"Lessons" learnt in the past 9 months *giggle* *giggle*

So the other day Meenaks (a very dear friend of mine and top blogger in Cognizant. Pity he doesn’t write externally!) asked me to write a guest post on his blog about my “learnings” from my course in journalism and media studies. My first reaction was to smirk sarcastically which if you know me is my first reaction to most things in life. Unlike most people who believe that every phase in life is a learning opportunity from which you have to take important lessons, I believe that every phase in life is basically a mistake which you could have avoided but then since you didn’t have the good sense to do so you might as well enjoy the mistake, make the most of it and not make it again in life. (Think about it. Birth, Class 10, Class 12, college etc. All mistakes which most people don’t make more than once! :P) Yeah. The Eternal Optimist. That’s me! :P

So what you are about to read is not profound, philosophical jargon about how my course in media studies has changed me as a person and made me the pride of my parents and envy of all others’ but its basically a list of things I have observed in and around me in the past one year. Meenaks, I am sure it hurts your IIM-Bangalore sensibilties and the fact that I haven't used words which have more than 7 alphabets and in your own words (I could never come up with management jargons like tat) I hope the post is "harmonious to the stakeholder expectations". :P

So this was my comeback post on ch1 (the internal blogging site in Cognizant). Come back. Yes! Pretty much like the Bollywood heroine who gets married, has children, puts on 20 kgs of weight and then makes a comeback as second sister of hero’s friend. Ummm. Wrong analogy there for neither was I a Bollywood heroine (I had the looks though. I can assure you of that!! People who knew me shaduupp!! Ok? :P) nor did I get married and have children. But anyway a comeback this is. (Oh BTW, I tend to ramble a lot. So plizz to bear ok? Ok! )

So following are vairy vairy important lessons which you must incorporate in your life otherwise Swami Nithyanada will curse you with a life of celibacy. Oh by the way these are totally my views and there might be a lot of stereotypes in here so please don’t come after me with bazookas you media students! I am one of you guys! :P

1. “You have to cut the umbilical cord.”
This was what I heard first from a professor when I joined the course. With my knowledge of cryptic writing limited to Aravind’s posts (:P), when I heard this I remember wondering that if a person did not know the simple biological process that only cutting the umbilical cord would free the baby from the mother, the person probably did not deserve to be a professor at a prestigious institute. Apparently it was a metaphor (or a figure of speech or an allegory or whatever . :-\) which meant that I should distance myself and cut myself away from everything if I wanted to be a good journalist. Not be bogged down by petty issues like my caste, my gender, my religion, my family ties and such identities and have no fear. This was probably the biggest lesson I learnt here though I am not sure if I have reached a stage where I can mercilessly cut the umbilical cord (the figurative one).

2. Media students have enough opinions for you, me and people from 6 of the 7 continents in this world. No exaggeration. We (I say we because whether I like it or not I am now a part of “them”) have opinions on everything ranging from “Is the hilsa a better fish than karuvaadu and can south Indians cook fish as well as Bengalis can do” to “Is secularism a failed ideology in a country like India” to “Is godhaan garam a better brand of cigarettes than india kings” to “are feminists ugly women who cant get dates or do they really support a cause”, we have opinions on every frikkin’ thing on this planet. Who was it who said “Opinions are like smelly feet. Everyone has a couple and most of them stink”. So true Sir, so true.


3. When you hear words like “the existentialist dilemma”, “orientalisation of one self”, “challenging the hermeneutics”, “return and revenge of the simulacrum”, you can be sure that you are in a media school. We love big words. We love to make people think that we actually know more than them by using big words. We love to flummox people by pretending to understand what Pranab Mukherjee is talking about when he presents the budget. We love to declare that we read Marx, Foucault, Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Tolstoy, Simone de Beauvoir and we love to wear T shirts which say “Che Guevara”.


4. People actually respect engineers. No seriously. One big lesson that I have learnt is the fact that though engineers do not respect themselves enough, when you tell a non-engineer that you are an engineer you can see visible dilation of their pupils and visible arching of eyebrows and an audible “Oh!! fancy. So what engineer were you”. After which you would proceed to explain in detail about computer science and engineering and throw in words like “java”, “struts”, “application”, “develop”, “test case” etc and throw them off guard. AFTER which they would say things like “Umm. Actually my computer has been acting up for some time. Could you please take a look at it?” and throw YOU off guard. I mean seriously what is it with people who think that just because we are engineers we can fix everything?


5. Media students more often than not drink and smoke, and smoking not necessarily restricted to tobacco if you know what I mean. So do people of every profession but while the rest of the world smokes because they are addicted or to relieve pressure or for whatever reason, we apparently smoke to “challenge our intellectual limits”. Yes sir. When you are on a high apparently your thoughts go from thinking about “Does Gabten/Govinda look more revolting in yellow color pants or when he is wildly shaking his arms and legs and calling it dance” to “Does God exist?”, “ When will revolution come and relieve us from this imaginary bondage” etc etc. Another important lesson learnt is that you can’t die when you stay in the same room as someone who is smoking and I have mastered the art of holding my breath and having a conversation.


6. Joining a course offering journalism because you love writing is probably the biggest mistake you can make. If anything, it kills the little bit of creativity and panache in yout writing and makes your writing all newsy and crisp. So basically from writing about your trysts with dentists to your smelly feet and generally laughing at the idiosyncrasies of the world you go to writing about potholes in 12th cross street Indira Nagar and writing stuff like “12 killed and 15 injured as train derails”. And then you sit and edit what you have written because obviously the newspaper is not your blog and when they say 500 words they actually mean 498 and 2 words to fit in your names. So right from day one you are told to write crisp, precise to the point stuff. Not at all helpful for a person like me who is like a 84 year old grandma in this sense and loves to ramble on and on. (As you might already have noticed. :roll:)


7. Maybe this is too extreme but personally I think a course in media studies completely changes the way you look at life and your perspective. You no longer look at a paper in the morning with the same indifferent eye with which you look at a packet of milk. You no longer read articles for the news content which they offer but you become critical. Too long, too short, improper headlines, too many adjectives, biased, grammatical errors and so on and so forth. Same with the TV news channels and radio bulletins. Something suddenly changes and you read a bad article and go “Gasp!! I would never write like that. What lousy writing” though something tells me out in the real world maybe I will also end up writing such stories! And suddenly everything around you, wherever you go, whatever you do, is a story which needs to be told and written about!


8. A course in media studies puts ideas into your head and kind of nudges you to develop an “ideology” for life. So all of a sudden you think being an environmentalist is cool, being a feminist is cool and capitalism is the bane of mankind and that the Amabanis and Tatas and Birlas and ALL their obscene wealth should be wiped out from the face of this planet without actually understanding the principles of feminism, capitalism etc. If you are not careful enough you could end up carrying a red flag, shouting Jyoti Basu’s name and giving a “Lal Salaam” to people on the streets if you know what I mean! ;)


9. Your GK and world view improve vastly and you get to read a lot. And when I say read I do not mean books by Chetan Bhagat or books which are titled “Anything for you Ma’am” or “True Love” etc but books which actually make you sit up and think. Don’t get me wrong. I am not being an elitist or a bourgeoisie here. I am very grateful to Chetan Bhagat for making so many Indians read and inculcating the reading habit in so many people. But let’s face it. If you love reading and Bhagat’s was not the first book you read you would agree that his books are not what you would call good literature or informative or thought provoking. His books are best read when you are on a train and have 4 hours to kill and don’t know what to do.

Anyway I digress. Where was I? Yeah, reading habit. I remember in my first few classes the professor asked a question about the Emergency and none of us could answer it. So he sighed, took off his spectacles and went “The problem with your generation is that most of you think history began after you were born”. Very true that. A course in journalism makes you curious, makes you want to read and you realize what a LOT of books there are out there to read and you feel painfully unaccomplished and stupid when you realize how little you actually know about India, let alone the world.


10. I have developed a love for non-fiction which is rather surprising given I disliked the genre an year back and my ideas of non fiction were pretty much what most people’s idea of feminists or what constitutes feminism is. Having spoken to a lot of people I get the same reactions from them (about reading non-fiction, not about feminism! :P)

As of now these are the only pearls of wisdom that I can think of showering on you. A lot of other lessons have also been learnt but they are personal and obviously you don’t want to know about that. As I already said follow these and you will be rewarded with a life as rich and “fulfilling” as Swami Nithyananda’s. Babes, Booze, Bhashan (speech), “Beatitude”, Bhaktas and of course the Big bucks. Seriously. What more could one want from life.

Yes, the absence of TV cameras in bedrooms and earth shattering TV commentary like “Nadigai churidhar pottundu avar arigil vandhaar” would be helpful but then you can’t have everything in life can you?

Anyway, So I leave you now with hope and prayers that one day you will incorporate the rich lessons this place has taught you and become better, brighter more responsible human beings and will make this world a better place to live in. And always remember that whenever you point finger at others, there are three fingers pointing back at you and one finger pointing up to God (the thumb) . Go out into the world and achieve great heights my children.

Heh. Just kidding. The above are actually quotes stolen from my high school principal who would say the exact SAME thing year after year after year at student farewells. I always wanted to say it once in my lifetime especially the finger pointing dialogue! Finally got an opportunity! Thanks Meenaks!

Of Gunda, Papi Gudia, Behne and the rest

So yesterday, I was sitting and watching Paapi Gudiya at 1 in the night on Star Gold with a bunch of friends in the TV hall. A completely kvlt movie starring Karishma Kapoor in the 1996. You know the kind of Karishma Kapoor I am talking about. Red lipstick, fake eyelashes, jhataak clothes and a childish voice which makes you contemplate if strangling is a better idea to kill yourself or slashing your wrists. In fact, I have it from very reliable sources that ideas in the Inglees movie, Child’s play have been shamelessly lifted from the very original Paapi Gudiya. The beginning of the movie has Karishma Kapoor dressed like Amitabh Bacchan when he sang “Saara zamaana haseenon ka deewana” complete with the black dress with bulbs on it and gyrating on stage, in the middle of overweight middle aged men singing “I love the beat in Muuuuusic, I love the heat in Muuuusic”.

Lately I have been watching a lot of these kinds of movies mainly because I seem to have ample company in hostel to watch movies like Papi gudia, khoon bhari maang, Gundaa etc. Star Gold very thoughtfully telecasts these movies at 1 in the night when all of us are wide awake and have nothing much to do except giggle and laugh.

Anyway, I realize that dialogue writers these days just don’t have the kind of creativity which the dialogue writers in the 90s possessed. For eg: Sample the following

1. In paapi gudia there is a scene where the child (Karishma Kapoor’s brother - a kid who I think must have been ragged mercilessly in school for speaking such dialogues and must have faced severe emotional trauma later in life) wants to buy a doll, actually THE doll – the doll which is possessed with the “aatma” of the killer and he goes “mujhe yehi gudiya chahiye, mujhe yehi gudiya chahiye” and Karisma Kapoor goes “Bilkul ladki hai tu. Gudiya ke saath to sirf ladkiyan khelti hai” and the boy says

“Arey didi. Aisi gudiya ke saath to ladkiyan hi nahi balki ladke bhi khel sakte hai”

:D :D

Woww!! What innuendos, what excellent double entendres even in that day and age.

Just think. When was the last time you heard such excellent stuff in Hindi cinema?

2. Which brings us to some EPIC dialogues from the movie Gunda

Each villain in Gunda has a kvlt tagline.

The main guy is called Bhulla and his tagline is “Mera naam hai Bhulla, mai rakhta hoon Khulla”

His sidekick is this guy called Ibu Hatela whose tagline is “Mera naam hai Ibu hatela, maa meri chudail aur baap mera shaitaan ka chela”

And so on and so forth. You get the drift don’t you? So the entire movie is peppered with such dialogues.

Picture this. The sister of the Bhulla is raped by another villain called “Lambu” who unfortunately doesn’t have a tagline (if I were to give Lambu a tagline I would say “Mera naam hai Lambu, yen kitta vechukadhe Vambu” or “Mera naam hai Lambu, maa meri savitha bhabhi aur baap mera shikari shambu” :P)

Anyway so this girl, Munni, is raped and she is lying dead in the middle of the road. Along comes Bhulla and this is what he says when he sees the body of his sister.

“Munni meri behen Munni, Lambu ne tujhe Lamba kar diya? Maachis ki teeli ko khambha kar diya?”

:D :D

So effectively a scene which is supposed to be a very poignant and heart rendering one turns out to be laugh riot. The unintended (or maybe intended who knows) comedy of the movies in the 90s has been unmatched till date.

I digress. The main reason for this post was actually a very serious thought that while Hindi cinema has matured over the decade (and you thankfully don’t have many movies like Gundaa coming up), how Hindi soaps continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

Now while watching Papi Gudiya, the thrilling plot, edge of the seat drama and intense dialogue was interrupted in between by commercials of the various Hindi soaps and one of them was this serial called “Behne” where the only aim of the four sisters in life is to get married, be subservient to the husband, have children and take care of their in laws and if they manage to do all the above they would have roshan karofied the naam of their parents.

So there is this one particular episode where one of the sisters is pregnant and the father (I *think*) kicks the bucket. So the other “behens” decide not to tell the pregnant behen of the death of their father thinking it would devastate her and she would lose the baby. The vamp of the serial over hears this and sends the pregnant girl green bangles wrapped in the newspaper cutting of her fathers death (suggesting that the only way the girl would read newspapers is when they come wrapped in bangles or pakoda or jalebi or something) and the commercial stops with the pregnant woman opening the “gift”

I gathered all this from a 50 second commercial of the soap.

Having grown up watching serials like Tara, Shanthi, Buniyaad, Zamaana Badal Gaya, Zaban Sambhalke, Waghle ki Hasin Duniya, Hasratein and Banegi Apni Baat which portrayed women as progressive, independent, self sufficient individuals, I am shocked by the current trend where girls in the age group of 12-20 are subjected to such colossal crap and probably grow up thinking this is the way to be.

That it is perfectly ok to be ill treated by your husband and in laws, perfectly normal to bitch about your sister in law, perfectly sane behavior to sleep at night wearing full make up and georgette and chiffon sarees. None of the women in the ‘K’ serials work, they are never shown as reading the newspaper, they are always shown cooking for men in the kitchen while the men have “intelligent” discussions in the drawing room. One of the serials I remember even had the protagonist’s mother telling her before marriage, “Beta, ek ladki ki jagah uske pati ke charnon ke paas hoti hai. Pati se zyaada tarakki karne ki koshish mat karma. Tum hi pachtaoge”

Pleeeease!! This is the 21^st century for christs sake!!

Soaps in my time had women, who stood for what they believed in, did not need men to define their identities, portrayed normal housewives (who weren’t caked in make up with half baked brains) fighting for social causes and not fighting for saasu ma ka pyaar. I find it VASTLY surprising that writers 15 years back had so much of foresight and were so broad minded while the Ekta Kapoors of today trivialize important issues and magnify useless things.

Sighhh.

I think its high time Indian soaps got better writers or someone, 15 years down the line will write similar posts about Indian soaps the way I now write about movies like Gunda and Papi Gudia. At least Gunda and Papi Gudia were a phase of Hindi movies that we have outgrown. Thank God we don’t think that Govinda is the best dancer or that Mithun da is the best actor. Its part of a normal growth curve but this continuous deterioration in the quality of Hindi soaps is depressing.

I think I need to watch Sabse Bada Khiladi or Coolie No.1 to cheer myself up now.

So long.

Lets Meet!! *GROAN*

Nowadays I shudder every time I see the words “weekend plan”, “XYZ’s birthday – what plan” , “meet up”, “guys – what plans” on the subject line in my mails. Even something as harmless as “Hi guys” can send shivers down my spine.

These terror mails are mostly started by either Yellow or Aki the two people who constantly strive to keep our group together (which is a euphemistic way of saying they are pretty jobless. I know coz a coupla months back I was one of the few “striving to keep the group together”:P).

Don’t get me wrong. I love these guys. Honestly I have known them for so long that meeting them is always a pleasure but not when I have to read 73 mails (NO exaggeration. Check image). And even after reading 73 mails I am pretty clueless about the “meet”.

When I was working it was a different thing. I would check my mails 3 times every second and could delete mails faster than they were produced by my friends. But now with me checking mails just about twice during the day the amount of backlog I have is HUGE (as if backlogs in assignments weren’t enough) and at the end of the day there seems to be no consensus about the place, time, day date of the meet.

So though I get to know valuable facts like F had dosa with sauce for breakfast (ewwww) and that N is on a diet, which essentially means she will eat chocolates only twice a day instead of four times and that yellow’s manager has loud conversations on the phone and that A’s onsite coordinator appreciates her work (its very rare u see so she makes sure we all hear of it) and lots of other things, I am COMPLETELY clueless about the actual “Meet” which was the purpose of the mail.

So a frustrated me sits at 5 in the evening after my classes and patiently reads those mails trying to find out if ANY of those 73 mails even remotely talks about the meet. Nope!! Though there are a BUNCH of excuses given for not being able to come to the meet and other inane conversations no proper plans of a birthday surprise or a meet. Trust me it IS a pain when u go through EACH AND EVERY mail, when u click on each and every one of those 73 little tabs to find out what the other person has said and still remain as clueless as ever.

And following are the top excuses which are given by the “group” to not attend a meet.

1. I can’t come because I have to take a bath man. So you guys carry on.

(No shit. The person who has used this excuse has not only used it once but several times as a result of which we have stopped calling her for the meets. Cleanliness is before Friendliness apparently :P)

2. The sun is too hot on Sundays. I don’t like to come out on a Sunday.

LOL!! :D. This is my favorite excuse. And the rest of us would go, “eh??? Errr. Dude!! The same sun shines all through the week. How can it be any hotter or colder on Sunday. If anything it should probably take a break and shine less on Sunday”.. But this person can be excused because when the sun is not “too” hot she always makes it to the meet AND on time.

3. Hey I am on a diet. So if we go out we are BOUND to eat out and that’s bad for my diet. Please. This is my first sincere attempt at dieting (YAWN!!). Don’t spoil it. Why don’t you come over to my place?

The person who gives this excuse lives in one godforsaken corner of the city and reaching that place is like undertaking an expedition. So all of us politely back out!! :P.

4. My parents are sleeping. Someone has to lock the door if I leave. Sorry I can’t come. Gee. That’s seriously the lamest I have heard till date. Ermm.. How long would it take to drop a vessel in the kitchen, act like it was by mistake, wake a parent and ask them to lock the door?

5. I have to study for my mock CAT (*YAWWWWN!!*).

The person who uses this excuse would probably excel in CAT if they posed questions about sleeping patterns of humans and had average sleeping time as a criterion for admissions.

6. I have office.

Sometimes genuine but most frequently abused excuse. Used when you are actually lazy to go out and so call up a friend and say “office maaan!! Soo sorry” :P

7. It’s my mother in law’s birthday guys.

Sighhhhh!! No comments.

8. I have assignments.

The person giving this excuse is an extremely nice person who usually makes it for every meet so she can be excused :P

So these are some of the most commonly used/abused excuses. And FINALLY by the time we actually reach a consensus, decide on a date and time we realize that it’s Monday and we have effectively lost the weekend in mailing each other. (We quit calling each other long time ago when we realized that all of us are equally bad at picking up the phone and answering calls or talking sense for more than 28 seconds.)

Effectively by the end of the day we have a terribly bad strike rate. Out of 25 meets planned 3 materialize and only 1 has all of us together (in which everyone will forget to bring the camera so we don’t even have any proof of THAT one meet when we were all together.). Going by statistics the only times when we have succeeded in meeting without hearing any excuses from anyone were the times when someone got married. And that was in December of last year.

I think it’s time someone got married. It’s been quite long since I saw everyone together.

Lets meet!! :P

P.S: I am GLAD gmail shows all 73 mails as just one mail. Imagine having to open 73 different mails and delete them one by one. *Shudders uncontrollably*

Natural Haircut or a Haircut in Naturals? Former for me please!! :-\

Now I am one of those people who hate getting a haircut. I get a haircut once a year when I go home and this is not because I think I need a haircut but because you can get haircuts done for really cheap rates in Jamnagar. Yeahhh!! I am a cheapo because I just don’t (will not) understand the funda behind spending anything more than 50 bucks for a haircut. Though in essence, that’s what this whole post is about. About how I almost had to sell my kidneys to pay for a haircut. Sighhh. Am not a cheapo any more. No sir.

Anyway so about three weeks back I realized that it had been a year since I last went home and my hair errr…euphemistically put would make birds look lovingly at my head and go “Sighhh. Home Sweet Home”. Don’t get me wrong. I love animals and all that but not when they are thinking of starting a family on top my head. (I better be careful about what I say about animals. You say something as harmless as cattle class and a whole bunch of anally retentive politicos will start letting out steam).

I am digressing. Where was I? Yeah so I realized I was majorly overdue for a haircut because given my trichotillomania and my hair which is prone to split ends I had hair of varying length all over my head and let aside looking lady like, I didn’t even look human.

So I set out to get a haircut done. Now never having had a haircut done in Chennai I had absolutely no idea about the rates. So I started calculating. Since Jamnagar last saw civilization in….. oops. Sorry. Jamnagar has never seen civilization. My bad. So since Jamnagar has never seen civilization it was but obvious that the rates in Chennai would be say three times more than the rates in Jamnagar. So I guessed that a haircut in Chennai would set me back by 150 bucks. Not bad I thought. Given the fact that I had last gotten a haircut 15 months back it wasn’t bad at all. But yet I thought it would be better to ask coupla friends.

So I sent out a message saying “Hey. How much do you guys pay for a haircut in Chennai man?” to about 4 of my friends. And I got replies from two of them saying “Depends on the parlor and the cut” and I sent back an “eh?”.

My friends knowing me elucidated that there were different ways in which you could get your hair cut, called U, V, W etc and depending on the cut you would be charged. So how much for a straight cut I asked and the casual reply I got was “Ohh. About 250-300”.

And I freaked. 250-300 bucks for a bloody haircut? Who was I? Julia Roberts? Hell!! ideally beauty parlours ought to be paying me coz I am GIVING them MY hair. 300 is what I spend in 6 years for a haircut. So I decided to ask in a couple of parlors. First I went to L’Oreal (Sighhhh) coz that was closest and I walked in and asked them the rates. I shall not repeat the price for many a faint audience might suddenly choke and die. So I gasped uncouthly at the receptionist when she told me the price and made a hurried exit.

Next stop was Naturals (double Sighhh!!) where I was told that I would be charged 250 bucks. Now in relative comparison to the price I heard in L’oreal, Naturals sounded so cheap I agreed at once and sat to get a haircut done.

12 minutes. I counted. She cut my hair for 12 minutes and I sat there stupidly for 2 minutes when she came and told me “Over madam” and I gawked. What?? I had paid almost 25 bucks a minute for this express haircut?

“Hmmm. How much?” I asked

“275 ma’am” replied the receptionist with perfectly made eyebrows, delicately powdered nose and bright red lipstick

“umm. You said 250 right?”

“Yeah ma’am. But with tax it will work out to 275. Cash or card?” she smiled sweetly.

I looked in my wallet and found a lone 100 rupee note laughing almost derisively at me as if saying “Ha ha. And you thought I would be enough to pay for your haircut? Sheeesh”

“Card” I grunted

And I came out with 275 bucks less in my already impoverished account. (I am a student remember. Its been 3 months since I last received a salary) and a couple of hairs less on my head.

My cell beeped. I opened the message morosely and it read

“Hey sorry. Was sleeping so couldn’t reply. It will cost you 80-100 bucks for a straight cut in Green Trends”

It took everything in me to muster all the self respect I had and not sit in the middle of the road and bawl shamelessly. Green Trends was two streets away.

Sighhhh.

I think I will next get a haircut when I am 37 years old and I am NOT going to Naturals!! GAH!!!

Meeting with an old nemesis - Sanskrit and Mrs M

Today as I was taking a walk around the township with mom I met an old nemesis of mine. I have decided that in future if I want to walk around in a place where I had once received my education I will either do it in the middle of the night when no one is around or wear a burkha. 

So amma and I were just sauntering with amma as usual giving me advice and self nodding my head sagely, looking at the ground in an attempt to look remorseful for being errr... Me (read lazy, sleepy, bored, lethargic, spend thrifty, anti marriage etc...) when suddenly a voice comes saying "Arey Revathi beta. Aap kab aaye?"

In slow motion I lift my head and whom do I see?? I see  Mrs. M** (name changed to protect I dunno what. not like she is going to read this blog but whatever). Now I had always been a decent student in school. never getting those obscenely high 99s and 100s and neither failing miserably in any subject except except for SANSKRIT. I never really understood Sanskrit in school (errr.. I don’t do it even now). I never really understood why we needed to study Sanskrit. Why??So that one day when I die and meet god I can talk in Sanskrit, impress him and convince him that he should send me to heaven instead of hell where I ideally should be for the kind of deeds I have done??? I mean what is the use of studying a bally language which I would never use .

Errr. mind you, not that I "use" the other subjects and languages I studied in school/college. That is a totally different thing but back then in class 8th I thought that in future the math and science which I studied then would help me conquer the world and help me earn the "big bucks" (gosh!!! big bucks it seems. lol. :D. big pennies is more like it!! :D). I hadn’t heard of anyone having Sanskrit as a subject in aptitude exams or Sanskrit as a "stream" in class 11th or anyone saying we have the Sanskrit Olympiad exam or Sanskrit coaching classes or doing a Bsc in Sanskrit or..... Anyway I am digressing. you get the drift dontchya?? I hated Sanskrit from the bottom of my heart and with the kind of marks I got in Sanskrit, I don’t think the language liked me anymore than Ratan Tata likes Mamta Banerjee.

 

in class 8th Sanskrit was introduced and it was obvious from day one that I wasn’t getting the "hang" of the subject. Mrs. M was a huge fat white Punjabi lady (I have had a fear of Punjabi ladies ever since) who had a booming voice and would go "lata, latah lathabhyaaaaaaam...hey lata, hey lata, hey lata" (Sanskrit purists desist from commenting on my Sanskrit. the lata conjugation is probably the only thing which I sorta remember from those miserable days). I never did understand why in the end of the lata conjugation we had to shout at lata and go "hey lata, ho lata, haaaye lata" or something like that. Exclamation it seems. BAH!!

so the first unit tests (or monthly tests or quarterly tests... I really don’t remember) and I errr..... euphemistically put did not make enough marks to make the merit list, in fact I did not make enough marks to even make the "pass" list. sighhhh!! cutting the crap.. I flunked. and if u r a self respecting conscientious 8th standard kid you will cry at having failed. I mean jeeez you don’t fail in 8th standard and especially not when your mother is a teacher in the same school, your Sanskrit teacher looks like she has 8th std kids for breakfast everyday and when u made a decent 80 (ok 75!!!) in all the other subjects. but sigh. fail I did and I continued to fare poorly the whole year and finally ended up switching to French in class 9th.

 

Now Mrs. M hated failures. I mean no teacher likes failures but she HATED them. and she would never miss a chance to humiliate me and my Sanskrit paper always looked like it had been written in red and corrected in blue. she would put a huge cross across my page, put a merciless and fat looking 0 in the left, write the correct conjugation in red and write "bekaar" (worst). I would be in tears every time I saw my paper. She was a great teacher or so people told me but I think teaching me Sanskrit was as herculean a task as asking Angelina Jolie to be not sexy (errr.. me being AJ and "not sexy" being Sanskrit!! :P). Needless to say I never thought very highly of Mrs. M and I think the vice versa was also true.

so today she met me in the park and did what she does best. humiliated me. she pulled my cheeks and went "Beta. ghar aaye ho? yaad hai na? hamesha Sanskrit mein fail hote the aap" (you have come home?? Remember you would always flunk Sanskrit in school) 

Me: (thinking) what the... lady I am on vacation. you don’t need to remind me how miserably I failed in ur papers and frankly u never did teach properly!! :-\

 

Me: (saying)heh heh. yaad hai ma'am. kaise bhool sakti hoon. (I remember. how can I forget?)

 

M: abhi bhi aise hi fail hote ho kya? (do u still fail like this) followed by a guffaw

 

Me: (thinking): lady now u have had it. eeeeyaarrghhhhhhhhhh (mentally bringing a karate chop on her head)

 

Me: (saying): heh heh. nahi ma'am. ab to bas pass ho jaate hain (no. I pass now)

 

M: ok beta. ab mai nikalti hoon. (turning to my mom). bada accha lagta hai jab old students milte hain. I feel young (feels nice to meet odl students. I feel young)

 

Me: (thinking). lady. no amount of Botox or retinol in this world can make u look young. and u may feel good meeting old students. I don’t repeat DONT feel great being reminded that I was a failure (sigh. I know I am being rude. she wasn’t a bad sort but..I dunno :))

 

Me: (saying); Thanks ma'am. bye!! 

 

sighhh!! moral of the story: never go for a walk in broad day light in a place where there is high probability of meeting old flames (:P) or teachers. and later I came to know that she was on a "karva chauth" vrath and hadn’t eaten anything from morning (praying for the long life of the husband). maybe she was hungry and she decided to eat my brain instead. sigh. they ought to have a rule for karva chauth. no eating anything and brains strictly prohibited till u see the moon!! :-\

 

P.S: is karva chauth a Punjab da festival or UP festival? I saw lotsa Punjabi aunties doing the karva chauth routine today (looking at the moon and looking at the husband). always thought it was a UP thing. hmmm

 

Snap out of it - part II - The ordeal of passport size photos!!

Inspired by arun I decided to write a sequel to “THIS”. I forgot to write about the one situation which sends shivers down my spine even as I think of it.

Passport photographs: now I have never really understood the concept behind taking passport size photos. Right from class 6th onwards when I got my first passport size photograph taken, I have dreaded sitting in front of some unknown person who asks me to lift my chin, smile a little, straighten my hair, hide my bald pate etc. I don’t understand. Why do u need passport size photos for exam application forms? I mean ok. If u know you are going to top the state and expect to see ur picture in the paper with a caption below which reads “Srinivasan Ananthakrishnan (errr.yeah. These toppers, I have noticed, usually have names like that!! :P) has topped the state with a whooping 495/500 and the last time he saw a TV or read something other than subject books was when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated”.

Ok. I know I am being sarcastic but coming back to the point if you know you are state topper material then it makes sense to paste ur photo in the application form. For normal folks like me who get the 1258748th rank in state and the only way we can have our picture in the paper is, if someone is kind enough to write an obituary with a picture for u. why the hell do I need passport size photos? I am not exaggerating when I say that not even one passport size photo of mine looks decent. In most of them I look like some serial killer who gets pleasure out of gouging out the eyes of her victims, drinking their blood and wearing a chain made of eye balls. And remember I am not exaggerating.

And it doesn’t help that I get my passport size photos taken at this place in adyar which is run by a woman and a man who loathe smiling as much as I loathe being photographed. I mean they NEVER give any expression. They have this deadpan expression on their face all the time which betrays no emotion and even a person as charming as me has been unable to penetrate their thick skins!! :P. Most of the times this is the conversation between us

Me: passport size photo?

Lady: mhmmh kum ulla oklum

Me: (thinking) errr. Sorry ma’am I don’t understand Swahili, or was that Maori?

Me: eh? Sorry?

Lady: mhmmh kum ulla oklum

She says again pointing to a dark room at the rear of the studio.

(sitting on a small stool in a dark room staring at a man who looks like he has never seen sun light in his life)

Man: look at the red light

I sincerely look at the red light

Man: chin up, eyes down

I Chin up and look down.

Man: small smile please

I mentally strangle him, slit his throat and gouge his eyes out. The image gives me a lot of happiness and a smile creeps on my face

Man: give good smile please

Me (mentally): eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! Baring all my teeth

Man: look to the left and straighten ur shoulders.

Finally after giving me approximately 45637 instructions he clicks, the flash blinds my eye and I close them.

Man: one more photo ku okkarunga. You have closed ur eyes in this one.

After about 20 minutes which would even test the patience of mother teresa the ordeal is over and the result is a photo which would fit perfectly in the wanted list in the police stations and looks nothing like a person who wants to apply for admission into a prestigious university!! :-\

Till date I strongly believe that I didn’t get admission into any of the colleges that I wished for only because of my photo. :-P.

Say Cheese, Click...Oh "Snap" out of it!!

I hate posing for photographs. Well!! Not that I am a celebrity of some kind whose house is being thronged by photographers of all kinds who go “Please please come out so we might get a glimpse of u and take a picture” but the rare times that some one does actually want to take a picture of me I cringe and shy away and try to give lame excuses about how the flash blinds my eye or pretend to not notice that fact that the photographer is actually waiting to take a snap and purposely wander to a place which is devoid of photographers.

No seriously. Maybe this makes me sound like a snooty and haughty person who thinks she is too high and mighty to actually pose for a photograph with peasants but most of the times I never know what expression to give when I am being photographed. My expressions in all the photos which feature me range from “please finish taking this photo soon coz I badly need to visit the loo” expression to the “I am a model for close up toothpaste and this photo is to prove that I have 32 teeth” expression to the “I am a mean machine and I eat small photographers for breakfast and the big ones for lunch” expression.

I have some friends who are naturals when it comes to posing for a photograph. I envy them and I wonder how they manage to strike the right expression at all times and how their face automatically curves into a smile while my attempts to smile result in leaving a constipated expression on my face and a pain in my jaw due to the forceful smile. There are a lot of occasions where I am stumped as to what expression to give

1. Marriages:
Now what do u do when u go to the wedding of a person you don’t know very well? You go up on stage, give the gift all the time hoping and praying that the photographer doesn’t grin and say “one minute photo please” and the minute u finish ur prayer u hear a voice saying “one minute photo please” and u stand there wondering what to do with ur hands. Do u put them around the arm of the person next to u – but wouldn’t that look too informal? or do u fold ur hands across ur chest and stare stupidly into the camera (my standard and favorite expression which I have mastered after years of practice and attending useless weddings) but wouldn’t that look too unfriendly? Or do leave ur hands by your side – but hey this is a wedding not the national anthem being played at the republic day parade that u need to stand in attention. So every time I attend weddings I try to hide behind a horizontally challenged person (read: fat) so that I don’t feature in them snaps!!

2. Eating at marriages:
This is by far the most uncomfortable and irritating situation ever. All the times when you sit to eat the wonderful marriage food and wonder if you should drink the payasam first or attack the bisibelebath first and are trying to solve this delectable confusion, the second vilest threat to mankind (the first place goes to… brokers) a.k.a photographers and video men will materialize from no where, put a blinding light on your face and try to capture a picture of you eating there by broadcasting ur eating habits to the entire world (the world wasn’t supposed to know that u put all five fingers into ur mouth when u eat!! :rolling eyes:)

And all the time you are left to wonder what you should do. Should u eat like a glutton unmindful of the camera – but jeez!! What if geroge Clooney stumbled across this video one day and decide against marrying u saying u had disgusting eating habits? Or should u just stop eating and look into the camera and stare stupidly – but wouldn’t that be too artificial and wouldn’t people think u r trying to hog the limelight? Or should you eat daintily just picking at the food and pretending that the bisibelebath and aloo sabzi are trivial things for a person with your level of sophistication? Naaah? Given my level of “sophistication” (the most sophisticated I can get is using one straw to drink milkshake rather than using two of them and inserting them into my nostrils!!) I could never do that. So most of these marriage videos which feature me capture me with food on my hands and a stupid expression on my face.

To all u dorks who are going “ha ha!! Yeah right. Like u have an intelligent expression on ur face all the time” I am going to show u how sophisticated and intelligent I am – Author putting out her tongue at the audience and going Uuuuuuuuuuuu!! :P Humph!! Now if that’s not sophisticated and intelligent I dunno what is. :-\

3. group photos:
Now I have close to 8 gb of photographs of college life which is close to some 1000 odd snaps and only about 100 of them feature me. All through college I enjoyed being the photographer rather than being a part of the photo. All through college two words which I dreaded the most weren’t “internals” or “results” but “say cheese”. The photos which were taken without my knowledge were ok because I didn’t actually have to strive for an expression. But as soon as someone asked me to pose I would become conscious and try to achieve what looked like a smile but what finally came in the photo was a cross between a grin and a smile which would look so artificial that people would look at the photo and go “you spoilt the entire photograph man. Everyone is smiling and you look like a person who has escaped from rehab and badly wants a bottle of liquor”.
Not my fault. I just wasn’t born with the “smile-when-someone-clicks-a-camera-gene” in my body

I just hope the day George (Clooney) asks for my hand in marriage he agrees for a quiet ceremony and does not insist on a huge wedding inviting everyone and being photographed because I HATE being photographed and posing for snaps!! :P

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!!! ;)

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!! ;)

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

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? :-\

I hate giving titles so this post doesnt have a title!! on second thoughts i would call it Life's Like That - Part II

My 7 year old cousin is going through a phase in his life where he wants to be everything. One day he wanted to be spider man, the next day he swore that he was born only so he could bat like dhoni and then he wanted to be a footballer like zizou. Everything he sees around him enamors and charms him. It reminded of the time in my life when I was going through a similar phase. From the time I was 4 to the time I was 18 there were approximately 137 people I wanted to become and 3764 things I wanted to do when I grew up.

Age 5: Revs the garbage collector
I am extremely serious when I say that at the age of 5 I thought the coolest profession and the best thing to do in the world was to collect garbage. The reason was this. When I was young and amma used to give me something to eat, me being me I would invariably always drop what she gave me. A bar of chocolate, a ladoo, fruits EVERYTHING. And most of the times I would drop it in the dirtiest of places possible and just when I went to pick it up again and put it into my mouth to eat it my mom would say “chi!! Gandha hai” and flippantly throw it into the dustbin without realizing how it broke my heart to see a perfectly edible, delectable piece of chocolate go into the dustbin just because my mom suspected it had contracted germs. So most of my childhood went by with me sacrificing most of the things I liked to the dustbin. Every morning when chandu the garbage collector came home I would stare at him wistfully and think to myself “if ever I grow up I would want to be someone like chandu so I can go from house to house and collect garbage and retrieve all the things amma cruelly threw into it”
Needless to say after I attained a certain level of maturity this dream died.

Age 9: Revs the teacher
Though this sounds like an extremely sane and serious profession to choose, now when I think of it , the reason I chose it for seems extremely silly. All through school the one thing which absolutely enamored me was writing on a black board with white chalk. In class 4 there was nothing in the world I would have liked to do more than writing on the board with chalk and the only person I knew who always did this was my teacher. Because of my lack of stature though I have been monitor many times I was never given the opportunity to write the proverb for the day on the board primarily because I never could reach so high. It was such a grand thing for me to be called by the teacher to solve a sum on the board or something and I used to almost swell and burst with pride and hold the chalk as tightly as possible and do the sum as slowly as possible but that was a rare occurrence and So every time I looked at the teacher I would be like “That’s it. If ever I grow up the only I thing I want to be is a teacher and the only thing I want to do all my life is write on the board with chalk”
This dream died when amma and appa bought my sister and I a black board at home and after writing for 6 months to my hearts content the charm wore off.

Age 11: Revs the pilot
I think EVERY child would have had this dream at some point of time in their life. I haven’t known a single person who didn’t want to be a pilot when he/she was a kid. I think it is just one of those childhood things. Kya banna chahti ho badi hoke? someone would ask me and pat I would reply “Mai to badi hoke pilot banoongi” . I dunno why or what made me chose this profession but the very thought of sailing high in the skies among the clouds and wearing all those badges and stuff seemed like the most interesting and fun profession. I think this dream of mine never did die and never will. Even today I nurture a secret desire to ride a jet or at least a helicopter. The fact that I have never seen the insides of a jet or a helicopter and have a mild fear of heights is something which we shall not waste time discussing.

Age 13: Revs the sleuth
Extremely predictable. Every kid who has grown up reading enid blyton, nancy drew, hardy boys, agatha Christie, perry mason or sherlock holmes would have nurtured this dream. At the age of 13 I knew that I was a reincarnation of fatty (the main character in the five find outers and the dog. My favorite series by enid blyton). I used to dream up non existent mysteries and suspect extremely innocent people . I got the hiding of my life when once my dad had given my cycle to the cycle fellow for some repairs and I went and told him “hah!! Ramanan!!! So u thought u could escape by stealing and selling my cycle, getting some money and then claiming the insurance claims also by declaring the cycle was lost eh? (errr.. yeah. That was the way the book “the mystery of the burned cottage” ended when Mr. what-his-name would set fire to his own cottage to claim insurance claims). Needless to say my dad wasn’t pleased. Parents!! No appreciation for creativity or lateral thinking.
So because of extreme parental pressure I gave up this dream of mine.

There were so many, so many other things I wanted to become. A lawyer (the thought of wearing a black robe and carrying a rolled up white paper and shouting “your honor” gave me quite a kick and I have done it many times in the privacy of my room when I was young), an actress (ok!! U can stop heaving a sigh of relief that I did not pursue this dream of mine), a cook (never will become a good one I guess!! :(), a writer, a doctor (I grew up watching corny hindi movies so I have always had this desire to come out of an operation theatre, look at anxious family members and say “inhe dawaa ki nahi duwaa ki zaroorat hai”. Lol. Morbid!! I know!!), a cricketer, an army general (because the fact that there were no women in the cricket team or Indian army rankled me.) and sooooooo many other things that I have lost count.

It is indeed surprising and rather ironical that not even ONCE in my lifetime did I want to become a software engineer. I have nurtured so many dreams when I was young and in none of them have I pictured myself sitting in front of a computer screen and typing away to glory. Well what I am doing now is way way way better than some of the things I have wanted to become. (I mean seriously. Just imagine what would have happened had I pursued my first ever dream of being a garbage collector. Incidentally I am also doing that. Yesterday one of my team mates asked me if my variable in java had been garbage collected and if I had done garbage collection. I couldn’t help but laugh!! :D) and I am extremely happy and have no complaints but sometimes I wonder why I never pursued some of the things I wanted to when I was a kid and ended up becoming something I totally did not think of. But I think all of us have extremely romantic and exotic dreams when we are young but reality is so much different and I guess life’s like that and though right now I may not be exactly fulfilling some of my dreams (Thank god!! :P) I am extremely happy and contented and I hope I stay that way!!

Money Money Money - Must be Funny

What is it with parents and accounts? Why are mom’s in particular so particular about money and where it goes once it is given to a teenaged daughter? What is money after all, when compared to a daughter who is worth a million dollars. My parents sadly don’t seem to realize that and are always worried about how I spend my money. When I was doing my engineering I was given 10000 rupees per semester (four months) apart from my fees and it was deposited in the bank in the starting of the semester and I was to survive with that money for the entire semester. Now it’s a funny thing with money. If u have it in hand u never know how it goes out of ur hand, where it goes, why it goes, when it goes. The only thing u know is that it goes, never to come back.

I tried telling my parents that maybe they should give me a monthly allowance rather than a semesterly allowance if they wanted me to keep things in control but they never listened. As a result of this normally by the end of the third semester I would be in a pathetically impecunious state, with a bank balance which would be equal to the weight of the most mal nourished kid in somalia. In fact the bank in which I had an account had a rule that my account must have a minimum of 100 rupees of balance. Once I was so hard up for money that I had 126 rupees in my account and I wrote out a withdrawal slip of 126 rupees and was given such dirty looks by the cashier that even now I shudder when I think of what he must have thought of me. By the end of the semester i would go to the college stores and buy the cheapest soap, cheapest biscuits, cheapest of everything. A normal conversation between the stores guy and me would be this

Me: give me a packet of hide and seek and a bottle of maaza

Stores guy: that will be 25 bucks

Me: (thinking) what???!!! 25 bucks. That’s an outrageous amount especially when u have exactly 20 bucks in ur pocket.

Me(saying): Errr. Give me a packet of tiger biscuit. ( note to readers : stop thinking “My god. She eats tiger biscuits”. When u r hungry and have no money even pedigree dog biscuits would taste delicious and anyway tiger biscuit was the cheapest biscuit available in the stores)

Stores guy: that will be 7 bucks. Don’t u want anything to drink?

Me: (heaving a sigh of relief and reluctantly parting with my last 10 rupee note. The remaining 10 bucks were in coins.): no thanks. I think I ll just drink some water from the cooler.

I dunno what the stores guy thought of me and at that point of time I was hardly in a position to think of what people thought about me.

By the fag end of the semester this would be conversation between my mom and me

Me: amma. Errr… hmmm.. actually.

Mom: stop hemming and hawing shruthi. What do u want. I am sure u have run out of money. That’s it right?

Mom’s are too smart for their own good.

Me: heh heh. Actually yeah. That reminds me that I am kind of short of money (that’s an understatement. I am extremely short of money. I wear a burqa in hostel so ppl dont recognize me and ask me to return the money I owe them and I am scared some of them will get their boy friends to beat me up if I don’t return it in time)

Mom: ok. I will transfer 200 bucks. Is that enough?

Me: (almost hyperventilating and thinking) 200 bucks?? My debt is running to over 700 bucks and then come my own personal needs.

Me: (saying to amma):Hmmm. Actually could u transfer 1500 bucks please.

Mom: 1500? Shruthi. What did u do with the 10000 I gave u at the beginning of the sem?

Me: amma. There were so many expenses this sem. Plus a mess bill of 1200 per month.

Mom: 1200 per month. So 4 months Rs 4800. what happened to the remaining 5200?

Me: (mind working at a speed which would put Einstein to shame): well u know amma the mess food is so bad that we buy maggi and cook it in the hostel.

Mom: (incredulously): u spent 5200 bucks on maggi???

Me: no!! heh heh!! Actually. It was my room mate’s birthday and then my class mates birthday and then I saw a couple of movies, took photocopies of a couple of notes (terrible lie!! Being in the hostel we never had the need to “Xerox” any notes. If one had it, it was same as all of us having it. I was usually never the “one” to have it) and then the usual u know.
I sounded extremely lame even to myself. Try as I might I just couldn’t imagine where 5200 bucks had gone.

Mom: how many times a year does ur roommate have a birthday. Normally people have it just once a year.
(yeah. Sarcasm runs in my blood!! :|)

Me: (thinking): Damn!! Looks like I have already used up that one.
Me(saying): Actually. She is not really my roommate. She is a close friend of mine and spends so much time in my room that she is almost a roommate. That’s what I meant.

(I am damn proud of myself and the way I handled this sticky situation)

Dad (joining in the conversation): I dunno shruthi. I think u spend entirely too much. When I was doing my engineering appa used to give me 300 rupees each semester. I used to write accounts daily and in the end I used to save 50 bucks and have enough money to buy my ticket home. But you? U spend all the money, demand more and apart form that we also pay for ur ticket home.

Me:(thinking): appa studied in 3rd century B.C when people were still thinking that the sun revolves around the earth and 300 bucks in 3rd century B.C was like 20000 bucks in present day.
Me(saying): yes appa. Sorry appa. I will try to spend diligently from now on and save some money and also write accounts
(even as I say this my conscience is rolling on the floor and laughing. I am miserable at saving, I am miserable at account writing. I am miserable at everything except spending and I lie blatantly to my father. I wouldn’t dare saying this to my mom because being a daughter it is easier to melt dad than mom)

Dad: hmmm. Good girl. I will transfer the money.
Me: phew!! Thanks appa. Umm. Can u do it now. I am kind of in need of it now.

This scenario used to repeat itself unfailingly every semester. Apart from this I also used to get “special” allowances from my grandmom and sis who being the kindred souls that they are would give me “diwali” allowances or “birthday” allowances or "Cool. u failed only in 3 subjects out of 6 this unit test" allowance. Once even going as far as giving me 200 bucks because it was mahatma gandhi’s birthday. In spite of all this kindness from various members of my family by the end of the semester I would be in an extremely impoverished state. Till date I dunno what I did with all that money which came to my hands. All I knew was that it wasn’t there when I needed it and needed it most.

I used to envy my friends who were committed or had boyfriends. They never spent anything. Their boyfriends spent for them and I wondered how that dude handled his parents’ questions every time. My friends who were in love had so many other “love” problems but I was always the one with “financial” problems which I think are much more difficult to handle than “love” problems. Apparently when u r in love u don’t feel hungry or sleepy. I was always sleepy and always hungry and hence always in constant need of tiger biscuits to keep my hunger pangs away. My friends in love had no such problems. So no standing shame facedly in front of the stores guy for them. :-\

Even now after I have started working money in my hands flows like water. And thanks to the umpteen investments which my parents have started for my “safe future”, at the end of the month my bank balance looks like the same Somalian kid mentioned at the start of this post. The day I learn to manage money will be the day Osama bin laden will surrender himself to bush, Vajpayee will take part in a marathon and win, Andrew Symonds will look more human and less primate like…. U get the drift. It aint gonna happen ever.
Suddenly the words of the song by Abba seems to make so much sense.

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world

All the things I could do
If I had a little money

Having more money and not knowing what to do with it. I guess that’s one affliction I will never suffer from!! :(