???

Why is it that when I wish for something to happen it never does?

Why is it that when I advice someone it never works?

Why is it that I hate the course my life is charting and still feel pathetically incapable of doing something about it?

Why is it that I assume that people won’t mind what I say and will take whatever I say in the lighter vein? Why don’t I understand that people have feelings and can get hurt and feel bad unlike me?

Why MUST I act like I know everything that there is to know and why can’t I mind my own business?

Why is it so easy to convince me? Why do I always say yes to whatever people say? Am I indecisive? Am I a sycophant? Am I vulnerable? Am I stupid? Am I confused? Why don’t I know what I am?

Why is it that I lack the basic maturity to handle simple things in my life but seem to have lots of maturity in areas where it is of no use to me?

Why is it that though I have everything in life that I can ask for I crib?

Is it possible to love someone whom u haven’t seen, haven’t spoken to,dont know how they look, and who doesn’t even know that u exist just because u admire one trait in that person?

Is it possible to completely hate what you are doing, completely hate your job and yet be completely in love with life?

Is it possible to completely hate and totally love the same person at the same time? For that matter are love and hate mutually exclusive of each other?

Its been more than an year since I last cried because I have been really happy for the past one year, but yesterday night I was thinking “now why haven’t I cried for an year? Something is fishy”. Why am I scared of being happy?

The other day my manager told me that I had done a good job and gave me a high rating for everything this promotion cycle and told me she enjoyed reading my blogs. I should have been happy but I told myself “No Revs!! You hate this job. You hate the IT industry. You want to get out. Don’t be happy. No!!” why do I deny myself happiness?

If some one is nice to me I start thinking “ok!! Now what does he/she want” and when someone doesn’t talk to me I am like “huh!! Attitude?? See if I care”. Why am I so skeptical?

This post comes across as a post written by a morose, sad and suicidal person which is FAR far far from the truth. I am extremely happy and content with life as it is right now and life’s near perfect but these are questions which have been in mind for a long time and now they are out there because I decided I could do with a little bit of self introspection. It hasn’t helped because just like in college, though the questions are clear, the answers still elude me!! :)

L'affaire Skandagiri

DISCLAIMER: The following post is quite an onerous read and I wrote it just to have a record of my Skandagiri trip. Read it if at your own risk and if u have the time!! :)

Even for a loquacious person like me there are certain times in my life when I am left speechless, awestruck and completely at a loss for words. Some of these times in my life have been

1. When I first had the idly in our college mess and I was left speechless as to how anyone could possibly make idlis like this.
2. When I heard George Clooney say “does he make u laugh?” to Julia Roberts in Oceans Eleven and I was left speechless thinking it must be a crime to look so good.
3. When I saw a new born baby for the first ever time in my life and held her in my trembling hands and I was left speechless wondering if anything in life could be more perfect than this.
4. When I read some (actually all) of dinesh’s posts and I am left speechless thinking “oh my god!! What a gift this guy has”. Most of the times I hesitate to leave a comment because no comment of mine would actually do justice to his posts
5. When I stood at a height of 3000 metres above sea level in skandagiri, looked down, saw the clouds floating below me and the mountains above them, a slight drizzle beating down on my face and a naughty breeze tickling the exposed portion of my neck. I stood there thinking if anything could be more beautiful and prettier than this. I felt sad that I had only two eyes and there was only so much beauty that I could soak up with them.

My trip to skandagiri. Where do I start from?
It all began a couple of weeks back when I heard about the Chennai trekkers club started by a group of people from CISCO headed by Peter, from the friend of a friend and decided that rather than whiling away my weekends worrying about what I was going to do with my future I could go trekking or do something constructive. The registration was free and I immediately shot a mail to all my friends asking them to join. Quite surprisingly, given my group of high enthu friends I got positive replies from only two of them but it was a start nevertheless and we registered ourselves into the group and for the skandagiri trip on june 7th, 8th weekend.

Saturday morning 7 o clock came and fermie, suseela and I (akila was to join us in bangalore) found ourselves in the midst of 35 other highly enthused group of trekkers more or less the same age as us. I think one of the main reasons I completely enjoyed the trek was because of the absolutely brilliant company and highly vibrant group of people we trekked with. We boarded the Brindavan to Bangalore at 7 and I didn’t speak much to anyone in the train choosing instead to complete We the Living (bloody brilliant book. How I wish I could write book reviews!! Sigh!!) which I had bought a week back. It took sometime for us to get rid of our inhibitions and talk to the others and we had just got around to exchanging names when Bangalore came.

To reach skandagiri, we had to take a bus from Bangalore to Chikballapur which is 65 kms from Bang and then from there another 5 kms to reach skandagiri base hill. A game of Dumb charades in the bus helped us be friend a couple of others. Since there is no water or food or shop of any kind at the top we had to carry everything right from water to sleeping bags and we had to carry a weight of almost 5 kgs in our back pack up the hill As soon as we reached the base hill, took a “just-before-we-started-trekking” snap it started raining and we started the trek auspiciously with the rain gods blessing us. The problem with me is that when I really really enjoy something I find it difficult to express it or write about it which is why I cannot write book reviews. How can u write about an absolutely brilliant book in just 300 odd words? Its just not possible. I cannot even begin to write about the pleasure a cup of hot steaming tea, a plate of bhajjis and a good book on a rainy day give me or how much I love to drink a huge glass of chocolate milk shake on a hot summer day.

In the same way I don’t think any words of mine could do justice to how I felt when I climbed up that mountain with a good friend of mine, talking about nothing in specific but just enjoying each others company, helping each other at tricky places, sipping glucose to give us much needed energy, taking in the fresh air which is so rare, almost non existent in Chennai and admiring the natural beauty all around us. The view as we went higher was breath taking and the landscape was a very pretty blend of dark brown and green and looked very fresh because of the recent rains. Something tells me that nature must be a woman. So beautiful, deep, patient, helpful, kind, at times demanding, at times yielding, at times angry, at times playful and something which none of us can live without.

After an arduous but extremely fun trek of around 5 hours and after making many pit stops to rejuvenate ourselves and take photographs, we reached the top at around 8.00. it was dark and the entire city of Bangalore lay right below us decked in golden and silver lights. An absolutely spectacular sight. I wish I was a decent enough photographer but alas all my photos were so blurred that I have decided against sharing them with anyone. By this time we had gotten to know each other well and we spent a good one hour pulling each others legs, teasing grown up men who slept with turtles, teasing men who cracked sad jokes, the saddest being “what? You want to light ur cigarette? Well take my backpack. After I removed 2 bottles of water it has become lighter. Ha ha ha ha!!” , taking photos of women with scary eyes and men with hair longer than me!! ;) and generally having fun.

And then it began. It started off as a slight drizzle and then it started POURING like nobody’s business. It poured and kept pouring, drenching our bags, our sleeping bags, our tents but only partially dampening our spirit. The group of experienced trekkers headed by peter got into action, whipped out the strongest tents, set them up and pushed the girls in. Sigh!! The advantages of being a girl!! The poor guys not only got stuck with weak tents which blew away at night but also had to stand for a long time in the pouring rain setting up tents and taking care of dinner and other things. I must appreciate Chennai Trekkers for being extremely well planned and organized. I mean they made sure all of us had dinner and took very good care of the girls specifically and everyone generally. Hats off to Peter and Ramki the pillars of Chennai Trekkers.

It kept raining for a long time and there were five of us in a 5 feet by 5 feet tent soaked to the skin, shivering, cold, wet and singing at the top of our voices. It takes much more than rain, a cramped tent, wet sleeping bag and wet clothes to dampen the spirit of my friends and me. We cheered ourselves and irritated everyone else by singing at the top of our voices, so much so that it even stopped raining shortly after wards. Finally at around 2 we somehow pushed our bags, made some place and tried to catch some shut eye but it was impossible with the base of the tent all wet, our sleeping bags all wet, wet clothes and no space. Finally at around 4.30 we were slowly beginning to fall asleep and suddenly from somewhere a loud alarm rang jarring our senses and rudely waking us up. It was ironic. The alarm sang “it is raining now. Ooooooo” or some shit like that. One of my friends had given his cell and camera to me to protect it from the rain since we were the first people to go into tents. The jerk forgot to take it back and at 4.45 on a sleepless morning the bloody alarm rang waking us up. God!! With what choice words Aki and I scolded Jassi. Jass if you are reading this, we cursed you so much that if Bal Thackerey had been anywhere near our tent he would have put us behind bars for the continuous and tremendous use of foul language. We are not sorry. You deserved it then!! :P

Morning dawned and it was all misty and skandagiri is well known for its moon light trek and beautiful sun rise. Because of the mist we couldn’t see the sun rise but as the sun rose and dissipated the mist, the landscape shed all its inhibitions, lifted the veil of mist from its pretty face and stood out in front of us in all its glory which convinced me that nature HAS to be a woman. Playful as a naughty child one minute and shy as a newly wed bride the next.

I stood at the top of a rock looked down at the beautiful landscape, small houses, lovely floating clouds and thought “Global Warming?? Huh?? Where??” and a small voice inside me echoes a fear I have always had. That all this is only fleeting, its all surreal and there will be day when we will be buying the air we breathe and our future generation will never know what it is like to have the first rain of summer beat down on their face, will never smell the intoxicating smell of the mud after the rains, will never know the beautiful woman that nature is and I shiver a little and the chilly air is not the only thing to blame.

Anyway we started our down ward trek at around 7. reached the base hill by 9. hitched a ride from skandagiri to chikballapur on a cattle carrying van, reached the bus stop, boarded the bus, played another vigorous round of dumb C. It was amazing where we had all the energy from. I mean our legs were sore, our shoulders hurt, our head ached from lack of sleep but still we played with all the enthu we could muster. We reached the Bangalore station at 1.30 for our train at 2.30, boarded the train, bid goodbye to skandagiri and reached Chennai on Sunday night at 11.00

I was sorry when the perfect weekend ended and as I slept that night, though my legs ached my shoulders hut and my back had a sprain I had an overall great feeling and I am looking forward to my next trek with Chennai trekkers, the coolest trekking club in Tamil Nadu as they call themselves!! :)

Lessons learnt by Revathi Ramanan in the last one week!!

1. Never ever ever again waste money (however little it is) by buying any book written by chetan bhagat. I picked up three mistakes of my life and I can write a book with the same title the three mistakes of my life being

1. Five point someone

2. One night at the call center

3. Three mistakes of my life

Ok!! Five point someone wasn’t all that bad but the other two books!! Saaaaaaaaaad!! Someone please ask Chetan Bhagat to stop writing. Buying this guys books is like watching a karan johar movie. U know its gonna be bad but u still go ahead and read the book and watch the movie for reasons known to no one. Next time Mr.Bhagat decides to write a book and I like a fool decide to buy it again and write a post on how sad it was please feel free to get in touch with me and kill me. I would be very grateful to you.

2. Moto L6 when dropped from the fourth floor of an apartment is shattered into approximately 47 different pieces. This has been tested and proved by the author. :(.
Yep!! I accidentally dropped my cell into the lift of our building while attempting to close it. I had to then call the watchman and ask him to open the lift, jump down into the shaft and retrieve my sim card. My cell was beyond repair and I wish I had a camera so I could take a picture of my cell’s display and paste it here so you could see how I had tortured the fellow. I am now using my friend’s nokia 1600. May my moto’s soul rest in peace. Anyway with my cell gone I have lost all my contacts so if you figured in my contact list please do send me a message letting me know your number.

3. if u work in an IT company you would have come across the automatic doors which have sensors of some kind and open and close when the detect any movement around them. The lesson I learnt last week was that these doors can detect movements only when some one approaches the doors and not when someone stands right between the two doors. Here’s what happened to me last week. As I approached the doors, they opened and just when I was about to cross them my shoe strap snapped and I stood there in between the two doors trying to fix it. And suddenly I felt someone pushing me and when I turned around I was shocked to see that the doors were closing in on me and there I was caught like a little rat between the doors squealing for help. And then a good Samaritan came and the doors opened. It was such an embarrassing situation. So all u designers of automatic doors please make the doors intelligent enough to detect the presence of someone between them also

4. when your sister who recently moved to dubai calls u and starts crying DO NOT assume that she is crying because she is missing you. This was the conversation between my sis and me last week
Preethi: sob sob!! Sniff sniff!! Shruthiiiii
Me: (acting all smug thinking she is crying because she is missing me): what is it Preethi?
Preethi: Shruthi can u believe it? They give milk in bottles here and not in packets like in India. Who gives milk in bottles??? Waaah waaah
Me: (rolling my eyes and thinking)Sheeeesh!!! So much for missing me!!

Jokes apart i do miss her!! :(

In Happier Times - yeah!! the person with the idli like face on the left is my sis and the person on right who looks like she is the brand ambassador for anchor white is yours truly!! :) . This is one of my favorite pics taken when we went to Kabini some time last year!! beautiful place, lovely memories!!

5. Distance DOES the make the heart grow fonder. My sister and BIL when they were here wouldn’t trust me with a saefty pin at their place and now my BIL has gone as far as giving me his hardly used almost new 8 Gb Ipod nano saying he anyway doesn’t have time to listen to it and figured I would be the best person to make good use of it. You are now reading the blog of the proud owner of an 8 GB ipod nano. :). Sigh!! Is it possible to die out of happiness?? If yes then I would have died long ago!! Thanks guys!! (hey Milinta u dawg. i wrote this post before i read ur vile comment on my last post!! :P See even i can be grateful!! ;))

Of relocating sisters and brothers in law

Ye gads. don’t ever give anyone elder sisters and even if u do give people elder sisters don’t get them married to men who get settled in countries other than India. Before u guys go "Sheesh here she goes again, being all senti about her sister going to Dubai" let me assure you that this is not a senti post. If my sister and BIL wish to settle down in Dubai they can do so by all means and I am no one to stop them. but over the last weekend I have been helping my sis clean out her house, pack everything and decide which stuff to send to Dubai and which stuff to leave here in Chennai, which to dispose of etc and god damn it!!! her house is like an akshya pathram (for the uninitiated the akshay pathram was a vessel which krishna gave draupadi, a vessel which would never run out of food and the emptier it became the fuller it really was). Well as I was saying her house is like akshay pathram. The more u empty it, the more u un earth. Archaeologists would have had an easier time unearthing the Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilizations compared to the stuff we unearthed at Preethi's place.

It was amazing how each and every shelf in her house had something and she has been married only for two years. She has 3 pressure cookers, some 100 odd pieces of crockery, 6-7 mud pots, a million small wall hangings, a thousand medium sized wall hangings, a hundred large wall hangings (all of which she packed to take to Dubai!! :-\) And the number of vessels she has!!!! Phew!! The whole continent of Australia could have used my sister’s vessels alone to cook and lead a comfortable life. I was left to worry that if my parents had given all the vessels to my sister, what WOULD be left to give me when I got married. :P. (ok!! I don’t want to hear anyone saying “given your sad cooking (s)kills you would do well to hunt food and eat raw meat rather than using vessels to cook”). Anyway she packed all the vessels she could lay her hands on, she packed all the curtains and even the curtain rods (which she later did not take after we told her that the person who would occupy the house next wouldn’t mind a little privacy and would appreciate it if we left the curtain rods for him to hang curtains on, she packed so many clothes that I decided it is only because of people like my sister that people like Pamela Anderson and mallika sherawat have nothing to wear. I mean what would poor mallika do if she discovered that every time she visited a shop my sister had reached ahead of her and bought everything in the entire shop? Poor thing. No wonder she wears only rags.

And worse was the way my sister wanted to take everything to Dubai. I mean she wanted to take the fridge, the washing machine, the cupboard and have them transported via cargo to Dubai. she would look at everything and go "Awwwwwwwwww, amma gave this to me when I got married" looking at the washing machine or "Paati gave that to me when I got married" looking at the fridge or "I can’t possibly leave this here and go. Our neighbors neighbors daughter in surat gave it to me when I got married" and my BIL would growl saying "Grrrrrr. your neighbors neighbors daughter gave u a mud pot. We get mud pots in Dubai. We are leaving it here and going. period" and then there would be a huge fight between them with Preethi wanting to take the "oh-so-beautiful-but-heavy idol of Shiva which my aunt gave" and the "I-hardly-use-it-but-I-have-emotional-attachments-to-it pressure cooker" (errr yeah. when Preethi was in class 9th amma wrote an essay for her on renewable sources of energy and she won the first prize in the whole of Gujarat state for that essay. and the prize was a 2 liter pressure cooker!! lol!! :D) and my BIL would patiently re-iterate the fact that Dubai was a moderately well developed place and that people there did not hunt for food or wear leaves for clothes and hence had seen and used a pressure cooker and would definitely have cookers in the markets.

My sister though refused to believe this and put the pressure cooker along with the gasket and the weight into her suitcase when my BIL wasn’t looking. Needless to say my BIL wasn’t very pleased when my sis had to pay something close to 3000 bucks on extra baggage at the airport.

A major part of the packing was done when my BIL was already away in Dubai and during the course of relocating my sister has thrown away everything my BIL considered important and retained everything she considers important and my BIL considers worthless. Now that they are alone I shudder to think of the sparks which will fly because my sister and BIL agree on nothing. And all these days I was the peacemaker when they decided to have a go at each other fighting over trivial things like “u left the wet towel on the bed” or “damn!! U used today’s newspaper clean the kitchen now what will I read?” and I would act peacemaker by reminding them of their love for each other more important than wet towels and dirty newspapers. Now in Dubai they will be alone doing all the unpacking and I am afraid the Dubai government will imprison them for excessive domestic violence and for meting out untold atrocities on each other.

Anyway now with my sister gone, though a part of me is feeling sad a major part of me is relieved that I don’t have to go through the whole “Preethi can I throw this throw this handle less coffee mug” and hear her go “noooooo!! I can use that to keep a money plant in the kitchen when I go to Dubai” routine. I guess like my mother she will keep accumulating things over a period of 20 years and I am sure one day my niece/ nephew will be writing about how their mother annoys them with her spring cleaning!!! ;)

You have logged on to 100% bakwaas blog!! :P

DISCLAIMER: Read the rant below at your own risk. its utter bakwaas and nothing but bakwaas at its best. dont bang ur head at the table or curse me and all future generations of Ramanans after reading it!! :P

1. Last Friday when I had gone to the airport to drop my sister off I saw Mpumelelo Mbangwa (Yayy!! I got it right) standing right behind my sister and getting on the same flight as her. He is huge and has never washed his hair. His hair is disgusting to look at and he caught me looking at his hair and smiled at me thinking I was admiring his unconventional good looks. For the life of me I cannot understand how parents can take a new born baby look at it lovingly with happy tears in their eyes and name the cute l’il baby “mpumelelo”.!!! I mean would they have gone “Sigh!! such a cute baby!! lets name him Pume… I mean mpule…errr I mean mpumelelo”. I am sure even they wouldn’t have got his name right the first time. But like my friend says maybe he has the same things to say about my name though personally I think Revathi is much easier to pronounce than Mpumelelo!! Actually on second thoughts what an exotic name to have. what a great feeling when u realize that no one in this world shares ur name. sigh!! I guess I never will know what that feels like.

2. With my sister gone, I feel strange because I have no one to call and tell “I am bored. Chal koi movie chalte hai aaj raat ko” or calling her to say “sheeesh. U know what? Mere office mein ek ullu da patha hai jo…” or her calling me and telling me “aaj khana banane ka mood nahi hai. Chal punnu ka dhaaba chalte hai”. Now if I want to call her the thought that “damn it is 14 bucks per minute” remains at the back of my head. The leap from 40p to 14 bucks is a little unsettling and it will take some time to get used to that. Anyway I am getting used to it and I have been catching up on a lot of reading which I have always wanted to do but never found time because I had to chill with my sis

3. Its an amazing thing when u meet a friend of yours after 6 months and realize that NOTHING has changed and u resume talking to her as if u last spoke to her 10 minutes ago. Talking to a best friend, along with a huge glass of chocolate milkshake in a quiet corner of qwiky’s with the AC just right is the closest I have come to experiencing heaven. And heaven is when u tell her to put one straw in each nostril of hers, dip it into the chocolate milkshake and exhale (not inhale!! Otherwise u will die of chocolate milkshake asphyxiation) and admire the bubbles caused by the process and make a completel fool of ourselves in a decent establishment!! hmmmm please don’t use the straws which u put into ur nostrils to drink the milkshake. That’s GROSS!!! Did I hear someone say “yeah right!! Like the other stuff was very pleasant to read!!”. Humph!! :-\
Anyway the comfort levels I share with some people is amazing and I think I must have done a lot of good deeds in my previous births to have the kind of friends I have. Thanks guys!! :)

4. This weekend I went to higginbothams (with the same friend mentioned above) and had a whale of a time looking at, smelling and taking in the heady smell of all the books. I prefer higginbothams to odyssey/landmark because it is a place completely dedicated to books. Just books wherever u look. Not so with landmark and odyssey where if I turn right I can see random colors splashed haphazardly on a canvas under a section called modern art and when I turn left I see stuffed toys of all sizes and shapes. They seem to adulterate the place.

5. Chennai is becoming excruciatingly hot day by day. Its so bad that I actually look forward to come to office so I can spend some time in the AC. Can u believe that?? Looking forward to come to office. What IS wrong with me?? and with the mercury rising everyday and with the impending threat of being roofless I just hope we find a house soon. (don’t ask me what is the correlation between us being roofless and it being hot. :P)

6. I have a problem. I cant I just CANNOT be serious. However serious or grave the situation is, I find something to laugh at or something to be sarcastic about. This might be good and SEEM like an advantage but when people are talking seriously to u and u in turn crack some sad joke it seems rude and seems like u r making a mockery of the whole situation. like last week a friend of mine who is trying to woo this girl he likes, seriously wanted to know where he ought to take her for a date and I went “ha ha!! Take her to watch arasangam. Captain will be so revolting that you will look decent in relative comparison and she will say yes”. A second after I sent the message I was like “Sheeeeeeeesh!! How insensitive can u get Revs???”. Though my friend didn’t seem to mind I felt like a piece of shit. Sometimes in my attempt to be funny I think I unconsciously hurt people. I am sorry if you are one of them. I might seem like a person who steals hand bags from old ladies and pinches small kids hard when no one is looking (in short I might seem like a B**ch) but assure u I aint all that bad!! ;)

7. My parents are going to the US and UK for a three month trip and I am really really happy for them. I mean in the 26 years that they have been married, they haven’t had a single decent holiday (nope! I don’t count the annual visit to Chennai in the peak of summer every year till 2000 as holiday) mainly because either I would have malaria or Preethi would have typhoid or either one of us would be in 10th/12th or just about to join college or just finishing college or be home for the semester hols or shifting houses or something. They have sacrificed a helluva lot for the both of us and I am glad they are taking some time off now and going to have a ball without having the two of us to badger them. I would have loved to sponsor their US UK trip but the last I heard, 600 bucks (my bank balance) doesn’t buy to and fro tickets to the US!! :-\

8. The aunt of a very good friend of mine is admitted in appollo hospital in a very critical condition with serious head injury because she was run down by a guy on a bike. To all u guys who drive fast bikes, please be careful when u r turning and please respect those traffic signals. They have not been installed on all busy junctions to teach kids the difference between the colors red green and orange. They have a more serious purpose and a lot of people would appreciate it if u followed them. Anyway I hope she comes out of danger soon and gets well soon. She has two young children and I again find myself doubting the existence of god!!

9. Work is pretty relaxed now and I am getting lot of time to blog about inconsequential things and subjecting u to utter nonsense but u don’t have a choice but to read this crap. :P

10. If you are still reading, hats off to you. It either means you are mother Teresa or as jobless as I am!! :)

Travails of house hunting - Part II

Well I promised a part II (read part I HERE) and here it is. ok!! u guys can stop saying "why oh why does she keep her promises and torture us with meanningless posts!! :P".

So where was I? Ah!! yes. Brokers. As we decided that we would definitely need a broker to help us, help poured in from all corners and we were flooded with the numbers of brokers all of whom were willing to show us “super houses in ‘dee-jent’ localities and very 'reasonable' rent”. These broker guys earn more than what we do and I have decided that the day I get completely bored of software and everything else that I have ever been interested in I will become a broker. I mean just look at the figures. If they are able to “sell” a good house to someone they get a months rent as broker fees. Now assuming the rent is 7000 (minimum) this guy gets 7000 bucks and just by selling 5 or even 4 houses a month he earns a cool tax free 28 to 30K a month. How cool is that? All u need is some marketing skills and a vehicle (sun screen if u r in chennai!! :P) and as we became experienced in dealing with brokers we began to understand how the minds of these guys work and I have complied a small dictionary of the lingo which these brokers use.

What they say :super house, very less rent, locality oooook
actual meaning: the house is great but you will have shop keepers, plumbers and electricians as neighbours and they only drink 5 times a week and beat their wives only when they are drunk

What they say : super house, super locality, rent ok.
actual meaning: the house is great, locality impeccable but u must give an arm and a leg for advance, an eye for the rent and the other arm as broker fees

What they say :central locality, right opposite to coffee day
actual meaning: next to coffee day there is a road, take the first left, third right then the second left and now if u hold a compass the north will point towards coffee day. Right behind na??

What they say : if the broker has a vehicle and says “only a little distance madam. I will come by vehicle. U can walk”
actual meaning: buy a water bottle, hiking shoes and be prepared to walk for 5 kms on winding roads while mr. broker drives his vehicle slowly ahead of u and keeps saying “idho vandhiruchu”

What they say :if the broker doesn’t have a vehicle and says “ayyo. Very far. Must take an auto”
actual meaning: the house is less than 200 metres away.

All these brokers have this amazing ability to portray the dingiest and dirtiest of houses as taj mahals and their marketing skills never fail to amaze me. I mean u do need some guts to call a house which smells worse than a public urinal, looks worse than vijaykanth’s and TR’s face put together as “super veedu”. And the best part is that when u tell them u r not interested they will look at u with a sad expression on their face saying “inniku pona nalaiku irrukadhu. Nalla veedu miss panareenga. Unglakku vendam na sollungo naraya customers waiting la irrukaanga” as if Bill clinton and APJ had wanted that house but the broker had said "No!! i will give it only to Revathi Ramanan!!". :-\

The result of all these skirmishes with brokers is that the cell phones of four young pretty girls (errr… us) which should ideally contain the numbers of cute looking guys now contains the numbers of 20 odd brokers all of whom are useless and haven’t succeeded in showing us a single decent place. Which means we are still house less so if any of u guys know of any good single bedroom houses in and around thiruvanmiyur and adyar area do drop in a comment. Errr. No. we wont pay u broker fees but you will be blessed by 4 young and pretty things (us again!! :P) that the day u start searching houses u should get one as soon as possible without the help of brokers!! ;)

My sister preethi just finished crying. She cried because she had to go to dubai, leaving Chennai, leaving her house, leaving my grandmother, leaving parents, leaving her friends, leaving all relatives, leaving cousins, leaving a country which has been home to her for 25 years now. I hate to see her cry. I consider myself a fairly strong person but I can’t see my sister in pain, can’t see her cry. I feel helpless because there is absolutely nothing I can do to lessen her misery. She has these big shrek pussy cat kind of eyes which fill up to their brim with tears and it breaks my heart when I see those big fat tears roll down from those doe shaped eyes on to those big fat cheeks. My sad jokes and equally sad sense of humor do nothing to alleviate her grief and I know it is only a matter of time before my resolve breaks down too.
I wish she wouldn’t cry and I wish she didn’t have to go.
Sigh!!!!!!!

Travails of house hunting - part I

If you are above the age of 22 and working in a city where your parents don’t live, you would have definitely gone through the ordeal of finding a decent house to live in, gone through the ordeal of dealing with obnoxious brokers, irritating house owners and nosy neighbors. Recently we were asked to evict our house of one year, given a notice of one month and asked to find another house to live in because our house owner’s son wanted to occupy the house. Then began the Herculean task of finding a good house to live in. Now when u are talking about 4 girls living alone there are obviously a couple of basic things to take into consideration.

1. proximity to office
2. no wine shops within half kilometer radius of the house
3. decent neighbors who wouldn’t look at you like they have never seen a girl ever before in their life
4. decent residential area inhabited by people of your kind

Now the trouble with our basic requirements was that these were the basic requirements of everyone searching for a house and hence such houses were very very few in number and after wasting a week thinking we would definitely get something we realized it wasn’t going to be an easy task. So my friends and I who have no clue what 7 am (or for that matter 8,9 and 10 am. :P) on a weekend looks like, have no clue where the classifieds section in a newspaper is, got up at 6 o clock last Saturday, bought all the newspapers and free ads we could lay our hands on and started short listing houses which would match our specifications.

Here is where I introduce you to a breed of humanity which in the disguise of a blessing is nothing but a menace to the society and especially to young people looking for houses. Brokers. In the past one week my friends and I have seen them all. Fat brokers, thin brokers, greedy brokers, stingy brokers, revolting brokers, seemingly friendly and completely unfriendly brokers. Having dealt with this menace the first time we were on the lookout for a house this time we were very keen to avoid them and hoped we would get a house without their assistance. Wrong!! The first lesson we learnt was that when u see ads like the following don’t get excited

Single bedroom house, rent rs 6000, III main road Gandhi nagar, brokers excuse, no advance

Now III main road Gandhi nagar is a wonderful locality and getting a house for 6000 bucks and no advance and broker fees there is something inconceivable and we obviously got excited, called the owner and at 7 the same day set out in search of the house. As we walked on III main road, saw the amazing buildings, beautiful apartments and tree lined roads, mentally we had already started living in the house, even making note of the vegetable vendors, proximity to the bus stand and other facilities in the area. Finally we reached old no 3, III main road which is where the owner lived.

It was a beautiful duplex house, with a nice garden and a friendly looking dog. (We even decided what we would call the dog!! Sigh!!) And then the owner took us behind his house to this rundown place which had last seen a coat of paint when India got its independence. The way to the “house” for rent was a long winding dungeon like passage which could hold only one person (a thin one, a fat person would have to walk sideways. :-\) at a time and we went in a single file to see the house. Personally I thought that like miners we should have carried a canary or candle to ascertain the oxygen levels in that passage and I am sure the candle would have blown out and the canary would have died on entering the house. :-\. Anyway it was a sad house with cracked tiles, cobwebs hanging from every corner and the toilets in trains were like mansions when compared to the bathroom.

We were desperate for a house to live in but not that desperate. It was then that realization dawned on us that searching for a house for rent in Chennai without the help of a broker is as difficult as getting some work done in government offices without giving bribes. It was impossible. Our experience with the brokers deserves another post and this one is getting way too long anyway. Will write about that travails of house hunting – part II

Tagged!!

I have been tagged by srikanth with this tag and here i go!! :)

Last movie seen in a theatre:

u me aur Hum (saaaaaaaaaaaaad movie!! ). I was wishing I would suffer from alzheimers after watching the movie so I could forget that I had watched the movie

What book are you reading?

RK Narayan’s bachelor of arts and chicken soup for the women’s soul. :P

Favourite board game:

Scrabble and scotland yard (I used to love this game but its been like 10 years since I played)

Favourite magazine:

business today, frontline, pc quest… YEAH RIGHT!!!
JAM mag!!

Favourite smells:

smell of old and new books, mann vasanai (mitti ki khushboo)

Favourite sound:

silence, howling of the wind

Worst feeling in the world:

splitting headache + lots of work + bad food

What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?

is the bathroom free for me to take a bath?

Favourite fast food place:

I like all of them. MacD, marry brown, pizza corner everything!!

Future child’s name:

as my grandmother would say “adiyengra pondaati ya kanom, pulla peru gopalakrishnan”. For people who don’t know tamil please forgive me but I cant translate that

Finish this statement, “If I had a lot of money I’d…”

I would just get up because the only place where I will have a lot of money is in my dreams!! :

Do you drive fast?

yup. I love the wind on my face.
@amma, appa and all relatives
Heh heh!! I am lying of course. I drive at 20 kmph (sometimes even 10), wear a helmet and even let cycle and auto rickshaw fellows over take me.
(uncrossing fingers behind my back Phew!!! )

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

lol!! NO!!
On second thoughts. Does my sister qualify? I mean she is stuffed (sorry preethi) and she is an animal so yeah!! :P

Storms - Cool or Scary?

Cool

Do you eat the stems on broccoli?

I hate the vegetable and eat no part of it

If you could dye your hair any colour, what would be your choice?

black. Nothing beats black

Name all the different cities/towns you have lived in:

baroda , surat , jamnagar , sunabeda, chennai, reliance township

Favourite sports to watch:

cricket

One nice thing about the person who sent this to you:

linux stud

What’s under your bed?

no beds. Aint rich enough to buy beds yet. just mattresses!! :P

Would you like to be born as yourself again?

absolutely!! I love myself!! :)

Morning person or night owl?

night owl most definitely.

Over easy or sunny side up?

sunny side up!!

Favourite place to relax:

home. :)

Favourite ice cream flavour:

chocolate

You pass this tag to

Jassi (coz he hates tags and I am sure would have loved to kill me if only he could get hold of me)
Sheikh (coz its been eons since he updated his blog and he only does it every time I give him a tag)
Mi (coz I always tag her!! :P)

Anyone else who wants to take this tag up please feel free to do so!! :P

Of all the people you tagged this to, who’s most likely to respond first?Will update this after one of them finishes it!!

Lately I have been spending obscene amounts of money on books. I was just writing accounts yesterday (oh yeah!! That’s one new year resolution I have been following religiously never mind the fact that everyday it reads like this Food: 70, misc:100!! ;)) and I discovered that I spend close to 7% of my salary every month on books. (I mean the miscellaneous expenses most of the times is on books). When I started earning I promised myself that I would spend all my money on books and after that if I had anything left I would spend it on rent and food and other such trivial things. I remember as soon as I got my first salary in hand I rushed to odyssey looked lovingly at all the books and thought “Wow man!!! I can buy all these books with MY money now and I am gonna start right NOW!! Wow wow wow!!” Thankfully(or maybe not) sanity prevailed and after all these romantic dreams had been wiped out cruelly from my mind I told myself that come what may I would buy at least 3 books a month. The result of this promise which I made to myself is that my bank balance by the end of the month reads in double digits and at the end of every month I find myself thanking HDFC bank that they let me have a zero balance account!! :-\

But I just can’t seem to help myself. Whenever I go out I see myself picking all the wodehouses, roald dahls, R K narayans, Ruskin bonds, james herriots, bill brysons Jeffery archers and john grishams that I can lay my hands on. The other day I went to odyssey and I actually picked up a book because I completely loved the way it smelt and just didn’t have the heart to keep it back on the shelf and so I bought it. and I love these second hand book shops in T Nagar and Moore market. They have wonderful hardback and paperback versions of PG Wodehouse and Roald Dahl available at steal prices and I completely love the heady smell of moth balls and yellowing paper which emanates from them. And before my bank balance and my conscience can reprimand me I buy the books. Its been 10 months since I started earning and I have close to 28 books in my collection now!! :)

The days when I come back early from office or weekends when I have nothing to do, there is nothing in this world which gives me more peace than curling up on the bed, hide and seek in one hand and a book in the other lost to the world. Ah!! Bliss!! :) Some people I know don’t read books and have never heard of enid blyton or tintin or RL Stevenson or archies or asterix and I feel sorry for them. I mean how can u honestly say that u have completed child hood if u haven’t solved a couple of non-existent mysteries with the find outers, if u haven’t been to the far far far away land on the wishing chair, if u haven’t loved betty and hated veronica, if u haven’t used words like billions of blue blistering barnacles, if u haven’t sung yo ho ho and a bottle of rum with long john silver or if u haven’t signed letters in blood ala tom sawyer and huckleberry finn?? All my life I have never been able to understand how people cannot like books. I mean the very sight of good books sets adrenalin coursing through my body, I become breathless and I want to possess the book ASAP. (ok!! Now even George Clooney has the same effect on me but given a choice between Clooney and a carton full of books the latter would win hands down I think!! ;))

Some books which I have read a gazillion times and would still read them again without tiring are

1. Mating season, pigs have wings, leave it to Psmith by PGW. Basically all books by PGW

2. boy, going solo and short stories by Roald Dahl

3. swami and friends by RK Narayan

4. daddy long legs by jean Webster (ok this probably speaks volumes about my level of maturity but seriously if u guys haven’t read daddy long legs yet, please go to ur nearest book store, pick up this book and read it. its one of the most eloquently wonderful work of literature that I have ever read)

5. time stops at shamli and other stories by Ruskin bond

6. The lord god made them all by james herriot

7. anne frank’s diary

8. fountain head by ayn rand

9. a twist in the tale by Jeffery archer

10. all enid blytons

of all the books that I have read the ones which made absolutely no sense whatsoever to me were

1. one night at the call center by chetan bhagat

2. making the minister smile by some one, don’t remember who

3. eleven minutes and alchemist by Paulo Coelho (ok I can see half the population of this world going Whaaaaat??? But I am this extremely shallow person who cannot appreciate fine stuff like john keats’ poetry or Paulo coelho’s writings. I can’t delve into what the author is trying to say. It has to hit me right on the face for me to understand it. In alchemist I couldn’t really follow why the boy must speak the language of the desert or why the horse must speak the language of the boy. And in eleven minutes I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why he wrote a whole book on eleven minutes of errrr.. never mind!!)

4. Life isn’t all Haa haa Hee hee by Meera Syal. (I decided she must have either been stoned or in an inebriated state when she wrote this book)

5. Mein Kampf. (all my attempts to try and read this book and complete it were in vain. I finally gave up)

6. Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel gracia marquez. (another one of those deep profound books whose actual meaning completely eluded me. I think the book lost most of its essence when it was translated from Spanish to English. And I kept reading the book till the last page thinking I would understand and follow. Normally I can finish in a good 300 page book in 5 hours but this book took me a month to finish!! :)

Generally I can read any book and there are no books which I dislike per say and I have this amazing ability to read a book till the end however miserable it is. I just have to know how it ends. I think mein kampf was the only book which I gave up on. Phew!! This post is getting way too long!! :). Isn’t it amazing how u just cant stop talking when u start talking about books!! :)

A couple of days back I cleared an exam which I was supposed to take and clear so I could become a confirmed employee of cognizant. I wasted the whole of May day studying and trying to find out if EJBHome can be used only to create a bean or if it can be used to both create and remove session beans (or was it entity beans!! Whatever!!). Till a week back I didn’t even know what EJB stood for and now that’s the only thing about EJBs that I know. That it stands for Enterprise Java Bean. Its depressing. I have no clue why I am being made to write this exam where I am being forced to study technology which I will never use in my project, which I forgot the minute I cleared the exam. But I had to write it because only then I could hope to remain employed.

So I started studying two days before the exam. Started reading stuff like EJBs, CMP, BMP, Collection, Junit, design patterns. Obviously if u start studying 2 days before an exam u cannot hope to become well versed in the above mentioned nonsense. So we did what we do best. Tapped our sources who had already written the exam and asked them to prepare a question bank which contained the most important questions and studied only that. Not a single question made any sense to me. So we devised ways to remember and mug up the answers for all the questions.

Sample this. There was a question which said “what is the interface which allows operations on beans” whose answer was “javax.ejb.EJBObject” (EJB enthusiasts, DESIST from commenting!! :P )and three other questions which were exactly similar but had different answers. This was the conversation between my friend and me a day before the exam

Me: Yaar. I cant remember a single thing. I mean how will I remember that the entity allowing operations on beans is EJBObject and that which stores the state is EJBSession?

Friend: abey!! Simple hai. See. Look at the first question. One which allows Operations is EJBObject. Both have the letter “O” in them. So that’s the option. No other option has “O”. Ab second question dekh. One which stores the state in session. Both have the letter “S”. that’s the answer. Simple hai na??
She said with an all knowing air!!

I looked at her with new found respect, speechless, not knowing whether I should laugh coz I could now remember the answers or cry that the whole thing was nothing but an exercise in futility and if someone changed the question even slightly I would be lost.

After I finished the exam I proudly came out and messaged all my well wishers and told them. “Cleared. Got 76!!”. And even if a single one of them had replied asking “so!! This means u can start coding using EJBs right?” it would have been as absurd as asking Ricky Ponting after the Sydney Test “so!! This means u can conduct a seminar on sportsmanship right?”. :-\. I cant help but scream “What is the point of it all???”. Anyway do drop in your congratulations because, for whatever it is worth, I have just been promoted from Programmer analyst trainee to a programmer analyst!! And this also means that I am eligible to apply for visiting cards which bear my name and proudly proclaim Revathi Ramanan, Programmer Analyst. :P .

I am like this only ya!!!

A certain comment in my Makku post made me go into peals of laughter yesterday. The last comment on that post by an anonymous commentor was the highlight of my day yesterday. For the benefit of those of u who haven’t read it here’s the comment!!

You guys write this blog thinking that it is fun and many people may love it.. But what difference does it make between you and the bloody Indian politicians.. If you arent able to resist even this small temptation and be honest how can you expect a politician who has got a huge power at his disposal not be tempted..

Even more worse comparison is to a bollywood actor or actress who is ready to do anything only for the simple reason that people enjoy how ugly it may be..

Come on guys.. This is not to hurt anyone.. Stop writing bullshit blogs and try to write something that will influence someone..

I seriously don’t know who this is. Is it Mr. Anniyan or Mr.Indian who will roast me in a boiling cauldron of oil (or tea in this case!!) just because I free loaded a couple of teas all of them amounting to 100 odd thereby causing a dent of 100 (gasp!!!!) bucks in my college management’s funds of 20 odd lakhs?

Maybe tomorrow I will find myself in a lonely forest with Mr.Anon standing over me asking “oruthan vandhu oru naal 5 tea thirudina thappa???” and I will meekly say “thappu ila”, and then he will ask me “5 per anju anju naal anju anju tea a thirudina thappa??” and I will meekly say “thappa madri dhaanga theriyudhu” and then finally before pushing me into the boiling cauldron “5 laksham per, anju anju vaati, anju anju tea thirudina thappa” and just seconds before I die I will say “periya thappunga!!”

Oooooh!! I am really scared!! Don’t hurt me Mr. Anon. please!!!
I cant help being sarcastic. I feel sad for these anonymous commentors. I mean when Mr Anon here doesn’t have the nerve to reveal his name and has to hide behind the anonymous tag and leave vile comments, how the hell can he expect to change the world by asking college girls to stop stealing teas?

And with all due disrespect Mr. Anon, I am not asking you to read my blog, I am not saying I will immolate myslef or go on a hunger strike if u don’t leave comments on my blog, so if u don’t like my blog all u have to do is click on the “Next blog” link right up there and leave my page without gracing my blog with your esteemed comments!!

And though I am not averse to the idea of constructive criticism, I detest people who have to hide behind anonymous tags to leave venomous comments and those who think they can do what they please just by being anonymous. And stop telling me what I must write about and what not. Even if you were the last person in this planet i wouldnt want your opinion on what i should and shouldnt write about!! And just FYI this is my blog, not yours and I really don’t care if my writing influences someone or not least of all people like u!!

So thanks for the ethics class and I will convey your thoughts to all the bollywood/kollywood/tollywood/hollywood actresses and tell them to cover themselves and consult you before doing anything “ugly”!!

I just read this post of mine again and this has to be the rudest, most obnoxious and most audacious post i have ever written but it took me 15 mins to type this up (5 of which went in thinking up a suitable title) and i didnt want all that effort to go waste so just posted it :). And oh yeah!! By the way I do not know if anon here is male or female. I just used Mr for the sake of convenience!!

Hmmmmm

The other day I was watching the movie Bombay on TV. Now the only way you wouldn t have heard of or seen the movie Bombay is
1. if u have been living under a rock for the past 15 years
2. if u don’t appreciate good movies and prefer to watch movies like veerasamy etc.

Jokes apart, It is one of the most beautiful Indian movies I have seen. It has mani ratnam written all over it. The story is impeccable, the actors are impeccable, the direction is mind blowing and I am not even going to talk about the music. It speaks for itself. After all God composed the music for it. its gotta be great!!! :)

Anyway as I was saying I saw the movie (for the 7th time I think) after a very long time and it took me back to 1992. The babri masjid riots. On December 6th 1992, the babri masjid was demolished by hindu extremists and the whole of Bombay was burning. At that time we were living in surat- a city which is 5 hrs from Bombay and hence was affected by the riots. My dad had gone to a god forsaken place called babrala for a 6 month trip from office and my sister, mom and I were alone in surat when the riots struck. We were hindus living in a muslim area then, and my sister and I were attending a muslim school near home. Our muslim neighbors were extremely nice people who helped us when our area was attacked by muslim extremists thirsty for hindu blood and I don’t think I would be sitting and typing this if not for them.

I was a six year old for whom riots meant no school for ten days. It is only now that I realize what my mother would have gone through without having my father for support and living in a muslim area. My mother was a 30 year old woman with 9 and 6 year old girl children. It is only now that I understand what she would have gone through, what a struggle each day must have been. A struggle for food, struggle for milk, struggle for life and existence and yet there wasn’t a single day when my sister and I went hungry or a single time when my mother actually made us realize the seriousness of the situation choosing instead to keep all the troubles of herself than let us know. Sometimes I wish I had at least half the courage and fortitude which she has. I would be a very different person today.

I remember there used to be no vegetables or bread or milk at home and my mom would be scared to leave home to buy it because she was afraid that if she was attacked/killed, we would be alone. So if she went out anywhere she took us with her and I have vivid memories of sitting on a policeman’s motor bike and going to buy milk and veggies (due to curfew no vehicles were allowed to run and only police jeeps and motorbikes dotted the empty roads). I also have these disturbing images of entire buses being burnt and curfew being declared. On the roads where we usually saw children playing, vehicles zooming, people buying vegetables etc we saw skeletal remains of burnt buses, police jeeps and absolutely no souls on the road. Some of these images are etched and ingrained in my memory and I am not likely to forget them for a long time to come.

During the riots a part of our school was burnt by hindu extremists and many of my friends lost their parents. It was appalling. The massacre of innocent people in the name of communalism makes my blood boil. Also people who make statements like all muslims are terrorists or terrorism is rampant because of the presence of muslims irritate me to no end. All terrorists might be muslims but not vice versa. Someone rightly said that it is only in times of adversity that the true colors of human beings show. And in times of adversity you are neither hindu nor muslim. You are just another human being either capable of helping or in need of help.

To all the extremists and fanatics who are ready to take innocent lives and demolish prayer houses in the name of religion I have only one thing to say to u. The primary difference between animals and us is the fact that we have the ability to think. If u cannot think, cannot value another life, cannot understand that terms like hindus and musilms are trivial and are of no consequence whatsoever in a world where relationships and human bonds matter the most and not caste, creed or nationality than u most probably shouldn’t have completed evolution and your very existence is a shame on the human race.

What's in a name? Sigh!! Ask me!!

For the past 21 years I have had 2 names and when I say 2 names I mean 2 good names. It would have been all right if I had one good name called Revathi and the other one called chintoo, mintoo, munnu, chunnu, babloo, or something. That way at least people would have been able to differentiate between my good name and my pet name. but in my case I have 2 good names namely Revathi and Shruthi. And let me tell u for a perennially perplexed person like me its quite a confusing thing to have 2 names. When I was born my parents named me Shruthi. For the next two years I was called shruthi and I have a birth certificate which says I am shruthi. In the year 1988 my family suddenly decided to change my name to Revathi. I have asked all the members of my family why my name was changed but haven’t got any concrete answers. Some of the answers I got were

1. When I asked my sis she told me that I wasn’t the own child of my parents and that mom and dad had adopted me from the milk man who had 10 daughters, was in abject poverty and my parents decided to adopt a daughter of his (me!!) and since the milk man had named me shruthi my parents didn’t want to change it and hurt his feelings so once we moved to a different place my name was changed. For a long time, I think till class 12th I believed that I was adopted and would pick petty fights with my parents thinking they were being unkind to me because I was adopted.

2. Shruthi in Sanskrit means good sound or pleasant sound. My cousins tell me that two years after having named me the family realized that naming me shruthi was like naming TR Rajender Azhagu Sundaram or like naming a child of laloo Prasad yadav and rabri devi as Einstein. There is a saying in hindi which goes aankh ke andhe naam nayan sukh which would describe this situation perfectly!! Anyway my cousins said that my name had been changed because it would have been ironical if I had been called shruthi because I cried all the time and croaked like a frog. And that’s why my name was changed to a harmless revathi which doesn’t mean anything and is the name of a star in the sky.

3. My uncle tells me that he named me because he loved the movie mouna ragam and decided to name me after the heroine in the movie called revathi. Till date I shudder to think of what would have happened if my uncle had watched some other movie and decided to name me manorama or jayalalitha or something. Sheeesh!! The way my family members have played with my name!!


Anyway like I said the problem of having two good names gave rise to a lot of confusions and errr. Heart breaks in my life. Now at home no body knows that I am called revathi in school, college and office and outside of home no one knows I am called shruthi. I remember in school I had this huge crush on a guy and once he told me that he would call me and come home in the evening and collect my history notebook for some notes. I floated all the way home and all evening I waited beside the phone for his call. As fate would have it the phone rang when I went to get a drink of water and dad picked the phone. Now my dad is really absent minded. He forgets our birthdays, his own birthday, his anniversary, which class we study in, where we work for everything. The only thing he does remember is the name of latest version of linux. Ubuntu, edubuntu whatever. :-\.. Anyway this was the conversation between the cute guy and my dad

Cute guy: Hi uncle. Can I speak to Revathi

Dad: Revathi?? There is no revathi here. Wrong number

Cute guy: is this Mr.Ramanan’s house

Dad: yes, but no revathi here. (click)

Me looking at dad: (thinking). Not only have u ruined my life, u also just lost a great son in law.

So u get the drift. I had a tough time managing two names. And to top it all in one of the schools I attended there was a girl called shruthi and that gave rise to confusions galore. I would answer her attendance, collect her papers and was mortified when I saw “Shruthi loves nikhil” scratched in big bold letters on one of the trees in school, only to realize later that they weren’t talking about me. Personally I love the name shruthi. All my life I have hated the name Revathi and sometimes I wish things had been the other way round with all my important documents and birth certificates bearing the name shruthi and revathi as a pet name. I have never been able to relate to the name revathi. It reeks of sophistication and panache two words, I would never associate myself with. :)

Whats in a name said Shakespeare. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Yes sir it would smell as sweet no doubt even if it were called sewage but then the name defines the identity of a person and having two identities is not something which I like. Sheeesh. I wish I was alive in the year 1498 so I could have explained to Shakespeare the importance of having a name and a single name at that. I mean seriously would he have taken lightly to the fact if we changed his name from William Shakespeare to a Billy Shakeabong or something? :-\

Trip to Bombay - Part II - Train journey from malad to churchgate

Having spent four days in Bombay I have come to the conclusion that Bombay is a hugeeeeeeee city. But hey!! That’s like stating the obvious. That’s like saying anupam kher is bald or saying TR Rajender is animal like. Anyway where was I?? Ah yes!! Bombay. Bombay is a beautiful city. . After reading shantaram I wanted to see the city with the eyes of one having read shantaram. Having been in Madras for almost 7 years now I am loyal Chennai-ite and I completely love it because of its people and kind of life it radiates. Bombay I noticed exudes the same life. Delhi and Bangalore somehow never charmed me. Maybe it was the lack of beaches or the people I saw. I dunno what. They somehow seemed beyond salvation but Bombay is still so Indian and a very charming place. If u really want to see Bombay I would say take the electric train. Even as I write this I am traveling in an electric train from malad to churchgate in a first class ladies compartment to catch my train back to Chennai. I am surrounded by 10 women and since I love observing people and for lack of anything better to do I start looking at them and start sizing them up.

The 55 something woman sitting near the window has prayer beads in her hand and is praying fervently. I try to guess what it is that she is praying about. Maybe she is praying for her daughter to get a job or for her son to get married. :P or maybe she is just praying for the general good of the world.

Near her is sitting a woman not more than 28 or 30 who is so made up that I cant resist the temptation to go touch her and see if she is for real or is one of those mannequins u see in these clothes shops. She has so much lipstick on her lips, so much kohl in her eyes and so much of foundation on her face that even if u dug a feet deep into her face you wouldn’t touch skin. Ok I exaggerate. Make that half a feet. She is carrying a Gucci handbag, has fast track sun glasses on her head and is screaming of brands. She is wearing a funny kind of skirt. I mean in my humble opinion it looks like she left home wearing a complete skirt with a proper hemline and on the way was chased by a dog which managed to get a bit of her skirt and she was left with a skirt with a ragged end. I mean I don’t understand. Why else would her skirt be of different lengths at the sides and different lengths on the front and back? Aren’t skirts supposed to be of the same length throughout? Fashion. I never will understand it I think. Anyway this porcelain doll doesn’t smile and I guess it must be difficult to smile when u have so much of weight on your face. I mean imagine having to push layers of make up, curl up both sides of your mouth and attempting to smile. Phew!! Must be tough!! I quickly lose interest in her and concentrate on the woman sitting in front of me.

She is one of those “i-can-manage-everything” kind of woman. One of those super moms I decide. She carries two cell phones. On one of them she is giving instructions to her son named Ashish telling him that the dal is in the microwave oven, curd is in the fridge, asks him not to fight with his sister and dirty the house as they are having guests for dinner at night. On the other phone she is giving instructions to someone asking them to pick her up at Hyderabad airport. “GTL - 143” she says “G for go, T for tomorrow and L for lucky 143 is the name of my flight”. Just looking at her makes me tired and I wonder how these women do it.

As I finish writing about super mom and look out the window I pass this station called marine line and I can see the beautiful marine drive before me. Of course since the train is moving I can’t see much but I love what I see.

I shift my interest to the woman sitting next to me. She reeks of cigarette smoke and some kind of mint. The smell is far from pleasant and I guess she realizes it because a minute later she takes out a can of deo from her bag and sprays it liberally on herself. It only results in people moving further away from her. Bagon cockroach spray smells better than her deo I decide as I turn to look at the woman sitting diagonally opposite to me, next to the super mom.

She is a nervous 35 something woman, whose eyes keep darting here and there and she is biting her nails so fiercely that I am surprised that she is not drawing blood. She seems to me like one of those insecure people who keep worrying about what people think about them, try desperately to fit in and fail miserably. I dunno why but as she smiles nervously at me, I feel sorry for her. I smile back and avert her gaze. The other women in the compartment are not doing anything interesting. Two are sleeping and one of them is reading a book. This interests me and I try to look at what she is reading. I am deeply disappointed when I discover she is reading something called “the power of your sub conscious mind”. Such books bore me. Suddenly I wonder what each of these women is thinking about me.

old aunty: (she hasn’t opened her eyes even once during her prayer so has not seen me yet).
porcelain doll: God!! Just check out her fashion sense. Totally wrong. Who wears a yellow kurta over blue jeans? Yellow is so not the color of the season. She is approximately 20 years behind times. And why cant she use a little bit of lip gloss. Would do a world of good for her sad face!!
Super mom: (I dunno why but this is what I think super mom would have thought about when she looked at me.)Sheeeesh!! I forgot to ask Ashish to feed the dog. Should call him and tell him that. :D
Bagon Spray: why the hell cant she keep her bag on the rack above. There is no place for me to keep my legs. (in my defence I had all my original certificates in that bag and didn’t want it out of my sight)
Nervous lady: I wonder what she is writing. Maybe she is writing about me. I wonder what she thinks about me.
Of course I could be totally wrong in my interpretations but something tells me this is precisely what they think of me. By this time I have reached churchgate. And my 20 minute walk from churchgate to Victoria Terminus deserves a post in itself. A lovely walk. Made me feel like Lord Emsworth going for a walk to see the Empress while admiring his garden on the way. That reminds me. I added two more wonderful wodehoueses to for my collection during that walk and I am as happy, to quote a popular saying ,as a dog with two tails!! But more about that on my next post!! :)

Trip to Bombay - Part I - TISS!!

The TISS campus is beautiful. I wouldn’t call it a sprawling/huge campus or anything but it is an extremely handsome looking campus. The miute I eneterd I felt at home, felt one with nature. It is the kind of campus I have always wanted to be a part of. One of those really old campuses which is wild and completely overgrown, with these huge peepul and banyan trees whose roots snake on the ground and make their presence felt everywhere on the campus. Each of these trees must be a hundred years old and would tell stories, maybe narrate epics if only they could talk. It is a campus where the canteen benches bear the names and remarks of batches and batches of students who have passed out, who I imagine would have sat there, and had some great conversations over piping hot cups of tea and a plate of samosas. A gentle breeze which caresses my cheek and naughtily tousles my hair blows and makes me feel comfortable though its noon of a very humid day and the temperature is a sweltering 38 degrees. A couple of age old buildings (built in the british era I think) with the paint peeling off tower over me and they have these old doors with lovely knockers. As I walk on the old leaves crunch under my feet and I wonder if they too have something to tell me. Suddenly I wish each of these inanimate objects could talk and tell me stories of life at TISS, a life which I so want to be a part of. I have completely and hopelessly fallen in love with the campus. My first love. Poets have very often said that there is nothing more devastating and painful than unrequited first love. Something tells me I am gonna experience that pain soon.

Disclaimer: The contents of this post are completely my thoughts. They haven’t been influenced by anyone. I am sorry if this post hurts anyone’s sentiments or if anyone thinks its contents are sacrilegious. My intention is not to hurt anyone.

I was a believer. A staunch believer. I used to make it a point to visit the temple at least twice a week, say a prayer daily, say a little prayer every time I passed a temple on the road. But somewhere in the past two years something has changed, some part of me has started asking some fundamental questions. In the past two years I have seen so much and experienced so many things that I have started asking some blasphemous questions. The past two years of my life have been relatively relaxed and as a part of college and also out of my personal interest I visited a couple of orphanages, old age homes, spastic societies to try and do my bit for the society.

The scenes which met my eyes when I went to these places were heart rendering and as I visited more such places I found it more and more difficult to believe that up there, there exists someone who is supposed to be looking after all of us, supposed to be doing justice, punishing the wrong and rewarding the right.

What wrong has 15 year old shabana done that she is “blessed” with the intelligence of a 3 year old, cannot wear clothes, cannot button up her dress, and cannot use the bathroom without someone helping her. What wrong has she done that while her peers talk of board exams, farewell parties and the latest trend in clothes she cannot even speak a coherent word let alone a sentence. She suffers from down syndrome.

What wrong has 67 year old patamma done that at the age of 67 though she has 2 sons and a daughter none of them want to keep her and have sent her to a depressing old age home where she gets a 5 feet by 3 feet space for herself, 2 sarees for diwali, one for new year and no visitors throughout the year though her children live in the same city.

What right has laloo Prasad yadav done that inspite of charges of embezzlement of so many funds, inspite of being such a corrupt politician he enjoys the status of a king?

What right has jagmohan dalmiya done that after misappropriating “just” 2 crores he gets bail and most probably will escape scot-free?

What kind of a justice system is this, where the innocent get punished and suffer more and the guilty enjoy a hassle less life? This is the justice system which is revered all over the world, accepted by one and all despite its horrendously screwed up laws and principles. The juctice system of God.

My grandmother tells me that every person who is suffering is actually repenting for the sins which he committed in his previous birth and every person who is happy and contented is reaping the benefits of the good things he did in his previous birth. What kind of a stupid, skewed system is this where u get punished for something but have no clue what you are getting punished for?

She says that this is the kalyugam and this is how god’s system works and that once evil has completely overshadowed the good, that is the time when god will descend in all his glory to take his last avatar and save the world from the evil. BullShit is all I can say. Even the most cruel person or a person with a heart of stone would melt if he saw the likes of shabana and patamma and we are talking about God here. The compassionate and considerate do gooder who cares for nothing but the “well being” of his children. If he does exist and is looking at all the pain and suffering and not doing a thing when he has the power to change all of this, then I cant believe we trust and pin our hopes on a person like this who just likes to look at all this suffering and not act. I would rather build temples and worship the person who started the old age home where patamma lives or the people who started Banyan the home for destitute and mentally ill women. My blood boils when I see people drop obscene amounts of money into the hundis in temples, some of which goes to decorate the idol of god and most of which goes god knows where.
I am confused and hurt when I think of the fact that something which I believed in for 20 years of my life is actually a farce.

I was a believer, a staunch believer, then I became agnostic and now I find myself tending towards atheism.

Makku!!! :)

I have been wanting to write about this incident which happened in my final year of engineering. It was the 7th semester exam time in hostel. Incidentally sem exam times are when our enthu levels are really high. Do not mistake me. By enthu levels I mean enthu levels to have fun. Enthu levels to study are usually at an all time low during semester times. Normal college days in hostel are just spent sleeping or watching movies endlessly but sem exams are the times when all of us make a sincere attempt to stay awake (the reason we stayed awake was to study which invariably never happened) and refrain from watching movies and hence ended up spending lots of time with each other. We used to stay awake till 4 in the morning pretending to study but gossiping and giggling and talking about everything except the course.

Anyway during the seventh sem exam time I dunno what came over our college management, but they decided that the hostels would have a coffee and tea vending machine. (similar to the ones we have in office) but not free of course (yeah our college was good but not that good). I wonder what they thought. Maybe they thought they could improve results by providing tea and coffee to the students.(preposterous idea. The only thing which could have improved our results would have been forging our mark sheets). Anyway it worked like this. We would have to get a 5 rupee token (a round gold colored coin) from the college stores, which we would have to insert into a slot and then select our option, keep the cup in the desired position and the machine would give us tea/coffee. like any other machine it would work at times and not work at times. Sometimes we would put the coin in and it wouldn’t react at all.

Anyway let me come to the night of November 26th 2006 2 a.m in the morning when five of us were pretending to study in the corridor. We had a paper called engineering ethics if I am not mistaken. An extremely dry paper. Now if one of us had a craving for tea invariably all of us would have it. So it all started off with me saying

Me: hey!! I am sleepy. Tea u guys?? U have tokens??
All friends in chorus: Yeah yeah. Lets go. Nothing seems to be entering our heads. maybe some tea will help. Tokens irruku.

(giggles because we know tea had nothing to do with our productivity and is just an excuse for us to while away time)

I put in my token first and it got stuck half way and refused to go into the slot. I tried pushing it in but a major part of it stayed outside. In my frustration I banged the machine hard with my fist. I was trying to aim the coin but my fist slipped and I banged the machine a little above its slot and wonder of wonders it started pouring out the tea with the coin half outside. We couldn’t believe our eyes. My friend then tried to pry out the coin and it came out. We were thrilled. Our first free tea!!Another friend suggested that maybe I should give it another blow to see if it was a fluke or if it really worked. I gave it another blow at approximately the same spot that I had done before and voila!! There it was pouring out tea again. We were ecstatic, surprised and scared all at the same time. First emotion was obvious, second one was because we were surprised at the stupidity of the machine (we later went on and named the machine “Makku” or stupid in tamil). The third one was because a part of our conscience pricked since in our heart of hearts we knew what we were doing wasn’t ethical. (ironical that we had our ethics exam next!! Sheesh!!). next thing was maintaining the secrecy of the whole thing. In a hostel of 200 odd girls if the news spread we knew both free tea and the machine would vanish. So the five of us vowed that apart from ten final year girls (our gang) we wouldn’t tell anyone else. And all of us would use Makku only at night or when the machine was unattended to.

Among the ten that we revealed our secret to there were a few harishchandras who went “hey this is wrong man. Our parents give us enough money to buy what we need. Why do we need to steal tea?”. It was then that we split our group of ten into two parts. The RH gang and the HBP gang, abbreviations for Robin Hood (the non-harishchandras) and the Honesty is the Best Policy gang. The HBP’s believed that honesty is the best policy and even in times of adversity and poverty (read most of the times) we must be honest and get tea only after putting in the token. On the other hand we the RH (errrr. Yeah. I was part of RH) believed in stealing from the rich (the college management. We figured they were rich enough to provide a few teas to poor malnourished gals) and giving to the poor (us of course). So we stole shamelessly, relentlessly and on a daily basis, all the time being careful in maintaining the secrecy. We were criminals. Occasionally we would put in a coin (borrowed from the HBP’s of course. :P) just so that people wouldn’t suspect that we were free loading and we did most of these criminal activities at night when only our gang would be awake and “studying”!!

Despite maintaining secrecy the news somehow got out (C’mon!! When u take ten girls into confidence basically u are taking 10! girls into confidence because each girl will in turn tell 10 other girls and ask her not to tell anyone.). Eventually the boys hostel came to know and they started free loading too and a month later after the sem exams were over and we came back after our hols, Makku was gone. (Apparently only 5 coins had been deposited and 75 teas/coffees had been claimed and I guess the management smelt a fish!!;))

It was an amazing thing while it lasted and even now when I think of it, the incident always cracks me up. It happened one and a half years back but the incident remains as fresh as it was when it happened on nov 26th 2006. Of the original five who were present one is married, one is in bhuwaneshwar, three of us are here working for cognizant. We guys don’t meet often now and there are many thing which we will forget but the night of November 26th 2006 will always remain fresh in our minds and is not likely to be erased from our memories. I dedicate this post to Mug, Hems, Moti and Touch me not. (I have used the pet names which we used for them in college. I have already trashed my name. I wouldn’t want to do the same to them also!!)

A Slice of my life

Some random happenings in my life lifted from my diary and censored for a larger audience!! :P

1. Today for the first time someone called me aunty. For a long time the kid was calling me and I just ignored him thinking he was calling someone else and then he says “shruthi aunty can u please pass me the ball”? I was taken aback. Its like discovering the first white hair on your head, like discovering that you are not completely impervious to knee pains and back aches, discovering that its been so long since you passed out of school that you now have friends whose children are in school and you gulp and gasp and stubbornly try to hold on to whatever remaining youth is left in you. I am sure you are smirking right now and thinking “hell, she is only 22 and is hyperventilating as if she is 42 and is suffering from mid life crisis”. I am not disagreeing with the fact that yes I still have more than half my youth left ahead of me but it is just kind of unsettling that children call me aunty and adults expect me to be responsible, take my own decisions and also help them take decisions. the other day I almost burst out laughing when someone asked me “I am planning to invest in so and so mutual fund. Do u think it is the right thing to do”. It was hilarious. I have no clue about mutual funds, the bull and bear are just one domestic and one wild animal to me and it is best not to talk of my pathetic knowledge about the share market. Anyway coming back to the point I am just not used to this sudden adulthood which is being thrust on me. I hate it when people tell me “you are so immature. Cant u act your age?” I know I am trying unsuccessfully to cling on to my childhood and college life. Sigh!! I wish I grow up soon.

2. my sister’s husband has got a job in dubai. Even the person with the meanest intelligence can understand that this means my sister and her husband will be moving to dubai some time soon for a of minimum three years. I have been trying not to think about it and trying to postpone the inevitable but yesterday as they sat talking about things like visa, house, transfer, flight tickets etc it just struck me that in less than three months I am going to lose the one person I am closest to in this world and the thought is killing me. Things like “arey email hai na” , “flight tickets to dubai have become so cheap you can almost fly once every six months” , “arey yaar, mai every week tujhe call karoongi” are just idle talk. The truth is that things will never be the same, with her some thousand of kms away. Its weird. From the time preethi was in 10th till she got married we lived separately. She did her 11th and 12th in Chennai while I was in Jamnagar and then she went on to college and work. All those years I never felt any of the things which I am feeling now. Its just that for the past 2 and a half years we have grown more closer than we ever were and I hate having to break that. I am going to miss all the night shows, midnight chats, midnight movies at her place, her miserable cooking (read semiya upma), her good cooking (read everything else), stealing all her good clothes, pigging out on ice cream, teasing her intelligence (or the lack of it), being the peacemaker in all the fights which my sister and BIL have, riding with her on the two wheeler, screaming at all the chauvinists on OMR, eating vegetable pulao at punnu da dhaba with her…. Sigh!! So many things. Its an irony. The things in my life which I want a change in remain exactly the same (I have the same software job, same working hours, same miserable code which doesn’t work etc) and the things in my life which I wish would remain the same are changing (my sister moving and other things which I cannot mention). Life is cruel.

3. I have lost 5 kgs of weight in the past 3 months with absolutely no conscious effort from my side and I am sick and tired of people squealing, screaming and shouting at me saying “Eeeeeeeeee. You have lost so much weight. What did you do?” , “Oooooo!!! Don’t you eat at all? It isn’t good to lose so much of weight so drastically. So what did you do to lose all this weight”. Please!!! I don’t know why I am losing weight. If I knew then I would stop doing whatever it is because this weight loss has me also worried. How much ever I eat, however little exercise I get I lose weight. Might sound like an ideal situation (and trust me I was pretty happy when it was happening. Imagine. You can eat all the ice cream in the world without caring a damn about ur waistline) but now I am not so sure. One doctor said I had borderline tuberculosis (no kidding!!), another said it was work stress and said I should take it easy and stop working hard. Now work has been extremely taxing for the past 6 months but not so much that I start losing weight because of stress. After that I stopped visiting doctors. All my family members have their own theories though. My mother thinks it is because I work too much, eat very little and worry a lot. Her solution? Quit your present job, come and live with appa and me in this godforsaken place also called Jamnagar, work in reliance and eat good home food”
I would rather run a mile in tight shoes than work in Jamnagar. K
My grandmother in her typical predictable fashion thinks it is because I don’t drink milk and eat curd rice. I am tired of telling her that it has nothing to do with my eating curd rice and drinking milk as that’s how I have been all my life but no use.
My sister in her usual dum dum style thinks it is because I have fallen in love. I have not even tried telling her that the only man in my life right now is Herbert schildt (errrr. He is the guy who authored complete reference java) and the probability of my getting a boyfriend sometime in the near future is equal to the probability of Andrew Symonds completing evolution and becoming human. In other words zero. But she goes on and on and on, teasing me with every person she can think of. I have told her in typical hindi film style that “mere maang mein mai sirf george Clooney ke naam ka sindoor bharoongi” but even that doesn’t stop her!! L

4. though it sounds extremely clichéd and lame I have just realized that we realize the value of someone only when they are gone and dont care a damn about them when they are actually there.

5. Its amazing how you can totally relate to a complete stranger at times and how ever lasting friendships are sometime built in a jiffy. I recently started mailing this really really nice lady in los angeles (indian - working for cognizant) who i came to know because she reads my blogs and its incredible how we hit it off right from the word go. Its wonderful to mail her and i do not find peace until i have mailed her whatever happened the whole day and all our mails to each other always exceed two pages!! :). Thanks Anupama. You have made my life so much better. Your mails have given me something to look forward to when i get ready to go to office each day.

6. This is the 102nd post on my blog. i cant believe i have written 100 (gasp!!) posts!!

Its that time of the year again. Board exam time when lakhs and lakhs of students across the country sweat it out to get good marks. This year one of my first cousins is giving her 12th CBSE boars exams and everyone at home is behaving as if swathi (my cousin) is going to the war front to fight militants and not to write an exam. Suddenly the house is abuzz with calls from “close” relatives like my grandmother’s sisters husbands brothers son’s wife calling up swathi and giving her valuable advice like “get 8 hours of sleep and eat food on time. When my brother’s wife’s neighbours son was giving his board exam he slept only for 7 hours and 26 minutes and ended up getting only 92%. Disgrace to the entire family he was. Don’t make the same mistake”.

So when I called up swathi day before yesterday to wish her she was at her wits end and said “please shruthi. I have had people calling me up from the morning wishing me and giving me all kind of weird advice. I am really really tensed. I will talk later. bye”. It was then that I realized that we give entirely too much of importance to these silly board exams. I mean seriously. NOW, 5 years after I have given my boards (man!! Am I old or what??) I realize that its not such a big deal. I have seen people do miserably in their boards and still come up very well in life and I have also seen people who excel in their boards but today are doing what everyone else is doing.

Anyway coming back to the point yesterday an hour before the board exams began I was watching some news channel where the following conversation made me sick early in the morning.

Person 1 in the news studio : moving on to the next big news item today. Today the CBSE 10 and 12th std exams begin and the air is pregnant with tension with more than 4 lakh (he stresses on 4 lakh and pauses for effect) students all over the country taking up these exams which decide their future. Lets ask our correspondent malvika who is present outside the ABC public school noida about what the situation is like right now. Yes malvika. So how is the atmosphere right now? What is the mind set of the students?

Malvika : (striving for an intelligent expression and nodding her head periodically and then suddenly she starts speaking at the rate of 75 words per minute). Yes ravi. As you can see I am standing outside ABC noida. With just an hour to go students as well as parents have started streaming into the school and the atmosphere is thick (stress+pause) with apprehension and tension. Also topmost on every student and parents mind is the fact that CBSE has changed the pattern of its exam papers and introduced different kind of questions which test the students abilities. We have with us the principal of ABC with us. Lets ask her what she thinks about CBSE’s decision and how it will affect the students?
Thank you for joining us ma’am. So what do u think about CBSE’s decision of introducing very short answer type questions and how will it affect the students

Mrs Principal: (obviously this is her first time on TV. She is immaculately dressed and speaks like a true principal at the rate of 4 words per minute). Personally I think CBSE’s decision should not affect the students at all. Because if a student is well prepared and is fundamentally sound he/she should be able to tackle any kind of questions. And yes it is a good decision of CBSE’s part to introduce this concept for it will test the true understanding a student has of fundamental concepts

Malvika: So ma’am what steps have u taken to ensure the success of the students in your school

Mrs Principal: well we have conducted 17 pre pre board exams, 18 pre board exams, daily mock tests and assignments which will help the students be prepared for the real thing. We have also made sure that we don’t put much pressure on the students (I cant help but smirk at this)

Malvika: what steps do u think students preparing for the board exams should take to come out with flying colors?

Mrs Principal: Oh!! A student should get a minimum of eight hours of sleep, eat food regularly. Eat many small meals and not few large meals which would make him/her sleepy. His/ her mind must be “completely relaxed” and stress free for the D day because in the end it is not only intelligence which will help you but also a cool and composed mind.

At this point I am not able to take it any longer. Completely relaxed??? With each and every news channel offering their smart ass comments and giving advice which no one asked for and splashing the board exams across the media like this, how can any student or parent for that matter be relaxed? With such immense pressure to perform any child would break. It is no wonder that the number of children committing suicide because of failure to perform in the exam has gone up so drastically. I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of pressure a 14 year old must have undergone if it actually drove him to take his own life. And the case of kids committing suicide will be made into a big issue by the same news channels

The first people who should be blamed are these news channels. I am not joking when I say that ravi and malvika continued this board exam nonsense for half an hour in the morning for the breakfast news. When these news channels have no idea what to talk about they just pick up random, inconsequential things and talk about them as if they are the most crucial and vital topics. (the next news item in breakfast news was this “after the break lets look at a village in bihar where a little girl was married to a dog (stress+pause) to ward off evil spirits”). Any parent would have got a nervous breakdown if they had watched the way ravi and malvika spoke about the board exams thinking “Oh my god. My son wrote only 4 pre pre boards and only 5 pre boards. If only I had put him in a better school…”

Secondly parents must also try to understand and accept their children and their shortcomings. (I really hope Taare Zameen Par goes a long way in helping parents realize this). We cant all have prodigies as children. Give your child the freedom to be what he or she wants to be. Don’t pressurize or terrorize or your children.

And finally stop calling up kids, giving their board exams and boring them with your advice. I am sure you have great intentions in mind but trust me the advice which you are giving would have already been given by 7 other people in 8 different ways (unless of course your advice is “get drunk before your exam and go to the exam with a bad hangover” or something!! :P). So just call, wish him/ her luck and keep the phone down and you will earn a child’s good will!! ;)

This is just a random rant which I penned down after I saw what my cousin was going through. I sure hope she does well but even if she doesn’t it doesn’t matter because after all they are just board exams and not the kargil war!! :)