Things that make my head go bang bang bang

Bang as in exclamation! For once, i am not fantasizing about shooting people.

I bargain. With a flower seller. And win. The gym instructor talks to me in Tamil. I go to the gym with my FIL. Every time i go stand anywhere close to a temple, one of the flower sellers sitting there will come and give me flowers for free. Every time. Its like they can smell the fear. The apnapan i feel when i hear someone speaking Marathi here. The dude, at random times. After 5 years of fitting into a chat window, to suddenly see him life-size, even though he may just be disapproving of the mess that is my cupboard. How easily i can switch contexts depending on which home i am in. Like a robot with two settings - Pune and Bangalore. There are irreconcilable differences in the two settings, but since never the twain shall meet, it all works out. Money means so little to me. I still havent caught a live concert in Bangalore. I can make vadais. In principle. How easy it is to forget. And how difficult to understand. The kindle hasnt taken over my my life. I am quitting. The place that has been the biggest part of my life (well, time-wise) for 5 years now. I need people. Yet how little i do to keep them in my life. 

Excuses

The problem with food, or rather, with the making of food, apart from the fact that it needs to be done every. single. day. is the sense of  accomplishment that it gives. I have never had to cook in my life, and so when i now have to, one meal makes me feel i have justified my presence on earth. Not breakfast, breakfast is fun. But anything after that i do, and i can happily spend the rest of day basking in its glory. Which is kind of strange because i come from a family of working women, every single one of them. Whatever they have done in life, they have done in addition to making food.

My life right now is a long list of things that need to be done and are not getting done. Well, its actually not very long, if we get right down to it, there is just this one thing. Come next month and i will be done with my current job. Yes! No more working from home! Happy as that makes me, i need to make sure this doesnt turn into No more working! And totally contrary to my usual approach to things, i am handling the look for a new job thing by worrying too much and doing too little. Which you might have  figured out when i tried to pass off " but i had to make lunch" as an excuse for not preparing.

So, i need to prepare. And while i have full confidence that i'll get a job, i have close to zero confidence that i can clear an interview. Any interview. Even one for LKG. When the dude tries to help by asking me questions, i make faces and not-today-honey him. I'd like to take the high road and say the system needs to change to accommodate people like me (of whom there are plenty), but that will take time. Meanwhile, i shall have to stoop to conquer.

Next is what

By popular demand. What? Bhai asked for a post, and he is popular, okay?

So, Presenting... the Partner! *drumroll*

(The effect of which might be diminished by the fact that 90 percent of the people reading this were supposed to be at the wedding. The remaining 10 percent, i hope you die of shock. Or have a heart attack at the very least.)

So, yes, the partner. Who shall henceforth be known here, there and elsewhere as the dude (Because, you know, everything else about this blog is so anonymous). I live in his home (naturally), i work from his home, and omg, creepy as it sounds, uska ghar hi ab mera sansaar hai :P Not the least becasue i'm in a new city (Hi Bangalore!) and have no idea what goes where. Seriously, that is what i find to be the most disorienting of all. New home, new people, new language, new role - all fine, but a new city that i have to get used to? Nooooo.

I should have cracked under the strain of wearing so many saris, i didnt. I should feel a bit lost and out of place, i dont. I should be devastated, i'm not. I should be deliriously happy, i'm not. I'm... normal. I think tomorrow if i wake up as a man in the Bahamas, i will still be normal.

Because it sometimes feels like a new me in new life, where none of the "facts" from the old life need to be true, i say "Hello World!"

Ooh, look what 2011 is doing!

Its just the second month and i've already taken two leaves. Both last minute oh-i-wont-be-coming-tomorrow leaves, which is not so good. But neither of them were oh-i-am-too-bored-to-get-out-of-bed, which rocks! If you dont get why i am jumping about this, i present to you my 2010. In which i must have taken, oh, 3 leaves? 2 of them because i was bored.

So, yes, 2011. Keep up the good work! And try not to make a philanthropist who donates all her leaves to the office charity out of me, yeah?

Yes, again!

(To post something, anything, in the hope that it will over-shadow what in the light of the day seems an embarrassingly naive outburst from yesterday.
Umm. I really should stop writing SoPs for my posts.)

So. We were kidding about existential crises the other day (i dont remember the context, but it could have been about how the product builder couldnt build the product anymore and imagine the size of that e-crisis) and i got to wondering about the things in my life that should be going through the e-crisis.

1. my phone
On my birthday a couple of days ago, i got more calls than i get throughout the year. That might actually be true, modulo telemarketing and what time are you coming home calls. I dont organize using my phone, i dont make calls, i cant dont surf. So basically, its a Rs 10,000 alarm clock. That, thanks to my brothers constant yelling, i now have by my side at all times. People selling insurance can get to me at any time of the day. How they must love me, the telemarketers. Also,
Oh how blind that love must be
As to most of them
I still am
Mr. Vinaya N.

2. my orkut account
If it cannot connect me to my social network, if it cannot warn me of approaching birthdays, if it cannot show me baby pictures or trip pictures or home pictures, really, why does it exist?

3. My weekends
Weekdays are easy. Weekdays have structure, they have purpose. Weekdays are when we are animals, doing what we are programmed to do - providing food. Weekends are when we get to be human, when we get to rise above our programming and do what we want to do (unless you are one of those who are providing for their food by doing what they want to do, in which case, bye, i dont want to talk to you).
There was a time when not having a structure to the weekend used to be enough. Not anymore. There was a time when entertainment used to be enough. Not anymore. So, what is it that i want to do, what makes me human? *shrug*

4. The adult inside of me
Inspite of fast approaching ages that need 6 bits to be expressed, i do things like taking a mug shot with the wafer on my birthday cake as the name plate. (Trust me, it sounds funnier than it looks. Its got me in profile, not something recommended for those of delicate composition). I regularly skip while getting down stairs. I got a Tintin DVD set as a birthday gift. I absolutely dont mind playing hide and seek with kids. And you better not get caught with me near a construction site with sand that can be jumped upon... All of which would have been fine, well, weird but fine, if i had also taken on some of the responsibilities of being an adult. No thank you, i say, when adulthood beckons with the promise of freedom. 9 cases out of 10, i am happy to be led. It is that one case, however, that might end up making an adult out of me.

Why growing up sucks

The trouble with trying to be an adult, in getting your backside off your comfort zone and trying something new, is this. Once you are done, you still want to rush to mummy and show her your drawing. You still want her to look at the box and two lines you have drawn and tell you its the best damn horse in the world. You want your efforts appreciated, even though you know, and she knows, and she knows that you know, that by this time you should be drawing horses that look ready to jump off the page.

I may be telling me to shut up

Pretty sentences get in the way of what i want to say. Sure, they make for great arm candy and impress people sometimes (myself included) but is that what I want a sentence for?

Well, yes.

Maybe until i learn to get pretty things to say what i want, i should say nothing at all.

Not long ago

in a city not at all far away, there lived a girl. There was this bunch of stuff she was supposed to do. You know how it is with stuff you are supposed to do. If it is in your way, you step around it. If it grows so big that it becomes impossible for you to step around, why, you sit where you are, lean your back against it and enjoy the view.

One day the stuff she was supposed to do was being a very persistent nagger. It wouldnt let her rest, no matter how much she tried to ignore it. Fed up, she decided to go looking for excuses.

She crossed mountains
she swam seas.
She fought dragons
and got stung by bees.

Finally she found one. And what a good looking excuse it was! Strong and sturdy. No loopholes, whichever side it looked at it. She bought the excuse home. The stuff she was supposed to do was waiting for her, having grown stronger from all that neglect.

She walked in
her head held high.
Leaned on the excuse,
and looked the stuff in the eye.

The stuff gave up. For the time being. It knew however, that as long as she was willing to go through all that just to look for an excuse, it was safe. Its only when she really started to look at the stuff that it had to worry.

She and the excuse went on to live. Not too happily. Not at all for ever after.


(P.S. Thats the second time its happened. One sentence inspires a post and at the end, that sentence is nowhere in the post! This one was to be about her finding an excuse and them living happily ever after and making little baby excuses.)

Is cross

With herself. With how almost every aspect of life seems to have led to some bridge to be crossed. And with how she seems to have settled down on this end of the bridge. Built a house there, furnished it, has regular guests over. Even the postal department knows she lives at this end of the bridge. How she occasionally looks to that end of the bridge, imagines what life would be like if she crossed over, and goes back with a wistful sigh to what she has allowed life to become. How reality kicking in once is a while only causes discomfort with the status quo but no progress whatsoever. How the fact that she doesnt have to cross it all alone brings warmth but not courage.

Its not like she hasn't crossed bridges before. But crossing bridges you find yourself put upon is very different from finding yourself a bridge to cross.

P.S. At much stronger version of this post was in my head all evening. Where it went i dont know. Also, the following narrative from my one and only rafting trip was supposed to be woven seamlessly into the post. Why it is here looking like an unrelated sock that comes along when you pull out your woolen sweater from the cupboard i dont know.

It was a 3 day rafting trip. I dont usually get scared of climbing or falling or water or outdoorsy things in general, but this trip had a couple of genuinely scary moments.
One was when we were to cross a grade 3 rapid called the wall. A high rocky mountain on one side, with the narrow river crashing against the rocks. 90 percent change you raft would flip and in you would go into the Ganges, we were told. And it did. And in we went. Though there were life jackets, i spent a few scary minutes going up and back deep down into the water wondering if any of the rescue kayaks would reach me.
Another was at a rapid called Three Blind Mice. Mice 1 and 3 were harmless, but if you got pulled into the mice 2, you'd had it. There were rocks and we could see whirlpools all over the place. Our instructor had told us to simply follow his instructions. Paddle forward he yelled as we came out of mice 1. For some reason the people ahead of me thought he'd asked us to stop paddling and immediately stopped. What were they doing! OMG! I was sure we were crashing into mice 2. Fortunately he saw and yelled louder and they went back to paddling furiously and we escaped to mice 3. Which wasnt all that mild as we'd been led to believe. The raft went almost vertical a couple of times and i was sure the guys sitting ahead of me were going to fall on me.
We were almost at the end of our trip. There was a rock jutting out into the river at a very convenient height and location, and we were to jump off it. I dont get scared of such things, right? I saw people climbing up the rock, looking down, getting scared and the organizers having to push them off. And sniggered. When it was my turn, i went up, looked down and was ready to climb down with my tail between my legs, my reputation be damned, my forever dream of diving into water be damned, the fact that my friend had already jumped before me be damned. The organizer of course refused to let me go back and pushed me off. (I wish i could say it felt awesome, but it ended too quickly for me to actually register much).

That push, i think, is what i'm waiting for.

Paisa paisa

Remember Vinaya's head? Here's more where that came from. Triggered by a company i used to work for going public and leaving me better off than yesterday. To all those demanding a treat, this is it :P



What!

Yeah

Seriously?

Yeah

Just because we worked there 6 years ago?

Yeah

Damn, has it been that long?

[silence]

Okay, okay. Still no age talk.

Yeah

Its a very decent amount of money for having done nothing spectacular at all.

Yeah

Funny no, how money to us is more "just a number" than age is?

Not really

You think there will be a day when it'll mean as much as a good book or say, the beach?

No

Strictly means to an end, eh?

Yeah

If only we knew what the end was!

Dont we all

Cycle Agarbatti

Have you seen the cycle agarbatti ad? (The one i've linked to is in Hindi, but what i'm going to say was inspired by the Tamil version). Mom takes son to temple. Son asks - Mama, agar bhagwan nahi hote toh? With the toh repeated thrice for effect. The bells stop tolling, the sadhu stops counting his beads, birds fly off in temple, as if horrified at the very idea of such a question. And then, the world answers back. In the electricity board board workers perched fearlessly on umm... 10 feet tall poles, wearing what look like mining helmets. In the two college going girls who probably spend as much time studying as praying. In the little girl who idea of God seems to be some kind of Santa Claus who comes at night while you are sleeping and puts water inside your coconuts. In the taxi driver, the tight rope walker, the army...

So far so good. I had to work hard to make what little fun i made of the ad. This is the point where we switch to the Tamil version. Where a supposedly confident and reassuring voice informs us - Haan, bhagwan hain. Only, its not. Its scared and stubborn and sounds very much like its coming from someone who is trying hard to shut himself off to all evidence to the contrary.

But the best part is when the voice says - Cycle Agarbatti. That is when the penny drops. The voice is not worried about farmer crops or waterless coconuts or the well-being of little kids. What makes the voice squeak out Cycle Agarbatti in panic are the economic implications of the question. Agar bhagwan nahi hote toh cycle kaun jalata?

Note: All of this is very likely to be fanciful imagination on my part. In my defense though, the Hindi voice sounded perfectly confidant and reassuring. I dont think my fanciful imagination recognizes linguistic boundaries.

HBD

For reasons that hopefully have nothing to do with age, i sent out the following text as mail to everyone in my office. It also talked about sweets, so people forgave the mail (i think). You never know, though.

Time: 3rd Feb, around 11 p.m.
Place: Inside Vinaya's head


Really?

Yeah.

Just because the earth went around the sun once more since you popped
out?

Yeah.

Arent we getting a little old for this?

[silence]

Ahh. Right. Sorry. No age talk on the birthday.

Yeah.

Did we in any way help the earth on its journey?

No.

Did we maybe deflect a passing meteor, clear some asteroids out of the
way?

No.

So we just hopped on for a free ride.

Yeah.

And yet we celebrate.

Yeah.

Oh my god! If it were up to you, you'd still wear a new frock and
distribute lollipops, wouldnt you?

Of course not!

I give up. Happy Birthday. Have a great day.

Oh i will.

I'm feeling postitve

I missed a step and tore a ligament. Yeah the same one again. One basketball coach used to yell out butter fingers whenever someone let slip a pass they shouldnt have. I now have my own contribution to add to the colourful description of human body parts. Crepe paper ligaments. That tear even on a change in wind direction. Or the flapping of a butterfly's wings. It isnt anywhere as torn as the last time though, so i get away with crepe bandage and no running/jumping/skipping.

So i decided not to be a hero, not to go to work with a limp as if my putting a semi colon was going to save the world. I decided to work from home. I got off to an early start too, before the state electricity board decided to step in. They cut off power for the whole damn day and when asked why, said it was Thursday, like that explained everything and how dumb could one be for asking. So i couldnt work from home, i couldnt entertain myself from home, i certainly couldnt not be at home. The day could have been awful but i had the Big Bang by Simon Singh (who is now my new rock star) for company and of course afternoon sleep. I realized something during the course of the day. Here i am, on an unscheduled leave, and it doesnt bother me, it doesnt affect my work, it doesnt affect anyone else at work or probably anyone else in the world! While it should have made me feel about this big and made question my role in the scheme of things and left me generally depressed, it didnt. People, or at least I, dream of having a life they can take a break from whenever they feel like one and come back to it and for it be like they never left. Or, because i've been reading about spacetime and would like to show off, primarily to the future me, i dream of being light enough to cause minimal distortion in the spacetime around me. So i can walk off to another part of the universe and not have planets plummet into each other or fly off into space. Today, at a very micro level, was about that.

This is me trying to be back

Why has this become so difficult? Small things that i could easily pull into respectable (at least in my eyes) posts now just refuse to grow up. Some of them flirt with moving out to twitter but finally just give it up and settle down in their pyjamas on the overstuffed sofa that is my head. Which is the perfect place to just be, really. No one there is going to tell you to stand on your own two feet, go out in the world and make a place for yourself. Me being a firm believer in not telling others to do what i dont myself do.

And with that post, content over having won a small victory over lethargy and indifference and apathy, she will forget that there is a war.

Notes to the future me

Ideally, i'd like to yell this so the whole world can hear. Or at least, my world. Since that isnt happening, i'll yell it on my blog.

<begin imagining caps>
You can either get things done or do them your way. Wanting to get things done your way is just plain greedy. If i believed in a universe that was interested in you and interested in being fair, i'd tell you that it'd give you one under the ear. (I know i ruined kaan ke neeche, but nothing in English comes close.)
<end imagining caps>

Me, right now i'm in that in between place where i neither do things nor get them done. I know its not going to last, so when it over and i have to pick one or the other, can you please shove this post in my face?

Its DONE!

I did it! Seven whole days of eating according to syllabus!! GM diet shall now proudly head the extra curricular activities section of my resume. A few years ago, i would have been super impressed with myself, not to mention super ashamed. Today, after a little gloat, i'll take it in my stride.

Day 1: Only fruits. Bad. At the end of the day, i was willing idlis to turn into fruits.
(People offered me pastries. They promised not to tell anyone, even.)

Day 2: Only vegetables. Worse. Worst, actually. Low on energy. Head ached, tooth followed. I dreamed of fruits.
(Someone got chocolates to work. People made sure i saw them eat.)

Day 3: Fruits and vegetables. Awesome! Woke up fresh. Felt great all day. Except for disconcertingly pleasing images of bakasur finishing off truckloads of food and breaking open watermelons for dessert.
(People offered me cream biscuits.)

Day 4: Milk and bananas. And wonder soup. The soup saved my day. Wasnt as bad as i'd convinced myself it would be.
(It was gudi padwa and people had modak and srikhand and basundi Waaaaaanh. I'm not exactly sure what basundi is, but it made me cry.)

Day 5: Tomatoes. LOTS. And brown rice and palak and rajma. Normal

Day 6: Vegetables. Brown rice. Sprouts. Tofu. Normal.

Day 7: Vegetables. Fruits. Brown rice. Sprouts. THE END!

I havent seen the results yet but i dont feel particularly light or fresh or super intelligent. Rather anti-climatic it is, at least after the first 4 days. But if the results are good, its a nice short cut to have!

For want of a purpose

Who has Monday blues on a Monday evening?
I rock at feeling sorry for myself. I doubt if anyone does it better.
Ooh, i could watch that movie until its time to sleep.
Call him about that cake.
Call her.
Please? Its a good movie.
At least download the songs she was kind enough to send you.
Not even if it is the only thing that'll get me out of this bed? I suppose not.
Reply or she'll think you died.
I should go on that diet!

And that is how, from tomorrow, i go on the GM diet. The whole world has done it and survived, so i should not be so scared. But i am. Which is why the declaration. Kick me if i default.

I am the world

Have you ever felt... complete? It comes to me, this feeling, usually when i'm alone with music. I may be by myself in my room or surrounded by humanity on a busy street, but world fades into the background. The wind blows just for me, the song plays just for me, its been written just for me and that is all there is to the world. I sing along cause there is no one there to laugh, you see? The world flashes by now and then, but it doesnt demand, doesnt hold me back, it just waves a cheery goodbye. And where ever it is i am going, the only thing i wish for is that i never get there.

A list (not of the linked variety)

I've been to Essel World. Had almost all my limbs in a cast (fine it was the same hand twice, in my world that counts as two hands). Now if only there could be a small flood outside my house that doesnt kill anyone, because of which we'd have to get out in tiny rowing boats, i can let go of my childhood and start on the business of fulfilling my adult fantasies.

Err... you know what i mean. Although i do wish they could be as clear cut as the childhood ones. The wooly fuzzy ones that i seem to be stuck with, very difficult to put a tick against one and say, yes, this one is done.

Being well on my way to the big 3, a friend asked me if i had a things to do before i turn blah list. I hemmed and hawed because obviously i hadnt thought of it like that, as yet another deadline. (I'm impervious to them, deadlines, they come and go with barely a blip on my existence). He then contributed to the first item on the list - make a list of things you want to do before you turn blah.

Its a good one, that one. Because making a list means you see a future. In which you have the power to do things. Something to work towards, something to tick mark. It means having moments best described by this awesome song from Ru-ba-ru:

यह जो पल, यह पल है सुहाना
जिंदगी जीने का एक छोटा सा बहाना

So yeah, i'll make a list.

The Three Hundredth

Post this one is. Which of course means it has to be a meta-blogging one. I did toy around with the idea of postponing it to the 301st, but pretending to be different? Lame-r than following the herd.

Warning (inserted after having written halfway): This is going to be very boring to anyone who was not there. And since no one but me was there though the 6 years i plan to cover...

The first two years
She inspired me to start. With this post. Took a few posts to develop the courage to come out to my friends. Started a group chat on MSN, our communication lifeline back then. For everything from lunch to tea to snacks to badminton to birthday cakes to random leg pulling to gossip.

Me: I have a confession to make (or something equally dramatic)
She: Now what?
(To this day, i remember she said that. I wonder why. Its not like we did dark confessable deeds everyday. We were seedhe saade bachche log. Very. The only way we were conspicuous was by the amount of noise we made on the lunch table. And err... the number of helpings of food some of us couldnt do without.)
They read. Didnt laugh. Continued to read without having to be reminded. And that is how it took off. Did anything change? I'd like to think so. Most of them blogged at that time and i think reading each other pushed us away from that line that divides colleagues and friends.

The next two
IIT. I know the blog helped. Provided the bootstrapping i needed to come out and start talking to people and hitting people and throwing things on people... (That and the most embarrassing game of basketball ever, but shhh). And i'm so glad at least some bits of that magical time are on record because in a few years, i'll have no problem believing it was all a dream.

The last two
Is when the blog became something more than (lets face it) an outlet for my vanity. Writing helped. Added meaning, at times took it away, made things appear lighter. And has it changed anything? It has been recently discovered at work, not that i'd made it difficult, there is a link on my Orkut page, for God's sake! What does it say about me that it took two years even so? That maybe, i'm not done with needing the bootstrapping.