...as seen by...

Liquor consumption in Kerala on X-Mas day!!!

2009-12-26T23:30:00.005+05:30

A friend of mine, had mentioned in his facebook update that the state of Kerala sold 28 crores worth of liquor on Xmas day. So here I was, sitting idle, waiting for another friend to go to the movie Avatar in iMax 3D. Which meant I had a little time to kill, so I did a little math, which goes somewhat like this -

Starting Official figure: 280m
So including all the bars and toddy shops etc, the unofficial figure should hover somewhere around 130% of that: approx - 360m(I feel 30% is still a very small figure, thinking of all the toddy shop-scenes in Mallu movies. The soul of Kerala lives in those toddy shops, literally, If you know what I mean..)

Population of Kerala - Around 32m

Male population(Hmm.. we still frown upon females who drink!) approx - 15m (thanks to the superior sex ratio)

Which got me thinking. Look at the development indices, and we are somewhere up there among the most developed nations. But mention a female who enjoys a drink or two to a mallu guy, and a series of lewd jokes would follow, most of which would make even a tough woman like, say, Sharon Stone in Basic Instincts, to run for cover in her mother's womb!

But I digress. Back to statistics.

Considering an ever dwindling birth rate, lets assume 75% of that is adult population - 11.25m
Of which, maybe 5%(Still very ambitious) are the rare and endangered species in Kerala called the teetotalers, so we're left with approx 11m

And maybe 5% of the most influential members in this group is not in Kerala(including yours truly), so remaining - 10.5m. (If you start converting all those Riyals and Dinars and Dollars into Rupees, you'll start wondering how a recession could ever have happened!)

Considering statistical errors and other situational factors (like the wifey getting unreasonably fussy(that could be dealt later) or unreasonably romantic(that could not) on the XMas eve...), am rounding it off to 10m(also for ease of calculation).

Which means that on an average, every single Malayalee with hair on his chest (and otherwise), spent abt 36 Rs on alcohol. If you consider the price of XXX Rum in Kerala(Assuming that's still the most popular brand) - Abt 255 Rs for 750ml,thats roughly about 2 large shots of rum per Mallu gut!

Did anyone check the happiness indices in Kerala recently? For me, surely thats one happy lot! Definitely after those 2 'large's went in!

First fall in my life

2009-10-20T18:57:00.007+05:30

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower" - Albert Camus

Everyone had warned me about it. I had seen pictures of it. I had read about it. So I thought I was prepared, with my camera. I had framed my shots mentally, even found captions for it. I monitored foliage news constantly, and planned trips around the fall-peak. But finally, when it came, I was so overwhelmed, like a kid who forgot the first lines to utter on the stage. All my carefully charted out plans suddenly seemed like a chaotic mix of things to do which was not important at all. Maybe for the first time, I felt as if my camera is totally useless in my hands. The pictures I took screamed of my ineptitude. The plans, though executed, seemed hardly appropriate, or meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I was simply blown away by the beauty of fall.

Finally, I decided to relieve some stress from myself. I told myself, it's okay if you cant capture it all, it's OK to feel frustrated to see a long line of trees, glowing in the evening sun in bright yellow orange and red, while you are unable to stop by and take a picture. Maybe its all part of the feeling that is 'fall': that beauty is so ephemeral, that we're never capable enough to scour down all the beauty that we see around us. Just dont forget to cast a passing glance at something beautiful, and that flashing image will create such an elaborate and vivid imagery in your memory, and that's often more than enough!

Read this if you want (me) to make money for free!!!

2009-09-02T22:36:00.002+05:30

I did a remarkable thing today.

I 'monetized' my blog. Like many of you, I didn't know what the hell that means. But fortunately, our brains and eyes are hardwired to cling on to anything that has the letters M-O-N-E in it. Even if the 'Y' is absent. Wow, I just made a super-cool statement! Good start!

Bottomline, I signed up for google's adsense. So If I am smart enough to make a few people come read my blog, and they are prudent enough to click on any of those links, and a few and then a lot many of such clicks happen, google will send money to me! By the time I finished writing that, it has already started to sound like a bummer! What do I write, that millions of others cant write about? I have had many starts with this blog in the past, and many false starts too. By far, the most successful streak has been the time when I started it, when we had a bunch of friends who had time at their disposal, and I used to be a very active member in blogger cicrles. Means, I used to read and comment on other blogs, and they used to return the favor, even maybe in an obligatory sense. I used to track the traffic in my page, check for comments every hour etc etc.

But now, who has got time? From my own experience, my attention span has dwindled to at least 10-20% of what it has been in the last 4-5 years. I cannot even make myself sit and read a full article on Time.com now. Gosh, now I see myself in a supernatural status when I recollect that I studied and passed ME 305 - Metallurgy and Material Sciences, about seven years ago! In any given 5 minute break during work, I browse the entire spectrum of NYTimes, Time, Manorama, TimesOfIndia, Deals2Buy, Twitter, Orkut, Facebook, and Berlytharangal.com, not necessarily in that order. Given that scenario, who's got time to read a blog which is 2 pages long, and talks about one person's constrcited view of the world? When we have actors, sportsmen, scientists, and even politicians blogging and twittering like mad out there! The question is, would you rather follow Priyanka Chopra or me?

All that said, I am going to try and see. I dont care much about the money. Not like I dont care about money at all, but am pretty sure its not big money that I need to really care about. This is an experiment with my own ability. To see If I can make people read my blog. From a probable starting readership of one (which is my wife, that too if I promise her something really nice) to maybe a few hundreds in a few months. And, in the process, If I can make money out of this. Believe me, thats just secondary. And I am pretty sure, wont happen any sooner to make me lose sleep over, thinking what to do with it!

Many many happy returns of the day? Maybe not!

2009-02-06T07:24:00.010+05:30

Thus, Bejoy Babu enters into the thirtieth year of his great struggle for existence against the elements of this planet last week. Like his very first year, he did it again in a hospital room. Talk about the ironies of life. Back then, he had a young and energetic father, who had sat hours on end admiring the red little thingy in a white wrapper (am hoping he did, most newly promoted fathers do, don't they? At least Ross Gellar of Friends did when Ben was born!). And now, 29 years later, his father was lying down weak, with tubes attached to his body, while he sat hours on end looking at him. Not admiring, but worried when his father will become alright, he will be able to go back, whether his leaves would affect his job, how the great plans of a first birthday together with his wife was spoilt etc etc. Oh 'cmon, there's no use being pretentious about it. Nobody enjoys this particular disposition. He didn't do it either, and he managed to kill time with 2 activities.

1. Looking at the nurses.

They were all kinds. Young ones, old ones, the haughty kinds and the hottie kinds, ones more slender than the needles they beheld, and the ones so plump, it makes one wonder whether they dont get any coscience attack when they say. "Uncle, your BP is shooting up, you gotta reduce your weight!"

So he looked at all of them, and didn't have any reservations about it. As many of you would agree, this is one thing the male species enjoy about being in a hospital. Aren't there numerous great tales of men who turned into pussydolls in the presence of these loving caring always-smiling clad-in-white angelic creatures, hopelessly fell headlong in love with them and never wanted to leave the hospital? - One affliction turned into another.

But his case was a little different.

Wasn't he morally obliged not to look? Yeah that 12 letter word of ridicule you just uttered was audible enough. But wait, there's more to the story. He was morally obliged not to look, starting the day he decided that he had found the match of his life, but that never really made him stop looking. It wouldnt be fair to call him fickle minded, for he had made an attempt to avert his gaze during the initial days of his romance. The profound question that had hunted him down was "What the hell am I looking for now, am I not supposed to be loyal to my girl?" But then later, he understood one more truth about life. A man cannot help looking. But something had changed about the way he looked now. While he was single, the look was at its purest, most natual form, which even contained ingredients of a small chance of attainability. ("Yeah you're Angelina Jolie, I know, but what the heck, look at me, am single!"). Now, that he was married and had pledged his loyalty to someone special, the look was different.

He particularly enjoyed to feel the air of tension, the restraint that was written all over their faces, while he looked at some of them. They would be undergoing a great deal of consternation internally, trying to concentrate on the syringe and the vein, while being aware of the fact that someone was staring at them. Two of the most conflicting aspects of their womanhood would be drawn for battle against each other, knowing that whoever wins ultimately, they themselves would fail. They would not even dare to steal an occasional cold stare back in defense, for it would be betrayal against all that they tried to represent. He enjoyed thinking about all these a great deal while looking at them, drawing a kind of sadistic pleasure. P had told him the same day - "Dey podey ketti kazhinjaalum vaay nokkam" (Its okay to stare at women even if you're married). But it was never the same!

The things mentioned above were purely his fantasies, and they could be factually very wrong, the women readers be advised. But nevertheless, why shun from saying the truth, being concerned of propriety!

2. Reading about the Mediterranean

"The pillars of Hercules" is undoubtedly the best book he has read in more than 6 months, and by the way its shaping up, likely to become one of the best ever. Don't be misled by the numbers, because the list of books he read in the past 6 months is not particularly deep, running into a whole of 2 books! The other being "The Last Mughal". While the former could be termed as un-put-downable, the latter was very, err... put-downable. And hence the 6 months. But it would be blasphemy to call the book bad, its a fine book indeed. Only that he found it hard to read.

Maybe he'll talk about the book himself sometime later in the blog. But, in a nutshell, thats how he marked the beginning of his 30th year here. Yeah, there were other things too. But I dont think anybody would be particularly interested as he was, on how a flock of cranes spent half an hour circling the same locality trying to figure out which tree to spend the night on.

But considering all the previous birthdays were uselessly spent cutting cakes and drinking wine, this was quite a feat, wouldn't you agree?

The nomads

2008-07-07T13:23:00.008+05:30

I have lost the knack of waking up to the alarm. I cant believe I used to wake up at 5:45 every day, and go for a jog. The pox had rattled everything. Now all I can do when I hear the alarm is: turn it off (even snooze aint an option!) or even better: not hear it at all, so that I can throw a tantrum when I wake up finally, some time when the sun has reached directly above the head. So last Saturday, I set the alarm at 5:40, as I was supposed to meet some friends at Madiwala at sharp 6:15 AM. And so, it was riding the bike at spine-numbing chill winds at 100 kmph, and jumping the traffic lights (its no harm when you are the only person on all the four sides of the junction, right? And besides, obeying rules is my principle, but its no use being a fool about it) Finally I met them at madiwala by 6:40. Turned out that they waited for a long 2 minutes or so. Afterall, we're all running on IST(Indian Stretchable Time)!!!

We proceeded to our destination, which was in front of the Yeshwantpur railway station. Despite the way it sounds, yeshwantpur is not in UP, its right in namma Bengaluru. Though the effort involved in reaching there can be considered somewhat equivalent! We reached there by sharp 7, and was glad to see some people already present at the meeting point. Together, we proceeded to the 'Rajasthani settlement' of nomads near Dasarahalli, which was our shooting location for this weekend. As it turned out, the Rajasthani settlement was not Rajasthani in its entirety. There were people from almost all parts of the country. The illusion of them being Rajasthani was created due to the presence of camels, in large numbers.

Some more people came in, and after all the customary hand-shakes, ogling at expensive equipment and introductions with the newly-met, we trickled down into the slums. A girl who I was meeting for the first time seemed a bit surprised that I was married. "You look too young to be married", she remarked. I would have pondered more into the meaning of the statement, its possible rammifications, its potentital etc etc (as I had done several times in the past and failed miserably) had it been a different situation, but, I just brushed it aside with a smile. One of the things you pick up, as you learn to live as a married man!

The dwellers were just about waking up and going about their morning chores. Their initial reaction was surprise, bordering on hostility, as they saw this large group advance towards them with big fat black ugly looking equipment in their hands. But later, we split into small groups and tried to befriend them, explaining to them that we're from a photography college, and we were doing this as part of our project etc etc. That little innocuous lie has worked well since a long time back. In fact, its not entirely a lie too..

But all were not as friendly either. One elderly woman was not at all amused when I tried to take her picture, and she even tried to pick up a stone! That as the first time in my adult life I was being threatened to be pelted! I fled the scene immediately! I don't completely understand their apprehension towards being photographed. Of course, my own reaction would not be very different either(not the stone-throwing part) if a total stranger tried to click my picture, but that would be upon concerns of compsomising my privacy. Whereas, for these people, its something else, as I have come to experience. They really loathe us for what we have, and they do not. They think we want to make more and more money by just photographing them, and publishing it somewhere. They feel extremely miserable in their situation, and that feeling is exacerbated when they see these people wearing neat and expensive clothes, talking in langauges they cant talk, and having money to squander on expensive toys! And they feel we're completely unable to empathize with them. They are human beings, and they hate being treated as objects. But as we speak to them, and show genuine concern for them, they turn friendly immediately.

In contrast, children were really enthused to see us and flocked around us. As some of us began showing the pictures in our LCDs, the children grew in numbers, all of them chanting, "Uncle, ek photo! Uncle mera/meri bhi ek" While were zeroing in on some interesting subjects, and was just about focusing, a group of children would come and stand right in fron of the camera, grinning. It was annoying and amusing at the same time!

I talked to a thin, friendly looking young man. He could not have been more than thirty. He was from MP. It was now close to a year since they left their homes. And about 3 months since they came to Bangalore. They generally look for work, sell stuff, offer camel rides etc. They stay in one place for about 3-4 months and then move on. Some people visit their homes in between, but mostly it will be another year or so before they see their homes again. He said to me, "Its nice to see all the things you are doing, but will it benefit us in any way? We are really poor, and if you can do something for us, we'd be really grateful." Just that I didn't know what that something could be! Is 'this' something? Or do I need to do more? Of course I can do more if I wanted to...

I met the school-teacher too. The 'school' was nothing more than a slightly bigger shanty, with a blackboard, and the children sat on the floor. Only that there were no children. It was funded by the government, he said, but the real issue was getting the children to come. He had to go to literally each and every tent and pull them along. Even the parents were least interested in educating the children. He seemed really excited when I told him I was working with computers. To him, it was a world far beyond his reach. Maybe he can help some of the chidren reach there, someday..

They offered us camel-rides around the place for Rs.50. I did not feel like doing that. Somehow, it felt humiliating. Reminded me of elephant safaris in national parks and stuff.

No, it was wrong. Very very wrong!

See the pics at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazystrokes/sets/72157603421425757/

waking up...

2008-07-03T15:58:00.009+05:30

I guess I have been quiet for a while.

I knew that nations won’t go to war if I stopped writing. Heck, I thought no one cared. But what happened last week challenged all such notions of mine. I was asked 3 times, in a span of 48 hours, why I had stopped posting. And considering the fact that everyone suddenly got concerned after a span of almost 2 years, I have reasons to believe that the blog had started turning in its grave. Yes, I had decided to burry it. Now I need to dig it up, and create some magic, like Dr. Frankenstein did. And one of the three people who asked the question, happened my own dear wife, so I couldn’t just push it away. Hmm, well, you see, quite a few things happened in my life during this period. (We’ll talk about that, hold on…) So seeing this sudden spur of interest in my long-lost habit of blogging, I went back to the blog, and read it. It made me smile, several times. And then, I was convinced, I should resume writing.

So let me write about what I did last Sunday.

One of the best things that have happened to me after coming to Bangalore is BWS. BWS or Bangalore Weekend Shoots is a bunch of loonies like me, who want to make a life out of photography, (“A life”, not “a living”, there’s a considerable difference between the two, as you would notice) who consider their cameras and lenses as the most important possessions of their lives. (Contentious topic, I know… my reasoning is that you can’t consider your life-partner as something you possess!) So these guys, they get together on weekends, and shoot pictures as groups. Streets, markets, festivals, parks.. pretty much anything under the sun. So this weekend, I and a couple of guys from BWS went to a place called Shettihalli. This place has the ruins of an old church. I was out of action for nearly 4 months, so I thought, OK, come let’s shoot some church ruins and crank me up again!!! As it went, it ended up being much more than just a church-shoot.

We started early in the morning, by around 4:30, and my dear ikon was put to duty once again. She behaved impeccably during the entire trip, as usual. :) We managed to do Bangalore-Darshan for about 3 times before getting on the highway. For the un-informed, Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if you are not dead sure of your route. Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if you were chatting your way to bliss with your co-passengers in the car while unknowingly passing that free left turn. Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if there is a huge bus on your left side waiting to turn right, while you want to turn left. And Bangalore-Darshan is what you do if you find cops on the other side of the signal. We finally found our way out of the city, and were soon on the highway. I had to put all my driving skills to test while passing the huge trucks that ruled the road at that time of the day. Once we took the turn at Nelamangala to enter the NH48 which leads to Mangalore, driving was was back being enjoyable.

Before reaching Shettihalli, we stopped at two places, once near Kunigal, and again near Hassan. Okay, that doesn't make any sense, I know, so let me rephrase. Once near an old brick factory, which apparently belonged to a Mallu (wow!) and again, near a field were a man was tilling with two oxen. I was struck by the fact that how friendly the people were. After living in Bangalore, I somehow had developed this misconception that Kannadigas are not a friendly bunch of people. But as it turned out, they are much much more friendly and hospitable than my own state folks. Just so happens that Bangalore is..well, you know...depressing topic, let's leave it!

We took the turn from the Mangalore highway approaching Hassan, and suddenly, enchanting sceneries began to appear on both sides of the road. We were denied many an opportunity to shoot because of the intermittent drizzle. We kept going, fighting the deep urge to stop and jump out of the car despite the threatening rains, mentally noting down the places where we wanted to stop on our way back. We reached the church finally by around ten o clock, and all my weariness of driving so far gave way suddenly.

I dont want to try to elaborate the beauty of the place in words and ruin everything, just look at the pictures! (link provided in the end)

Weather kept playing cat and mouse game with us, and every ten minutes or so saw us running towards the shade, tucking our equipment inside our shirts. Well, if you can really call roofless walls as 'shade'! After a while, the sun peeped out for a few minutes, giving us the opportunity to click under blue skies as well. We decided to call it quits by about 1 o clock and as we were walking back, we spotted a group of women involved in planting paddy saplings. And how could we not!!! It turned out that we spent more than an hour with them, and as we stood up to leave, a small group of women and children came with food for the working women. And they asked us to have food with them. Though I was expecting it seeing the nature of people so far, I wasn't expecting them to be as persistent as they were. We tried refusing initially, but finally gave in for 2 reasons, One, they were extremely friendly and hospitable, and the offer was not just formality, they really wanted us to have food with them. And two, we were extremely hungry and none of us had any idea were the nearest restaurant was! You dont think much further when you have 'extremely' in both of the reasons! The food turned out to be good, and we collected addresses from them and left, promising to send them pictures by mail! I am sure they will be waiting for that!

And the weird thing about the entire episode was, none of us spoke very good Kannada, and they didn’t speak anything other than Kannada. At the risk of sounding platitudinous, let me surmise - When human beings connect, language is hardly a barrier.

And here are all the pictures for you:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazystrokes/sets/72157605948634238/

when the rainclouds paused for a while...

2007-06-23T21:45:00.000+05:30

There are no rain pictures this week! Because it has been raining incessantly for the past 48 hours or so... So I cant go out and take a rain picture. I cant go out and take a rain picture when its not raining either. Catch 22!

Anyways, there's been this wonderful sight that has been raising my hormone levels whenever I go to drop my sister in college. Naah, its not girls am talking about, I have grown out of it(pretension, nevermind!) Its the lush green paddy fields on the way. So I took a calculated risk, and ventured out with my bike, when the rain seemed shying away for while today afternoon...

I took a deviation from the main road, and I wasn't disappointed at all. There was this narrow pot-holed road lined on either side with trees, and beyond them lay the vast expanse of green green paddy fields.

***click on the images to enlarge

Two women were cutting grass to feed cattle. They would have made a pretty picture. I contemplated walking upto them and asking for a picture. But then, they began eying me suspiciously. And I suddenly realized that something has upset the fine balance of this perfect calmness here, and it was nothing but me, in my bright red T shirt and bike, with the camera... duh! I dropped the idea and backed out.

Walking around clicking pictures of totally unsuspecting subjects sounds like a good idea. Only thats it is tough to put it into practice. I walked around, totally lost in the beauty of the place around me and having confronted with the problem of plenty. Timidness too, if you insist.

There is something with red clothes and cattle. Bullfights and matadors come to mind, but, here, it was a harmless buffalo, who seemed intimidated (or maybe just irritated) by all the sudden attention. I hung around until it began bellowing.

And yeah, my parked bike looked absolutely gorgeous amidst all the greenery. Won't you agree?

And before I sign off, here's another attempt at creating an HDR. This one from the office parking-lot again...

monsoon musings - 2

2007-06-17T14:44:00.000+05:30

Friday: This was taken in office, on Friday, just after I got into the car, relieved to have pushed one more week aside. This is my office building, all drenched in rain. Looks beautiful doesn't it? If you are being subjective about it...

Today: The rain is arresting today... quiet literally!I remember someone saying something about the rythmic beat of the rain... No its not the normal pace that you're talking about... the rythm of the rain, starting.... getting stronger, then waning out into a drizzle, then heavy showers accompanied by winds.. and then calm for a while... That rythm. I've been meaning to go out and try some shooting this weekend, but somehow, found myself confined to home again..

Another day perhaps... I have a few more weeks before I leave this place.. and the monsoon is just about getting into its groove..

monsoon musings...

2007-06-10T14:35:00.000+05:30

Am back! Yeah back again. I wanted to make a series on the monsoon. Yes. monsoon in Kerala. With pictures. Thats where the rub is...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It wasn't raining when I woke up. There was a queer silence around. I strolled outside... Yes it had rained yesterday for sure. But I cant hear the toads anywhere.. Where have they all gone? Perhaps they've already found their mates. And don't want to be disturbed on a rainy morning, from their sleeps, from the cozy comfort of having their loved one near.. Toads!!

So here's one to start off...

***** click on the pictures to enlarge*****

The 'chembila' as it is called. Used to double up as umbrellas for school-children caught unawares by a sudden drizzle without warning. That would make a great shot, if I could get one.

This is the June- 2nd week moss. Very adolescent. Very soon, this guy will start sprouting little shoots red and green in color with little bulb-like thingy's in the tip. We used to play duals with those. The red one was feared all over. The big dark green one, with a red tip used to be nasty. But there used to be days when a lean mean simpleton green would steal the day, and make a fortune for someone! That was another age!

Here's another version of the moss!

It was amazing, to see life taking every opportunity to flourish, every little inch of space being taken. The sole objective of life is, to exist. To come into being. It will find the ways and means in the most unlikeliest of circumstances..

The whole place had become green so soon, with shrubs and weeds and all sorts of little insects.. I took a step and suddenly a swarm of mosquitoes rose, attacking me all over. I spotted this -->

..and wondered...The thing(vazhakkoombu) must have fallen before the weed grew over it. And it couldn't have been here for more than a night, it looked somewhat fresh. So the weed grew within a few hours time. Things are happening pretty fast over here. Monsoon is like big-city-madness in these parts. Suddenly the vision of a buzzliing starwars city came to my mind, mosquitoes being the airborne pods zooming past and all sorts of activities happening in the ground below..The murky world of bacteria and other malicious creatures..whoa!

Am sure you all have seen this somewhere, at least in a dream. (To the male readers only) A beautiful girl, after taking bath... water droplets scattered on her face... and a couple of strands of wet hair sticking together, and fallen over her eyes. Suddenly takes you to somewhere doesn't it??

And then the sun began peeking out from behind the clouds, and the droplets shone like luminous crystals. Time for me to go. One more and I am off for today.

Coming back to the point

2007-01-22T15:52:00.000+05:30

Someone said yesterday, "You've thinned down a lot". I've been used to that for quite a while. While folks at home are on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown over the issue of my thinning down, friends and acquaintances put it in a more comforting clothing, by asking "How do you manage to stay in shape?"

"Oh its no big deal, I just go on a 5 km jog near my home everyday, and once in two days I play tennis. When I dont play tennis, I visit the gym. I don't know swimming otherwise I'd have loved that too, and yeah, I dont even look at fried or fatty food!"

Truth is, I do nothing. And I am a big fan of potato chips, dark chocolate and and late night movies, in reverse order. Which should be your one-buck-ticket to obesity. Yet people have managed to say I have thinned down every single time I see them without fail, no matter how frequently or rarely. Which is kinda unsettling, if not exactly worrying. Unsettling because, at this rate, I can see the day when....

"Honey I am home..."

"Where? dont pull that trick on me, where are you, behind the curtains?"

"Am here, right in front of you. :(( "

"Wait, let me get my infrared goggles..."

Thing is I don't want to invest in infrared goggles when I should be worrying about car EMIs, home loans and primary school education. Hmm unsettling, indeed.

Well thats not the point.

The point is, this is my re-entry to blogging, after a long gap of 4 months or so. So naturally you'd expect this post to be my pièce de résistance. Which should stop my erstwhile readers in their tracks wherever they were going and make them sit down and take notice, and bookmark the page. Yet I chose this as the subject, How boring!!!!

Well you're advised to wander away... While I will be back with some more self-indulgent stuff later.

Of killing the past...

2006-08-10T17:21:00.000+05:30

Life's all about moving on. Shedding the scales, and getting a new one. Well, easier said than done. Because, accept it, we all love our pasts. We would be happier if one day, we could just walk back to our house and find it as it was ten years ago, those days when you were spilling over with the excitement of having discovered something called"college". Your room would be adorned with posters of Gabriela Sabatini(remember her?) or a very boyish looking Sachin Tendulkar! You'll once again open and adore the new "action shoes" that you recently bought. You had just heard about Nike and Reebok then. You're discovering the first signs of real conflict with your parents, when you've just hung up after that call from a girl in class. "Oh come on! She's just a friend. You guys just dont understand". Its another matter that you secretly admire her and you, with a couple of close confidante friends are plotting big time to break it out to her one day, soon. You throw the slingbag to the bed and settle in to the tune of "Paint my love" or "Sleeping child". The world seemed just too big and too exciting.

These are just sidetrack thoughts that formed in my mind when I heard a piece of news today. One friend from the old company who chatted with me today said - "Ananthu is being demolished for technopark expansion". I can see a few hearts sinking, a few of those who're reading this....For others - Ananthu is the place we used to have lunch from.

No, that is a huge understatement.

Ananthu is about five or six kilometers from the campus. We have to ride through the byepass in bone-breaking heat to reach that place. There are about ten other restaurants inside the campus and several outside on the way. But, come 12:30PM, we chose to ignore them all, and head to Ananthu. That about sums up what Ananthu meant to us. Its a very small, unassuming shack-like place along the byepass. You're sure to miss it the first time you go looking for it, as we did. There is a name-board of sorts which says "Hotel Ananthu" in Malayalam. But its hardly noticeable. Maybe its that feeling that evokes memories of the food from your grandparents' place still lingering in your toungue, maybe its just the way the place looks and feels, you connect to the food immediately. Its not special. Its not pompous. And the menu is not worth advertising. There is absolutely no interior deco, save a few burnt agarbathis and the icy cool of the thatched roof. But thats just what you love about the place. A few of us had kep the secret closely for a few months like the closed community in the movie - "The beach" until others discovered about that place and began to come flocking in. Then the inevitable happened. It lost the very Ananthu-ness in all the mayhem. P had called it "globalisation" then. We had reluctantly started to look for other places to lunch. But the taste remained in our buds. It does still.

Memories are there, just to taunt us. And the sad thing is, they cant be run down by earth-movers like Ananthu is being done, right now!

A night's tale

2006-07-11T16:17:00.000+05:30

It was really uncharacteristic of me to wake up in the middle of the night. I mean, I dont usually get up in my sleep even to piss. But here I am, having woken up like a shot bang in the middle of deep sleep. Wondering what was it that caused the sudden rush of adrenalin, I try to close my eyes and retrace the fading realms of any dreams I might have seen... or more likely, nightmares. No, there isn't any. I am wet. Err, I mean, I am sweating. I sharpen my ears to listen to the drone of the ceiling fan, which has a habit of melting in your ears once it goes on for a while, pretty much like the tick of the clock. You cant hear it unless you really strain your ears and concentrate. No, I dont hear any. The power must have gone off. And that explains all the sweat.

I scrambled up, almost stumbled upon the bean bag, but found my way to the blacony door and opened it. Ah! what a relief. It was so cold and crisp outside. There was no moon but I could see the silhouettes of trees. And there was this peculiar smell, too. Nothing like I have ever experienced before. I stood there for a while before I went back to my bed, leaving the door open. That smell is really getting to my head...

I dont remember how long I slept, or whether that I slep at all, but I opened my eyes, sensing some movement about the balcony door. My blood must have turned into ice and my nerves must have stopped transmitting to the limbs, for I could not move a finger, even after the visual impulses set about a flurry of activity in my brain which under normal circumstances would have caused such a big rush of adrenalin that would make me either scream, start to run or at leat bloody get up from the bed. I saw the silhouette of a female at the door. Her hair was loose and flew about her head in the cool breeze. I could not see her face. It must have been a gown she was wearing, but I could trace all the lines of her body as the strange green light from behind weaving through the cloth of her dress. She put her foot forward and her face came into the light, and if ever there were any active nerves left in my body, were turned immobile by that sight.

I was frozen by the thought that all the fear in my body had given away to a strange sort of longing now. I realized I no longer had any control over my mind, or body. She moved towards me, her steely eyes piercing deep into my psyche, sat on the bed, and smiled. Well, how do you normally react when you find someone has got a set of canines that grows long when she opens her mouth? I don't know. And I haven;t had the chance to meet anyone who knows. I think I just sat there, unable to react, and let her come to me. The canines felt icy cold when they pierced my neck, but there was no pain whatsoever. I closed my eyes.

* * * * * *

It lay by the side of my bed when I woke up. Initially I was perplexed by the little black mass that lay on the floor. But as I tried to touch it, t spread its wings and there was no mistaking the wings of a bat. A bumble-bee. It looked cute until the point I decided to lift it up and look at its face. Man, there's nothing else in that face, but pure evil. But it was lovely, in a devilish sort of way, and quite immoble. I dont know what happened, it must have hit the fan or something. I took it, and placed it gently on the floor outside. It crawled to a corner and sat there, never looking up.

A perfect start to the week!

2006-07-03T05:38:00.000+05:30

It took about 38 Megatonnes of will and 5 snoozes on the alarm and 2 phone calls to make me lumber myself out of bed today, limp towards the bathroom, spend a rather unsuccessful 15 minutes there, and treat myself with a bone-chilling bath at 3 am in the morning. Am no masochist, mind you, all this because Sydney runs four and half hrs ahead of us. And my client happens to be there.

So I drive 27 kms to office, kill two toads and almost kill a cyclist on the road, sing aloud with Alanis Morissette to keep myself from dozing off while driving, reach a deserted and ghostly looking office (duh! I need more choices in life, I sure do) and wonder why there aint been a call on my mobile yet, despite I being 10 minutes late for the meeting...I will most surely sleep off in the meeting, coz I was late to bed yesterday, after having a rather harrowing experience in trying to reach home in an overcrowded KSTRC superfast. With all this conflicting deliberations in my mind, I open my calendar, to discover that the 5-day early-morning exercise planned for this week is from Tuesday to Saturday, not Monday to Friday!

Amen!

wait a sec..

2006-06-26T16:21:00.000+05:30

Somewhere inside my head, there still lives a faint memory of those days when the first thing I used to do after coming to office would be check my blog, reply to comments, wonder why there are no comments, check statcounter and see who all were reading my blog.. then think about the next post etc...go blog surfing...

I realize I need to stop, and take a breath. And look behind, and around. I've been so really out of my own being I realize. Thank God there's at least a saving grace!

Pictures...

2006-05-30T17:59:00.000+05:30

My camera has been largely lying idle for sometime. But this is what it has been doing in between.

Monsoons!

2006-05-26T16:42:00.000+05:30

It has started.

As always, the metereologists' hit the bull's eye this time too, they predicted the monsoon will start exactly on May 30th, 11:23 am, right after you'd have pulled up your zippers after taking the first break of the morning. So it started last week. Actually I don't remember when, but today I suddenly realized it had, and had been for quite a while. We were just about to finish our lunch and I heard the noise, sudden, unmistakable. The sound of approaching rain. And it came down with quite a brute force, some people in the restaurant actually got scared and deserted their lunches halfway and ran for their lives. And before they could complete two full steps in the open, they were as wet as they ever knew. Each drop was the size of an ostrich's egg. Thinking what's with the raindrops and ostrich eggs? You should have paid attention in 12th grade when they taught about terminal velocity and surface tension and stuff like that, instead of sizing up the physics ma'me. I hate to explain such silly things. The former. Latter, with pleasure!

The entire srroundings take a pregnant, aching and vulnerable look. (This line is borrowed). Evenings are so beautiful. Yesterday I was so struck by the blueness of the night when I came out of office, that I stood there with my mouth wide open and hands on my hips for quite a while. It was not the blue you normally see, it was so unreal. Then I realized there were some people staring at me. One of these days am gonna get that into my camera. Some very pleasant, cliched, nostalgic, evrlasting imageries from the monsoon season -

Kids going to school with their multi-colored umbrellas, splashing each other with water by rotating those...

People wearing raincoats in scooters.. though those in bikes are not as pleasing to the eye..

The working woman in saree, balancing the umbrella btween her shoulder and neck and holding up her saree from wetting, displaying a good-looking leg or two...

Areal view, a sea of blackness...

Mist on the windshield...

Transluscent atmosphere...

It makes you want to weep, sometimes. Along with nature.

I coudn't help but compare..

2006-05-11T17:02:00.000+05:30

I guess, I just wont have enough of comparing...

Then: It's a sin, sitting a minute more in the office after 6. My fingers find its way immediately to Windows+L, and I spring up. Watch all the ladies hurrying towards the door, grabbing their falling handbags, lunchboxes, shawls, sarees or whatever. I make way for them, wearing a weary smile. 6 o clock is normally the time for the top-rung managers too, the suits (none of them in a suit, actually) looking at their watches and walking swiftly, those leather-finish laptop bags on their shoulders... Whereas the menfolk are waiting impatiently, to let their ties lose and start getting a bit loud now.

I come out, pick up the helmet, and run down the stairs. Am in no hurry, but I just love running down the stairs. I reach the bike-parking lot and try to remember where I parked mine. There are a few guys smoking and chatting with each other, with coffee in one hand. I find her, from among a hundred others, stuffed into every inch of space aviable. I carefully draw her out, and kick her up, and let her loose.

It's a sudden transition from the noisy highway as you take the turn at Chavadimukku. The road is relatively quiet. There are bunch of engg students, totally absorbed in their own world, oblivious to all those eyes staring at them. As I take the turn at the engg college junction, the settings take an even more rural character, with the devotional songs playing from the krishna temple nearby, people returning from the temple after the deeparadhana, sound of chenda and stuff. Eerie stillness everywhere. I reach home, unlock the gate. No one else. I park the bike, sit on it for another 5 minutes, lazily. Then I put the helmet down and walk, with my hands in my pockets, to get that pack of cigarettes.

Now: It's still a sin sitting in the office after 6, if u can afford getting out. My fingers find a way to Windows+L again. But there are very few other people who've contemplated moving from their seats. With a shrug, I walk out. Some people are staring at me. Like I care. I walk down the stairs. The parking lot has fewer bikes. She's wearing a thin sheet of dust, thanks to all the construction taking place nearby. I kick her up. She fires up rather haggardly and catches on. The longer commute to work daily is taking its toll on her as well. And I realize my attention towards her has dwindled a lot I find my way through the maze of crazy evening traffic @ Kochi, survive a few traffic signals as well as life-threatening auto and bus drivers, and reach the highway. which is the slightly enjoyable part of the journey. But the heavy traffic spoils all the fun.

I reach home, pull her up, and sit on top of her for a while. Mom opens the door and demands to know whether I've had tea or not. I reply absent-mindedly. Smile at her or try to crack a joke, either of which must be really unconvincing, as she quietly goes back to her serial at 7. I feel wierd that I dont miss that cigarette anymore. I go straight up to my room, grab a book/turn on the music.

Then I wait...

10 things I miss from my previous job

2006-05-04T17:15:00.000+05:30

Read someone's meme and thought about this. Mind you - this is in no particular order.. oh yes, it is in the order that it came to my mind, and you know things can get pretty messy out there, wherein the first thing I think about after waking up in the morning could be taking up a netflix subscription when I go onsite, after which, comes relieving myself off 8 hrs of liquid waste! U get the idea..

1. Evening tea at Hotel California: If u r in technopark, dont be surprised by conversations like these -

Software Engineer No. 1 (SE1) : Hey man, how ya doin?

SE2: Awesome! havent seen you lately?

SE1: yeah I had been onsite... California! Came back yesterday. U seem to be in a hurry?

SE2: yeah, going onsite man... coming?

SE1: Sure, lets go!

SE2: And lets go to California after that, u got a bike na...

Naah, we dont have such motorcycle buffs out there who'd think of taking up a world round-trip in their bikes.. anyway not since I left. Hotel California, alias Cali is the little tea-shop nearby, where you get steaming hot and crisp vadas, ethaykkappams, deep-fried houseflies etc and tea - custom made to your choice of strength (of tea-leaves that is). And cigarettes of course if you're of that smoking kind!

And onsite smells heavily of odonil/urine depending upon when was it cleaned last.

2. The balcony and birdwatching : Lunch-break was the best time to do this activity. This is best enjoyed in the company of a few experts, whose knowledge in ornithology might come handy while analyzing certain features of rare and migratory birds. Such sessions would mostly come to a close after mourning ebout extinct species.. dodos and the likes..uknow!

3. Rainy days: Rainy days meant sleeping till 8:45. And then a couple of frantic calls here and there, to people who've got a car for a lift, only to learn that they're already gone. Then the inevitable, change back to homewear, and get that remote! Or just sit about and chatter away. Its another matter that anyway you'll end up reaching the office wet, which classifies the time spent above as a waste! Or is it?

4. The three humps: I loved the three humps on the uphill/downhill road to bhavani. I loved braking hard in front of those humps and feeling the gentle roll-up in my tummy while taking them. The second was the loveliest, coz we had the TCS training centre right in front of it, and I have to say the hump played a major part in reducing the number of motor-accidents in that vicinity. But they do happen nevertheless. And ch loved taking on the humps with his hands off the handle. God, let me live till the day which finds him flat on the ground, which shouldnt be very far. And which is pretty difficult I mn considering the way his tummy is challenging him, its hard for a flat-fall, it would be more like rolling down. Whatever!

5. The technopark club: If you'd ask me which was the best place on earth to booze, this was the answer. used to be. :( . Several factors made it unique. Hard day? Just stroll down after getting out from the office, and there you are, the great Vyshakha lawns of the club, the night sky with all the stars, music, and yeah, I have to admit that the food used to be good too. It was another matter that we've never left the place without being involved in a brawl with the waiters about something, like the fries being too oily or the beer bottles having a wierd green color or that the toilets used to be on that side of the pool when we came here last time...

They closed it down a few months before I left. Compelling reasons? Maybe.

I guess thats enough for one post. The remaining five will follow in the next...

Non-starter

2006-04-24T17:18:00.000+05:30

I dunno what is it that makes words drain out when you have a lot to write. I have the world to tell about, and I cant find a single word to start the proceedings. If you dont believe me, this is the fifth time I am starting off, and hopefully the last, before deciding this is the worst start I could ever hope for, only until I started again! I realized my problem, just now. These things I want to write about, are of gargantuan dimensions for sure, but they are so, just for me. Neither do they possess the the quality to create any interest in an audience like the Friends - season 9 could, nor do I possess that quality to make it sound interesting as someone like Dave Barry could. So having realized my handicap, and having set the expectations straight, its much simpler now. I am just going to write for myself.

One would never really get a true list of the happiest moments of his life until the moment he dies, as was seen by Lester Burnham, as was told by Sam Mendez. I liked that scene like no other, and it continues to be one that really touched my heart. You'd recollect If you'd seen American Beauty, and u'd understand me if I say this weekend conatined a few. Probably.

All the fun that is there in a bungee jump is because u know you'll die, if the chord snaps!

I am just going to revel in some precious memories and stop bullshitting.

Trivialities

2006-04-12T11:07:00.000+05:30

I'm simply astounded by the capacity of the human mind. To sink down deep into an abyss one day, to bounce back and fly high the next. To love unconditionally. To stubbornly believe in individualism but be ready to sacrifice everything for another. To find strength in the weakest, bleakest of moments, and pass on the strength to someone else. It's then that the age old Hindu notion of mind/soul having an existence of its own begins to make a lot of sense. Its just unacceptable that something of this immense profoundness shall perish along with the mortal physical state of existence. Just unacceptable.

After 2 months long and arduous effort, I managed to finish “The motorcycle diaries” and move on the next book. Arduous was other things, due to which the reading had suffered, and not reading in itself. Otherwise, it’s not at all a tough book to read. The resemblance to “zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” is just in the name. There’s no metaphysics of quality here, just the exuberance of the youth, free spirit, and the making of a revolutionary that was Che Guevara.

So, its “Remains of the day” now. Already liking its crisp britishness, for a change.

The pain, killer.

2006-04-10T17:08:00.000+05:30

I had waited a few weeks for this. To find some time. To get out. To be alone. To face the wind. Finally, after all the pitching and rolling, and the settling in of dust, I found myself wanting to get out this last weekend. And I did. I threw the camera into a backpack, and hopped on to the bike, and set out.

And I would never know what was it that I forgot to take this time. I listened to the sound from the exhaust, and all I could hear was the mechanised drone, and not sweet music. I missed the wind on my face, then realized heck, I had the helmet on. What was the helmet doing on my face now??? I felt irritated at the thumpings from the road, transmitted uncomfortably through some delicate parts of my body where it came in contact with the bike's seat. I watched in silent indifference as I saw fishermen, with their precise, dance like steps threw their nets into the water, neither feeling the temptation to suddenly park the bike and run along to get a snap nor see what catch was in there for me!

Everything looked a pale, dull grey.

I walked along the beach, stared at the lighthouse. The sight could be termed as something equivalent of 'magnificient' or 'awe-inspiring', had it been another day. another time of my life. The green, blue and beachsand of the land succumbed meekily before the ever-expansive might of blue sky, stretching all around, the view from the beach was indeed inspiring. But I couldn't just find that inspiration today.

I watched my footprints in sand behind me. One pair of feet. It looked desolate. Wanting. I kept on walking briskly, to pacify a throbbing heart. There were several sights, multi-colored catamarans lined up along the shore... children playing atop them, the faint lines of a liner in distance against the red cherry of the sun... But my camera remained inside the sack. Nothing. Nothing can fill that void today.

Some other day, perhaps.

Some day!

2006-04-01T00:00:00.000+05:30

I used to wonder what's with the April Fool's day on April 1st. Until I met this person and she told me when her birthday was. Then it all began to make sense.

Happy Birthday, N!

Your carma just ran over my dogma!

2006-03-30T16:44:00.000+05:30

"Open the bonnet..."

"Err, huh?"

"The bonnet! Open the bonnet"

Wait a minute, I thought I told you to do the 'vahanapooja' for my new car, not the Engine inspection. And I thought you were a priest, and not a mechanic. And what with all the costume and the pot-belly and stuff? Mechanics dont have pot bellies, for God's sake. They need to get pretty deep under vehicicles, and pot-bellies don't help. In fact pot bellies wont help if you want to get deep anywhere, for that matter, if you know what I mean. Thats why they say get settled and get over with everything before you start getting those dreaded roundies, or else, be smart enough and make enough money to hire secretaries. I'm digressing!

I opened the bonnet. He took a coconut and cracked it open on the floor, lighted agarbatthis and smeared 'kalabham' over pretty much everywhere. The 'Rocam' engine, air-filter, fuel injectors, batteries, radiator... god, he knows where it matters. Probably he took automotive as his elective in the final semester or something.... duh! I dont know how these poojari's are trained! He did a lot of stuff which I didn't understand, including asking me to place four lemons in front of all four tyres and run the car over it. The lemons, all got crushed and their juices squeezed out to the pavement. To me, that looked as if it symbolized something, and I shuddered! And thus, having got all the necessary blessings, (this he wont give until I had given the dakshina...) I hit the road, in my brand new car, all excited and thrilled and all that.

The excitement lasted about as long until I hit the highway. National Highway -17! Do you know what that means? If you don't, I'll tell ya! 6 lanes of speed regulated (I mean lower limits, stupid) sooper smooth tarmac,with all the bright road markings and signs and vehicles zipping past at such breakneck speeds, It'll put the autobahn to shame! Oh, by the way before I forget, only one among the six lanes is currently operational, the 2nd being the road - shoulder, also called road-under construction which has been squatted upon by roadside vendors and other commercial establishments... Signs of India growing. 3rd was being marked by a stone, which lies in Mr Appukkuttan Nair's courtyard, 4th and 5th being in his toilet and borewell respectively. And the 6th? Well, even 85% adherence to international standards is too much in Indian context, whatdooyuthink? Road signs? Yeah, everywhere, "Thankappans jewellery", "Ormma marble palace", "Ittichan and sons", "If you like the Congress party, vote for CPI(M)"..being a few. I call these road signs because, well, what else do you call what's placed on the road?? And, yeah enough kidding, I wasn't joking about the breakneck speed, mind you! The buses never run on anything lower than a decent 80 Kmph. If you're on the way, and can't find enough space to move, well, close your eyes and start counting, dude! And hope you paid for the insurance! The vehicle's, and yours too!

I can go on, about the railway gate that remained closed for nearly 20 minutes, leaving queues kilometers long, the traffic police who asked me to take free left and take the U-turn another 2 Kms down the road, because the traffic lights were broken, and I just wanted to cross, to the other side goddammit! And, by the time I reached office, all the spaces in the parking lot had been occupied, which left me with only one option, park in the open, which meant, I was fried when I got into the car in the noon.

You know what, I loved my bike, I still do!

P.S: - The title was a bumper sticker I liked, btw, I didnt run over anybody's dogma!

peevish...just!

2006-03-17T11:57:00.000+05:30

I started this post as a comparison between now and then. Then being the time immemorial when I was leading the lazy spoiled bachelor life in a town far away from my home. And now being, ugh, no, don't get me wrong. I am still single for Pete's sake. Now I stay at home. Just.

Which means there is the bed coffee, folded sheets, pressed clothes, good healthy food, mother's love and a multitude of other comforts which just escapes me at the moment. But it also means, there are no cigarettes, no rumbled and soiled sheets, no stuff thrown around untidily in the room, no magazines to rummage through before I could find one to go to the toilet with, no bad food, no noisy bowels, no headaches due to hangover...

I woke up in the morning today and saw mom buying fish from a vendor, in a boat, in the river. Took my camera and took a picture, immediately, and settled down to read the newspaper with coffee in one hand, in the balcony, facing the river. How peaceful is that? A little too much perhaps? I miss all the noise, all the aberrations of not finding the right things at the right place. I miss all the fun of being difficult to live. Consider this, I cant even skip a meal now! I am being finicky, I know. But I am. Just for the time being.

Just that I needed to complain about something

Wayfarers...

2006-02-09T16:41:00.000+05:30

I didn’t recognize him first, as I entered “Vishnu”. Vishnu is a small restaurant, “Hotel-tea shop” as they call it, and serves food fresher and tastier than any of the much more expensive restaurants around. It was dark inside, and my eyes took time to adjust, so I dismissed the dark silhouette as just another of those unhygienic lost-in-darkness kind, the kind that you see on the road every now and then, the kind that you take extra precaution to avoid. And then I realized he was staring at me.

I almost gave a start when I looked at him. His eyes were completely devoid of any sign of life, face unshaven, hair unkempt, and he wore something that looked like it has been ages since it has seen a drop of water or a pressing iron. I tried to smile, and later corrected myself, when I saw him failing miserably attempting to return the gesture. I sat down by his side, and ordered food.

He went on with his eating, raising his head occasionally to look at me. He seemed like begging, without saying a word. In his eyes I saw the look of a man so deprived, he couldn’t even make himself up to ask for mercy. I tried to make a conversation.

“So are you taking the restricted holiday today?”

He stared at me, puzzled. He obviously didn’t have a clue about what I was talking about. And later, when I succeeded in getting him to talk, I learned that it has been three weeks since he came to office, the first two were on leave, and on the third week, he just didn’t go.

He was a colleague; in fact we entered the company together, and had training in the same batch and all. He was a slightly laid-back personality, but everybody suspected there’s something going in inside his head. His classmates used to say he was brilliant, had very high marks in college, and later he repeated the same performance in training and scored good marks for the tests and all. And then one day, he went down with Chicken pox. In retrospect, I can see that, that incident actually cut the first strand in his relation with the outside world. He couldn’t make it with his batch, and when he resumed, he seemed even more distant. But I knew I always kind of liked him.

We used to see him once in a while, at office, always alone, and barely managing a smile. I don’t remember when was the last time I saw him. I remembered a friend once telling about him, apparently he hated his folks a lot and had stopped going home, too.

“I am stopping it all, I can’t do this job”. He said. For a moment, I had a flickering doubt in my mind whether it was the job alone he was referring to.

“I wanted to study, and my folks wont let me. But now I have decided, I am going to study.” I asked him what his plans are – of course, for ordinary people like me, everything has to have a plan backing it, the money, the time… but he didn’t seem to have a clue about all those details. He said he was preparing for the GATE, but had lost concentration in between due to pressures from home. And he was not going to make it this time. I advised him to go teach somewhere, maybe as a guest faculty, that would help him in his preparation also. He seemed to like the idea. After briefing him about the formalities of resigning, I waved good bye to him, reluctantly.

Before going, I went to him, put my hands on his shoulder, put on my best reassuring smile, and told him, “Just give a try, don’t know, maybe you’ll be able to make it this time itself”. He made an attempt at smiling back, but I saw my words fluttering into thin air. And when I looked in those eyes again, I couldn’t help feeling a bit concerned whether he’s going to make it at all.

And I don’t know whether I should hope he does, too…

How blind we become...

2006-01-31T11:17:00.000+05:30

The chair was comfortable. Very comfortable. Perhaps this is the only time I’ll be able to appreciate it. I looked at the floor. A few fluorescent lamps glistened on its mopped luster. I registered all the shapes, the angles, and the symmetries and asymmetries of the lounge. I will never see this place like this again. I will become one among the people hurrying past, never having to bother to appreciate the room and its features. I felt like that person in a music video I had seen, standing still while everybody hurried past. The room and myself, still, and conversing to each other, without making a sound.

It is three years since I had done a similar thing. Another place, another office, similar situation. Then I so comfortably slipped into the role of the passer-by. Often trying hard not to notice the people waiting in the chairs. Familiarity makes you take things so much for granted, that you fail to notice them. Only until the moment comes, when you stand to lose them. Then the shapes begin to reappear, what passed off as noise, gradually transforms into resonating, rhythmic music, and the place starts looking fresh again.

Probably that’s the same with our lives, us being able to appreciate it only twice, at the beginning, and then again, at the end!

Visuals...

2006-01-23T14:31:00.000+05:30

This is how I spent the weekend...

laundry service?

2006-01-17T09:48:00.000+05:30

Welcome to the armpit of India.

Alang, where end-of-life ships from the First World come to die. Beached along the coastline like dozens of decomposing whales, the carcasses of ships are dismantled, disemboweled and dismembered until not even a bolt remains.This is a place that progress purposely forgot, but conveniently remembered when it needed to defecate. No high-tech machinery here, no Makita drills and no Hitachi cranes, just 40,000 migrant labourers working in subhuman conditions, scantily-clad, unprotected, bare-footed, scrabbling with their bare hands to meet the steel mafia's quota and earn a miminum wage. Scurrying like ants on fresh road-kill, workers haul miles of cable out to burn on the beach, use blowtorches to cut through pipes containing oil and gas that often explode in their faces, and expose themselves to hundreds of debilitating chemicals that surround them 24 hours a day.

Pictures...

2006-01-03T13:52:00.000+05:30

Here r the pics, from last weekend's trip

On a good note....

2006-01-02T14:47:00.000+05:30

00:00 AM, 1st January.

That’s the time when everyone is throwing themselves around (or up, depending upon how much you’ve consumed) and hugging each other and kissing each other and wishing each other and all that. That’s a moment when everyone loves everyone else and greets everyone else with their best smiles and …. Scree…eeech!! My altruistic New Year vision comes to a sliding halt!

“Shut your bloody mouths and get your dirty asses inside, or I will beat the shit out of you bastards!!!!”

That’s what we got. Those were the first words spoken to us in 2006. Or the Malayalam equivalent of it. Which sounds slightly worse. And thank God, we were still on the right side of alcohol intoxication, and the testosterone levels were kept under check with a small effort, and our brains seemed to have registered a few facts –

1. Unfamiliar territory
2. Armed, more powerful opponents
3. Bad light conditions…
4. Possibility of more forces joining the ranks

What the heck, we were just a bunch of drunk, out-of-town loonies trying to create trouble in the peaceful little hamlet in the New Year’s eve – that’s how it would have appeared to them, the cops. And we decided not to challenge their impression whatever it is, and retreated peacefully. Coz we were pretty damn sure that impression was not nearly as good enough to marry one of their daughters off to one among us.

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That was just the New Year’s eve. A blip in the screen. The previous day, and the next day, has been good. Very good in fact. I am waiting to get a little time off to tidy up the pics and post 'em...

My blogroll

2005-12-30T12:15:00.000+05:30

Ah, Goawd! Sigh! Here it comes again. For the 26th time in my life. I so want to write a year-end/new year post about summing up and moving on and leaving behind and all such cliches. But the problem is, I am totally at a loss about picking and choosing. And I am not game enough for another harrowing literary ordeal at the wee hours of this wonderful year that had been. So I decided to play it safe and apply some strokes on a few of those amazing blogs that I have been following religiously this year. And I made a rather untidy attempt in trying to figure out what makes me keep going back to them.

I don’t like to expand too much and get lost in the mayhem, so I keep the list small and tight. A rather sad side-effect is that, many a noteworthy blog might have been (un)intentionally avoided.

**Being diplomatic **

This is by no means an exhaustive list. There are many amazing blogs out there which I might have missed .... Okai, uknow the rest.

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In alphabetical order -

Alyss
She keeps it short. As scant as they come. I still am not sure why I follow this one. Maybe I just like it.

AM
Here’s one crazy world for you! I am simply awed by the amount of places this fella has set his foot on. Too bad we don’t have too many continents and islands to discover. Otherwise he’d probably have found a place among the likes of Marco Polo, Columbus, Captain Cook etc.
Arvind
Ads, Ads, and more ads. Everyday, I get up, brush my teeth, go to the toilet, take bath and visit Arvind’s site.
Bandito
This is a friend. He writes seldom but it’s always worth a read. Write more, dude!

If I tell ya..

Another one of those hilarious female writer oddities found among the species.

Indu
So many colors here. One day its kickboxing, another its Carnatic music, then trekking, poetry…this is always a happening place.

Lost in Trance
Friend from college. Rediscovered a few months ago. ‘Redisovered’ in every sense of the word.

Nandana
It’s never been so easy to make a friend. I guess that feeling is shared by several of my blog-mates. Description of the blog is simple. Life.

Nomadic waves
Another girl who writes achingly pretty. She always takes such pains to find the right pictures for the posts and I admire her for just that. Does it so well that sometimes makes me think she does it the other way round. It’s a recent addition, but methinks it’ll stay.

Oxytoxic
When I feel like its time to exercise those parts of my brain which’ve been left idle for a little too long, I hop over here.

Poornima
You just have to read it to know it. One of the best prose I have come across in blogdom.

Potato
He plays games with the language and it’s such fun to read.

Sidin
Well, most of you know about this gentleman, what can I say! What happened to this guy BTW? Kidnapped by LeT?

Silverine
Hilarious to the core. Pictures, conversations, spice, salt, this one has got it all.

SnM
I read this and sometimes feel, well, that could have been written by me!

L'earn to live!

2005-12-21T15:11:00.000+05:30

"Five thousand!!"

"Okay ten thousand!!!"

"Fifteen thousand????" Her eyes widened at the enormity of the figure. I was playing the guessing game with my sister when she asked me about the cost of my camera. Poor girl does not know a thing about the cost of digital cameras. Good for her. I somehow managed to change topic. The first thing everyone wanted to know was the cost. And when I tell them, most of them look like they wished they had never asked.

“What the …”
“Some guts you have…”
“Couldn’t you wait till the prices come down…err, will they come down?” These are just a few of the reactions I have received so far. Another person just stared me in the face for sometime, and walked off, without saying a word.

That set me thinking about the different perspectives we have about money. For ease of comparison, I pitted my latest investment against another most popular investment most of my peers seem to be making nowadays. Land. A cent of land can cost you anywhere between a fifty grant to an eye-popping, lunch-stopping, stomach turning 4-4.5 lakhs, depending on where you’ve decided to mark your bearings. I am only talking about the small city I live, for godssakes.

Suppose you buy 10 cents of land for Rs one lakh a cent. Ten cool butt-burnt lakhs! Okay, it was actually 10.5 cents. What’s the difference? You’re probably never going to use that half cents. So where’s the value of that fifty thousand? Nobody would seem to mind that, while there’s no living soul around me within 50 meters of me I am sure, who can digest the fact that I spent an equal amount for a camera!!! A camera! duh! And I am seated within a teeming melee of knowledge workers, mind you! “You can always sell it off and earn more money “ – some may argue. Okay, so that’s the entire point. You buy something, only to sell it off and earn more money. Then? Then you buy something else and then sell it off again! What a wonderful notion! The circle of life!

The only difference in this case is that, I am not selling off what I bought. And I am enjoying every single second,(err… actually one four thousandth of a second, to take it to the limits) that I am using it.

Two days in geektown - II

2005-12-08T16:36:00.000+05:30

...12:55 PM, New Hyderabad Road
In my life, I must say I don’t have a previous experience of dealing with angry ewes. Forget it, I’ve had 25 whole years of experience in dealing with a bit closer species, which is - angry female human beings. But still don’t have a clue. I am not going down that road again, which numerous eminent men have before me, and failed miserably. I decided to pursue the safest option, which was backing off. Oh, I didn’t tell you, momma sheep was angry coz I was getting a little too close to her little one, which was dozing off so serenely, pic on the right. Couple of clicks more, bemused herdsmen, and we left!

1:30 PM, Nandi hills
“The view from the cliff is breath-taking… when u can see it” - I was informed by SnM. But today, the view was rather creepy. A sheer drop to nothingness. We had walked past a pond, minutes ago. Unless I was told, I would have been forced to believe that it was one of those never-ending gorges, the kind you have seen only in starwars movies. That was when we had stopped by to photograph some of these!

That was moss on a wall, by the way, and not tea-gardens in Munnar hill-valley. And u can make out the faint lines of the steps of the pond in the background

7:30 PM, Forum Mall
Each and every one of those thousands of faces looked familiar. I could read those faces, I knew those smiles; those hands that were held together. I could hear what they were chatting away in cell phones. I knew their deepest fears, I knew their wildest dreams. As we stood in front of a smiling mannequin wearing a sexy red dress, discussing plans for the night, I thought, this must be the most boring place on the planet. Yet everyone is here. Everyone wanted to be here, or, everyone wanted to be seen here!

Beer, vodka, rum, tequila and more tequila. Was joined by Bandito, and a lot others worth mentioning. That’s how the night ended.

One more day of shopping, visiting friends and dusty roads, and I returned.

(That must be about the driest endings for a write-up that you have ever seen, but that’s it, I guess)

Two days in geektown

2005-12-06T11:33:00.000+05:30

6:30 AM, somewhere in Tamilnadu

I slowly turned my cramped neck to discover that it was raining. Without any second thought, clipped on the ipod and played Mark Knopfler. Knopfler started off by 'post cards fom Paraguay'. Lovely song. It cheered me up instantly. And I chose to ignore happy faces of folks along the road going through their daily rituals, this and that on public display.

Ch called in, "Where have you reached?" I put all my geographical, cartographical and anthropological skills to practice, did some quick scan of the surroundings and declared "40 minutes and I'll be there". That was when the first hole appeared.

10:15 AM, Madiwala bus stop

The hole was in fact, a pot-hole. And it was the first among the Thousand three hundred and twenty three more I was about to encounter that morning. Not your normal pot-hole that you see on the road every day…, each was just a bit short of being qualified to be called a well or a pond. Despite the great maneuvering abilities of the Volvo which put to shame some bikers who were also trying to avoid those holes, the bus took a good two hours more to cross the TN-Karnataka border. Ch came and picked me up, and I demanded his helmet the next instant. It was not the cold, but the dust that scared me. And I was on a diet of antibiotics and cough-drops for sinus infection, for the past 6 days.

12:15 PM, Indira Nagar.

Having treated myself to a sumptuous breakfast, I stepped out of Ch's house along with SnM, to find two familiar, smiling faces at the doorstep! Surprise, joy, smiles, and quick exchange of pleasantries with A and S, and we(me and SnM) were off, to Nandi hills in R’s blue Unicorn, which looked like it could use a good splash of water.

I was told Nandi hills was just about an ordinary hilly place. But, the climate made it look extraordinary that day!

12:55 PM, New Hyderabad Road

"Watchout, dude!" SnM called from behind. I turned around with a start and saw this lovely face, looking angrily at me!....

--to be concluded

Bookaholics ahoy!

2005-12-01T11:55:00.000+05:30

NewYork Times' selection of 100 noteworthy books of the year, here! There's also a link to similar lists for all years back till 1997.

In the driver's seat

2005-11-28T15:27:00.000+05:30

Psychos! That’s what they are. I am talking about the KSTRC bus-drivers. Sorry, people of Karnataka, u might want to call those from your part of the world something else, I give you the choice, but K is for Kerala, and psychos is what I choose to call them, with dignity. And without it, they get it everyday, from other road-users, enough to go home and sleep peacefully with.

Well there was a time when I admired these guys. That was about when I was learning the trickeries of manipulating 5 tonnes of iron in four wheels with the help of a slender wheel and a couple of paddles that looked like slipper soles. Oh yeah, I forgot, and there was this thing sticking out of the steering column, called the gear lever. This was exactly the problem, I kept forgetting it till I was done with pretty much everything else, and remembered only when the car would start rocking like hell or the instructor did, along with my ear in his clasp. Whichever happened first, the latter would happen, invariably. And by the time I was able to find my way through all those noisy, rickety-rackety, unyielding set of gear teeth, the car would have found its own way to a place of its own choice! Boy, it was hell. That was when I learned to appreciate good driving. And the bus-drivers, with more than 60 lives and 60 odd thousand loose nuts and bolts at their disposal, were the gods. And thus, I developed this habit of sitting near the driver whenever possible, and observing them. Also, I liked the view. O don’t get me wrong, talking about the KSTRC, so the ladies are at the back.

As I have found out over the years, there are several types in this species. Some of then are just too fussy. They’d hop in with a wide grin, and try to make conversations with you. Even try to gossip with you about the bus-conductor. And there are even bigger idiots, who fall for this and strike up conversations with the drivers. Maybe it makes them feel important. You know, sitting near the helm and talking to the bus-driver, yeah, pretty damn life-threatening important, birdbrain.

And then there are these animated characters, they make all kinds of faces, blow their noses, blink their eyes like they’ve lost sight suddenly, and they mimic the movements of the vehicle. That is, if they have to steer left, their whole body would sway to the left, as if they are steering one of those high-speed levitating things from starwars. And sometimes they become targets of this unexplainable, unfathomable cosmic interventions, and take a sudden fancy with this approaching car, so much that they cant take their eyes off it, and keep watching it even after its gone, poking their heads out of the window!!

The next type is the stoic one. The unflinching, tight-jawed, get-out-of-my-way types. These guys will be wearing dark aviator glasses, mostly. No wonder, coz they must be thinking they’re flying fighter planes, and it’s pretty apparent, too. Once I was in this superfast and was awaken from deep slumber by this huge thud, and a jolt and the bus swaying to one side. I thought I’ve had it. I tried to memorize all the best moments of my life like Kevin Spacey did in “American Beauty”. But nothing came. Then I poked my head out and looked what was wrong. The bus had gone over a divider and cleaned up almost half of it. Our driver stepped down, tapped at the tires, tore off the sagging sheet metal, got in, cleaned his goggles, and drove off, like nothing happened. With half of the bus’s side bodywork gone! And you thought Clint Eastwood was cool!

That’s just a small part of it. And there are several other types. And whichever type they fall into, one thing is for sure, they’re absolute terror for other road users. On second thoughts, not just the road users. Cant remember how many times I have seen buses having slammed into roadside houses, shops, waiting sheds etc. The entire scene has a Hollywood-ish effect to it, doesn’t it? Imagine, an old guy, sipping tea , and reading the morning newspaper in his verandah, vividh-bharti playing in the background, everything is so peaceful, and suddenly, there is this deafening noise, and he sees this huge thing coming crashing towards him at 100 Kmph…. Even better than Hollywood!!

Well, everything is not as bleak as the picture I paint, there is a beacon of hope. There is the KSTRC Volvo crew, which is exactly what the rest of the KSRTC is not. Yesterday, there was a dad and a small boy sitting in my next seat, the boy in his lap. And when the bus reached an intermediate station, the conductor came and told him, “Sir, two seats have been vacated in the front, you and your boy can come and sit there”. The compassion brought tears to my eyes!

Not complaining at all...

2005-11-24T18:10:00.002+05:30

mp3 was too good to be true. I remember what someone(was it Murphy himself?) said, if everything seems to be coming your way, get out of the wrong lane, stupid! So thus we were, enjoying the bounties of all those wonderful music, without paying a dime, without ever moving out of our cozy comfortable seats, with just a few mouse-clicks! And when all the hyper-reality ended suddenly, here we are, complaining!

Get a grip, dude!

OK, the irrelevant trivia being that suddenly someone thought let's give the music all the respect they deserve, and cleanup the network, and fizzle out all mp3 from the system. Bad! I mean real bad! You cannot imagine the amount of trauma this announcement induced in a majority of the workforce, which depended on the aid of soul-liberating music for everything right from designing frameworks to getting their shit out after lunch. Some passed out, some stopped working, some started working again, and some, including yours truly, protested in vain. But when all the ruckus died out, I began thinking… these guys are right. mp3 is nothing but wolf in a sheep’s clothing. mp3 spoiled everything. mp3 spoiled the very essence of music and love for music.

What’s the fun if you can’t
- go to the music store and spent your entire month’s savings on cds, all the worries evaporating the moment you tuck it inside the tray and listen to it!
- find out that cd you’ve been looking for since you were like 10 years old has finally arrived, but you don’t have enough cash to buy it, so you hide it behind a deep stack of Britney Spears albums, and hush out! Smart! Only to find it is gone next time you visit!
- the agony and pain of deciding upon whether to buy the 1050 Rs 3-cd collection or 199 Rs. discount sales…
- meeting up with a girl who loves rock music in the record-store (this one though, still remains a fantasy. Either it’s a boy with long hair, or a girl who’s with a boy with long hair. The hair need not be long, in this case. It can be short, absent, or… err, am I digressing here?)

- gazing proudly at your neatly arranged record-collection, sipping coffee, while listening to.. duh! too much. Stopping here.

Man, real connoisseurs will tell you that all this crap is about as naïve as you could ever hope to get in the subject. Am talking about laser Discs, vinyl records and such. It’s a world of romantics out there. And mp3, is a real misfit. At the risk of reading the worst simile ever, here you go. It’s a bit like county cricket on a beautiful warm sunny day, and the twenty-twenty in an indoor stadium. Ok, that was a terrible one, but you get the point.

I deleted all my mp3 songs today!

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So that's it about all the nice-talk! Those bastards!

One evening in the life of...

2005-11-02T13:37:00.000+05:30

The evening sun reflected upon the ripples of the lake, making a million golden ringlets. The mackerel-sky began to acquire a color which was a quaint mixture of yellow, grey and pink, or ethereal, in one word. I walked to the edge of the lake where my friend was sitting, facing the sun. A big flock of geese flew past, like fighter-planes in formation.

“See those birds? Winter is here in a week!” I told him.

“I don’t want to dismantle that tent. That’s such a sexy tent and I want to make love to it all winter!”

“Spare me, I’ve got my girl in town. And I can’t go without beer for more than 2 weeks”

“You’re not thinking of flying home, are you?”

“What home?”

He laughed out loud. And snapped the line out of water, and it had one big fish caught in the hook ! It jumped around in the grass, spraying water and mud all over, trying to make its way back to water. Couple of jumps later, it lost direction, couple of jumps more, and it lost interest as well. It just lay there still, breathing gently through the gills, ready to embrace death, waiting for the atmospheric oxygen to kill it.

“Are you any closer?” He began prodding me again.

“Closer to what?”

“The truth, Nirvana.”

“You know what, the day I find out, I am gonna come here, I want my body buried in this lake”

“You got it!”

I caught a rhythmic whirr from a distant engine. It rose and fell with the gentle tides of the lake. He began singing, somehow managing to match the rythm. And after a while, the light appeared, around the hill in distance.

“Ah, here comes the rescue-party!”

“Game over! Go and make your Russian dame happy!”

We walked towards the tent, and began packing stuff...

A place called home - III

2005-10-26T17:45:00.000+05:30

It was raining as we parked the car near a heap of road-metal. One would imagine the heavily pot-holed road(I refuse to call it so) will be repaired very soon, but the heap would remain there, for ever, till the last of the stones have disappeared, either going into the concrete mixtures of private construction sites nearby, or becoming insta-missiles in the hands of some really enraged/bemused school-kid.

“That’s the way”, I said, pointing in the direction of what looked more like a stream than a walkway. Becoming a little skeptic myself, I could understand the bewildered look on my uncle’s face. I rolled up my trousers, and followed the rainwater-stream. So did my uncle, and aunt and children, preferred to stay in the car. The idea was to see me off at my new abode, where I was to stay in the first year of my engineering. Bachelor accommodations can be such hazardous places you see, and no sane woman would dare to set foot within half a mile of those ill-fated dungeons.

The stream opened into a small clearing, and bingo! Appeared a concrete house- cracking roof, full of lush green moss and all that. We stepped aside into the courtyard and parted ways with the stream, which continued its course down the lush paddy fields below. The view was beautiful. I almost went into another one of those wonderful-greenery-induced delirium, only until I turned around!

There was a slightly flummoxed look on Unc’s face, and the reason turned out to be a score of multi-colored, multi-faceted, mutli-lingual .... undies, under multiple stages of disintegration, displayed proudly on the verandah!

“Ah, so this is the place for sure!!!” I said, gleefully. But my enthusiasm in our great discovery wasn’t returned.

“Shall I help you in getting the stuff inside….”

“Nope, I can manage!” I was quick to cut him off. Right now it was manageable, I didn’t want the situation to get any worse. Can’t really blame him if he felt a bit of local-guardianesque concern about the entire affair. In hindsight, my foresight wasn’t wasted.

There were eight guys staying in that 3 BHK house, five seniors, and three of us freshmen. And then there were the girls! Two of them permanently in my room, in the rest of the rooms, they kept coming in and going out all the time. Nah, I am talking about girls who occupied the walls, you pervert! The posters! You see I was this huge fan of Aish Rai at that time and and all, I wont have anyone else in my territory, and my roomie, was equally stuck up with Kajol. In the other rooms, there were posters of apparently anything and everything that looked female, in jeans, skirts, sarees, bikinis… you know where it leads to.

The bathrooms were built and maintained with only a single purpose in mind, utility! Meaning there were some really nice pictures in there, and a door was always considered a luxury! As a matter of fact, there was only one door for two bathrooms, and it was very convenient, you could just lift it off and keep it in front of the room of your choice before starting the activity of your choice, unless you hear a very loud and angry scream! Either from one of the inmates or the servant-maid! Man, really, I was always of this opinion that these maids are grossly underpaid! There’s no account of the amount of torture they have to undergo each day, so much that it will follow them to their graves, and to their afterlives. Or else she must have been some kind of really cold-blooded tyrant in her previous birth. At the gates of hell, devil himself was appalled by the amount of atrocities she/he had committed, and yelled…
“You have done such grotesque things in your life, even hell is not fit enough for you! By admitting you to hell, I fear that the last trace of sanity left in here will be compromised, so I condemn you to suffer eternally, working as a servant maid in an Engineering college host…”

“Naaawwww…….” THUD!

She took it out on us by cooking us some of the most horrible stuff I have ever put to my mouth. Anything, was welcome in those days!

I have often heard that the vicinity around where we lived had the highest density of poisonous snakes anywhere in Kerala. But I haven’t seen a single one. Neither have the snakes seen me, apparently. They’d prefer their holes, any day! The paddy field would dry up in summer and we would play cricket there. In monsoon, we had other jobs, like praying the roof don’t collapse, for instance. And yeah, occasionally, studying, a sacred act performed when you are really cornered, like - “Man, I hate that [expletive]!! Despite making it to all his lectures within an hour of start and submitting every single assignment copied/Photostat-ed/got written by juniors/girls, he gave me a measily 10 marks for sessionals, shucks! Now I have to slog my ass and get 50 for university or be damned”. Those were the days when sanity was hanging by a thread, literally!

I stayed there for a year, till the seniors passed out. Finished their courses, I mean. Then went looking for greener pastures! (Read near the women's college, yeah believe it or not, there was one right in front of the Engg college. And it was a good college… you know, good repute, run by nuns, really good courses and all that… ;-D)

That and more in next...

Cupid Strikes!

2005-10-18T09:59:00.000+05:30

Congratulations, Pr & Dps! Live a life now!

A place called home - II

2005-10-17T15:35:00.000+05:30

This looks ominous, this little series I’ve started on. What will be the last of this series? Here’s a rendition - Draw a cube, Throw in a nice looking rug, some wood-paneling, a chair with lumbar-support, and an IBM ThinkCenter with 1GB RAM……naaaawwww!!!

There are nicer things in this world to speak about on a Monday afternoon. OK, the lunch was one of those, but I am not going into the details of that. (I am imagining that pre-Cambrian fish which gently slithered out of the muddy banks of that volcanic lake on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and he beckoned to his buddy in water, “Man, come on over, you gotta check this place out, this is way cooler than down there!” and the good ol’ buddy was a dimwit, and he preferred to stay in water and raise children instead. Thank god he did! I enjoyed the fish-dishes on the lunch-menu today!)

So let’s move to part 2, and this is where I get a room, entirely for myself, for the first time in my life! The fact that my sister was 6 years younger and from Venus, meant that there was no battle for territorial-control! Only the nights were a problem. Because, in the night, if you looked out of my window into the pitch dark outside, you could see…… nothing! And all sorts of public used that corridor in front of my window for commuting, like the Dracula, or the yakshi’s from mallu myths, zombies, the valkyries, shoorpanakha from the Ramayana(which was being aired then) and even Mr. Skeletor himself sometimes. I didn’t enjoy all the buzz you see, so mostly, I slept alongside mom! The best part of the day used to be the journey to the school in the school bus and back. The school bus was a pre-independence model Mercedes painted in sky-blue and white like the Argentine flag, and was driven by a 70 year old rhino of a man with an unshaven face, bushy eyebrows, and an irritated look on his face, always. I dunno which way the trait was passed, but the façade of the bus also looked exactly like its driver. Obviously both had seen better days. And I had this nasty little habit of associating automobiles with people’s faces – So tata buses were always cheerful and smiling, Leyland looked like they’re in some kind of a hurry, ambassadors meant business and tempos looked as if they’d just received a punch in the nose! To school took almost an hour and a half, and all the kids made sure they made the most of all that time, coz once inside school, it was business. And in the evening, it was my job to buy the milk and boil it by the time mom was back from office, so that she could mix it to make tea pretty fast. I have several times tried to convince mom that “There’s no use fretting over spilt milk”, but she would never listen!!

There was a pond in the backyard which had fish in it! Big deal, what else do you expect to find in a backyard-pond, the Lock-ness monster? If you’re thinking so, then you don’t quite realize the possibilities a pond with fish could offer to an eight-year old! Like fishing, for instance! ;-)

I still remember the devotional songs they used to play in the dusk, in the nearby ‘Kaavu’. Those songs evoke a very strong nostalgic feeling when I hear them now. A few are –
1. Chandanacharchitha … -Chitra
2. Namaha – Yesudas
3. Anivaakachaarthil - Chitra
4. Radha than premathodano…- Yesudas ... and a few more. Sweet!

We stayed there for just a year and moved to another one nearby, where we continued to live till early this year! And I don’t really consider that place as interesting or worthy of a post, So I would move on to the place where I lived during my engg college days, in the next post!

A place called home

2005-10-10T18:15:00.000+05:30

There, everyone! How ye doing? Yeah this took a long time coming, I know, many of those who have wandered around these premises musta got bored and left by now. I don’t know what will it cost me to have them back… Whatever, I’m ready to bear the cost.

Yeah, I was sleeping all these while. Just got myself shut up in my little den in the snow, and hibernated for a month. And a lot of things happened outside, meanwhile! Some things even changed their identity. Like I got this forward titled “Katrina Kaif: Careful”. Suddenly I was slithered down into this wonderful little reverie of a skimpily clad goddess with long legs and a killer smile. My urges got the better of me and I opened it in broad daylight, one hand strategically placed on “alt+tab” to take sudden evasive action, and I was greeted by this picture of a very very sexy, well….hurricane, and a cricketer, whom some of my female friends might consider sexy, not me, naah I’m too straight for that. Katrina Kaif!! Bad taste! Very, very bad taste. Wait, if that didn’t get the mucus going haywire inside your esophagus, then this will. The best ever act of Charity in those difficult times came from none other than Britney Spears, who donated her diamond studded bikini and brassiere to be auctioned, for the benefit of Katrina victims!! Diamond studded what??? She would have done much better if she had opted to do a live performance in New Orleans free of cost, hip swinging and tummy shaking and all that! Hurricane relief, and what a relief would that be!

I digressed. This is what I intended to say...Yesterday while I was traveling home, it rained outside. You know, rain, it does many nasty things to our imagination, and it’s a wonderful dreamlike feeling if you’re sitting in a Volvo, with 80% of the sides open to nature and anything to suggest motion would be a gentle hum of the engine from the rear and the occasional lunge forward from shifting gears. (I suggest you don’t look out through the front windshield, unless u have at least 100 hours of in-flight experience in any one of these - Mirage. Mig, the Sukhoi or the F-series! Not one for the faint-hearted!) So the world whizzed past me in a hurry, and I was thrown back, around 20 years, to the place, which is the first I remember to be, my home! As a result, here’s the post-series on the places I have lived so far!

***********************************************************************

Draw a 2:1 rectangle, longer side as the base, and divide the width into three equal sections. And the section in the middle is what my first ‘home’ looked like! Imagining the rooms are simpler still, extend the rectangle three-dimensionally backwards, and divide the length into 4, bingo, you have four rooms! And toilet was outside! That was the super-duper premium quarters of this great settlement of tenants ranging from the municipality-insecticide guy, to a group of three engineering college students, who lived in the quarter next to ours. And all owned by one man, whom my parents used to refer to (pssst…) in secret as, surprisingly, “The Owner”! He had a sprawling house in the middle of this entire cornucopia and two Tasmanian devils for children. I don’t even remember those engineering guys, any venture into their premises were dealt with serious repercussions, them having to bear this ‘dubious’ reputation of being "engineering college students”! O boy didn’t I find out the reason later!!! There was a little rock in front, where we – the gang, used to make burrows and houses. I once made an entire burrow out of characters from “Balarama”, including Kapeesh, Kaloolo, Mayavi etc. I forgot the name of the lion, which I placed in the throne inside, surrounded by all his loyal subjects, complete with thrones and council and all that! And there was this big “njaval” tree in the premises, which became the centre of activity during the summer days. Some really smart boys used to climb on top and shake all the njaval-pazhams to the ground, which, more enterprising people like us, collected and ran for our lives! Don’t remember much of the neighbors. Again, the rains were the most pleasant and dangerous times in the place, dangerous because, the ground was hard and collected a lot of moss during monsoons, which became free-waltz training floor!

We shifted after my sister was born.

To be continued…

Departing from tradition

2005-09-16T14:27:00.000+05:30

Well, hope you noticed the pun in the title. If not, you will, after reading.

An announcement came in the company newsletter on Wednesday, that those who wish to come to office in traditional wear can do so, on Friday. It came very late, as if they wanted to make sure no one sees it. Suddenly it reminded me of my father, during my early teens – when I would ask for something and he wouldn’t hear a word of it, and maybe later tell my mom that I can do whatever I please…hehe those times! Then I would mostly choose not to do it, but today, I did. I came wearing a mundu.

Wearing seems hardly the term here, as you are always bogged down by the niggling doubt in the back your mind whether you’re inside it or outside it. The feeling of giving out a wide yawn and finding yourself naked(well, almost) below the waist must be quite odd, especially if you’re at office. Also, wearing mundu means the number of pockets at your disposal is suddenly reduced from six to one, six including the special mobile carrier tucked into your right pant pocket. Now that poses a colossal problem. You’re somehow supposed to fit into one single shirt-pocket your wallet, pen, mobile, bike-key, house-key, draw-key, hair comb, kerchief, the sodexho coupons, the lanyard and the kitchen sink, duh! I will look like Mohanlal when I walk today (shirt having only one pocket)

Wearing mundu has its advantages, though. Besides making ironing much simpler, you can rid yourselves of the shoe and socks, unless you want to look like SureshGopi did in Lelam. And one particular activity is reduced in its complexity by about 70%! Number of steps reduced from 6 to 2. Geehaha!

And so I marched proudly into the lobby in my crisply ironed Kasavu mundu along with Ch. But to my utter dismay, I didn’t find the overwhelming response I was expecting today. In fact, when we came in, we almost began panicking seeing everyone else in formal(western) wear and was about to distort our faces and start limping when we saw a couple of people in mundu. That relieved us (didn’t relieve too much as this might cause the knot to loosen and the mundu to pursue its own course). But I have one doubt in my mind though, the company newsletter said traditional wear. Since when did shirt become traditional wear of Kerala? Just kidding….

Say that again....

2005-08-24T14:11:00.000+05:30

"We perceive no reason," the Supreme Court ruled, "why both parents of a child cannot be women."

I leave it to you to think and comment on this one. Mentally/visually challenged readers can also take part. (I mean no offense, please)

Go to article in NY times.

Gossipping!

2005-08-22T14:57:00.000+05:30

THUD! It hit me like a missile. For a moment, darkness spread into my eyes, I lost footing, but finally managed stay firm on ground. He thinks its funny, throwing stuff at me like that. I wish one day I could stand up tall against him and spit it all out on his face. But I know I can’t. Never, ever.

Let me introduce the other characters of this house. There are three of them. Let’s call them X1, X2 and X3, for the sake of obscurity. The three of them live in the house, with me. And I, am the waste bin, to say it straight without any pretensions. I sit, or stand, or whichever way you prefer to call it, in a dark corner of the room, in front of the wash basin and the mirror. I wish I could walk up and claim my rightful place in the house, which I would prefer to be, in the center of the room. But since I don’t have limbs, or those who have, won’t bother to do me that favor, I end up sulking in this dark corner. They do take me, occasionally out, into the sun. And I love it. Oh don’t get the wrong idea, Im not one of those idiotic romantic types who start melting when they hear the chirping of a bird or feel the warmth of the sun etc… I don’t give a shit for all those. I love it because when they take me outside, they clean me up of all their shit. And keep me back in my own private tropical island. Squeaky clean, glistening, just ready to take in more crap. Ah, life’s good!

I could go on for days about crap if I start, I guess when it comes to crap, there is no one better educated than me. But I guess you folks won’t really be interested, folks are always interested in gossip about other folks’ lives, which I think is crap anyway. Stuff like - X3 checks out his receding hairline 30 minutes everyday in front of the mirror. X1 thinks X25 is an asshole. And X2 stares into the mirror like he can see the other side. That’s the kind of stuff folks are interested in.

Like this one day, all of them were having some booze party, there were noises and laughter all around, and I was getting so damn tired of all this hullabaloo when I found a dark shadow approaching. It was X2, he came and stood in front of the mirror, silently for a long time, I suspect he was crying. But I just heard him roaring with laughter minutes ago. Then, just like he came, he went and joined the laughter. I don’t understand these folks. Maybe some of you reading might be able to make some sense out of all these. What’s that goon X1 doing when he stands staring at himself on end, sometimes talking some mumbo-jumbo I can’t make out? He strikes me as pretty edgy at times. But he’s okay when he’s with others. Thank god he’s stopped examining his bulging biceps these days, for, they don’t bulge anymore (in that location, but elsewhere), and any effort on his part to make them bulge is only likely to escape as rear-gas. Yuck! And to think I stand right in the firing line. Folks are so obsessed with their biceps, their hair, their tummies, and their… oh forget it! We didn’t quite talk about X3 did we? We will, on another occasion.

Another THUD!

***Goes silent****

The season of longing.

2005-08-03T16:16:00.000+05:30

Who gives a shit for primordial urges these days? Man has come a long way from cages, and such things as mating and reproducing are carried out with the same seasonal fervor, only by those dogs in the streets. That reminded me of last Friday, when the naughty little puppy who suddenly began to do the thing to his sweetheart, a white long-legged beauty with a sexy scar on her face, in public and in broad daylight, and in authentic doggie fashion! And not to mention the utter discomfort that caused to the waiting public, and as some kids were staring open-mouthed wondering what in the world is going on, their parents were scampering desperately to catch an auto or a bus and flee from the scene, not even bothering to look at the routes. Didn’t they betray a shade of jealousy for our little canine couple who seemed to care all about nothing but the job at hand, I wondered!

The reason for such a contentious topic now, (I am sure half of my morally obligated readers have left by now) is that our discussions for the past few days have been hovering dangerously close to marriages, love affairs, high school crushes and the like. Hence the thoughts about mating season. I don’t think we’ve lost that gene completely, and it’s gently poking its head out of the hole, waking up from hibernation. Only in these times of such things as onsite deputations, B school admissions, Pay hikes and such occupying the top of our heads, these urges have been reduced to the scale of mere frivolities. And btw, nothing is more lame than a s/w engineer marrying another. Imagine, what could be more romantic than cooking your dinner together discussing the missing factor in RTM which caused another possible Change request to slip so flippantly away. Have you tried discussing the SQA audit over grating carrots? O man, its pure satori. (Pr, If you’re reading this, yes, I was inspired during the visit I paid to your place last day, and please forgive me. No offence…and the halwa was delicious!)

And one such frivolity, about a decade back, suddenly caught my attention last week. I stumbled upon my high school autograph. O don’t get into the impression that we happened to have reserved adjoining seats in the Jan Shatabdi express or something, in fact, I was searching for it and found it. And while lazily flipping through the pages I was nothing short of given “the treatment of the year” to read the jottings in there from my high-school sweet heart. I mean I was instantly elevated to a higher plane. (Dear X, if you are reading this somehow/somewhere, my home phone number is still the same ;-) ).

Those were the days!

More coming soon….

Figurewatching!

2005-07-27T18:18:00.000+05:30

Well I guess u can't make much out of the picture. It's actually showing me as the 1001st visitor of my own blog. I had a big promo and all worked out in mind for the 1000th visitor and all that, but in the end, missed it by a whisker. (Actually the 1000th visitor was to be promised a big dinner and night together with John Abraham/Aishwarya Rai, depending upon his/her orientation)

So until 10,000 next time, THANKS FOLKS, and be my guest always!!!!

End of innocence

2005-07-27T11:56:00.000+05:30

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Mutilation:(noun) [mu·ti·la·tion] An act, the process, or the result of inflicting serious injury on a person or animal or part of somebody or something’s body by removing or destroying parts of it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hello everyone,

I am a normal guy.
Sorry, that’s incorrect, I used to be a normal guy. Till yesterday.
I used to go to college, and I had ambitions, and dreams.
I was madly in love with a girl in my college, and I was going to talk to her today.
Now I wont, because I don't deserve her anymore. And I’m probably impotent now.
I used to have exactly 206 bones in my body, not a single one more than that.
I had a handsome face (Not my opinion alone).

I used to be a normal guy.

I peed in my pants during my freshman year, when my seniors had called me up for the ‘ritual’.
This used to be a secret I wouldn’t tell anyone, not even my wife when I am married.
But now, I wont pee in my pants, even if the Tyrannosaurus Rex himself incarnates in front of me during midnight. I pee through a tube, without even me realizing it, all day, all night.
By the way, the nights are too long now. It wasn’t like this before, till yesterday.

When I used to be a normal guy.

Till this happened…

Hyperlinkophobic!

2005-07-21T11:23:00.000+05:30

I don’t like the proliferation of the hyperlink - culture . Reading something in the web has become such a nightmare because of this. Imagine yourself reading an article on Silicon Valley’s decadence with your breath held hostage somewhere between your nasal cavity and food-pipe, and the hyperlink taking you here! (Click on the " Silicon Valley " at your own risk, especially if you’re in office)

Epilogue: To see the link dance, run your cursor over the paragraph above and look at your statusbar...

How my salary affected the world order

2005-07-15T14:30:00.000+05:30

It was meant to be nothing more than an innocuous prank when I told R that I got the increment letter yesterday, and had a very decent 65% hike( Which was waaay above what one would expect in the normal circumstances). The way the color of his face changed from red to pale to blue, should have given me a warning for the sort of things in store. Ok, here’s the background, he’s leaving the co. and all I wanted was to give him a good shot of adrenalin before he settles down for the mundane. Oh, haven’t you checked lately, the Oxford dictionary has recently revised their definition of mundane. Now it stands like this –

Mundane - mun·dane (m n-d n , m n d n ) adj. a young talented (while in college)
B Tech graduate, now a software engineer, married and (un)settled in Bangalore.

Ok, back to the story. Seeing him undergoing this unbearable pain and neurotic convulsions broke my heart and after a period of 30 minutes of having him in the doldrums, I told him the truth. But the color never really returned to his face. And I thought it was over….

Today:
I was woken up from deep slumber, by the cell-phone ringing. I first thought it was usual 5 o’ clock alarm (which was my way of believing that miracles are still possible with the help of cell-phones), turned it off and went to sleep again. But it won’t stop. So I lifted it, managed to open my eyes and saw that it was Prt. Calling. I accepted the call.

From the other end: “Macha, Good Morning!”

I looked around, yeah its morning, and I am still in my room. “Gloo… (Wiped the drool) Good morning!”

“Pinne what else da macha?”

What’s wrong with this guy? Waking me up in the middle of the night… okay 8:30 in the morning, but what difference does that make? And asking how’s my life progressing from boring to unbearable!! “Dey dey, cut the crap, what’s the matter? Did you ram your car up a truck’s backside or something?”

“No da, heard you got the ‘Ola’ (Mallu jargon for raise-letter)? And a pretty neat raise too, huh? ”

So that’s the matter! Poor soul, tensions are running pretty high in our co. due to this particular white piece of paper. I explained him things and barely managed to convince him and gave him a pep talk (he had begun sobbing, too) and went to look for the newspaper in the courtyard. And started going through the daily motions. I was in the middle of a very pleasing article about unconditional “release” of prisoners in the Guantanamo bay, the phone rang again!

“Hello?”

Baritone from the other side: “Hi, this hand is cold and white ass Can I touch you now Sir? ”

“WHAT?”

“Hi, this is Andy calling from White house, can I talk to you now Sir?”

?!!

“Yes, you can, err, wait a minute”. Sound of flush.

“I may warn you that recording this conversation would be considered offensive and might affect the diplomatic ties between our nations, so can you please turn off that equipment, Sir?”. Duh! With a sense of déjà vu, I turned it off.

“Yes, I have turned it off”. Still trying to adjust to the hyper-reality.

“Sir, we had some extremely reliable sources reporting that you had a recent salary-hike, of about 65% of your current salary. Would you confirm this?”

:-O

“Yes…I mean NO, ….well I guess yes, but what the hell does it have to do with the white house?”

“This is classified, but I can tell you sir, you might just have saved you country from a possible and fatal nuclear fall-out”.

“But how does my salary affect the ties with Pakistan?”

“No, it’s not Pakistan, stupid, it’s the United States!”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Don’t you understand the apparent threat software professionals from India is causing to normal civilian life in the United States? Our first option was to work underground, make Indian companies pay more for keeping employees offshore, and stop them flocking to our country. The second option was, nuke your goddammed country of born geeks.”

“But Andy, dear, legislations against outsourcing should have solved your problem…”( On second thoughts) “…though it might affect the Dollar Vs the Euro in the long run…”

“Shut up! It’s not about outsourcing; it’s about your countrymen turning our country into a garbage-bin. First they troubled us with their accents, and then they started questioning our own accent and said what we spoke was not Kween’s Ingleesh. Then they started hanging their underwear upon their front-windows, playing some sort of Indian heavy metal called Bangra through loudspeakers, shouting through their phones in movies and other public places, wearing sandals to formal dinners, offering bribes to cops for escaping speeding tickets, trying to jump in and out of moving trains and getting themselves killed.... they’re everywhere and they're driving us nuts!!! You know what buddy, maybe we should just have nuked the hell out of you.” I heard terse breathing.

I paused for a while. “Ok, cool it, Andy man, count from 1 to 10 and backwards, do you practice Yoga?”

I heard the sound of the phone slamming on the other side. The line went dead.

*****
Courtesy: D,N.

Collage

2005-07-11T14:52:00.000+05:30

**Present**

The small raindrops fell all over my body and felt like the tiny scintillating stars that filled a portion of the sky. The sea was roughing up in an intimidating fashion, trying to remind something, trying to scare away the few people who braved the drizzle and the waves, and were either chatting sweet nothings into their palms pressed against their cheeks, or holding someone’s hands and gazing ahead at the eternity that lay before them. The rain was thickening up. I got inside the car. R looked lost in a cloud so far away, sitting in the next seat. Curt Cobain was screaming his heart out, “My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me, tell me where did you sleep last night…”. I saw a flickering flame at one end of the windshield.The hand-cart-vendor who sold Channa was pushing his cart against the wind.

* *Year 1998 * *

We were lying on the floor.
Staring at the ceiling fan, when its leaves cast a magical and kaleidoscopic imagery, in the faint tube-light.
That was the first time I had listened to Nirvana, 2nd year, in college.
“My girl, my girl…” and I felt a quaint uneasiness at the desperation of the voice.
He had explained to me about the grunge movement then.

* *Present * *

The cart reached the middle of the windscreen, and the flame was almost dying out. The man shielded it with his hand. There weren't many customers for him today, but he cant yet afford to go home.

* *Year 2002 * *

The crowds were beginning to disperse in the Juhu beach, and the hapless mules in their century old Marathi décor were calling it a day.
We sat on the edge of the beach, our buttocks occasionally wet by the brown colored seawater which glazed the sand like a mirror.
We were singing different songs, in no particular order or mood, whatever came to our mind.
“In the pines, in the pines where the sun don’t ever shine…”
That was when our voices reached the top of the crescendo and we screamed in delight, watched intently by the moon above.

* *Present * *

The rain had lessened again. The cart reached the other end of the windshield. The flame was still intact. And I think I caught a faint smile on the candle-lit face of the vendor. “I would shiveeeeeeeeeeeeeeer……”. Cobain’s voice died through the 360 Watts speakers behind me. I and R clapped alongwith the equally delirious crowd of the concert.

Great expectations...

2005-06-30T10:07:00.000+05:30

Don't expect. Anything.

The apparent danger of expecting something without any rhyme or reason is shown hilariously in that beautiful Zemeckis-Tom Hanks feel-good movie, Forrest Gump. Forrest is on a mission, he's running across the country, well u can say continent, since the U S of A is as wide as you can get in the American continent, both of them.

*** In Gump's own words ***
Some people say I am running for world peace, some say for women's liberation, but I just ran.
*** ***

And he gathers some flotsam along the way, people get inspired and follow him. One more month at it and he could have given birth to his own religion, and found his place among the likes of Jesus Christ, Buddha and Robert Atkins. But it would have been a troubling ritual for the followers of Forresteism, like Dec 25, they'd have their day.. "This is when Lord Forrest Gump started his run blah blah... " and the most pious of his followers would probably try their luck at lasting the length of the continent or something, hmm tough religion!

But Forrest stopped.

I admire him for that. He just stopped. And turned around. The followers couldn't believe it. How could he stop? Probably, this is the moment. This is when he's going to preach something, and heal the pain and suffering of the masses. And the masses, as it turned out, were wrong.

"I am just tired, I wanna go home". Obviously that's not scripture material! That won’t even make it to the 6th page of the evening tabloid. Duh! Humanity, thus lost the chance to witness the birth of another religion and its fanatic followers... terrorism, separate country or whatever. And Forrest went home!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....

2005-06-14T17:07:00.000+05:30

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing about a movie for the past 3-4 days. But it scared the hell out of me. Ok, so what’s the big deal? Both the People’s Council of China and the junta in Cambodia have expressed through written communication that they’re okay with the idea of me writing about another movie. Then? It’s the name of the movie which is setting me back, because the name is, so unnervingly for any connoisseur of the silverscreen art, “Starwars”. Now you get the magnanimity of the problem at hand.

There are two extremes of people who’ve seen the movie. The guy who sat in the next row to me; a forty something chap wearing a lungi and carrying a three-fold popy umbrella, desperately hoping to catch some sleaze in the Engleeeshu-padam. The poor chap had his moment of Nirvana when at the end of the second half, Natalie Portman appeared wearing what looked like a super-mini. That’s one end. And on the other extreme, we have people who know every single character in the movie by the name, shape, number of eyes, planet of origin, or procreation methodology. People who take it up as a thesis for their doing their PhD. People who greet each other in the morning saying “Let the force be with you”. By the way, that’s quite a nice way to say hello, but I think it’s a little inconvenient. Maybe we should abbreviate it to LTFBWU, duh, maybe we should stick to Hello.

So naturally, it was with this thought of being a part of something really colossal in its effect on humanity, that I stepped into the theatre, and there it was, all empty save a few small groups cuddled here and there, and a guard questioningly looking at me and suggesting to ask, lad, do u think u’ve landed up at the right door? I took a step backward and checked the name once again, yep, I am at the right place, at the right time. And with a wistful sigh, I marched in. And the numbers remained disgustingly low till the movie began, and that too, on the second day of showing in this town. This is the capital city of Kerala, the state of 100% literacy and a substantial English speaking population. We fit Engleesh dialogues into every improbable scene in our movies and boil in our seats at the sight of our heroes delivering them thunderously on-screen, the thunderous effect created by the unnecessary emphasis on their “t”s and “p”s rather than the merit of the script. Yet, we refuse go and see an English movie which is part of moviemaking history, and dismiss it as just special effects supershow, stuff worth watching for kids and teenagers only. Probably they should start showing alien sex in the movie, and our people will flock in to watch naked aliens copulating, I’m sure.

After three hours, when I walked out of the hall, the transformation of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Wader had etched its mark into my psyche. Why do I always have this funny feeling when watching something turn bad? I had the same thing when watching Smeagol becoming Gollum, Harry Osborne turning against Spiderman…. Maybe its time I went and saw a shrink, before I turn into something catastrophic for the planet. The same could not be said about the entire audience, though. Some were even thanking God for the series getting over, and some other, were making plans to watch the sequel which was going to be released next year!! :-D.

The fact that there won’t be another Starwars movie made me rather despondent through the rest of the day!Maybe I should get the dvds of all the episodes and watch them over and over again, a new finding, a new insight unfolding each time!

mon objet du désir

2005-06-07T03:41:00.000+05:30

It was, five years ago that I saw her for the first time.

Her pictures adorned the walls of my room. She was just a prototype then, just another head-turner in the inermot show. Seeing her picture, me and my fellow bunch of nut-cases had let out a huge “WWWAAAOOOUUWWW” in unison, and had bellowed with rage, squirmed with irreverence towards our own luck, writhed with ecstasy, and finally given in to the futility of all such intense desires, the nirvana of an un-attainable kind. It’s the Yam MT-01 I am talking about.

Five years since, the sight of its factory version has turned out to be even more perilous to my extremely fatuous mind. I can afford to take a look at the picture only at my own risk, for it leaves me in another fit of depression.

More at: http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/photos/2005models/2005models-Yamaha-MT01.htm

The homecoming

2005-06-03T13:59:00.000+05:30

Men are such clueless desperate dimwits. Why else would we imagine every other thing we use in our lives as being feminine, like bikes, cars, our working tools… the list goes endless. Just a word for all my readers from Venus who, I’m sure must have got all charged up now, and are ready to pounce on me. Please! :) See, that’s how desperate it can get. And that latest in the long line of things that I consider with a hint of tenderness, akin to the one felt towards the opposite sex, is a house. Wait a minute, a house??? Well if you consider the biological (read endocrinal) reasons that would make a bike being referred to as female, a house would seem like a rather phantasmagoric, perverted choice. But that’s not how it works.

Here’s the boring background.

All of a sudden, last month, we realized that the number of people living in the house and the size of the house (read house-rent) isn’t really much of a match together. The place which witnessed enormous amounts of crazy, noisy, dirty bachelor-life fun has now become rather subdued, there are no more fistfights and wrestling bouts which had accounted for two chairs being dumped as firewood, there are no ear-splitting, sleep-stopper screams in the middle of the night to wake people sleeping in a 2 Km periphery, and the number of vehicles flagged off from the gates at exactly 9:15 am in the morning (Office starts at 9) has been reduced from five to three. Thus, we started the hunt for a new house, and after a disgusting ordeal (we even saw places where they used to keep cattle, now converted to a house by fitting of a ceiling fan) we zeroed in on one. So, on May 31st, 7:30 in the evening, after almost finalizing the deal with the new house-owner, we reach the gates of the old house. At the gate, I pause to make a phone call, and Ch and P goes in.

Finishing the call, I hang up, and turn to face the sight that broke my heart into pieces. There she stood, bathed in the moonlight, with no lights on, partially obscured by the leaves of coconut-tree falling by the terrace, like loose strands of hair on a girl’s brow, with a heavy, melancholy air about the whole thing, and I saw the silhouettes of P and Ch sitting on the verandah. All the good moments we had there come rushing towards me in a gush of cool breeze. I walk gently towards them.

“Da, we’re sort of thinking….”

“I’m thinking too”

Smiles.“So let’s call the whole thing off, dammit!”

* * * * * * * * *

The next day, Ch fwded a house-for-rent ad from the Ads@India. P replied. “Athellam marannekku!”
Then I asked him “What happens once you’re married, pinne ni vaay nottam nirthumo?”
The reply was, “Nirthilla, pakshe athellam marannalle pattuu!”

Puttum Kadalayum

2005-06-01T11:56:00.000+05:30

"Puttum Kadalayum" doesn't really sound like something big enough to hinge one's career decisions upon. But it is. It was meant to be nothing more than a casual remark when Ch asked me yesterday, "Bangalore-ilo Pune -ilo poyal pinne puttum kadalem evidunnu kazhikkum??" But I know it, and he knows it too, that the Qn was a fatal setback to my plans to switch the current job for a better(?) one. I was crouching low down, ready to lift myself off, but this very innocuous sounding Qn made me sit back, and rethink.

So what is it about Puttum Kadalayum? Apart from being my favourite breakfast...(I am no glutton, but this combo, with pappadam as the kinky sidekick, brings me to my knees, literally.) it represents everything good about working in TVM. There is a certain noisy chord inside me which is still chanting I should run to a metro. The fatter paychecks, the late-night discos, the cosmopolitan crowd, the rock concerts... hmm. Have you ever stuck yourself into a chair and got too comfortable with it to make yourself the will required to get up? That's the feeling. You know you're approaching the event horizon when you start thinking like, "What could actually provide me satisfaction??". That could be the point of no return.

I am sure I've earned the ire of quite a few Mallus working outside Kerala with these statements. But this is my consolation for my inability to uproot and hurl myself, and land up in some metro and face "the crowd". I know I will do it someday. But for the time being, I'd rather relish the plaeasures of the likes of Puttum Kadalayum.

When it rains...

2005-05-30T10:54:00.000+05:30

Silence....

I was almost tempted to use an adjective, but the silence contained nothing. An adjective would be most inappropriate. I try lowering the window gently, and suddenly, the world announces its existence loudly through the chaotic and sweet music of the rain. Water splashes through the top of the glass and lands on my lap, my hand and the steering. I raise the window back to its initial position.

Silence again.

I glanced around. I cant make out whether the other four persons in the car are asleep or awake. But for this moment, I realize, they don't exist for me. Mist gathers up in the front windsheild. I turn the a/c on, and try to concentrate hard on the road in front. The windscreen-wipers were doing the best they could in a frantic attempt to part the water gushing down to sideways. I can faintly see the dark grey of the tarmac, gently dissolving into the rain. The darkness all around comes out and reveals itself as greenery; occasionally, when a clearing is reached. The headlamps don't seem to be too effective, so I ease up on the pedal. In my mind, I break into a loud, cheerful song!

A night with the telly

2005-05-26T17:55:00.000+05:30

Two posts in one day? Naah, its not the creative juices overflowing. Just plain joblessness. Alternative to sleeping in front of the comp. That makes a pretty lazy picture, and you dont want your PM catching you doing that. Actually, I dont want my PM catching me doing this, either. But I can always alt+tab to the WSAD workbench. Why dont those folks confine to their seats? Is it the body's refusal to accept a mind that's becoming increasingly morbid day by day? Could be.

Saw "Frida" in Z Studio yesterday. And I am grateful to the moment that prompted me to fake sleep and thus lose a chance of going for the movie - "Daivanaamathil". Frida is as artistically forthright as you can get. And then there was "Amelie" right after that. Seen it, but again, the kind of movie that you dont mind watching again. But I had to make up a bit of sleep for the Milan Vs Liverpool match. That was the only sad part of an otherwise rewarding night. The reds ran riot .In fact only for six minutes in the second half, but the Italians were too stunned to recover after those six minutes and got buried themselves in their own stuff.

How unfair!

Of human bondage...

2005-05-26T10:30:00.000+05:30

Another sad parting.

The size of our gang used to be quite a topic for discussion among other circles, even after more than a year since joining the company. But ever since, it's been dwindling. There was a certain beauty about it, like the irregularly shaped cobblestones meshing together to perfection in an italian street. No two people were alike, in fact, they were as diverse as a group of people can get. But the fine lines of alignment that they found among themselves, proved to be quite enduring. And that is the reason why, even after getting shattered across all over the country and all over the world, it still beats the same pulse. In accordion.

Raesh once said - "How good it would be if all of us were to live in the same apartment building... me at the top, P and family below that, then you, then Anu, then..." I looked at him suspiciously, hoping to find the traces of leftover alcohol intoxication. But I couldn't find any, and it disturbed me.

We're going to miss those "luv and prayers"... :)

A small step taken

2005-05-24T15:09:00.000+05:30

...this is not my planet...

Well thats what's written on top of the page. But it's a big fat lie, as the more alert/intelligent reader would have noticed. It is very much, and I love it.

Well so much for a very "hip and cool" statement. Not just. I've done my part..You know, I always watch and follow the environment related news with keen interest. Discovery/National geographic is my favourite channel. I don't throw litter around...well if you ask me, If the insistence of not littering becomes too overbearing upon my comfort and poise, I do, occasionally. And, I don't consider cigarette stubs as litter.

That was a great paragraph about how passively inactive one can get while being in the cozy comfort zone of being an "aware" person. I did manage to change all that.

I became a member of Greenpeace yesterday. Too verbose for such a simple thing? Yes. Very much! To be honest, it makes me mighty proud!!!

Now I have a chance to do my part, quite different from the "part" I've been playing so far. :)

Made in USA

2005-05-21T16:16:00.000+05:30

I am actually one week late on this. But when that irresistible urge to post a blog becomes too overwhelming, and you cant come up with a topic, you talk about the movie you went half-heartedly for, a week back.

We were out for dinner on Sunday night, and the cool night breeze carried us off to the theatre. In our lunkis and pajamas and all, in all splendour. Suddenly reminded me of college.

Before you read any further, I'm going to break the suspense. A good director's effort gone waste by a weak storyline and mediocre performances. Now,

The movie opens with a queer kind of song or poem or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Obviously, the director has tried to convey the poetic overtures of a hardcore Mallu(Maddy) living in the US of A. Las Vegas, to be precise. But the effort, unfortunately ended up somewhat like dipping a McMaharaja double cheese in Thenga chammanthi! Sigh!
I was impressed by the songs, more so by the idea of using shots from an old film to depict the childhood of Kavery.

I had wondered about this often, the scary extremes of which was answered by "The Trueman Show".

At one instance, Kavery shows up with Kanji and Payar, and sweet music flows, and the childhood incarnations are shown, the kid-Kavery (cute!) offering Kanji-Payar to kid Madhavan. That entire shot was included just for the sake of showing off. Or did Rajeev Anchal had "Made in USA" in mind when he did that shot years back? err.. George Lucas?

The characters lack feel. Except for the new face (whatshername? and quite a good looking face, too), none other looked convincing enough. The least said about supporting cast, the better. Oh, I didn't say a word about the story... Or, do you really want to hear the story?

The price of development

2005-05-19T01:33:00.000+05:30

There used to be a strecth of road on my way to work, which had an enormous(by Trivandrum standards) paddy field on one side. From the Terrace of Bhavani, it looked beautiful, the light green patch among the otherwise darker green canopy. And it was green all year round. I don't know what was peculiar about that particular crop, for I have seen such paddy fields change color with seasons.

In the evenings the place would be swarming with small flying insects, which hit our faces

like missiles when we rode through the stretch. On friday nights, while returning from the routine carouse sessions,
we used to stop by the place, releive ourselves, talk and watch the stars,

before getting convinced ourselves that the ground is not moving beneath our feet, and the bed back home would be a much cozier place to spend the night.

The whole place is red now. No, paddy fields can't change color. But the land is getting filled. We can see Tipper lorries bearing "Emergency: Technopark work" posters shuttling across, and in a few days, the whole greenery will vanish. And in a couple of years, another technopark campus will rise. And it will create jobs for a few more thousands. Jobs like I do.

Sympathy for the devil

2005-05-18T04:48:00.000+05:30

I went through another one of those 10-ways-to-improve-your-habits web-page today. It's amazing how cheap advices can get. As children, you got it from every other grown up whose midriff you had just bumped into, and they performed it with quite an amount of dutiful alacrity too... To hold you in her/his lap and shower you with tips on a wide variety of topics ranging from how to keep your bookshelf clean to stop peeing in your knickers. And If I had known the fact there wont be any distinguishable fall in the rate of advices I get as a grown-up nowadays per week, contrary to my belief, I'd have quit growing up right then. They come in every form and every color every hour. From the good-will-forward-mail I was talking about at the start of this paragraph to stupid video jockeys trying to fake some alien creature incapable of uttering normal human parlance.

The best thing about those advices is, they are never timed properly. They never appeal to your senses when they should. I did not have to ransack my grey cells trying to understand why "cigarette smoking is injurious to health" when I was a kid. And now, after all these years, it is quite plain why romancing my classmate secretly while in 3rd standard wasn't such a bright idea. The very fact that something should be the way it should be, says that it isn't. Period. Simple. If everything was, what a dull place this would be? That's my advocacy towards the little vices and sins of life. I am not quite sure the hell, as they has been tempting the human race with for ages where you get dirt cheap wine and unbounded sex(without having to worry for AIDS) exists anymore. That's my excuse.

zzz...

2005-05-17T02:12:00.000+05:30

I see the blank screen ready for edit! And that's how it is best kept now, blank. For now, my mind is also blank. You could say I am not highly productive during nights, blogically!

In my dream, I am the Jedi knight!!!

INXS

2005-05-12T09:52:00.000+05:30

I suddenly took a liking to INXS. Michael Hutchence has a gorgeous voice. Cant understand why I wasnt hooked till now. Maybe the videos. Its only recently that I saw a few of their videos. A+. Very different videos. Then started listening to the songs, and got addicted. :)

Heartbroken

2005-05-11T10:05:00.000+05:30

Somebody is really unwell, and that's making my day miserable.

It started yesterday evening at 4 o'clock. She was normal and cheerful till then. There were occasional complaints of feeling unwell, but I had largely ignored it, not taking it serisously. And then, when I kicked her, she gave a loud cry. Very unlike her... I cranked her up gently to let her work up the lubricants, and kicked her again. Again that disturbing yell, and she started up, but with a big rattling noise as if something had got trapped inside the cylinder. A broken piston ring? Scratched cylinder walls? A loose crank-nut? Before I could decide, she went dead again. She sounded normal after that and when I throttled her up, the response was as quick as usual.

That made me really gloomy yesterday.
And it returned today morning. I've to take her to the mechanic. Now I have a huge veil of suspicion on the last service, which was done last Saturday. I'm sure someone has done something, screwed something up.

Dear, get well soon!

Here I come

2005-05-10T14:53:00.002+05:30

So I start a new blog. My second, in fact. Switched coz I liked the looks of this one, and this is more felixible. If that makes anyone curious...Visit the old blog here.