side of court is A. But how much longer she will be there is impossible to say. She has been known to answer hunger calls in the middle of a game, even in the middle of a shot. She is also known to race after the shuttle as if her life depends on it, raise her racket carrying arm to deliver the death stroke, only to have it stuck there in mid motion. With an enigmatic atak gaya, she walks off the court, hand raised in submission.

Next to her is S, the grand old man of the game, who has nurtured generations of PEOs. His presence on court is predicted with complete certainty by everyone but him. He appearance on court follows a rather peculiar ritual whose outcome he stubbornly defends as being unpredictable. When called to play, he politely refuses citing doctor's orders (signed, and in triplicate) as a reason. 5 minutes later, he is found on the outer boundary of the court. Just come down to watch, of course. 2.35 minutes later, he has displaced the nearest PEO and is poised for action, doctor's orders be damned in triplicate! One smash from the grand old man and the opponents are damned, the shuttle is damned...

The match goes on along thoroughly unpredictable lines, even though each player's game is as predictable as can be. PEOs are replaced at regular intervals (not always involuntarily) by others. Notable among them is K. And her compassionate serve (patent pending). Lest she send out mixed signals regarding her intentions to server backhand/forehand to her opponents, she follows an elaborate routine that involves rotation by 90 degrees and recalibration of the racket's alignment with respect to the position of the moon.

And then there is L. Though not a regular, he never fails to leave a mark. This is primarily because he believes the fool proofest way to create confusion among the opponents is to roll all over the quadrant where the shuttle has no intention of falling, in an apparent attempt to hit it. His success rate is impressive, if success is measured by the number of times the opponents are so busy gaping, they forget to play.

And E. Whose beliefs alternate between seeing his racket as a hammer and believing that the shuttle responds to voice commands. His voice commands. There are N and M but their quirks seem to have slipped my memory. (That they are normal is impossible).

To each of these PEOs (and a few other unalphabetized ones) I owe my love for the game. And this is how I pay them back!

Auntygiri

(Or should it be Auntiegiri?)

Not new, the concept has been around for as long as Auntys have. But now, cutting across age and gender, it has attracted the unlikeliest of followers. So, how much of an Aunty are you? Take this quiz and find out!

1. Do you always assume that everything that can go wrong will go wrong and prepare accordingly?
(reaching the (Indian) railway station an hour in advance, carrying food for 3 days for a 12 hour journey, umbrellas a month after rains have officially bid goodbye...)

2. Do you think that taking risks for non life and death issues is stupid?
(stupid to go out beyond ankle level into the sea, stupid to climb the gate when you can call the watchman, stupid to sit on the terrace parapet wall...)

3. Do you subscribe to the idea of society as a watchdog?
(that barks when you get home late, barks when you go watch a movie alone, barks when you do not follow the prescribed life cycle...)

4. Do you believe that our ancestors have figured it all out, and all we have to do is follow?
(they knew what to eat, when to eat, how to eat and I represent them, so eat! In other words, do you see the world the same way your parents do?)

Score: Give yourself one point for each question you said yes to.

Score                 You are a
-----                    -----------
0                         Antiaunty
1                         Miniaunty
2                         Semiaunty
3                         Superaunty
4                         Megaunty


No, you do not get an opinion. You are not being judged, not by me at any rate. I just show you where you are. Where you want to be is none of my business.

Its not just a moral issue, this not wanting to pick a side. I just cannot see the thing in black and white. Auntygiri has saved my life more times than it has messed it up. I was once saved from walking back home several hundred kilometers because one miniaunty told me to keep my money distributed. In case your purse gets stolen, she said, which it did. We all know (and if we don't, we can guess) what happened when there was no Aunty around to remind me to carry my train ticket. If its about the numbers, Auntygiri wins, hands down. But its not. Cause when Auntygiri messes up your life, what remains is this unrecognizable mess that you can neither own nor disown.

There i go. On the middle path again. I wonder why i bother thinking at all, when i know that for every yes or no, i will come up with a maybe.

Kahani ghar ghar ki

(Its all very cliched, i know. But it hits you only when it hits you)

Her fight beings before she does. The walls of her mothers womb are not strong enough to keep the big bad world out. They want to get in, they want to get her. She doesn't know why, she doesn't know how, but she fights. For her right to life.


She knows that the earth goes around the sun. She knows all about oceans and seas and snow and rain. She knows her tables up to 10. So what if she has never been to school? Her brother has, and if second hand knowledge is all the world allows her, so be it. She will take that and fight. For her right to a better life.

She had come first in her class. She couldn't quite make up her mind whether that was the high point of her life or it's biggest joke. Whatever happened, no one could take that away from her, but how did it matter? Did it make her a better wife, daughter-in-law or mother? For that was all she was and if life had its way, all she would ever be. Unless she fought. For her right to be all that she could.

Such a handsome guy! And in such a great job too. And from such a respectable family. I wish all girls were as lucky! How many times had she heard that? Square peg, square hole. What could be more sensible? How does it matter what peg you fit, as long as it is square? If only people were like pegs, she thought. Wouldn't life be infinitely simple? She would never have to fight. For her right to the guy that fit her soul.

She was good. She knew that. It wasn't enough. She knew that too. She had to prove herself, everyday, to people who were waiting for her to fall or even stumble, so they could write her off. She had to be on her guard all the time and yet be friendly because she needed them. They were the opponents as well as the judges in her fight. For her right to her heights.

She wanted to dance. Run barefoot in the grass. Spends days in the woods with only trees for company. Travel. Stop in the middle of nowhere because the sunset looked nice. Hear the old man's tales all day long. She wanted to be a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower. The word fight did not really belong in her world, but she had to let it in. For her right to fly.

A country living in many centuries. It doesn't really matter which century you are born in. All that changes is the fight you have to fight. Is live and let live really that difficult to practice? Why do we have to fight the past to get to the future? Why does every saas forget ki woh bhi kabhi bahu thi?

Not to be

I've found something else i don't want to be. I figure if i keep at this long enough, I'll eventually be what i want to be.
I don't want to be included in the log that people seem to fear and respect so much when they say "log kya kahenge". I do not want to dictate peoples views, actions, lives, definitely not indirectly, definitely not as a nameless, faceless mass that cannot be argued with. I do not want to be the reason Mrs Subramaniam's daughter cannot cut her hair short. I also do not want to be the reason Mr Sharma stubbornly refuses to take his errant son back into the family. I definitely no not want to be the reason Srygdh abandons his plan of murdering his wife and running away with his secretary. Not that i am for his plan, not for a moment, but I'm not comfortable with that kind of power. I cannot walk around knowing that one encouraging nod of my head and the next thing i know, poor late Mrs Srygdh's ghost has taken up permanent residence in my bathroom, moaning about how her life was incomplete because it ended before she could get her daughter married.
Seems to me there is only one way to not be what i don't want to be. And that is, to stop letting log's opinions dictate my life. Once i do that, i automatically lose the right to disapprove of any one's life choices. I'll be so far down log's morality scale, I'll be out!

Murder she wrote...

(I could kill. But instead I write. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.)

Why do I have to choose?
Why does no one review my code?
Why is it that each time I expect (and hence am prepared for) my neighbours dog to bark my arrival, he is safely inside? More importantly, why am I never prepared when he does bark?
Why am I not the way I am supposed to be?
Why am I not the way I want to be?
Why are the two so irreconcilably different?
Why is my hand in a cast for an operation on my finger?
Why is there not a single coffee addict in office?
Why is there no beach in the world where it snows?
Why am I always always always in two minds? (Does it mean I'm twice as intelligent?)
Who do I feel better even after writing crap?

I eat therefore I am

In a completely nonsensical attempt to explain the mystery that is Vinaya to a friend, I came up with the answer "I eat when I am hungry". After I said it I realized that it actually makes a pretty good mission statement. Excited, I came up with many more. And then I got bored. These don't even cover all the people I know well, so I doubt you will find yourself in there.

1 . Eat when hungry:
Keeping life simple. Cause and effect. An uncluttered mind. Living in the present.

2. Eat at mealtimes:
Living by the rules. Safe. Predictable. Inflexible.

3. Eat if ( (hungry && you_like_the_food && you_have_company && food_is_hygienic && (!not_going_to_gym_in_10_mins)) ||
(mealtime && you_not_likely_to_get_food_for_a_long_long_time) ||
(food_going_waste) || (mom_says_so && in_the_mood_to_listen) ):
Complicated. Unpredictable. Will take so long to decide whether to eat or not, might end up having no time left to eat. But will be happy with the decision all the same!

4. Eat if the weather is good:
Random. Totally unpredictable. Mysterious.

5. Eat during a public speech. Your public speech:
Shock effect. Living for an audience. Rebel without a cause. Unconventional.

6. Eat if and only if you feel like it:
Very determined. Not swayed by anything, sometimes including logic! Unpredictable. Unconventional.

Hmm. I don't think people can be boxed neatly into categories. Like, I see a bit of myself in 1, a bit in 2, also some in 5 and almost but not quite entirely none of 6.

To fly or not to fly

I sat down to write something but then remembered this poem we were taught as kids that says it so much better than I ever could.

What does little birdie say
In her nest at peep of day?
Let me fly, says little birdie,
Mother, let me fly away.
Birdie, rest a little longer,
Till thy little wings are stronger.
So she rests a little longer,
Then she flies away.

How do you know you are strong enough?

Selectively blind

(One of those rare rants where I express extreme displeasure over everything ever invented, discovered or evolved)

Ostrich, isn't it? The animal that buries its head in sand and believes that since it cant see the enemy, the enemy cant see it? Show me one human being who thinks this is not stupid. And yet, the vast majority of them do exactly that. Cover their senses with a comfortable, protective covering and believe everything is all right with everyone. And its fine by me. If thats the only way they can get through life, so be it. What I cant stand is them making a hole in their covers just large enough for one eye to peek out, using the eye exclusively too see whats wrong with me and shaking their "what is this world come to" head shake. Either you are blind or you are not. In between is nothing.

I know. I should be able to say go to hell, but I cant. Not to everybody.

Aaaaaaaa

I feel kind of left out. And dumb. A silent revolution seems to have taken place around the world without my knowledge or participation. Unless, there was a lot of hungaama, widespread protests, which makes me deaf as well as blind. Whatever be the case, from around the beginning of 2006 the world seems to have agreed that Vinaya is a guy's name. Just like that. Indian railways has been doing that forever, but I thought the rest of the world would have more sense. The only explanation I have been able to come up with the universal lack of recognition of the trailing "a" is - "Rama is to Ram what Vinaya is to Vinay". I've lost count of how many of my phone conversations follow the following general format:

Me: Hello
Caller: Hello. Can I speak to Vinay N?
Me: Speaking
Caller: Mr. Vinay N?
Me: Speaking.
Caller: Hello? (unwilling to believe that connection can distort voices so much in this day and age) Can I talk to MISTER Vinay N?
Me: SPEAKING
Caller: Oooh, its VinayA. He he.
Me: Yeah, my name is very funny. What can I do for you?

It happens regardless of age, gender, education, geography, which is why I believe its a worldwide phenomenon. My hard earned degree was awarded, both during rehearsals and the actual ceremony, to Vinay N. Apparently, the world famous professor considered it more probable for a girl to answer to the name of Vinay than for Vinaya to actually be a name. (Her parents must have wanted a boy, he must have thought, if his thoughts ever stooped to such levels).
Maybe it would help if I would start to write my name as VinayA. But then, what happens to my name on capitals only official forms? Brilliant idea, I could change the spelling! Vinayaa, Vinayaaa, Vinayea, Vinayeah... I'd better consult a numerologist before I do anything rash. My whole future might depend on which letter I use to distort my name!

(Three cheers to me for single handedly typing out this post! Knowledge acquired as part of this process - keyboard shortcuts are not so great for us handicapped folks)

I'm Back!

Blame this post on Monu. He is the one who told me such incidents should be documented, that they increase the BSP (best seller potential) of my blog. Who am I to disagree? So, here it comes, with a little bit of background and lot of mirch masala.

With the IT industry up and running again, placements were great for our class. The biggest majority of would be office going bachchas were lapped up by Bangalore based companies. Pune came a distant second, Hyderabad and Noida being also ran. There was a lot of horse trading from the very beginning, with people falling to unbelievable excuses to tempt people from the other camp. Even stuff like "Who will wake me up for breakfast everyday if you are not there" was considered respectable enough a reason to chuck a great job you still couldn't believe anyone could be dumb enough to offer you. End of the course and barring a few casualties to PhD and laziness, the various camps went to their respective cities pretty much intact. Bengaluru wale (Bengalurueans?) settled in their city (which means they cribbed about the traffic, the cost of everything and local language problems) and Punites settled in theirs (incessant rain, pothole paved roads and rickshawalas from hell for them). Life went on for everyone, with occasional conference calls between the two camps in which everyone spoke at once but no one had anything to say.

One fine day one brilliant Punite had the idea of a trip to what was then Bangalore, to see how the other half of the world lived. Lets continue with our story without getting into specifically who she was. She mailed her folks to see if anyone was interested. Only one other was. Another brilliant Punite, you say? Lets just say his heart was in the right place. These two made plans. Oh yeah, big plans that involved air travel and holidays from office. Her brother was especially supportive of the air travel idea. She not at all secretly believed it was because once she went to what was then Bangalore by air just to meet her friends, no one would ever question his trips to his holy place, even if he said he was going to see off his colleague's roommate's sister's friend, who was going to Chennai for the weekend. A feasibility study followed by in depth research revealed that bus travel for the to journey and train for the fro would be optimal. She promised to book train tickets the very next day after the results were published and the bus tickets a little later. She told the Bengaluru camp she was coming and they made their share of big plans.

A lot happens between this point and the point that follows. However since absolutely none of it is related to the story at hand, we skip ahead after making the following assertions:
1. She did not book train tickets
2. She did not book bus tickets
3. She did not tell him she did not book the tickets
4. He did not ask

Skip to some Friday. The day they were supposed to leave for Bengaluru. She messages him.
She: I hope you are packed and ready. We are supposed to leave today, remember?
He: I am at the bus stop. Where are you?
She: At the railway station!

They laugh it off, hit upon another brilliant idea to go catch Vettaiyadu Vilayadu in the local theater next weekend and go on with their lives. If you want to ask her how she liked the movie, go and read the story again. You have completely missed the point.

If you think this was the worst anti-climax ever, go hit Monu!

Nothing is free!

A recent addition to my extra curricular activities is reading Scott Adam's blog (yeah, the Dilbert guy). He writes every day, manages to make me smile on most days and laugh out loud on some. That guy is comic genius!

One of the recurring topics on his blog is that of "free will". Observing the behaviour of people around the world, he has apparently concluded that free will does not exist, that it is an illusion and loves to rub this in the face of his readers, who, as if on cue, get all worked up. Him and certain events have made me wonder - does free will really exist? My wonder does not extend to any deep, or for that matter shallow, philosophical level, but restrains itself to everyday life.

When you are young and foolish, you believe everything is possible. I am the captain of my fate, I am the master of my soul. Every road is there to be explored, every why to be answered by a why not. And if you don't find a road you like, why not make one of you own? Inevitable falls and bruises later, age and experience begin to take over. Risks no longer seem worth it since you have too much to lose. One by one the paths begin to fade until you see only one way - the safe way. And are convinced there is none other. Poof! There goes your free will. You are now a "moist robot", programmed by life to react in predictable ways to every situation. Living becomes routine and you are glad. The burden of choice is not easy to carry.

Apparently I don't write funny stuff anymore.

Words

Live and let die

Nothing lasts forever
Even cold November rain

Comfortably Numb

Never imagined these words would make sense, leave alone become the thread that one hangs by.

How many times have you heard someone say - "They are nice, honest people"? Really?? Can nice people be honest? Can honest people be nice? The truth is, there is a lot of ugliness in this world and you can either be nice about it or honest, not both.

Life's lessons from last week

1. It takes a lot of strength to hurt the ones you love.

2. The more they leave you to mind your own business at work (and by "your on business" I mean official work assigned to you), the less important you are.

3. Some things are bigger than everything (disclaimer: plagiarized)

4. Sometimes, its nice to live a lie. To get lost in its comforting haziness, never having to face harsh reality.

5. Do not get lost in details, like the little kid who chases the colorful butterfly. Keep an eye on the bigger picture. Not only because you might get lost, also because you might miss that perfect sunset.

There is a war out there
They fight cause its right
They fight cause its wrong
It goes on
Battle for battle, stroke for stroke
The moment one wins, its all a joke.

There is a war in here
Me against myself
For control of the boat
It goes on
Battle for battle, stroke for stroke
Only, whoever wins, I get hurt

A peek into a regular morning of a regular Indian family that

a) has recently been centralized after being a regular distributed Indian family for about two years
b) consists of 4 jobless people and
a) has free Internet from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.

Life begins at 6 a.m. with the mother tiptoeing into the children's room, not daring to switch on the light lest she wakes up the competition. She makes her way to the P.C in the semi-darkness (which in itself is no mean feat, remember, the two occupants of the room have been thoroughly "hostelized" and are yet to get acclimatized to home discipline) and switches on the UPS. That dumb machine, unaware of the sensitivity of the issue, emits a loud beep that causes the father to open both eyes, the son one and the daughter to stir. By the time the mother has finished her online activities (which cover a wide range - from jewelry stores, to cookery sites to MTV VJs that catch her fancy), the father has completed all formalities and is ready to take over. He then begins his journey of all online newspapers, heard and unheard of. Any missing details are efficiently searched using the small search bar in Yahoo Messenger (the existence of which, I am ashamed to say, I discovered only after I saw him use it). In typical Indian tradition, the son takes over. And in typical gen Y tradition, he dispenses with all formalities and jumps directly from the bed into the chair. While he organizes a massive and comprehensive hunt for unheard of songs and obscure comics, the daughter awakens. Having always belonged to the "Oh Shit! Its morning" community, she takes her time going about it. The Internet, her only gateway to the external world, proves a strong enough motivator. She wakes up, kicks the son out and settles to her few minutes of bliss, which consists of alternating between Orkut and Gmail. Yes, free Internet is pretty much wasted on her. She is lost to the world until someone shouts - "5 minutes to go!". She immediately wraps up her activities and very generously offers the remaining minute or two to anyone with an emergency.
8 a.m. Life goes back to normal.

You would think that with
a) the two children occupied in jobs that provide free Internet and ample free time to (ab)use it and
b) an upgraded Internet connection that is "free" the entire day,
the contention would have reduced. Ha! Remember that law we were taught in school that gases expand to fill the space available? They forgot to mention that it applies to free Internet too!

Back to work. A new place, a new beginning. Somehow not quite along the lines of my past beginnings. Allow me to explain.

Flashback: my first job. Though I had got in the hard way [a test, a couple of interviews one of which gave rise to serious doubts about my ever having done engineering], I knew that I still had to prove myself. I had to start from zero and build up from there. People knew nothing about me, assumed nothing and expected nothing out of the ordinary [ordinary of course being completely subjective]. I could take my time, make my mistakes and learn.

Cut to IIT. Another beginning. Another start from zero. Lot more time, lot more freedom to make mistakes [because they hurt no one but you] and a lot more to learn.

Back to work. A new place, a new beginning. But no start from zero. The bar has been raised. My past has caught up with me! People know where I am from and hence assume something, expect something. Nothing out of the ordinary, to be fair, just that ordinary has become a little extra-ordinary.