The aglet

Do you know how many times I’ve used the word ‘I’ in this blog? And how many entries revolve solely around my limited world of perception and thought?
Yeah, you’re right. Not nearly enough.

Okay, jokes apart (yes! that was a joke. Ha ha to you too) I do tend to talk a lot about things that can be of no interest to anyone, except maybe the few people who read it as a personal favour to me and to avoid a Fate Worse Than Death.

I thought to myself, how can I remedy this? Can I move beyond the narrow walls that confine me and expand myself into a larger world which involves more important things in life, like the little plastic thing at the end of your shoelaces?
Yes, I know it’s called an aglet, thank you.

And I just used the word ‘I’ way too many times in this entry.
Alright, this is a small ode to the aglet where no ‘I’ shall rear its ugly, inflated ‘I’ head.

Oh aglet, thou art more beautiful than...er, sorry.
The aglet’s a useful little plastic or metal thing at the end of shoe laces or drawstrings originally invented by the dude who couldn't get the lace through the tiny holes in his shoes. No one knows if he patented it, but it is a general opinion that if he had done it, he would now be earning a ridiculous amount of money and living on a private island off the South Pacific coast, wasting the ready on pink champagne and ridiculously high security.

The history of the aglet is very interesting but sadly, no one knows exactly how the idea was hit upon. Did someone wrap sellotape on the ends of their ragged and filthy shoelaces to keep their shoes together or was it the result of many sleepless nights and hard work..? It is possible that we may never know.
Some things are better left a mystery.

I knew it. I can totally move beyond the narrow walls that confine me into a larger world involving aglets. Wizard.

Life is a delicate negotiation

Third year has it perks. For one thing, we have this cool dude teaching us data mining and data warehousing. Let me tell you this up front, this entry has nothing to do with data mining and warehousing. This is basically because I don’t really know what it’s all about yet and also because the professor is a funny guy whose jokes are more interesting than his lectures.

Apart from the usual snubs he delivers indiscriminately to all who attempt to finish their math assignments in his class, he also accepts snubs gracefully from the class with nothing more than a ‘you people should act your age.’ That’s pretty mild actually. Any other member of the illustrious staff would have had an aneurysm and turned homicidal if we’d made a reference to their bald spot and/or spewed corny lines from Tamil movies and giggled at it every five minutes to annoy them.


I’m also apparently a part of the college choir. The best thing about this is that I get to bunk a lot of boring classes. The bad thing is that it gets really irritating when Some People (I name no names) who can sing louder than others and use terms like pitch and notes, boss around those who can’t.

Imagine this: a bunch of girls get together and have hush-hush conversations about which note they should start the song on, (It’s just We Three Kings, for heaven’s sake, not the opera) so that everyone else will suck less.

On one hand, I’m glad someone else is in charge of the whole thing and taking the flak from higher authorities on our suckiness as a choir. On the other hand, sitting and listening to them bickering and listening to them telling us to be a ‘Little Louder, People!’ and being rude to the not-so-popular is not my idea of fun. And strangely, no one seems to like it when I start humming ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen’ at odd moments to relieve the boredom and introduce a more festive spirit. Sad.



On account of the whole bunking-class thing, I now have a load of work piling up slowly but steadily. However, quoting from the movie The Dog Problem (Yes, I love Solo’s little dog just like everyone else), life is a delicate negotiation. So I suppose I should spend more time on Bresenham’s algorithms and less time on my blog.

Why does that depress me?

Love - part deux

As an almost twenty-year old it is impossible for me not to have any decided views on love.

I’ve gone through all the usual stages. You know, like when you’re ten you think the kissing scenes in movies are gross. At age thirteen, you’re guiltily interested in the kissing scenes and your older sister’s weepy romance novels don’t make you want to gag but you will die before you admit it. By fifteen, you probably have at least one unrequited love story involving Leonardo DiCaprio.
The rest, as they say, is history.

If you’re a guy, you have your own set of embarrassing stages involving Julia Roberts. You know what they are.

As you grow older, you also realize that this is more complicated than you bargained for. You’re exposed to different theories ranging from the plenty-of-fish-in-the-ocean theory to the one-true-love theory. You’ll also meet a lot of people who are convinced that it’s all a hoax generated by a capitalist economy to sell Valentine’s Day memorabilia and romantic comedies.

Also, it’s really a big bother.
And lame, sometimes.
Funny how no one minds all that.
Unless they’re old, cynical and bitter.
Or they’re your parents.

Sem six: Day one

Is it written somewhere in the cosmic plan of things that first days should always be crappy?

After five semesters it still amuses me that every single professor starts the class with ‘the rules and regulations of this college’. This includes:

1. The dress code. The main thing you should have in mind every morning as you get ready is that you MUST NOT attract a guy. By no chance must this ever happen or you will immediately be suspended for breaking college rules.

2. There should be no complaints about your class.This is a sub clause of rule #1. Because if you attract guys, you will be complained about.

3. Don’t talk in class. And don’t talk to guys. Ever.
(Yeah sure, and while we’re at it, we’ll also listen to the stuff you ‘teach’ us.)

4.We own you body and soul. Resistance is futile

5.Don’t change seats to sit with your friends. This is precisely what the college wants to avoid. Friendship and love will only distract you from the very important task of mugging up your textbooks and getting a university rank for the glory of the prestigious college.

6.Cover your observation. In fact, if you’re a ‘good’ student you’d cover all your notebooks as well and treat them with the all the reverence due to a work of art. Neatness more than actual matter, will get you that university rank.


After this, we have to listen to how lucky we are to be studying in such an amazingly awesome place. I’m sorry but are these people brain dead…?
Then they’ll dictate the syllabus. Hello, if we wanted the syllabus we’d go look in something called the syllabus book. This isn’t some place we come to everyday to practice our handwriting.
And yes, the always yawn inducing ‘How to present your answer paper’ talk. I didn’t even bother with this when I was in school, why the heck would I start now?

I know the truth however. These are all merely delay tactics because they haven’t prepared for the class. And because the lot of them got blasted at the last staff meeting for not churning out more university rankers and letting girls look attractive.

From being annoyed, I’ve progressed to being amused. You can’t hear rubbish like this year after year without a) killing someone or b) smirking sarcastically at the poor deluded souls who call themselves professors and deciding to become a stand up comedian.

Interpersonal relationships

A friend of mine was mad at me for a few days before she told me why. So there were some Amazingly Fun days of cold shoulders and curt replies. I had no clue if she was just annoyed with life in general, annoyed with other people or annoyed with me. As it turned out, apparently it was all me.

In certain circumstances, it sucks being non-confrontational more than it would have sucked being confrontational. Also, it sucks being clueless. I'm highly bad at this. If you left me to my own devices I would avoid any and all confrontations in life and remain blissfully clueless about my many unforgivable transgressions.

On my end, I keep making excuses for other people because of the whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing and because I really don't want to fight with them when what I should be doing is hitting them over the head for being block headed asses.

The bright side is that sometimes they tell you that you hurt them and after you apologize, they forget about it and everyone is chummy again over a cup of coffee and some biscuits without the whole mess of a fight ever happening. I love people like that.

Other times, it's like a festering sore which just keeps getting worse and worse and ends up in a lot of silent resentment and dislike. As Oscar Wilde put it,'that awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is!' Things which may seem mundane to you are kept alive through constant feelings of ill usage and hate, finally cumlinating in even the end of a friendship or a supernova-like fight of epic proportions.
That sucks.

This Christmas time...

The holiday season is here! The season of goodwill and joy and lots and lots of holidays! The weather is absolutely perfect too, as you will already know if you live in Chennai. Yes, life is worth living again.

Christmas is only a few weeks away and they're already singing carols in church, Sunday school kids are putting up Christmas plays and the Christmas tree is out. Of course, the sermons haven't changed.
'Don't concentrate on the shopping! Make Christ the center of this Christmas!'
A good sentiment. It's not about the shopping, people. It's about giving. Love, affection, time, effort, money...whatever it is, give and you will get it back one way or another. Besides, it's more fun than you realise.

Yeah, I wanted to tell you guys about the Christmas play. No matter how amateurish it is, it never fails to warm your heart when you see little kids dressed up as angels with wings, tiara et al. Probably the only time of the year when they seem angelic. Okay, okay! I'm kidding. I'm sure they have their moments.



The best part of 'The Fourth Wise Man' was the manger scene. I couldn't help stifling a laugh when the baby Jesus was peremptorily passed on to the little kid dressed up as Mary and the subsequent abandonment of the doll in the pulpit after its role was over.



It was cute. It was adorable. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Happy holidays everyone!

P.S: I know the pics are bad, so don't mind that. It was pretty dark in there and I had to mess around with it in picassa.

Chivalry is dead

Chivalry is dead, they say.
No one holds the door open for you,
'After you' is a forgotten phrase.
Giving up your seat in the bus?
Are you nuts?
Kids don't mind their P's and Q's,
Teenagers scowl all the time,
Young people don't respect their elders.
Chivalry is dead, you say.
I say, you get what you give.

Ta da! Another sem is over. (Cue: Applause)

You know, it's weird. There's still an entire year of college left. Till 8th semester that is, when I will only have to show my face in college for two days a week. That's something to look forward to, at any rate.

In the more immediate future, guess who's all set to have fun. That's right. Moi. I'm going to spend ten glorious days having as much fun as I humanly can.

I have plenty of things to do. I might be doing my in-plant training these holidays and there's still the matter of turning twenty. So far, I've struck a couple of things off my list but there's still so much I want to do. It includes some impossibilities like going to a Linkin Park concert but there are other things which aren't so impossible. For example, I want to finish writing at least one entire book. Just a small one. I'm thinking of calling it 'Turning Twenty'. Yes, very original I know.



Christmas is less than a month away and I'm looking forward to it. There's something different about it this time. I can feel it already. I spent all of yesterday evening downloading carols and Pride and Prejudice(the movie). Now I can't stop humming 'God rest ye merry gentlemen'.

My room is crying out for attention and I will have to spend a considerable amount of time on that. I don't mind. I actually like cleaning my room. I never know what I'll discover. For example, today I found a whole bunch of friendship bands from way back when and I couldn't throw them out. I couldn't. I'll just find them a new home.

Life is looking good. I'm going to meet my friends, my family, I'm going to be doing things I love and blogging all about it in the most annoyingly comprehensive way. Have fun, folks. I know I will.

The vampire-human conundrum

Enough's been said about the weird yet wildly popular Twilight. The world seems to be divided into two types of people: Those who talk about Twilight and those who don't give a damn. Guess which one I fit into. Ha ha.

I'm not going to bore everyone by summarizing Twilight. I'll just get to the point. As much as I like Stephanie Meyer's style of writing, the movie just refuses to cut it. Let's face it, the vampire theme is frankly, being abused. You want a good vampire movie? Watch Underworld. And Rob Pattinson? No offense to the dude, but he looks like Kate Beckinsale can kick his butt on a bad hair day. The term bad hair day takes on a whole new meaning with Edward Cullen's ice cream cone head.



Now that New Moon is out, I will not lie to you guys. I'm definitely watching it, if only for the Volturi scenes where Pattinson gets his butt kicked. Romance always has its allure but like all vampire-human romances (Blood Ties, True Blood...I won't include Underworld because not only did it decently refuse to let Kate be excessively romantic but also turned that Michael character into a hybrid)the whole plot just gets too mind numbingly mushy for a rational mind at times. If they start quoting poetry, I'm so out of there.

About True Blood, don't watch it unless you have nothing better to do. Blood Ties actually has a plot and everything(albeit a much used crime detective angle, but hey it's better than no plot at all). I'd still tell you to go watch Criminal Minds instead, if you're into that though.





In conclusion, Twilight's more of an accidental success spurred on by adolescent, teenage girls who just don't know what a good movie is. Romance is all very well but let's not lose our taste over it.

P.S: I watched most of them anyway. So never mind.

The Ebook Reader is Here

Ebook readers are slowly but surely gaining a foothold in today's technology driven world. When Amazon's Kindle first came out it didn't take the world by storm. It was a novelty and bibliophiles around the world eyed it with interest. It was apparent that others would soon follow in its wake and they weren't disappointed. Today, Sony has its own range of readers and there are others like Foxit's Eslick and the iRex digital reader vying with each other in a rapidly growing market catering to large number of consumers.



On a more personal note, I'm in love with my new Sony PRS 300. It is by no means the best reader in the world but it can hold up to 350 books, it's very easy to handle and it's mine. Perfect. It also sports the epaper feature so it looks exactly like a printed page which makes reading easier.
I just about had a heart attack when it froze today. But after a couple of hours of freaking out I noticed the reset button which set things right again, thank God.

I've got to get back to 'Mostly Harmless' now. Excellent book. Douglas Adams is a genius.

No roads left

As I get swamped down with the pressures of exams...ok, I'd probably feel a lot less pressurized if I had actually attempted to study something ahead of the last day before said exam. But that's not the point. The point is, as I battle it out with my textbooks, I can't help but think whether it's really worth it. Not the studying, just the cramming and stuff.

I've often thought, 'what if I had been in a better college? Would I have been more interested in what I'm doing? Would I be conquering the world right now?'
And the answer is no. Yeah, that's life.

Anyway, I was just looking for a few tracks by my favourite band, Linkin Park and I came across a few interviews by Chester and Mike. What a contrast. Chester was your typical high school rock punk who played gigs and did drugs. He's been in rehab, he's had a divorce and he still struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. And he's got the most beautiful voice. I swear, no one can scream like Chester does.



Mike went to Art school. He spent years painting and somewhere down the line switched over to his hobby, music. He writes, he plays, he sings, he raps, he paints...one interviewer even went on to call him a modern day rennaisance man. I came across a few paintings he's titled 'Glorious Excess' today.


So these are the people behind the music. But when the music takes over, you don't think about any of that, do you?

Will I ever be perfect? I doubt it.
Will I change the world? No doubt about it.

P.S: I'm getting addicted to crossword puzzles. I haven't finished an entire one yet but it beats studying.

Floods, chaos, disaster. And it's only the monsoon.

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that I’m nutty about the rain. I can sit and stare at it, if not for hours, at least for reasonably long periods of time. But even confirmed rain lovers like me have their limits. Mine was reached today as I waded through dirty, ankle deep stagnant water to get to my bus stop.

The very thought of what might constitute a majority of that water makes me shudder. Chennai, as usual, does not have the ability to sport a dry patch of land as soon as it gets some decent amount of rain. Blame the government, blame the drainage, blame whomever/whatever you want but the fact remains that it’s a safety hazard to walk the streets during the monsoons.
Just another one of the woes of the people who love 'singara chennai'.

Why can't I find the cornhusker vortex online???

I can't believe this. I've tried everything. I've tried to watch it online, I've tried downloading it and I can't. It's supposed to have been aired yesterday! Whatever happened to stuff leaking out on the internet before it's officially out, damn it?
I guess I'll have to wait.
'What is the world coming to?' she wonders, as she butters her whole wheat bread with a disappointed sigh.
Yeah, ok fine. I'll stop whining.

Matter matters.

Okay, my library’s been shifted to Tambaram and that effectively leaves me with nothing to read. I’m entirely dependant on the net and old issues of the National Geographic to tide me over. Of course, I have my semester exams in a week and I’m pretty hopeless. So I guess I should start reading my textbooks for a change. But they don’t have stories about killer whales and the Dongpo Pa and the Pecos River. They have no humour. Life is hard.

Yesterday, I saw a play called ‘Death’. It didn’t impress me very much. But they tried, I’ll give them that. I enjoyed spending time in French Loaf after the play with my friends even more where we discussed burning issues like, ‘who wants the last bite of the croissant?’


Oh yeah, there’s something else I wanted to say. In today’s papers there were at least four articles on social networking, all of them basically saying the same thing in different ways with attempts at humour which ceased to be funny by the time people stopped checking their orkut account.
‘Brave new worlds beckon’
‘What’s your love life status?’
‘Be what you want to be’
And this is just from today’s papers. Give it up already. Everyone already knows all about face book and twitter and second life. It is no longer a novelty which you need to milk for all it’s worth.


We know all the dangers, we know the perks and we know about the perverts out there who will use your phone number and address if you’re stupid enough to put it up on the net.


I’m getting tired of reading articles where the writer informs the world of the uninitiated, in tones a Mayan priest might have used to tell people why the gods needed the latest human sacrifice, about status messages in face book and how it can range from the mundane (‘Kavya just ate an apple’) to the boring to the occasionally informative or humourous. Stop writing about it and start writing about something we don’t already know! I realize my rant adds another article to the wide array of rants about networking sites but hey, someone has to point out that we need better articles in the newspaper.


Talking about articles, check out today’s TOI (Sunday Times), page two for ‘Go easy on the pitch, buddy.’ It’s hilarious and very well expressed.
Go on, get off of that chair and get the paper.

Rendezvous '09

That's what they called the reunion at school today. You know how you usually feel when you hear about reunions in school.
Your first thought will most probably be, 'Do I have to?'
Then you move on to 'No one I know is coming.'
After that you get to the 'Ok, I'll just look in for a few minutes and then scoot.'

Then you actually go there and it's like you never left.
The grounds, the trees, the sky, the basketball court, the buildings...every thing's so familiar it's like you were loitering around the school in the hopes of bunking class just yesterday.

The teachers remember you, they joke about what you did in their classes. You're hugging and exclaiming over people you generally ignored when you studied with them. Only, now they seem like a priceless link to the best days of your life. I know, it's a bit of an exaggeration. I always wanted to leave school when I was in it. It definitely didn't seem like the best days of my life then. But time has a funny way of erasing all the bad memories and leaving only the good. So even if it was crap sometimes, I don't remember it like that.





Anyway, coming back to the point from all that off-the-track rambling, you exchange phone numbers and take pictures. Most sounds uttered are high pitched squeals indicating another discovery of a long lost classmate. And it overwhelms you. I felt like it was the last place where I truly belonged. And the last place where I could make a fool of myself and laugh about it ten minutes later. And the last place where almost everyday was a bad hair day and I couldn't have cared less.

The school librarian remembers me. I know I went there every week to get a book, I know she stamped it out for me. She's even glared daggers at me for late returns. But still, I never expected her to remember me without the bad haircut and the pink uniform. I was seriously amazed that she did and that right there, was the best moment of my whole day.
Mrs.Pearl remembers me! Call me soft, but I still can't stop grinning like an idiot about it.

Going nuts

She loves you but she drives you insane.
And she only drives you insane because she loves you. Sounds familiar?
You have no idea...

An inconsequential post. You have been warned.

Ah, my life. Who can beat it?
Okay, don’t answer that.

There are facets to every day life which we take for granted. Like Facebook. Imagine life without Facebook. It seems ridiculously easy to me but going a day without Farmville, Café World and Mafia Wars seems to chill people to the bone. Benita just found a lonely black sheep on her farm! Bala just hired Anita to work in his café! Joseph just killed 56 people! Why would anyone not get addicted to this stuff? Having a brain seems like a pretty good reason to me.

I’m currently being robbed by my dentist who’s probably building up his family fortune from filling my teeth. He also says I have to pull out four of them. And my mouth feels like it belongs to someone else. This is seriously putting me off food.

By the way, I’m going to be twenty in a couple of months. I feel that this should be marked by some significant event. I’ve got a few suggestions so far from all my friends and my sister. If you’ve got any of your own, leave a comment please. It would really help.

Well, enjoy life folks. You never know when your dentist will ruin your zest for it.

Sick and bored

My cold has now progressed to a mild fever. This is so boring. You will not believe how irritating it is to have nothing to do even if this is exactly what I most wanted during my exams. I can't go out with my friends and consequently spent most of yesterday languishing on the couch and watching TV.

Let's see...I started with 'Love and Other Disasters' and simultaneously watched a bit of 'Hell Boy'. Then after a nap to get rid of the headache which was threatening to give me more grief, I watched 'I am Legend'. After that, there weren't any good movies so I sat and watched an episode of 'Grey's Anatomy'. I'm even contemplating watching 'High School Musical 3' today. That is how annoying this cold is.
I'm so jobless that I'm actually blogging about this. God help me.

The festival of lights

I’ve successfully completed my practical exams without any bitter and traumatic experiences which sometimes accompany practical exams and now I have a cold. It’s a piece of luck really, that it didn’t hit till my last lab exam was safely out of the way.

I checked out Sparky’s yesterday. I liked the décor but the food is so-so and it is also kind of expensive. Anyway, the bottom line is, I won’t be going there again anytime soon. American cuisine is not my thing, I’ve discovered. I don’t think I’ll be having a lasting relationship with Sparky’s like I do with Creamy Inn and Cake Walk, alas. We shall both have to move on and mend our broken hearts as well as we can.

Anyway, about my cold, it’s a major pain in the you-know-where. I can’t remember the last time I had a cold. The feeling of misery, the throbbing headache, the runny nose, Waterbury's compound...colds are really not fun. Apparently there are 250 strains of cold viruses and the only way you can gain immunity to a strain is by catching it. So, the maximum number of times you can catch a cold in one lifetime is 250 times. Oh joy.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Today India celebrates Diwali, the festival of lights and also of noise and pollution apparently. But I enjoyed last night, even with a cold. Standing on your terrace, watching the fireworks and the stars, listening to your favourite music and blowing your nose is really not a bad way to spend a night.

Firework prices have gone up, not surprisingly, so this time people didn’t start with the heavy stuff till the evening before Diwali. I remember times when I wouldn’t venture out alone for a whole week. There is a plus side to inflation!

Inside my head...

I’m reading...

A Damsel in Distress by P.G.Wodehouse
Macbeth by Will Shakespeare
The comic strips in the newspaper (and laughing out loud)
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
My lab notes (:p)




I’m listening to...

Linger by The Cranberries
21 guns by Green Day
Lucky by Colbie Caillat and Jason Mraz
Inner Universe (GIS-SAC soundtrack)
Boulevard of Broken dreams by Green Day
Faint by Linkin Park
Know Your Enemy by Green Day
Right Kind of Wrong by Leann Rimes
Broken by Amy Lee and Seether
Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfield
Our Time Now by The Plain White T’s




I’m looking forward to...

Hanging out with the gang
Checking out Sparky’s
Acing my semester practical exams
A fun Diwali
Opening a DMAT account with Remy
Watching a LOT of movies



I’m dreading...

My dentist appointment


Movies I want to watch...

Up
Wake up Sid
Dark Knight
Unnaipol Oruvan
FMA – The Conqueror of Shambala (Meilin, burn everything you have. I’m borrowing the whole lot off of you...:))
New Moon




I’m dreaming of...

Starry skies
Rainy days (mutually exclusive, I understand but a girl can hope right?)
Talking with my friends about absolutely everything



This week, I loved...

My niece’s recitation of Sick by Shel Silverstein
Laughing with my mom
Kidding around with my dad
The lyrics to 21 guns
Complaining about the world in general to my sis




I’m checking out...

http://sakurasworld.wordpress.com


I’m hoping...

The next three days get over before I know it.

It's rainin' in Chennai!

Okay, I'm in a surprisingly good mood. Maybe it's because the weather's getting cooler. I can't wait for the monsoon to hit. My mind is suddenly swamped with all the things I can do in my study holidays (excluding study) and that's helping with the good mood too. Pity I have to do my sem pracs before that.

Hark! Was that thunder? Yes, it is! Rains have been lashing AP and Karnataka for days now and TN seemed to be having a dry spell. The rains are predicted to be heavier this year but I hope TN doesn't get hit with floods like her neighbours. I'm always for more rain but our drainage system and the agricultural areas can't take it. I'll always remember the storm which hit Chennai in 2005.
It was practically impossible to step into the streets for days on end but I loved it anyway because we had a week off school right during the exams. That's too much to hope for this time, but the rain is right on cue. The weather was getting way too hot. It's a welcome change.

Stuck till next wednesday

I'm missing out on so much! SRM Med is having their THREE day culturals right in the middle of my model exams, which are frankly a waste of time and the meagre effort I put into them. I can't even go on Sunday because, guess what? My semester practicals start on Monday and then it goes on to delight one and all by continuing remorselessly for three consecutive days.

The microprocessor lab alone has me looking up to the ceiling and telling God that I'm sorry that I sleep in on Sundays. I'm being tutored in the basics of computer networks a week before the exam and I've given up on database management systems as a matter of pure luck. Not the best way to prepare for your semester practicals, trust me.

Do you know the last scene in Pirates of the Caribbean when Capt.Jack Sparrow looks up and says, 'Now give me that horizon!'
My horizon is temporarily equivalent to the 15th of October. Keep your fingers crossed!

Sales, Shoes and Sanity

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. What tunnel, you might ask. Sounds like an NDE, doesn’t it? Never fear, near death experiences have not yet been added to my lot. I’m merely referring to the drawing to an end of another semester.
These days when I tell people that I’m looking forward to the last glorious day of college I always sound slightly apologetic. Everyone seems to think that I should be grieving over the end of my college life and weeping over its lifeless body that I’m a little sorry to disappoint them.
It’s only the fifth semester and there are Three more to go.
And wait, I have to clear fifth semester first, I suppose. But after two years of writing Anna University exams, I’m fairly certain I’ll clear it. It’s all in the wrist work.

I went to the IMS sale today. That stands for the Indian Missionary Society. It’s a staple in the life of most of my relatives so it was basically impossible to walk ten steps without bumping into someone who’s not a part of the vast family tree and even quite a few who aren’t but we know anyway. I haven’t attended the IMS sale for the past couple of years, but nothing’s changed. Lots of homemade stuff to eat, game stalls, lucky dips and stuff no one would buy except during an IMS sale because it’s for a good cause.

I met a few of my friends from school and church which wasn’t too bad. One of them even asked me how I had dragged myself out of bed because I sleep in every Sunday instead of improving my soul at church. I told him the truth. That I was there under the threat of torture by my own flesh and blood. And mercifully, my parents decided to leave after a reasonable amount of time instead of hanging around to chat with the every person related to us by blood and/or marriage.

I should confess here that another main reason people flock to this event (apart from meeting the family tree) is that they sell biriyani.
Again, this is a staple.
Every event worth attending connected to the church always sells biriyani. I suspect there’s some sort of dastardly psychology behind this. Anyway, we left after the ritual buying of biriyani was over and done with. Then I came home and slept like the dead for four hours. It always takes it out of one to go jaunting about and meeting family trees.

I went to Bata with Remy last week, by the way. Why I think this is worth mentioning is that Bata has converses. I even saw this very cute cross between a converse and a ballet flat. I want one. I mean, at this very moment if you gave me a choice between a converse and designer heels, the converse would win hands down. My eldest sister thinks I’m turning into my other sister who used to haunt every shoe shop in Gandhi Street in Vellore during her college days. Well, what does she expect? We share genes.

I almost feel like I should leave a couple of lines now showing the moral of the story.
There is none.
If you feel that there is one hidden in the morass of relatives, complaints and shoes somewhere in here, there you go. That’s most probably it.

Industrial visit to NLC

I never thought that Neyveli would be anything less than a disaster. I mean, here are the facts: Almost ten hours of travel, scorching hot weather and no information which could be related to my field at all (not something which was necessary for my enjoyment but only as a sop to my frustration that the day would not have been a complete waste of time if I could have only learnt something new).

Imagine my surprise when I actually enjoyed myself.
The bus journey was not half bad, really. I spent most of the time listening to Hindi songs on Sab’s mp3. I already have a couple of favourites now - Jaane kyun and Masakali. She was very bemused when I played these two over and over again.
The weather was mild early in the morning and we went past rustic little villages, paddy fields, haystacks…the whole deal. My classmates were all high but managed not to go completely berserk which was something else I was glad about. I’m all for fun, but incessant screaming and getting squashed into a human sandwich is not my idea of fun. Thankfully, it wasn’t theirs either for a change and everyone enjoyed themselves without getting too rowdy.

When we finally reached Neyveli, there was some tension because we had heard that electronic devices weren’t allowed and all of us had our cameras, cell phones and mp3 players with us. It was also a bother that we had to get down at each check post and wait out in the open under the hot sun and humid weather till the bus was given a green signal to continue after it was checked.

Despite all that, we really enjoyed seeing the site where lignite was mined from. A couple of men who worked in NLC also took the trouble to accompany us and explain how everything was done. That place was huge! I think he said that the site we saw was roughly 35 square kilometers in area and we had an aerial view of the whole site. Really awesome place.

I would have enjoyed it more if I (not very surprisingly) hadn’t stepped in the first puddle of mud we came across and spent ten minutes trying to get all that muck off my shoes. We piled into the bus again after taking a few snaps and they took us to see this monster of a machine which is used to mine the lignite.

My first view of the monstrosity which costs around 62 crores, was a gigantic metal disc with grooves like spikes which can dig up to a depth of 5 meters into the ground. I was very impressed. Then to our delight, they let us climb it. It was so cool! It would have easily been at least three to four stories high and we had nothing between our feet and the distant ground but a mesh which seemed too fragile to bear our combined weight despite assurances from the operators that it could easily bear more. The adrenaline rush made us forget the heat, all the grease and every other conceivable inconvenience. The weak hearted (and for once, I was not among them) waited on solid ground for the rest of us to come down.

Then we had lunch at the afforestation project area which was very picturesque and quite a bit cooler. The lunch was nothing to get excited about. I hadn’t really expected anything more than the lime rice and chips they gave us but we managed with the food some of the girls had brought from home in anticipation of just such an event. After lunch, girls being girls, just had to take a billion pictures and find the perfect pose for each and very one of them. Mad, but characteristic.


The journey back was more subdued for me but for some, the party was just getting started. A little childish but they seemed to enjoy it which is what an IV is all about, after all. I managed to get a little sleep in between and found the sky overcast when I woke up. All my hopes for a shower were fulfilled in a very enjoyable spell of rain. There’s nothing like watching rain in the countryside while listening to Linkin Park. The weather cooled down quite a bit after that.

To crown it all off, I managed to get back home at the very reasonable hour of eight in the evening by myself. At home, I watched Hancock. My advice to you is, don’t watch it. Even if it has Will Smith and Charlize Theron, do NOT watch it. If you already have, you have my condolences.

Today, my limbs are stiff and I’m feeling lazier than usual. It was worth it. Sometimes, things work out perfectly precisely because you don’t expect them to.

To be or not to be. God, do I have to decide???

It is a fact universally acknowledged that I can’t make up my mind. At all. What others perceive as a fault, I’d like to think of as a quirk. At least a quirk sounds better than indecisive and confused.
At this point in my very confusing life, unlike Robert Frost, I have not two but too many roads lying before me and if I took aforementioned person’s advice about setting off on the one less travelled, one of the following scenarios will ensue.

1. My mom will go mad.

2. I find that the road is not at all what I imagined it to be.

3. I’ll have a brilliant time till the coffers run dry.

4. I’ll be the first person to be kicked out of Greenpeace.

5. I’d love every moment of it.

6. Or I’d hate every moment of it.

7. I will decide to chuck it all and wait to be posthumously recognized for my collected written works which, at the moment, are merely regarded to be the ramblings of an indecisive, no...quirky teenager.

8. My mom will go mad.

All in all, not too bad you know.
At the least, you can never say my life is boring.

Love!!! Part -1

Romance…Probably the world’s biggest franchise. And no one makes better use of it than the movie industry. Here are a few situations which can only, I repeat, only work in Tamil movies:

The culture clash: Hero is a successful entrepreneur/city boy. Heroine is the village belle. Heroine humiliates hero but then later does something so endearing that the poor guy can’t help but fall in love. Then a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness follows because of the girl’s scary grandmother/high BP dad and the guy’s snobby mom/homicidal mortal enemy, finally culminating in the inevitable wedding scene.

The family feud: Dads were once best friends and turned into bitter enemies over some stupid misunderstanding. Under these circs, their respective kids have no option other than to fall deeply in love with each other. All the hapless viewers will then have to endure some harebrained plan to mend the breach and gain acceptance to the impending nuptials from their fond but irrational parents.

The love-hate relationship: Very simple really. Guy hates girl. Girl hates guy. They bicker incessantly. Their true characters are one day revealed when they do some shining act of mercy and suddenly the realization hits that they can’t live without fighting with each other for the rest of their lives.
Now the real problem arises for the guy. How the bloody hell is he supposed to propose to someone who hates his guts..? This is promptly solved when girl cries over the guy’s apparently lifeless form in the climax and confesses her love.

The action flick: Guy has way too much moral fibre and insists on picking fights with every high profile goon in the place. Girl is highly impressed and pursues guy who generally acts all stuck up and rejects girl on account of his life being too violent. Girl cries. Villain kidnaps girl. Guy rescues girl. Kiss. Credits.

The bad guy/good girl equation: Homely girl. Guy with an attitude and loaded with cash. Initially, the guy takes up a bet to win girl’s heart. Girl shows her purity and homeliness by categorically refusing to play along and also exhibits just the right amount of disgust at being pursued by the spoilt hero.
Hero really falls in love and spends rest of the movie trying to show the girl he’s reformed and will give up all worldly wealth to live with her. Happily, this is not necessary and girl vows to be a good wife and keep the guy in check (chains?) for the rest of his life. The end.

Chick flick: Girl meets perfect guy. Girl also suffers from low self-esteem and therefore goes through the whole facade of being friends. Guy is too block headed to see the girl is nutty about him and gets infatuated with a hot bombshell. Girl retreats but seethes with ill-concealed jealousy. Ten minutes before the movie ends, guy realizes his mistake and runs after his best friend to make her believe that he was in love with her all along. This is generally done on crowded streets/in train stations/airport/girl’s native village,etc.

The tragedy: Guy meets perfect girl. Girl and guy fall in love. You have to note that the guy is either a very sincere and efficient policeman or anyone actually, who has a lot of very dangerous enemies. Girl dies in the end. Guy is heart-broken but continues with his service to society.


This entry will be continued as and when I come across more corny Tamil movie love stories. Till then, keep watching those delightfully lame and cliched movies. It's a culture, people.

That bane of education : lousy professors.

Professors.
If you could hear me right now you’d be very impressed with the amount of venom I can inject effortlessly into that single utterance. I’ve had maybe two good professors since I started college. It’s not like they don’t have M.E degrees and PhDs, because they do. It’s amazing how they still know so little. You would think a person who’s doing his PhD would at least not read out from the prescribed text book and make it sound like last month’s obituaries.

One of my professors is supposed to be brilliant. She overloads us in the lab, refers a gazillion books and gives us notes. What more would anyone want right?
If only I could manage to stay awake in her class. I’m not saying normalization and functional dependencies are a lot of fun, but they definitely can’t be as bad as she gives me the impression that they are.

Are my parents paying my college fees so I can enjoy all the benefits of a boredom-induced coma in class??!

Okay, that didn’t pack as much of a punch as it did when a friend of mine in med school exclaimed, ‘I can’t believe my dad’s paying lakhs so I can go examine shit in college!’
Anyway, metaphorically this pretty much stinks as well so it’s not entirely inappropriate to draw parallels between the physical and the spiritual in this case.
I end this entry on another vitriolic note: Professors!

Lousy morning? You probably started a war.That should make your day.

There are times when the world grinds to a sudden halt and the phrase ‘heart in your throat’ doesn’t sound anatomically impossible.
It could be anything. Like remembering that you dumped your lab coat with the laundry when you’re frantically searching for it or that you’ve just burnt an iron box-shaped hole in your dupatta, five minutes before you have to catch the bus. Even worse is the hunt for the key/wallet/ID card. You rush down to your vehicle because if you don’t leave the house in two seconds, you are, to all intents and purposes, quite dead. You reach for the ignition and go, ‘Oh shit….’
(Well, I go ‘oh shit’. Please feel free to substitute it with whatever comes to your mind at moments of extreme stress.)

Combine a temper which is already worn thin and an inability to find anything at the crucial moment and you’ve got the perfect lousy morning. And make no doubt, whether a sunny disposition is contagious or not, a lousy one definitely is.

So there you are. One small incident lasting maybe a few minutes, according to me, possibly started more wars, accidents and badly written novels than the world imagines.

You know you’re friends with someone when....

•6 am doesn’t seem like a weird time to be knocking on that someone’s door.

•The person dragging his/her sleepy butt out of bed to open the door does not ask you what the heck you’re doing knocking on their door at 6 in the morning.

•You don’t even feel slightly guilty about cleaning out that person’s fridge.

•The reply to, “Let’s do something stupid!” is a resigned sigh.

•Your parents don’t even bother to ask you who’s on the phone when you go, “Hey!!”

•You would rather get hopelessly lost with that one person than know exactly where you are in a crowd.

•You think that that person is cool, inside and out.

•You see eye-to-eye on general ideologies but can’t agree to save your life on the smaller details.

•You know exactly how flawed the other person is and you don’t give a damn.

•You can argue about anything for hours and grin at each other at the end of it all.

•You have a common enemy.

•You’re honestly interested in what kind of day the other person had.

•You always laugh a lot when you’re together. Even when you don’t feel like it.

•You accept each other as you are. In fact, you wouldn’t change that lousy sense of humour your friend has for the world.
Okay...maybe not the whole world.

•That person takes the time to listen to your ideas and does NOT laugh at them.

Now the most important point.
Are you still reading?? Friends...
Always read their friend's blogs!

Weekends to live for

After an extreme case of writer’s block, I’m back with so much to write that I doubt I can make everything fit in one entry. First off, Charms’ birthday went great. Everyone who was crazy enough to get up at an insanely early hour totally loved it. We didn’t manage to catch a perfect sunrise but I loved the one that did put in an appearance. After all the craziness at the beach, we crashed at Remy’s place and cut the cake Princess baked. There are two things P can do amazingly well: scream and bake cakes. It’s a good combination. Then we had breakfast at the Murugan idly shop which is expensive but pretty good. It was a good way to spend a birthday.


(Fast forward to the next weekend. I mean, who cares what happens in between??!)

I took an off on Friday and spent my Independence Day in Bangalore. I don’t know about the nation but any day when I don’t feel the need to whine about my college is what independence is all about for me. And Bangalore was great. I haven’t had this much fun since…the last weekend. Only that lasted for like 3 hours while this lasted for three glorious days.
We visited the Lalbagh garden. There was a flower show going on. I’m more of a trees person myself so I wasn’t really too impressed with that but the trees there…wow. Pretty impressive. The technological museum rocked as well. My dad took around a thousand photos. I kid you not. So I’ll put up some of those in this entry.

Day two was almost entirely spent shopping. I tell you, I made a killing. I’m not one to freak out shopping but I totally lost it this time. What can I say? The temptation was too great for a mere mortal. Talking about my excesses, I ate way too much. In the three days I spent there, I ate out three times. Nagarjuna was okay but I loved Balal. Empire had a lot of mid-eastern food which I’m not very partial to. At home, everyone basically stuffed me as much they possibly could. I can’t remember the last time I ate so much. Thank God my new jeans still fit.

We also saw the Parliament house, the High court, the musical fountain show and we even went up to the 23rd floor of the utility building to get an aerial view of Bangalore. Apart from the amazing weather, I also liked the fact that people just dress better there. And they have this thing with sneakers. A lot of guys wear sneakers. My most recent muse is a converse. The chances of moi getting anything in the next six months to one year however are extremely minute so it’ll have to remain a muse for a while longer.

We also attended (I use the term loosely) some pre-reception thing of one of my dad’s colleague's nieces. Nothing great about that. Except that she’s marrying a French guy.
Cool.
However, the minute they asked me to go and sit down to what looked like a full out mehendi session for all the girls (and even the guys. French guys. Someone should have told them that that stuff is for girls.) I knew I had to get out of there. French or not, no one’s going to make me sit around with a bunch of girls (and guys) waiting for stuff on their hands to dry.

Of course, what really made it great was the company. Aunty G is a retired English teacher who stumbles on old students everywhere from ticket reservation counters to Levi show rooms. Uncle loves to make miniature boat models. And they have a cute daschund called Terry. Everyone else was a lot of fun as well. I was never more in charity with all my relatives. They’re cool people really, when they’re not forcing me to attend weddings and wear salwars.

I warned you it was going to be a long entry. Now that it’s over, I have a perfectly mundane week to look forward to. It’s raining out though. That makes a big difference.

Things that ought to change...

Civic sense, or rather the lack of it, is one of the major barriers to a developed India. Educated people spitting on the roads, well-dressed men getting out of fancy cars to urinate on the roadsides and women and children throwing garbage on the streets are sadly, a common sight.
Frankly, this should scare us more than the under privileged ‘slum people’ who bear the brunt of the ire when their life of squalor crosses our line of vision.
One of my biggest regrets about this city is the Cooum, a.k.a the Buckingham canal. Every time I cross it I feel that it has the potential to be one of the most beautiful things in the city and look at what it is today. It’s a big drain for every kind of effluent you can find making it the dirtiest water body in the city.
I don’t know how many times I’ve looked at it and thought to myself, ‘Something must be done.’
It’s easy to say that, isn’t it?
I remember seeing pictures of Madras in the early 1900’s in a Saravana Bhavan restaurant. The Buckingham canal around the 1920’s was actually used as a major means of transportation. Nearly a century later, it stinks. Literally.
Things have this way of getting very complicated when you sit down and wonder what you can do, like I’m doing now and I’m drawing a blank. If history repeats itself, where are we going to be in another century?

The world's gone nuts!

Okay, this is an update on the real world. It’s gone completely nuts. Not that it was ever sane…
Anyway, on one side, Hillary Clinton urges India to cut down on emissions while it’s her country which is the consumer freak of the world. And Mrs. Clinton, stick to the off-white suits. That shade of red and blue is a little trying on the eyes. In the meanwhile, the leaders of gloriously over-populated India should realize that the lady does have a point even if we have low per capita emission. Our per capita is nothing to scoff at seeing as how we’re vying for the position of the most densely populated country in the world.

Speaking of over population, one of our brilliant heads at the center recently talked of a sure-fire way to reduce India’s birth rate: television. That’s right. The good old idiot box, if provided in rural India, will apparently distract all the poor in the country, who procreate for lack of better entertainment. The rural citizens who heard this merely laughed and asked the minister in question if televisions nowadays don’t require electricity because none of their villages, as of yet, has seen so much as an electricity pole. Touché.

Television’s not all that it’s cracked up to be, really. It is, of course, an absolute necessity when there’s a good movie on or when I’m bored out of my mind but mostly, when I turn on the TV it invariably has something dumb going on like Paris Hilton’s pathetically laughable excuse for a reality show or news updates on how Michael Jackson’s brain is still sitting in some morgue. Yeah, I can see how this is going to distract everyone from procreating.

I’m sure there are far more important things going on like politics and wars and global warming, but that’s been going on since forever. It’s much more entertaining to watch Beyonce telling people to put a ring on it in Single Ladies and wish that you hadn’t just finished an entire packet of potato chips.

I’ve witnessed three accidents in the past month on the Maduravoyal road. I tell you, it does not make your day to see someone with their head stuck under the wheels of a lorry or school vans being smashed into. From feeling slightly nauseous and shocked, I’ve progressed to the state of just being thankful that that wasn’t me with my head smashed in. The frailty of human life which can be snuffed out in a moment fails to impress after the first few times

In a nutshell, the world’s in bad shape and most of us are too busy watching Beyonce to notice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go and watch ‘Kate and Leopold’.

The catcher in the rye

I’ve been reading ‘The catcher in the rye’ again. It’s a great book but after the last page all I wanted to know was, what happens to Holden Caulfield?
Does he do better in his next school? Does he grow up and become a cynical author? Does he spend the rest of his life hanging out in pubs hating all the phonies in the world? Or did he decide that, what he’d do was, he’d pretend that he was a deaf-mute?

I can really relate with the character in an abstract sort of way. In the book he says, ‘I’m quite illiterate but I read a lot.’ I like that because I’m quite illiterate too. Kindred spirits, as you can see. I felt cheated though, when I got to the last page. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown up on commercial fantasy and fiction where everything is A-OK when you get to the last page. Hero’s alive, villain’s dead, everyone finds true love and lives happily ever after, blah, blah, blah.

None of the books which are closest to real life, as far as I’ve seen, gives you a happy ending. In most of them, things aren’t any better in the last page than in the first. The story doesn’t change but the characters do and you don’t even see any appreciable change. Just the feeling that something’s different but you can’t quite put your finger on what that something is.

Some would say that that’s the beauty of it. There is no happily ever after, only a vaguely confusing reality which can be captured by few women (and men) on paper. A really good author (according to J.D. Salinger) is someone you wish was your friend, someone you want to call up and talk to over the phone.

I wouldn’t mind talking to J.D. Salinger. Really, if it was a choice between Salinger, Lee and Rowling, I’d definitely pick Salinger.
There are some books you enjoy because you escape your own mundane life for a few glorious hours and then there are others that make you go, ‘Wow’ and you can’t sleep for the better part of the night because you can’t stop thinking about it.

So you know what? I don’t want to know what happens to Holden Caulfield. It’s better that way.

In Memoriam

On a grave note, the economics teacher Mrs. Paul who taught our batch in school passed away yesterday. She had been fighting cancer for a long time and finally succumbed to it. Even though she’s never taught me I still feel really sad because she was a good woman and her students loved her. She won’t be forgotten.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Some people you want to remember forever even when they don’t physically exist anymore and others you can’t wait to forget. It just goes to show you that the way you behave in this life does go beyond the grave.

Sunday evenings

After all those interminable mondays and tuesdays and so on till friday, you're left with the impression that friday evening will never arrive. You feel like a persecuted saint waiting for the second coming. When finally (hallelujah!) it's there and you're a bit heady with the euphoria.

No one is more disgustingly cheerful than I am on a friday evening or a saturday morning. Two whole days. The possibilities seem endless. I plan to wisely space out all the work I have, go out with my friends, read a couple of books and still have time left over for lazing around in front of the idiot box and bugging my mom.

To be fair, I do accomplish about 90 percent of the above-mentioned plans but somehow the ones pertaining to work of any kind is invariably postponed till sunday evening. I believe it's psychology of the kind 'Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow'.

It's all going good until it hits you on sunday evening that you're facing another week full of mondays and tuesdays and the rest of it and you have a pile of unfinished work to boot. It's a poignantly resigned and remorseful outlook that grips me on these days.

So I pause, put my books away and my legs up. After that there's nothing to do but curl up with a good novel to cheer myself up.

Letting off steam

I’ve finally got some time to even think about writing another entry.
Oh no, I haven’t been incredibly busy. I leave that to busy people. It’s just that I can only work so much in one day, being naturally less inclined to do things I’m not very interested in, and going to college and coming back basically takes it all out of me.
My inspiration has been sapped. Drained. All creativity is being siphoned away from my mind in small doses for seven hours a day. It’s really difficult to think about blog entries when someone’s going on about finite automata and instruction sets right before your face.

Right. I feel much better now, thank you.

In spite of being sapped of all thought processes, I have been doing some soul searching. It’s not like I want to do it but there’s nothing else to do on an hour long journey every morning if you can’t sleep at the drop of a hat like some people.
The results are quite disturbing. No surprises there.

What I’m getting at in a rather nebulous way here is that sometimes things are all disconnected, like the join-the-dots thing kids do. My life is just one big page full of dots right now. Seriously, nothing connects. Like entities with no relationship. Like functions that haven’t been called. Like the unfinished bridges marring the city. I could go on but you’ve been tried enough already.

I just wish that I could have a few ‘Aha!’ moments. I’m not looking for anything huge like the purpose of life, only a few minor details. Is that too much to ask for? I think not.

Doodles

The weekend’s almost here and there’s still half an hour to go for The Big Bang Theory so here I am, bent over the keyboard furiously typing away.
All the optimism which bubbled over on Sunday night was vapourised into nothingness on Monday. One look at my class-in charge and the way she taught Theory of Computation effectively convinced me that the semester was going to be a huge trial. Add to that recurrent heat-induced headaches and it’s no surprise that I was a major grouch.

But no more! Yes, I had a great day today. All my professors apart from TOC are pretty okay, especially math thank God.

By the way, there are a lot of guys from training centers in the city coming around to our college to enlighten us about java and networking and stuff. The past two days have all been about how being a SCJP (Sun certified java programmer) or a CCNA (Cisco certified networking associate) would immediately guarantee us a high paying job.
It was hilarious and also brought home the ill-concealed truth when one of the guys in my batch yelled, “Kedaikalana?” from the back.

My mom is watching ‘Vijay Awards’ in the background right now. She’s having fun commenting on everyone from Parthiban to Jothika. I only saw the part where the woman hosting the show gushed over Nayantara and Nayantara went ‘So sweet!’
That was funny. Because I can guarantee that girls who gush so enthusiastically and say ‘so sweet’ in precisely that tone are really saying ‘God, I hate this female.’

Okay, okay, I’ve got to go. BBT is about to start. I will keep you updated on my fascinatingly boring life, as always.
On a Parthian shot, in Bahz Luhrman’s famous words, wear sunscreen.

Tempus Fugit - Part 1

I have just had a week to die for. As my too short holiday draws to an end, I at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I have enjoyed my holidays. Am I looking forward to the new academic year with optimism and joy that passeth all understanding?
HA. Not even if you paid me.

Oh, by the way, I am now a senior. It definitely doesn’t feel like I’m one. When I sounded a few people out on this very gratifying idea all I got were very sharp raps on the head for ‘presuming’ to be a senior. But I know why they’re all so cranky about it.
Damn ego problem. Every one of them. Can’t stand to see someone grow a year older and boss someone else around.

Here’s a quick recap on the past week:
(By the way, this is going to be one long post. I think I’ll split it into two. Or three.)

Day 1:
Woke up early, went to a Saravana Bhavan diner for breakfast, watched Star Trek in Sathyam (Yes!), headed out to City Centre for a huge lunch, dropped by the beach which was almost empty and scorching hot (but hey, why did God give us hats and sunglasses right?), sang karaoke in the car with no regard to the mental health of the driver, crashed in Remy’s place where we rediscovered the joy of messing up someone else’s room. Then my parents dragged me to my second cousin’s daughter’s engagement. (No, don’t try to figure it out. You’ll only go crazy.)
End of day one.



Day 2:
Went walking in the morning with three of my friends and scandalized the park by laughing too loudly. Seriously, laughing out loud is not frowned upon only if you’re one of those people who laugh for health purposes or yoga or something. Have you ever witnessed this? It is very scary.
And ridiculously funny after the initial shock has worn off.

I say, why make a fool of yourself over something which is not even funny when you can do it for something which actually is?

Then I landed up in Kay’s place where we went through all our old scrapbooks and almost died laughing.
It contained, among other things, descriptions of fat history teachers, misguided attempts at poetry and threats of incarceration in the school bathroom.
Now what can be funnier than reading your old scrapbooks?
Taking videos of people reading your old scrapbooks.
End of day two.



Day 3:
Operation Clean-Up. I pulled out all the contents of my cupboards and shelves, threw out junk, rearranged furniture and generally made a bigger mess before everything went back to its rightful place. By the end of the day, I was exhausted but proud.
Imagine.
I just cleaned an entire room.
Moi.
Amazing.


Day 4:
Went to the park and played Shuttle for a change. I’d like to think I did not make a complete fool of myself but when you see forty and fifty year old uncles playing better than you, it doesn’t do your self esteem any favours.
Later I got my driving license! After going through one heck of a long and incredibly stupid process.

After that, I went shopping with my mother and got a bunch of new stuff because mom was feeling unusually generous.
Loaded with my recent purchases, we headed down to my sister’s place. The next day heralded my niece’s initiation into the mysterious world of kindergarten so there was a full out photo session featuring her in her uniform posing with her bag and water bottle and what-not. Finally, I got back home totally exhausted after all that infectious kiddie excitement.
End of day four.

Day 5 : continued in next post...

Tempus Fugit - Part 2

Day 5:
Started the day trying to wake Charms up to go walking but was sadly unsuccessful. So I had to settle for a quick sunrise on the terrace whilst listening to Sara Bareilles belting out ‘Love song’ and ‘Bottle it up’. I spent the rest of the day lazing around and I visited the library in the evening. I decided to get P.G. Wodehouse on a whim and spent the rest of the evening chuckling to myself as Bertram Wooster and his butler Jeeves found themselves in unlikely but very funny situations.
End of day five.



Day 6:
It was the old shuttle cock fiasco again. But we played considerably better than the last disastrous attempt and did not draw as many amused glances as before. By the time we decided to leave I’m sure we were on the verge of being unceremoniously kicked out by the old and respectable citizens frequenting the park.

At home, after a couple of hours of doing nothing, my thoughts alighted on the magnificent keyboard my father had got me years ago which was in comfortable retirement in one corner of my room.

I printed out the sheet music for ‘Hey there Delilah’, hunted through my old books for ‘Smallwood’s Piano Tutor’, cleaned up the keyboard and settled down to dazzle myself with my latent musical prowess. Only after banging away half the song did I realize that the treble clef was wrongly printed one note higher.
I decided that I had played enough for one day and closed the whole thing up again.
Geniuses can’t over exert themselves you know.
I then spent most of the remaining time talking with my friends over the phone.
End of day six.



Day 7:
Shuttle cock. By this time, I shouldn’t have to tell you, we were pros. So there was just this slight bit of a swagger as we abused that poor cock.
We were regulars by then. Everywhere we turned we saw familiar faces. There seemed to be a resigned acceptance to our presence in the park. Maybe they realized they can’t really kick us off public property.

The evening was…different. We attended a meeting based on the word of one of our younger brothers who guaranteed an evening of fun. It was okay but I will not deny that I wished several times during the proceedings to be elsewhere.
But all was not lost. We decided to recuperate in Creamy Inn where I believe the topics of conversation revolved around Africa, gorillas and Phantoms (the car, not the ghost).

Again, the establishment did not look kindly upon our undignified mirth.

We (my friends and I) have often pondered the more unfathomable mysteries of our characters, the predominant feature of which being a marked absence of anything approaching dignity when more than one of us has gathered to wreak general havoc on the unsuspecting populace.
Is this natural? (We ask ourselves.) Now that we’re considered adults shouldn’t we at least try for a little dignity? Then we decided…
Nah.
End of day seven.


Day 8:
Having watched ’27 dresses’ into the early hours of the morning, I woke up at a suitably advanced hour. Then I was off to Rushi’s place for her mom’s famous cheese parathas and paneer pakodas for lunch. Then Charms, Kay and I decided to bug Remy again. It’s amazing how much fun you can have watching a movie with your friends at home even if you’ve watched it before. After thoroughly dissecting Wolverine on several levels and getting high on nothing in particular, it was time to go home.

At this point I’d like to thank Charms for trusting me with her life.
It humbles me that you sat behind me on that Activa as I endangered your life in heavy traffic without screaming even once Charms.
You are an amazing girl.
End of day eight.


And it’s a wrap people.
Tomorrow’s a new day. I’m going back to college. You never know, it might not be so bad.

Beam us up, Scotty

It’s the end of a dark era…er, semester. It seems like an age has passed by already. The fourth semester takes the award for being the most interminably annoying semester so far. Whether it was the PQT professor or the visual programming lab…there was always something to feel crappy about everyday. I’ve never consigned an entire semester to the devil before but I do so now with great pleasure. Goodbye and good riddance.

There are so many things I want to write about that it’s impossible to put it in one entry. First things first. Star trek is hands down the best movie I have seen in a long time. Zachary Quinto is a worthy successor of Leonard Nimoy as Spock and Chris Pine was amazing as Captain Kirk. The visual effects were stunning and the whole movie is worth it just to say the famous lines, ‘Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the USS Enterprise…’at the end in unison with the movie.

Also the Vulcan greeting is quickly gaining vogue among my friends as the hottest way to annoy each other. Only we substitute ‘Live long and prosper’ with ‘Die baby, die!’

Of course, there were the usual moments of hilarity like when I, the klutz that I am, spilt coke on my seat and had to mop it up with tissues and sit on one side of it for the rest of the time when Kirk was hanging off the edge of precipices. He seemed to do that a lot in this movie whether it was when he trashed his mother’s car, battled a Romulan on a signal jamming station above Vulcan or on the Romulan mining vessel from the future.

This one is a real fall-off-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of movie if you’re familiar with the television series. I grew up watching Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Kathryn Janeway steer their respective spaceships through alien assaults, time reversals and black hole threats in unknown quadrants of the universe while the crew attempted to have something approaching a social life so I felt like a kid on Christmas morning confronted with Santa himself.

If you’re even remotely interested in sci-fi I guarantee you will love this movie. If you’re not, it’s about time you boldly went where you haven’t gone before and head to the nearest theatre, ASAP.

The kids in my life!

I was just thinking about the youngest members of my family and they totally deserve an entry for being so cool and everything. So here’s the tyke update:

My niece Divya, is all ready to go to school armed with her Nike (or is it Adidas?) schoolbag, brand new uniform, foot fun shoes and charming personality. She’s going to knock ‘em dead. She can’t wait to leave home and she’s three. Kids these days are way too smart.

Her little brother Ajay, in the meanwhile, continues his ground breaking research on ‘What I can’t eat but tastes good anyway’ and ‘how fast can I crawl away from my mom before she catches up?’ These experiments are neither approved nor appreciated by the higher authorities.

My other nephew (the last one, I swear...for now) Josh, is learning to say very interesting words. His dad’s already taught him ‘mamiar’. A little premature but I’m sure it will end up in the annals of family history as being extremely hilarious and will come back to haunt him when he’s old enough to be embarrassed about it. Sometimes your own family’s out to get you and you don’t even know it. Watch out, Josh.

Ah, to be young and ignorant of what’s waiting for you in the big, bad, mad world...
Has to suck actually. No one tells you anything worth knowing.
If I knew then what I know now, I would have stayed three.

Will I ever finish 'Rebecca'...?

There are funny characters in life. Whether you’re at school or college or work there’s always at least one person whom you’d rather avoid. You see these well intentioned, strangely unpopular people and you ask yourself, does she ever stop talking?
Is being that loud natural for him?
Will she ever learn not to call everyone ‘sweety’?
Will he stop trying to pick his nose in public?

And the worst part is you can never tell them these things because if you do, you’re mean. Like those snobby cheerleaders in American teen flicks.

I have something I must do before I graduate. The college library has this one copy of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ which I have been attempting to finish for the past two years whenever I get a chance to sit down in the library (which is very rare.) So I get this great opportunity to finish it after one of my practical exams when the buses were late.

Unfortunately, the girl sitting next to me had to describe all her cousins, her vacations, why she can’t score centum in her math finals (!) while completely ignoring the ‘Silence please’ signs and my utter lack of enthusiasm in the topics she found so witty and fascinating. I pointedly kept returning to my book, but taking a hint seemed to be a harder concept for her to grasp than Fourier Transforms. I left the library after half an hour when I found I hadn’t finished reading a single page.

Popularity is too hyped. It's not all that great. So kudos to everyone who manages to be cool without jumping on the bandwagon.
If people deliberately start avoiding you though (which is totally rude, I agree, but can you blame them?) you might want to think about why and try to avoid it. You'll make a lot more friends that way.

Hitch or...Hitchcock?

Weddings. Why are they such an ordeal? I have nothing against the sentiment behind it but I am bothered about why it has to be such a public spectacle. I doubt people actually enjoy getting married anymore. And what's the point if you don't enjoy it? I'm only 19 and therefore, my ideas are going to be extremely biased. But hey, if the shoe fits...you want to have a great wedding?

Elope.
Take your parents and siblings along, by all means.
Of course, you can’t lose best friends even if you try to.
And your dog. You can’t leave your dog behind.
Oh, and don’t forget the groom.

Guys, sell the idea to your girl if you don’t want a thousand people gaping at you when you’re getting hitched. Hey, I know you don’t care either way but in this case, it’ll probably be easier to convince everyone that wearing jeans to your wedding isn’t sacrilege.

I don’t know about you but I think that the concept of an ‘Indian Wedding’ is truly the best horror story in the world. Other weddings are slightly less scary only because…well, I’ve never gone to one.
Be romantic, all of you crazy people in love. Run.

If you actually want a big, insanely pointless wedding with all the trappings and hype, you shouldn't have read this.