Life's Like That!!!

DISCLAIMER:This is a long post as usual but I don’t have the heart to edit any of its contents so please bear with me!! :)

When my sister and I were born my mother took one look at us and hoped that she would have daughters with the looks of rani mukherji, the agility of PT usha and the voice of MS subbalakshmi.

I guess something went wrong in my mothers prayers coz we ended up with the looks of PT usha, the agility of MS and the voice of rani mukherji. :P But my mother, stubborn that she is decided that though god hadn’t given her gifted children she would make her children gifted and somehow make them great singers or athletes or orators. As a result of this my sister and I were sent to extra curricular activity “classes” right from the time I was in class 3 and she was in 6th. I shall try my best to recount my experiences in the various classes I attended.

The Singer:
Now I am not exaggerating when I say I have a voice which closely resembles rani mukherji’s. people who have spoken to me on phone have given the following adjectives for my voice. Bellow, raspy, howl, shrill, grating etc. Even in class 3 i knew that I could be anything I wanted to be but not a singer. Now in tam-brahm houses it is a tradition that if u have girls u have to necessarily send them to singing/dancing classes and if u have boys u have to necessarily send them to singing/ instrument classes. My family is no exception. I have cousins who are brilliant singers, excellent violin players and graceful dancers. I am none of them.

My mother not the one to accept defeat sent my sister and me to this 86 year old vidhwan (I still remember his name: dhinanath updhyay) to learn Hindustani music. In the year 1993 in surat there wasn’t anyone who taught carnatic music so my mother settled for Hindustani. Now Hindustani music is beautiful and soulful and some of the songs which our sir sang have moved me to tears even at the tender age of 8. (our sir sang mind u not us. If it had been us there would have been different kind of tears in our sir’s eyes)

So we were sent to music classes. Now this music class was from 2.30 – 3.30 in the afternoon. School used to get over at 1.30, then heavy lunch and then music classes. Please note the heavy lunch point. By the time we reached the class we would be half asleep. Now this guy who taught was an excellent singer but had poor eyesight (obviously he was 86. I still wonder how he stayed awake from 2.30 – 3.30). So as soon as we sat down to sing preethi would doze off saying “I am sleepy and anyway sir cant see me sleeping so I am going to sleep”, leaving me to face sir’s wrath.

Sir: Gao beta gao. Saaaaa
Preethi: zzzzzzzzzzz
Me: (Pssst. Preethi utth. Sir is asking us to sing)
Preethi (almost musically): zzzz.z.zzzzzzzz.zzzz
Me: (after futile attempts at trying to wake up my sleepy sibling I would start shouting at the top of my voice coz I had to produce the effect of 2 ppl singing): SAAAAAAAAAA…
Sir: (he cant see preethi sleeping away to glory): aur zor se sur mein gao, taal se mila ke gao beta. Sa re ga ma
Me: (thinking): sur aur taal ki to aisi ki taisi. I cant even sing and I have to care abt ur sur and taal also
Me: Sa re ga maaaaaa

And so on and so forth the great man tried to make the voice coming out of my chops a little bearable - in vain. Finally at the end of 3 months he couldn’t take it any longer and he called my mom.
Mom: ji. Kaise gaati hain meri betiyaan?
Sir: awaaz mein dum hai lekin sur aur taal ka milan nahi hai.
he said mustering all the panache he could instead of telling my mom, “Frankly, in my 55 years of teaching music I have never come across anyone so hopelessly disinclined towards music”
And so that was that and my mother dropped dreams of ever having sudha raghunathan’s and MS subbalakshmi’s as daughters

The Orator:
Next was oratory. My mom began having dreams of daughters who would be lok sabha, rajya sabha speakers or Indian envoys of the united nations. Honestly speaking public speaking was something which I was fairly decent at. Till class 10th I have never had a fear of crowds or people. I used to love taking part in debates, extempore and declamation contests in school. And then “THE” incident happened. I am not sure when it was, whether in 10th or 11th but I had to give a speech introducing a particular chief guest who had done a lot of work in uplifting the poor etc.

At one point in the speech I had to say “Sir, your enthusiasm is infectious and has encouraged all of us to follow in ur footsteps” and I dunno what came over me, I suddenly got really really scared fumbled and said “Sir. Your infection is enthusiastic and has encouraged all of us to follow in ur footsteps”. :oops:. I could have left it at that and no one would have noticed but I went ahead and said “I am sorry. Your infection is enthusiasm and …”

The entire school howled, the teachers giggled, the principal frowned and the chief guest wasn’t very impressed to say the least. I still wonder what would have happened if he had really had some serious infection or something. Whatever. Since then I have had this inexplicable fear for public speaking which has never gone completely and since that day I have never gone on stage to give a speech or anything. And so my mothers dreams of making me a lok sabha speaker also went down the drain

The Tennis Star:
Next my mom tried the sports arena. “Badi hoke monica seles banegi meri beti” said my mom when she enrolled me into tennis classes. When I joined tennis classes I was as high as a tennis racket (for people who have seen me stop saying “you still are!!” humph!!) and weighed 10 times as much. Meaning I was really short and really really fat. I could never lift the tennis racket to do a service or do a volley and even when I did miraculously manage to lift it my ball would never cross the net. Now my tennis sir had this weird punishment.
U come late to class – run around the court 2 times
U don’t wear proper sports attire – run around court 2 times
Ball hits the net – run around court once
Drop the racquet – run around the court, talk while practice – run around court, laugh while practice – run around court. U get the drift? Half the time I was running around court. So much so that many times I would come to class and start running around the court without even being told to coz I knew I would break some rule or the other during the course of the day.

Sir: Revathi today u…
Me: sorry sir. I will run around court
Sir: (puzzled). No wait. Today for a change u r on time and have worn the proper attire. U can start practicing ur serve.
Me: (running)
Sir: why are u running now?
Me: I know I will mess my serve, talk or giggle or something!! I’d rather run now than run after I am caught!!

Anyway at the end of 3 months of coaching I was 6 kgs lighter and a fairly decent athlete (all that running finally did pay) but tennis wise I was still the same. MISERABLE. I never did get the hang of the game and I was always made to play against people who were masters at the game. Before I could understand what was going on they would say ace, deuce, game point, match point and I would have lost.

So that ended my mother’s “meri beti monica seles” dreams.

Over the years I have realized that there is nothing I that I am really good at. I mean I was fairly decent at studies, fairly decent in sports, fairly decent in everything but never exceptionally brilliant in anything. I have never been a very ambitious go-getter kind of a person and am extremely comfortable with my shortcomings because I have realized life’s like that. U can never have everything and the beauty of life lies in the fact that it isn’t perfect. Its imperfections define its beauty. Ultimately i never did become any of the things which my mom hoped I would become and neither did my sister (at least she did justice to the looks of Rani and agility of P.T Usha condition. I was completely hopeless!! :P). But I have no regrets because though I know I never will be a monica seles or an MS subbalakshmi I am extremely happy because I am sure monica seles and MS Subbalakshmi (may her soul rest in peace) can never be me. :)

(Nope!! I have gone deaf so I cant hear u say “Huh!! Who u kidding?? They would never want to be you!! ;)”)

I am dead!!

My last and final hope of leading a better and meaningful existence just bombed today. The last silver lining on my cloud decided to hide itself behind the blasted cloud. For people who know me u know what I am talking about. For others I am really not in a mood to explain. I am in a “look at me and I will cry” and “touch me and I will scream” mood!!

What with today’s debacle and the fact that blogger has been banned in office I have a feeling the entire world is on a “lets screw Revathi’s happiness” mission. My blogging frequency will drastically come down now and I will be “busy” doing coding, designing and testing!! :(

All my life lines are being blocked one by one and it is suffocating me. Its like this. Imagine a man drowning right in the middle of the pacific ocean, and a helicopter comes to rescue him. He is suddenly very hopeful and thrashes his arms to catch the helicopter’s attention. The helicopter comes really close to the man and then flies away because it is unable to spot him. The man screams, shouts and ultimately dies. I feel like that man now.

Its funny. When you are 21 you think you are immortal and can achieve anything that u want. I just realized that I am dead. IT has killed me. :|

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!! :(

I am in love - Yet again!! :)

I have to stop doing it. I seem to be doing it on a regular basis now. I really really must stop falling in love. I seem to be falling in love so frequently that if I increased the frequency the shiv sena men would come and get me. At any given point of time I am love with at least 5 different people. Even as I type this I realize that I am falling love yet again!! In the past one week following are the people I fell in love with.

1. I fell in love with my 7 year old cousin. After a long time because of him I laughed at something totally silly.
Now my cousin Siddhu (short for Siddhanth) and I are the only people in my house who crave to have a dog in the house and the other day we were having a discussion as to what we would name the dog, if we ever had one.

Me: Siddhu nu koopadalam - *giggle, giggle*

Sid: shruthi (me) nu koopadalam - *giggle giggle*

Me: hey ile na andha doggie a “Shruddhu (shruthi + siddhu)” nu koopadalam. *guffaw*

Sid: idhu nalla name a irruku aana paathu shruddhu nu koopta approm adhu buddhu aaida poradhu.

Now this was such a lame joke but believe it or not Sid and I laughed for 10 minutes continuously as if we had cracked the funniest joke of the year or something. If someone else had cracked the same joke I would have gone "Soooo lame!! Hmph!!" but that day I was really proud of us.

2. I fell in love with my 5 year old cousin Arya when she called me the other day and said "I love u shruthi" her voice dripping with an innocence and genuineness which only a 5 year old is capable of. Not a day goes by without me wishing "I wish they were here in India". I hate having to see them grow up in photographs.

3. Even as I write this I am falling in love with my sister because she just called me and said "hey I have made ur favorite adai for dinner. So u better come home tonight. We will rent a movie and pig out in front of the TV". I love her adai’s and I love watching a movie with her because every time we start to watch a movie I fall asleep half away and she gets totally irritated. :D. I think the only movie for which both of us dozed off was khoya khoya chand. SAD movie!!

4. I fell in love with an auto fellow two days back because he actually charged less that I expected him to, to reach a particular place. It is a pleasant surprise when u brace urself to bargain and fight and then realize that he has actually quoted less that what u had in mind.

5. I fell in love with myself (yeah guys!! This one is really important. It is very important that u love urself if u want the world to love you. Never fall out of love with urself.) when a little something I wrote for someone’s birthday made that person really happy.

6. I almost constantly fall in love with people who say nice things about me or write nice comments on my blog. (yeah!! I know I am shallow. :P) but every time some one writes something as simple as "hey!! Nice blog" or something I find myself falling in love with them. Lol. I have a really really weak heart!! :P

7. I fell in love with this friend of mine when I re-read THIS blog which she had written about our life in college. I miss college more than anything or anyone else right now. :(

8. I fell in love with a team mate of mine after she came and told me "hey I found a couple of defects in ur code. They were minor so I fixed them on my own. Am not logging them for u". Such an angel she is!! :)

9. I fell in love with George Clooney (yet again!!) when I saw ocean’s twelve last time. How can that guy be so criminally good looking even at the age of 50?

10. I fell in love with P G Wodehouse (yeah!! I know he is dead) after I read pigs have wings yet again last week and laughed till my sides hurt.

So as u see in the past one week I have fallen in love with so many people and so many times that u can imagine the number of people I would have fallen in love with in the past 21 years. I am worried that if ever I get married and my husband asks me "so, have u had any past relationships?" I wonder what I will say!! :P

Jokes apart. Right now I am totally in love with life and seem to be falling in love with everything and everyone. I love this phase in my life. I love writing about it, I love being able to write about it, I love the fact that I always seem to have a smile on my face, a song on my lips and a spring in my step. I love feeling useful and being able enough to help someone I don’t know. I love the fact that I have just enough time to do everything I like to do, I love the fact that I am getting to spend quality time with my friends, I am also glad that it has been more than a month since I had a fight with my mom. I love it all!! I feel free, I feel liberated, I feel sooooo good!!! :)

YaBa DaBaaaaaaa Dooooooooo!!!

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Blog!!!
Happy birthday to you

For those of you who think that I have completely lost it (No!!!no one gets to say "u never had it in the first place!!" :-\) and think that I have the maturity level of a 2 year old, well my blog just turned 2 and I am just soooooooooo happy about it. 2 years back same day I started blogging. I remember starting a blog because I was really really bored and sick of the Jamnagar winter and had no idea what to do with my time and when I wrote my first blog I was sure I wouldn’t write for more than 2 or 3 months. 24 months and 94 posts I figure is not bad. From "writing because I am really bored" to "writing because I can’t live otherwise" I have come a long way. In these two years I am glad I haven’t suffered a block (not a long one at least. I had one in june last year and I still regret not having an archive link which reads june 2007!! :( ). This blog has seen me through a lot. I have poured my frustrations, my anger, my happiness, my pain, my sarcasm… everything on this blog and I am glad that I still have a lot left to say. I would also like to thank all the people who have taken some time off (I do appreciate the fact that there is so much else that u could have done with that time of yours) and read my ramblings, left a comment or not left a comment. I am glad u guys have been a part of my life. Thank you!! :)
I m in such a good mood today that even the news of george clooney's impending wedding to a waitress half his age wont ruffle me!! :)

Of Sisters and Brothers in law who love to feed me!! :P

I am dreading going to my sisters place nowadays. Why you ask? Well let me explain. Now I have relatives all over Chennai. Like I was telling a friend of mine the other day, if u stumble and fall in Chennai you will either fall over a software professional or a member of the natraja iyer or gopalakrishna iyer family. Name the place in Chennai and I have relatives there. Thiruvanmiyur - Yes, mandaveli – Yes, T.Nagar – Yes, Adyar- infested, velacherry- Yup, kodambakkam – oh yeah, besant nagar – yeah. You get the drift? And all the members of the natraja iyer and gopalakrishna iyer families have one thing I common. They love to feed people. All of them have two passions in life. To eat and to feed. Which is why I avoid going to their houses because all of them love me and the amount of food they give me is directly proportional to their love and the amount of food I eat is proportional to my size.

For example lets take my grandmother. My grandmother spends all her waking hours deciding what to cook. The minute she finishes making lunch her concern is “Tiffin ku enna pannalam”? The minute the tiffin menu is decided it becomes “rathri yenna pannalam”. It’s a long vicious cycle. My grandmother thinks that every problem in life can find its roots to food. She believes that if hunger is wiped out in this world all the problems would disappear. If given a chance she would probably call osama bin laden home for lunch and feed him because I am sure she thinks he goes around bombing world trade centers because he is hungry. I am serious. There are times when I am really angry/sad/pissed about something and she goes “pasi naala dhaan unnaku kovam varadhu. Iru thayir sadam kudukaren” (you are angry coz u r hungry. Wait I will get some curd rice for u). anyway she is a darling and her food would give the best chefs in this world a run for their money and I don’t complain and if u look at me u will realize that I have done more of eating than complaining.:P

Anyway after my sister got married I decided I would give her and her husband (lets call him K) the pleasure of having my company. I had my own ulterior motives. I knew that if I had to reduce weight it wouldn’t help if I went to any of my other umpteen relatives’ place. My sister I decided wouldn’t be that great a cook (Big Mistake on my part) and hence my decision to grace their house with my presence. Coming to the essence of this post I have decided to stop visiting my sister’s place because she has started proving it is the blood of natraja iyer and gopalakrishna iyer that runs in her veins. And as if that’s not enough she has also started influencing K. Not only has she started cooking well but she has also donned role of a mother hen whose sole purpose in life is to feed. My sister and BIL do not have any children yet and they seem to be practicing with me. “Feed your sister and u will feed ur children well” seems to be their motto. With 0 exaggeration (stop rolling ur eyes!!) this is what happens everyday when I visit them

8.00 in the morning

K: hey shruthi. What do u want for breakfast?
Me: Errr.. I think I ll just grab something in office
Sis: no no. I know u wont eat anything. I will make some oats for you

Now there is nothing in this world I detest more than oats because 1. it is healthy and 2. it is white (I hate all white things. Milk, oats, vanilla ice cream etc)

Me: Please no.!!
K: nothing doing. Oats it is. And u must have lots of fruits along with it.
Me: hmmm can I just have the fruits alone
Sis: oats will help u lower ur cholesterol, prevent diabetes, blah blah

She will make a very good mother and will make some poor kid’s life hell I decide.

Me: ok. But just make me a little.

After some time my sis comes carrying this 2 litre vessel full of oats and places it before me
Me: Hmmm. U guys take ur share. I ll eat the rest
Sis: (giving me a puzzled look): our share?? THIS is ur share. Ours is in the kitchen!!
Me: What??????????? You expect me to eat this huuuuuuge bowl full of oats? What do u take me for?? A pregnant elephant who needs her nutrients???
K: hey wait!! I haven’t added the fruits yet.
Me: (voice sharp with sarcasm which is wasted on K of course): only apples? U don’t have oranges or bananas??
K: oh yeah we do. We even have pomegranates.

"Just wait" he says and cuts half a banana, half an apple, half an orange and half a pomegranate and empties into the bottomless chasm also called a bowl of oats. And after that both of them hovered over me till I finished (yeah!! I did finish. I couldn’t flush it into the loo with both of them watching and fussing over me) the entire bowl.
The same procedure was followed for lunch and dinner where for lunch a plate full of bisibelebath (it could easily have been used to feed 5 children for 2 days in Somalia.) + curd rice was forcefully shoved down my gullet by a very loving sister and BIL and for dinner I was again lovingly fed 5 aloo paranthas (no kidding!!) with curd and after that my sister complained that I wasn’t eating what she cooked and being disrespectful. At this statement of hers I was even afraid to stare open mouthed for fear of the fact that they might push some food down my open mouth thinking I am hungry.

So there you go. I have decided that I must make my visits to my sisters place infrequent if I am to keep alive my hopes of reducing my weight.

P.S: Preethi and Kishore – if u guys are reading this u KNOW how shameless I am. U KNOW that tomorrow this time I will probably be at home telling u guys that I am hungry and want food. So though I KNOW you guys wont mind me writing this post, this is just to tell u that u guys are the best!!Love ya!! Muah.:) . and before they throw me out of blogger for such obscene public display of affection I will stop this post!!! :)

Happy New Year

The year is coming to an end. And as usual it is time for me to take a couple of useless resolutions which I know I will never keep but which I will make just for the heck of it.
So here I go. Here are a couple of resolutions which I am making and which I hope I keep.

1.I am going to practice being nice. Nice to everyone I know, don’t know, like, dislike, everyone. I will also try to be the same person that I am with my friends to my family. In short I will try to get rid of my hyde personality!!
2.I am going to start writing accounts. For those who know about my “account writing” skills quit laughing. I am serious. I started writing accounts in my first year of engineering and I have successfully managed to fill up 5 pages of accounts for 5 years. I am pathetic with accounts. I just cannot manage money. The minute I have some money on my hands I spend and 2 days after I have spent it I don’t remember what I did with it. So I am going to write accounts sincerely now.
3.I am going to do more of what I like this year. I hope I get lots of opportunities.
4.I am going to read more books. The past year I would have hardly read some 7-8 books (only 3 good books in that) and this year I am going to take some time out and do some quality reading.

2007 has been a good year on the whole for me. Coming to think of it all 21 years of my life have been good. But 2007 was different. A lot of new things have happened in my life. The best moments of each month would be:

Jan 2007: the unforgettable final year tour. Wow!! Is it already an year?? Unbelievable!! Seems like yesterday. Last year this time I was in kulu manali celebrating my new year in sub zero temperatures and this year I am sitting in front of a computer doing java coding.
I also remember writing THIS post last january. Since the number of relatives reading my blog has gone up I would like you guys to read it again. Nothing much has changed in the past one year!! ;)

Feb 2007: the singles party on Feb 14th!! The last and best singles party of college life. Amazing fun we guys had celebrating our singledom. (MS-Word says there is no word like that but u know what I mean). We have already started planning for this years singles party. Its scary. Out of the 6 ppl who were are at the singles party last year 2 are getting married. The singles in our group are becoming extinct. :(

Mar 2007: The college culturals. The last one yet again. Mind blowing fun. Shit man!!! I so wish I could go back to college now. All those night outs before the culturals, those petty fights over money, petty fights with the boys, petty fights over almost everything. Sigh!!! Instincts 2007 was just so great.

Apr 2007: Successful completion of our final year project. Phew!! How much we struggled to convince everyone that our project would actually work and ultimately we got stuck with an external who was just not interested in our project.

May 2007: leaving college. Leaving a place which was a part of me for 4 years. Leaving friends, leaving hostel, leaving a carefree and joyful existence. I cried so much that if all my tears had been desalinated Chennai’s water problem would have been solved.

Jun 2007: joining Cognizant. And more importantly joining the cognizant internal blogging network. A move which I don’t think I will ever regret. Have met some amazing people, made some great friends and if I can say so myself have grown as a writer. After joining cognizant I think it is one of the best things to have happened to me.

Jul-Aug 2007: Training. I would be lying completely if I said training was hectic. Training was awesome and rightly called as the honeymoon period of an IT professionals life. Trying to be professionals in an IT company. A very different experience indeed.

Sep-Nov 2007: moving in to a new accommodation. Lots of adjusting, lots of fighting, lots of compromises, lots of fun.

Dec 2007: Assassination of Benazir Bhutto. (Did u notice that?? Someone once complained that I don’t write about current affairs and things that matter. Did u notice what an absolutely valuable piece of information I have provided??). Anyway yesterday the first Cognizant bloggers meet happened. It was amazing fun. It is good to meet people whose writings u admire. Helps u relate more to the writer I feel. And the year ended on an extremely happy note for me when a very nice man told me that if ever he had a daughter he would want her to be just like me!! I have never been this thrilled and happy about anything before. Thanks a lot Mr. nice man though for ur sake I hope ur daughter is nothing like me!!! I shudder to think of the havoc a replica of me would wreak. :)

It’s the year end and I am in a really happy, sappy mood. I hope this euphoria lasts throughout 2008!!
Wish all of you a very very Happy and Prosperous New Year!! :)

Lost my Orkut account!!!

I have lost my orkut account!! The other day I was trying to log on to orkut and it kept telling me that I had given the wrong password. Now I have really fat and stubby fingers and whenever I am typing any password I always hit a couple of wrong keys and hit the correct one only on the third or fourth try. This can be a pain when I am logging on to my machine in office. After three wrong entries my account gets locked automatically and I have to call the global service desk to unlock it. Now almost every second day I call them and ask them to unlock my account. In fact last week my account got locked three times in one day and when I called GSD the third time the woman at the help desk didn’t even wait to confirm my details. She was so used to hearing my voice. This was the conversation between us.

Me: Errr. My account has been locked

She: just a minute ma’am I ll unlock it

Me: my associate id is…

She: yes I know ma’am. Associate id is 123456 and DOJ is blah blah. you called an hour back

Me: Errrr. Yes!!

Well anyway. So when orkut told me that I had typed the wrong password 2 times I didn’t bother. But after trying five times (the fifth time I typed my password in word and copy pasted it) I began to have my fears. The first thought which crossed my mind was "Oh my god. Someone has hacked my account. Soon they will misuse my profile and my photograph will start appearing on "ahem-aaahh-cough-cough" sites." Now I use my yahoo account to log in to my orkut and my google account for blogger and gmail. Then I tried logging on to my gmail and I found a mail from google telling me that my yahoo account was no longer active and that I would have to use my google account for everything and if my blogger/orkut was still using yahoo I would lose all my details!!! :(
So now i cant access my orkut account of three years, i cant edit anything in my profile, i cant accept testimonials and the whole process of creating a new account, re constructing a friend list of 289 friends seems like a very tiring job to do. if this had happened an year back i think i would have probably committed suicide. seriously i was completely ADDICTED to orkut. my day would be incomplete if i didnt log on to orkut, scrap a few useless people, write testimonials for a few friends. if by chance i didnt log on to orkut i wuld think about orkut the whole day. it was like dope. i couldnt live without it. but now an year later i dont feel a thing. i have lost my account and i just dont feel like creating a new account, renewing my contacts etc. i think right now i am more addcited to blogger than to orkut. i am so glad that i didnt lose my blogger account. Anyway so if u know/knew me on orkut and have scrapped me and are angry coz i havent replied u know the reason now. if ever i decide to create a new account i will let u know!! :)

Spring Cleaning - II

Well whether u like it or not here is part-II of spring cleaning. ;)

Bathroom:

The bathroom in our house is a really interesting place!! On entering there is a shelf which at any given point of time has 5 shampoos all at different stages of their lives. Some are new to the surroundings and some are just breathing their last breath. Its funny. My mom uses some herbal shampoo, my dad (who errr…doesnt have much hair left on his head) fears that after using the herbal shampoo his hair might start growing(i tease him saying that hair growing on his head would be like rice growing in the Sahara but he doesn’t listen) so he uses clinic plus, and then we also have sunsilk (for the guests mom says), my sister (when she visits) uses some shampoo whose name eludes me (honestly speaking I cant even pronounce it) and I use a little bit of all. I love experiments. I put a little bit of herbal+clinic plus+sunsilk+$%^*$ and put it on my head (which probably explains why I have lesser hair than my dad and whatever is remaining smells funny (read: smells like a pigsty)). All the persuasion from my side to reduce all of it to one bottle always falls on deaf ears

Anyway coming to soaps next. In the soap dish in my house you will find a green color soap, on whose back is piggy backed a pink color soap on whose back is a white color soap and so on. If u don’t know what I am talking about then obviously there is no one like my dad at ur house!! my dad believes that scraps of soaps should be preserved so that they can be joined along with the new soap thus forming two soaps. when asked why he cant throw the scraps of soap the gandhian inside my father surfaces and he says “there are children in Somalia who don’t get even a bucket of water a day let alone a piece of soap. you should consider urself blessed. never waste stuff when there are million out there in this world who have never seen it”.
and experience tells me that the minute the gandhian in my dad awakens the sarcasm in me must die and I must keep quiet. same is the case with toothpastes. my dad is never satisfied till he has squeezed the last drop of life out of the poor tube of toothpaste!!

Bedroom:

This time I have to face both amma and appa and two box cot’s full of junk (for people who are wondering what a box cot is it is a cot whose lower half aint empty. it is shaped like a box so u can keep stuff in it)
apart from this there is a cupboard full of useless papers
from the box cot I retrieve close to 25 unused dupattas

me: amma!! so many unused dupattas.i don’t care what u say. I am throwing these away. we don’t use even one of these now
amma: don’t be silly. I have been saving it for the winter months. when it gets really cold I can make a rajaai out of all these dupattas.
(she has been saying this for the past 4 yrs since we shifted to this house and come November we always buy a rajaai for the harsh winter, the dupattas forgotten )
next I discover a carton full of diaries dated from 1978 to 1996 most of them empty and some of them have my mothers neat handwriting on it describing in detail how she spent the princely amount of rs 1000(my dad’s salary in 1982) and how much of it she saved
(I cannot imagine how a couple could have lived in such abject poverty and my mother tells me that every month they used to send Rs 200 to each of my grandparents!! )
me: these moth eaten, rat bitten, infection carrying diaries!! do u need these??
amma: yes of course. good that u found these. I have been wanting to show u how wisely appa and I used to spend money and how neatly we maintained accounts. you children nowadays get a king’s salary you don’t save, you don’t invest, just spend spend spend!! tch tch. come here. see look at the entry for November 1983. that is the only time we used to get clothes for diwali. we saved every pie we could and that is the reason we have been able to give u such good education (next comes a long rigmarole about how my children will suffer if I don’t save or have a SIP-whatever that means. (I try telling her that the minute they become my children their suffering starts but refrain from saying so))

anyway the bottom line is I do not take the topic of the diaries again
next we move to the cupboard (I throw one piece of rag from the box cot after dusting and cleaning it for an hour!!)
I pick up around 10 kgs (no kidding) of appa’s official papers and proceed to throw them.
Appa stops me and the gandhian in him surfaces again.

Appa: are those papers printed on both sides or one side??
Me (after checking): hmmm…one side
Appa: so many bundles of paper with only one side written. How can u have the heart to throw them? It is because of people like u that half the trees in the Amazon forest are being cut down and things like global warming have become a reality.
Me: DUH!!! Sorry pa. Wont throw these. Will use it to write something!!

Anyway after cleaning three bedrooms and bathrooms I threw out a small polythene bag of stuff. What is most irritating is that over the period of 20 years my parents have thrown out my entire stamp collection (by mistake my mom still swears). my interest in philately has died since then, 12-13 posters of mine which I had painstakingly cut out of sports star every month, 287 éclairs wrappers that I had collected (don’t ask me why I did it!! I am weird. but I loved to look at those éclairs wrappers now and then and was damn proud of my collection) my entire box of paints, a pair of jeans-my favorite (those are the clothes u wear??? if u wear it out and go people might think we don’t provide for u or something!! was my mom’s argument) and so many other things which I loved and preserved!!
Anyway after that round of spring cleaning I took a vow never to assist my parents in this maddening hobby of theirs and so this is the concluding part of this series (do i hear a sigh of relief?? )!!

Random thoughts from my visit to Bangalore

1. The more I visit Bangalore the more I feel glad that I live in Chennai. I m not very fond of Bangalore (Sorry to hurt pro-bangaloreans but this is just my opinion). Some of the things about Bangalore which I will never get used to are
Traffic: the traffic in bangalore is a killer. A mere 7 kms will take you one and half hours. Its maddening to waste 2 hours in the traffic doing nothing but waiting at signals and waiting and waiting and waiting for an absolution that never seems to come!! :-\
Transportation: the Bangalore government should be kicked in all the wrong places for running buses which have numbers in kannada, number plates in kannada, the place names in kannada and bus drivers who speak nothing but kannada and have this inexplicable hatred for Tamils. U can’t go anywhere in public transportation in Bangalore unless you know kannada or know someone who knows the city well.
Weather: I am sure 99.99% of the people will disagree with me on this but I hate the Bangalore weather. I cant stand cold places. I hate being bundled up in woolens. I love the tropical climate of Chennai and the nippy Bangalore weather gets on my nerves

2.Old age is a sad sad sad thing. The more I look at old people the more I wish I die at the age of 50. It is scary to visit a relative who just a few months back weighed close to 60 kgs and now weighs less than half the original. It is even scarier when u bid her goodbye and realize that this is probably the last time you will ever see her. I wish they would find a cure for cancer.

3.The more I see cousins and relatives from the US the more I am convinced that I never want to visit the US and never want to leave India. I made this decision in my final year when everyone I knew was writing GRE to do their masters in some university in the US. I was just not interested. The very thought of leaving my parents and sister and grandmother scares the shit out of me and more importantly I never want a day to come when I will have to address the friendly neighborhood mosquito as a “bug”.

4.the hot chocolate which is available at the Bangalore city station coffee day sucks big time. Its just a spoon of drinking chocolate in plain hot water. Not even milk or milk powder. So if u are feeling cold in the night and happen to be at the Bangalore city station u know what not to have.

5.I have decided that if ever I have enough money I think I will buy a motorbike and ride it at a speed of 90 kmph on ECR. When sitting behind on a bike can be so much fun I cant even begin to imagine what fun it would be to actually ride one. A bike displaces the i-pod on my list of things to buy with my salary. I can ride a bike fairly decently, the only disadvantage being my height. My legs don’t reach the ground!! :(

6.Finally I had ice cream at the much hyped corner house in bangalore. Had this flavour called death by chocolate and for the past 48 hours since I had that I have been feeling guilty. Ok!! I will be honest. I hogged on the death by chocolate like a kid from Somalia who hadn’t seen food for 15 years but I wonder why all good things in life are fattening!! :(. criminal intake of calories but the ice cream was worth it!!

7.I have a problem with showing affection. When I am with a person who is close to me I act all cool and aloof and don an I couldn’t care less attitude and then later after the person is gone I sit for hours wondering why I was such a bitch. Sigh!! I am so confused.

8.I learned that it is not a very great idea to share your radical views on marriage with anyone above the age of 40. Have discovered that it is FATAL to tell them that you would rather have a dog than marry and have a husband. Warning: Never try this with ur relatives. U will get a specific marriage oriented lecture for an hour, then a general lecture about children today for another hour.

9.I love Chennai. The happiness that shedding sweaters and the warm weather give me is enough to make me live in Chennai all my life. There doesn’t exist another city which has as much life in it as Chennai does!!

10. I love the way Somerset Maugham writes. was reading a collection of short stories written by him on my way to bangalore in shatabdi (sad train!!) and back and i completely fell in love with some stories. have decided to do more quality reading from now on. should buy another collection of short stories by maugham!!

Butter Fingers!!!

I am clumsy. Ok I am very clumsy. Ok finally I am very very very clumsy. I cant do anything right the first time (or for that matter the second third and fourth time). When I try to cook I always burn whatever I am cooking (attempting to cook), if I am painting I spill the water on the canvas first, if I am drawing I smudge the paper and go oops, if I m driving a nail into the wall I drive my thumb in first, then I drive my parents crazy with my screaming and with the remaining energy I drive the nail into the wall, if I walk on a carpeted floor I trip on the carpet, if I walk on a non carpeted slippery floor I lose my balance and slip, if I walk on a non carpeted non slippery floor I stumble on some object and fall down, if I walk on a non carpeted non slippery floor with no objects I have the amazing ability to stumble over my own feet and fall down. I m not even going to talk about wet floors. On an average I bang my head on doors and walls at least thrice every week, skid on the stairs on all weekdays, stumble over my bed sheet and fall from my bed on weekends, get soap into my eyes everyday, put the soap into the commode periodically, cut my finger whenever I enter any kitchen, always drop whatever I am carrying. (sometimes I really do wonder what my fingers are made of. Butter?? Marble?? Soap?? Foam?? What is it?)

Till date I have broken 3 of my fathers spectacles (two by sitting on them and one by dropping them), broken 2 watches ( banged my mothers watch against a wall and my own watch broke when I fell from my vehicle), lost 3 pairs of gold earrings, broken a couple of plates and glasses at my sisters place (god bless the person who invented stainless steel. I cant even begin to imagine the havoc I would have wreaked had all cutlery been in porcelain and glass. My parents would have given me food in aluminium plates like they give doggies. Ewwwww!!). my grand mother tells me that instead of going oops, ayyayo, Sh*t, damn,(I will not mention the other words I use for obvious reasons) if I went rama, krishna the number of times I broke innumerable, countless things I would at least have attained moksha for all that punyam. Sarcastic grand mother u say and I totally agree with you. On a more serious note it is tough having a walking disaster like me in the house. My sister tells me I should enter her kitchen with a helmet and gloves if I have to avoid banging my head on the doors and cutting my hands with a knife. My mom and grandmother are smart. They don’t let me come anywhere within 10 km radius of the kitchen. The other parts of the house though, have to bear the brunt. Why I am built this way I don’t know!!

So needless to say in my family people don’t trust me with anything. if I am given any responsibility I either break the responsibility, lose the responsibility, forget the responsibility or disfigure the responsibility. errr yes. Once I was asked by mom to keep a potted plant on the parapet of our balcony (silly idea given me as a daughter and a house on the third floor). I diligently and ever so carefully carried the plant successfully till the balcony and even till the parapet. After that I placed it on the parapet, only the silly plant instead of resting its posterior on the parapet chose to go all the way down and smash itself into a million unrecognizable pieces. To this day I swear it was only because of the fact that I was suffering from astigmatism that the parapet seemed farther than it really was. The smirk and the sarcastic grin which my mother gives me make me think that she doesn’t believe my astigmatism theory. Parents can be so skeptical sometimes. That brings me to another aspect of my parents. Sometimes I think they only care for the objects in their house and not a priceless (priceless as in precious and not priceless as in priceless ass!!) daughter like me. For eg: sample this conversation between my mom and me

Me: amma!! I need to tell u something.

Mom: Hmmmm. What is it?

Me: I have decided that I have found my only true love and it is yousuf the milkman. I am deeply in love with him and have decided to run away and marry him because u will never allow us to get married otherwise. We have our future all planned. After marriage we will be moving to Afghanistan where he will join the mujahudeen or al quaeda and do social service by bombing more countries, I will convert myself to islam and bear him three children called osama, bin and laden who will grow up to be terrorists. Together we will wipe the human race off the face of this earth. In fact I urge appa and u to join the mujahudeen too and serve people. Inshallah!!

Mom: ok!! But shruthi if u are running away at night don’t stumble over the lamps and pots near the entrance and break them. Put the light on and run away if u want to but don’t break the pots.

You get the drift?? They just don’t care. Sometimes I think my parents should have given birth to pots and lamps and carpets if they care so much about them. I mean yeah I have broken a few (ok!! More than a few) things at home, lost a lot of things but still I am their daughter!!
But lately they have started caring a little. The reason?? Quoting my sister – “Oh my god who will marry an ungainly, clumsy girl like you. You cant cook, you are destructive, you cant walk without falling, cant carry food without dropping!! What are u going to do?”. Ah well. As Krishna so wisely quoted in the gita “whatever happens, happens for the best”. So if my clumsy and ungainly nature can result in “eligible” suitors rejecting me then there is nothing like it. I am glad I am this way and I hope I stay this way!! ;)

Random Rambles

Saw aaja nachle on Saturday. Good movie. Madhuri looks fab, kunal kapoor looks like a dream; konkona sen sharma does a great job. So why am I not exulting and going "Oh my god!!!!? Such a great movie!!"? Well it was just too predictable. Half an hour into the movie u know how the movie is going to end. U know the good guys get the bad guys, the bad guys lose, some bad guys become good guys and so on so forth. So the movie was just yawn!! But excellent dance. Someone who loves to dance would have completely enjoyed the movie I think (yours truly has got two left feet. I can’t dance even if u told me that George Clooney would marry me if I danced!! am that bad!!). but one time watch.

Sunday: Well. Nightmarish. An extremely trivial issue (at least I think it was trivial) got completely blown out of proportion and I was at the centre of the explosion. I think it is silly to make such a big issue out of nothing but I am also kind of glad it happened. A few things are out in the open and I can talk about them freely now. General opinion is that I seem to have a double personality. People mail me and tell me very politely "I think, maybe u have a double personality". It’s funny. There are people who have a double personality and are unaware of it. I am a person who is completely aware of it but I seem incapable of doing anything about it. I am like ur desi version of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Jekyll part of me is this nice, genial, happy go lucky person and the Hyde part of me is grumpy, complaining, aloof and a somewhat bitter personality. I am completely aware of the existence of both these characters yet I seem unable to change the Hyde into Jekyll. the irony is that people with whom I can afford to be Hyde I am all Jekyll and people with whom I should most definitely by Jekyll I am Hyde. u don’t understand what I am talking about.??? Good. Coz even I don’t understand!! :P.

I am a Gemini and most Gemini’s I know have this double personality. I am not justifying my behavior but I was just musing that maybe if I were born 20 days later or earlier I would have been a different person. Ah well!! Whatever!! I have had a gazillion ppl calling me names and telling me what to do and what not to do for the past week and I have reached a point where I am thinking that if all the energies which these people have been expending over me was used constructively and converted into some usable form, it could probably solve the energy problem of India and the world. is there some convertor which can convert advice energy to electrical energy? I would patent it using just the members of my family (i know their ability. i would be a multi billionaire in a month. i trust their advice giving capacity). I can almost hear some members of my family who read this blog going “my god!! She will never learn. Always sarcastic. Sheesh!! ”. Lol. But seriously I have reached saturation point.

Monday – work – break – work – lunch – work – work – work – take cab home at 11.00 reach at 12.00.

Tuesday – work – break – work – lunch – work – work – work – take cab home at 11.00 reach at 12.00.

Wednesday – work – break – work – lunch – work – work – work – take cab home at 11.00 reach at 12.00.

Did ya notice that? Did ya notice the absolutely happening life I have been leading for the past three days. Phew!! Each day has been so exciting I dunno what to expect. The thrill of anticipation just kills me. :-\ Ok!! I know I am being overtly sarcastic but seriously. I have had enough. Yesterday night I actually dreamt of JSP, Servlet and javascript pages. I can’t wait for the weekend. But then if my family members are in the same form as they were last weekend I wish the weekend flies away too!!

Thursday today. Not that I expect anything earth shattering or mind blowing to happen today but I hope it is peaceful without any comments from the guy sitting at the on site.

Home Sick

I want to go home. All of a sudden I am feeling really really home sick and right now I just want to quit my job, take the next train to Jamnagar and go home. It’s been 7 years since I left home to pursue my education, then a job and I have enjoyed every minute of staying in Chennai these 7 years but suddenly, though I completely hate Jamnagar from the bottom of my heart I cannot deny the fact that it is home and I so want to go there right now. (I was atleast hoping to spend some time at home after graduation but after staying at home for 15 days I got a call from Cognizant to join them. I joined work on June 1st after finishing my exams on May 11th!! :-\)

Right now I want to be able to sleep till 8, wake up to my mom shouting and calling me for breakfast, listen to my dad getting ready to office (yeah!! I love “listening” to him go to office. Its so much more fun than actually looking at him go to office. “Where’s my shoe, where are my socks, where’s my lunch, where are my car keys, ooouuuccch who left this hair pin in the middle of the drawing room, I almost killed myself stepping on it” are some of the sounds you will definitely get to hear in my house on any given weekday morning). I want to be able to eat a good breakfast, want to hear my mother say “you have lost so much of weight. U should eat green vegetables...blah blah” though I closely resemble a baby elephant.

I want to go back to the time when my sister and I used to fight everyday in the morning before going to school. We fought to decide whose hair amma would plait first, who would take bath first, we fought to decide which pair of socks were hers and which were mine (“you liar!! These are mine. See this bit of mud on the corner. That happened in PT class yesterday”. “you pig. I am sure u must have lost ur pair of socks and put this bit of mud on mine” “oh!! Don’t be lame. Anyway check out the new elastic on this pair of socks. Yours always sag. Mine always stay tight”), fought to decide which ribbons were mine and which were hers (yeah!! We had to wear black color ribbons to school and I will confess I always lost mine and pilfered my sister’s.), fought to decide who would have the first dosa in the morning for breakfast, who would make the bed in the morning. We fought for everything. Right now I make my own bed, we make our own hair we don’t wear socks or ribbons, she makes her own dosa (in fact whenever I visit her she has always been magnanimous and always offers me the first dosa!! It’s no fun fighting with her anymore).

Even as i write this my sister is in clacutta, my dad is in jamnagar, my mom is in bombay and i am sitting here in chennai. if dad were in delhi i could have said four of us live in four corners of india. ok!! sad joke i know but then i am not feeling particularly cheerful at present!! :-\

Yeah its fun living on ur own, fending for urself, staying with friends, etc but when I look at some of my colleagues who come from home, who bring lunches made by their mothers, talk about how they fought with their siblings in the morning I feel so jealous and wonder why software companies are so apprehensive about opening branches in a godforsaken place like jamnagar. And the funny part is that most of these colleagues envy me because I get to stay alone, have more freedom than they do etc. Sigh!!!

I love my life as it is now but I would give anything in this world to be able to spend one month with my parents right now. Sigh!! If wishes were horses the Revathi’s of this world would ride!!

Spring Cleaning - I

This is a blog which I wrote on sulekha a looooooong time back. I keep forgetting my id and password and the name of my page on sulekha and i didnt want to lose this so I just thought I would post it here!! Hope u guys like it!! ;)

The last time I went home my mother decided that since she had help (yeah!! I am talking about me. I can be a help at times too. I am not always a pest. Sometimes I try being nice and helpful for a change) she decided she would do the spring cleaning she had been wanting to do for a long time but had been putting off because of lack of help.
So one bright Sunday morning I was woken up by my parents and we started cleaning. Let me start with each room

Kitchen:
(If we finish off the kitchen first then I can cook and u and appa can clean the rest my mom suggested)

I started emptying the shelves and asking amma if she needed the stuff or wanted to throw it

Me : ( holding up a tablespoon with no handle and just the scoop part of it): amma...why do u need this?? I mean what purpose does it solve??

Amma: ila ila...keep it. I use it to keep oil, leftover paruppu and sometimes water and besides I would never throw it she says her eyes misting. those were the vessels appa gave me when I got married in 1982. appa is no more at least I can keep the vessels

me:(thinks): with all due respect to thatha I think he would be infinitely happier if amma had used a bowl to store oil,paruppu and water and not a broken table spoon!

Me: (says): right!! ok

later as we proceeded to clean the kitchen I unearthed 13 dabbas with red lids(only six of them actually containing stuff,the rest empty), 6 horlicks bottle (4 with caps,2 without caps, all empty), old dabbas of kerosene, some million rags to clean the kitchen (the blue one is for oil, the red one is for dry stuff, the white one is for water and the magenta one is to clean the gas my mother explains) loads of those free glasses u get with gulab jamun mix, lots of plastic dabbas from eat outs(no no.dont throw them.keep them.tomorrow when u r going back to Chennai those will be helpful to pack food for u she says. its a different thing that she ultimately decides to use zip lock bags to pack food but she wont throw them. I can’t go running around searching for them when I need them, so just let them be she argues)
I don’t understand my mother's fixation with wanting to keep the most useless of things without throwing them. loads of plastic spoons, empty tin dabbas and plastic dabbas all to be used at a later time

Bookshelf:

my dad and I started cleaning the bookshelf. as usual I had to bring down each book and ask him if he wanted it.
he has three shelves of readers digest and three more of national geographic.

me: appa why do u need a readers digest dated 1962

appa: oh my god. is it still here? I thought we lost it while shifting. give it here.
I oblige

appa: wow!! imagine a time when readers digest were only 4 rupees and I used to beg appa to lend me 4 rupees every month so I could buy these.

he goes into the nostalgia mode, smells the digest and starts reading. we have been living in the same house for the past four years and he has not realized the existence of the book but he wants to keep it...

me: appa please!! a national geographic dated 1983???this is heights of madness!!

appa: show me show me!! children these days, no appreciation for nature. look at this issue. did u know that the African grey hornbill advertises its presence with a pee-o pee-o pee-o call and it can also be used as a mating call???look here are the pictures

me (thinks): what???how does it affect me how the African grey hornbill shouts and woos its girlfriend???please!!

me: hmmm

The next are baby books("how to understand ur baby", "being a mother and more" , "pregnancy and motherhood" , "loving ur child" were some of the names) which were gifted lovingly to my mother thinking that she would be blessed with angelic babies (since she wasn’t, the books remain unopened waiting to be passed on to my sister hoping at least she would produce angelic babies!! so they stay too!!)

ultimately after we were done with the bookshelf I only thing I threw away was one subscription offer for national geo (he wanted me to keep that too but i convinced him whe n i showed him the text on it which said "hurry...offer closes on dec 31st 1986" :-\ )

Store Room:

this was the worst. with absolutely 0 exaggeration the following were the items we found in the store room (which have been collecting dust for the past gazillion years). the text in italics are my parents' reaction when I told them I am going to throw the stuff

1. two cycle pumps (one without the handle and the other without a nozzle). FYI we don’t have a cycle at home.amma gave my cycle away in 2001. (suppose we buy a cycle where will we go searching for a pump??)

2. three cycle tyres (all punctured. no don’t throw them. if the washer comes off from under the centre table or the stool we can cut pieces of cycle tyre and use them as a washer for the centre table!!)

3.some 20 pairs of shoes right from the squeaky ones which my sister wore when she started walking and I wore when I started walking (if preethi has a kid tomorrow it will be like a family heirloom and the child will get a feeling of attachment. I do not express my apprehensions and tell them that the only thing the child will get is psoriasis if it wears slippers whose rightful position is the archaeological department - Mumbai or antique collectors club)

4. some 15-16 pairs of mismatched rat eaten socks. (don’t u dare throw them!! we can put bits of soap into each of the socks and it can be very handy in cleaning the kitchen sink!!)

5. my sister’s broken pram (I have been meaning to fix it up. yeah right!! he has been meaning to do it from 1988)

6.seven or eight curtain rods(no no. its good steel. will help me fix up the pram)

7. 5 boxes of shoe polish(1 brown, 4black and all dry. Keep them. We can use kerosene to make them usable again)

8. to support 5 boxes of shoe polish mentioned above we have 5 tins of kerosene!!

phew!! that’s when I stopped counting and told my parents that I had had enough of spring cleaning. in part II I will re count the other things I discovered(unearthed) from the bedrooms and bathrooms. they deserve a separate post!! so if u haven’t slept off or moved on to the next blog and are still bravely reading this then please be as patient as u have been and read Spring Cleaning part II as well!! ;)

Foul Feet!!!

I have been suffering from terrible foot odor problem for the past 2 weeks. I have no clue why. So much so that when I went to watch Vel with my sister she refused to sit beside me. It was that bad. And because she didn’t have a choice she watched the entire movie with her nose closed with the help of her dupatta. I consoled myself saying that maybe it was because of the movie and maybe she was afraid she would barf if surya’s mom started crying again. She tells me her holding her breath had nothing to do with surya’s mom and everything to do with my stinky feet!! :(
i dunno the reason why my foot is behaving so strangely. I have tried everything. I apply sweet smelling Vaseline on my feet every morning but by the time I reach the fag end of the day my feet smell like mike tyson’s under arms after a fight. (Errrr. Not that I go around smelling people’s underarms but I am just assuming that mike tysons underarms after a fight wont smell like a new born baby. No offense meant to u mikey!!)
after ruminating on this issue for a day or two I thought I would google about it and find out what is this disease I am suffering from. I found the following reasons on this site.

Foot odor often results from wearing shoes and/or socks, especially shoes or socks with inadequate air ventilation, for many hours

Now I don’t wear shoes and socks. Irony is that when I did wear shoes and socks in school I never had this problem. My feet always smelt like a lily!! (author thanking god that there is no way people can affirm this statement!! ;)) . I wear ur normal floaters or sandals which are very open, highly ventilated and do not stink unless u want them to (meaning if u intentionally/accidentally go put ur leg into a manhole or something). So I ruled this option out.

Since human feet are densely covered with sweat glands (and men have larger feet and sweat more), excessive perspiration of the feet is the result

Now I stay in the AC from the time I get up to the time I go home. I do NOT sweat during the day and as far as I can remember though I sweat like a pig, my feet never perspire. They have always been dry. And errr. I hope u noticed the fact that only men have larger feet and sweat more. I am just ur dainty delicate little girl (really!!!) and my feet are really small and don’t sweat!!! So strike two

As physical activity increases, foot perspiration, bacterial growth, and bacterial waste production all increase, causing odor to intensify. Hair on the feet, especially on the toes, may also add to odor intensity by adding increased surface area for the bacteria to thrive in.

Now right now in my life I do 0 physical activity. I don’t exert myself AT ALL. The only physical activity I do is carrying my lunch plate from the counter to the table where I eat. I am putting on unimaginable amounts of weight. No offense meant to the CFO of my company but I squirm everyday when I log on to ch1 and see his blog title which reads “Here at cognizant u grow” and a voice inside me tells me “Ha ha!! He is talking about u fatso!!” and I realise that he is right and I am growing (not literally but what the hell it is growing that matters right??). so excessive physical activity also cannot be the reason. And no I don’t have hair on my feet. And I am not a grizzly bear so no hair on my head and no hair on my feet either.

I visited a lot of other sites and all of them either mentioned dirty socks, excessive sweating or hairy feet as the reason. Not the one to give up I looked up the remedy for foot odor. And I found this

· wear well-ventilated shoes instead of very constrictive shoes, such as boots
· always wear socks, preferably made of cotton or other absorbent materials that absorb a lot of the sweat so the bacteria can't feed on it
· change your socks a few times a day
· buy some absorbent Odor-Eater type shoe inserts
· apply an antiperspirant to your feet

very helpful!!!! :.. the first four points didn’t apply to me obviously. So for the past 2 days everyday in the morning I have been liberally dousing my feet in perfume and spraying so much deo that the makers of Charlie don’t have to worry about their sales dropping or anything.
It hasn’t helped. If anything Charlie has mixed with the odor causing bacteria thereby producing a smell which I think can be used on inmates on the death row to ensure a painless and instantaneous death. Jokes apart an awful and asphyxiating smell emanates from my feet which would have killed me had I not been holding my breath.
I am at a loss. I dunno what to do. I have tried changing my shoes, tried good quality sandals, poor quality sandals. If this persists I am thinking I m going to start coming to office bare feet.

have any of u suffered from a similar problem? if yes and if u have found a solution please do revert back to me. i am at my wits end and would be really glad if i could get rid of this problem!! :(

Hmmmmm!!!

Ok shoaib malik. Ok. We agree you are a professional and we also agree that u have to live with it. But frankly u didn’t have to tell us the same thing, three times on national TV. We heard u the first time u said it. Even if we hadn’t heard u then, we heard u the second time. But no!! u had to say it again the third time. And I ll let u in on a secret. Hindi is the national language of India. U didn’t have to necessarily speak in English and make a fool of yourself. You could have spoken in hindi and we would have understood u much better. Actually u could have spoken in Hindi, Urdu, Pashto, Swahili or any language which pleased u coz we don’t care a damn about what u have to say. India won the match and its all that matters to us. We don’t really care if u r a professional and if u can live with it!! ;)
For people who have no clue what I am talking about u should have heard shoaib malik’s presentation speech in the fourth ODI at gwalior. Hilarious it was!! Poor fellow. Kept saying the same thing again and again. Lol.

I read this article and it psyched the day lights outta me. Every time I snap my hair into place with a rubber band I keep imagining that I am going to contract syphilis, gonorrhea or AIDS. Heights of recycling I say. What next?? Maybe next china will come up with an “innovative” idea that car seats and car tyres can be made using used C******!! Ewwwww!! I wonder who gets ideas like this. Hmmmm

One more thing. Just yesterday I saw a stray red dot on my cluster map in the middle of the sea (to the left of north ameirca) and I was really intrigued. I went to google maps and I have discovered that I have a reader from Honolulu!!!! :). I dunno why but it really thrills me to know that there is someone in Honolulu who has read my blog. Whoever you are thanks a lot!!

I am in a really happy mood today. Maybe because it Friday!! :)

Yay!!! Its Friday. Two days of peace, joy and happiness!!! Om shanti Om and Saawariyaaaa. Here I come!!!

Holiday Hangover

Its Monday morning and Monday morning blues have never been as pronounced as they are today. I hate long weekends. They get over so soon. It just seems like yesterday that I boarded the train to go to Bangalore on Wednesday night and now I am sitting in this cubicle and its Monday morning already. Sigh!!
I have had an absolutely fantabulous and mind blowing weekend (week actually) and coming to office today is such a spirit dampener. Like my sister says its so depressing to land at Chennai central at 4.45 in the morning (yeah the bloody train leaves Bangalore at 12 in the night and before u can close ur eyes u reach Chennai.). its like after u have served a person chocolates and ice creams and sambhar sadam, potato subzi, palak paneer and aloo parantha for four days, on the fifth day u ask him to have oats for breakfast lunch and dinner. That exactly how I am feeling now. After having visited jungles, going boating, taking long walks and long drives for 4 days now suddenly some one is rudely asking me to sit and code some nonsense which I do not understand.
So right now I look like someone who has had ten pegs of whisky last night, not slept and forgot to wash his face. I hate these holiday hangovers. I soooooooo want to write about the wonderful kabini trip and so many things which happened in the course of those four days but right now all I can think of is the fact that I have to work for 4 more days till Friday.
I wanted to put this up yesterday but never found the time because of work.
And yeah I saw Vel yesterday. Please. Even if u r given free tickets plus free popcorn plus a free chauffeur driven car to go to the theater and back just politely but firmly refuse the offer. The movie sucks BIG TIME. And people are telling me that of all the diwali tamil releases vel is the best. Ye Gads!!! Thank god I didn’t watch ATM. I almost cried out of frustration after the movie got over. Loud comedy, unnecessary songs, using women as objects of ridicule/sex/desire, absolutely no story line and irritating mothers who say aluvadhenga yaarum aluvadhenga at the drop of a hat when all they have been doing throughout the movie is cry cry and cry for a son she left on a train!!! :-| . This is vel in a nutshell. Trust me. Don’t watch it.
Will try to do a write up about my kabini trip soon. Maybe this weekend. I just wish this week flies!! :-\

Marriage??? Naaah!!Not for me!! Thank you

What is it with all relatives and “well-wishers”. Why cant they just let me be. I just finished my engineering 6 months back and already elderly relatives and well wishers have started telling my parents that “if they are interested and if shruthi (me) is interested” they know this third cousins, brothers, neighbors son who has finished his MS in some university in US and is waiting to get married. I m NOT interested. I m 22 and yes child marriage is still banned in India. So all u people think twice before saying such things because before u know it I will report u to the police and see that u spend the rest of ur lives behind bars for getting a child married.

Jokes apart I am totally not interested. And what irritate me more are the double standards. Why is it that boys my age or those elder than me are only asked questions like “what are u planning to do next??” or “you must study further if u have to support a family” or “why don’t u switch companies. This other one I heard pays much better” and the only things which I get to hear are “there is this good boy..” or “don’t work too hard. After marriage u will have to take it easy” or “maybe u should learn to cook”. Thank god my parents haven’t yet been influenced and have turned a deaf ear to all those “eligible” alliances. Why girls?? A few days back in the metro plus there was this saying which I liked a lot which said “I am still to hear a man ask the question “how do I mange my family and work””. That is sooooo true. Don’t say hogwash like “we are modern. We are broad minded” if u think that women working after marriage is not cool or if u think that at 22 a women must marry and immediately start reproducing. We have our dreams and aspirations and we would be very glad that if they are respected.

When I tell people I don’t want to get married now or ever they don’t listen to me. They say irritating stuff like “yeah!! Thats what everyone says now but heh heh heh…. After a year or two ur outlook will completely change”. My “outlook” hasn’t changed for the past 22 years and its unlikely that it ll change now. I do not I repeat DO NOT understand the institution of marriage. If the only purpose is to have kids there are a million orphaned kids out there who would love to have a home. Why not adopt? If its companionship u r looking for get a dog. They don’t leave wet towels on the bed, they don’t scream or fight, they don’t shop, they don’t nag. In short they are perfect!!

I am perfectly comfortable in my own skin and love being alone with my books, my music and myself. I m not marriage material. I have 0 patience, am very short tempered, cant cook, hate clean houses, cant get up early if u gave me a million dollars and cant for the life of me wear a sari and sit for 4 hours in front of smoke “getting” married. Ewwww

I am sorry if this blog comes across as being irritable and peevish but that’s exactly how I am feeling right now!! And I know my blog looks sad and the quality of my posts has gone down drastically (not that the quality was very high or anything but in relative comparison I am writing really sad posts now!!). will do something to remedy that soon. Till then keep visiting!! :)

Musings

It has been raining cats and dogs and donkeys and tigers for the past two days. Seriously. It has been raining like nobody’s business. All schools are off today, all colleges are off today. I won’t be surprised if they close down government offices too. Then why the HELL are IT companies working all the time??? :-\

What I want: hot steaming tea with a plate of pakodas, a nice book and some good music
What I have: hot tea from the vending machine, code which doesn’t work

What I want: a job which lets me talk to people, read a lot and write a lot
What I have: a job where I talk to a maximum of one person, read the lunch menu everyday, and write some nonsense and try to convince everyone that it is code.

What I want: to read John Grisham’s latest novel called playing for pizza
What I have: complete reference java

What I want: is to be able to sleep peacefully without anyone waking me up and asking me to come to office
What I have: am at office at 8.30 owing to the bus driver who drove like he had a pregnant woman in his bus and was rushing her to the hospital

What I want: is to roll my jeans up and splash with gay abandon in the puddles formed by the rain outside
What I have: a voice inside me telling me that I am 22 and a professional working in a leading IT company and professionals working in leading IT companies DO NOT splash in water!!

Sigh!! But what is most surprising is that despite all this I am really really happy and completely in love with life right now. What IS wrong with me??

Survey

Hi all,
I need a favor from you guys. You need to fill this survey up for me. Now before u guys think this is one of those stupid things which says "choose the fruit u like the best and we will tell you your personality" and in the end says "if u chose orange u are a person who likes oranges" or something equally and incredibly silly, let me tell you that this is a real survey and it would help a lot of people if u took this survey seriously and gave your esteemed opinion (:P) on the questions listed in this survey. Your results will not be shown to you or anybody else (meaning it is an anonymous survey) so feel free to check whichever option you feel like. Here is the link which you need to follow and take the survey. Even if u dont like my blog and hate the way i write please be kind enough to take some time off your busy schedule and do the survey. Thank you!! :)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=qet2evuPO3TBuI5cy8_2bYAA_3d_3d

The Week that was

It has been a good week.
On Monday I did something which I have always always wanted to do and I am glad I finally got around to doing it. A tiny feeling of guilt still lingers but the sense of achievement (however small) kind of overshadows the guilt
On Tuesday a part of code which I had written actually worked. Now this is something earth shattering and mind blowing. Right from class 12th when I first started coding, till now not a single piece of code of mine has ever worked and I was elated when something I had written actually worked
On Wednesday I got the following mail from one of the readers of my internal blog and I haven’t stopped smiling since. It always feels great to be appreciated but this mail just made me soooooooo happy. :)

Hi revs … was thinking to write to u from a very long time …Chakkas post likha hai yaar …Loved reading it ….But whenever I go to d comments section , I read ur or someone’s retaliation n start laughing out so much tat I forget what I was about to comment …I enjoy reading all your posts …D best part is d choice of topics …Everyone can relate to them…u r very witty and u know wats d best part is tat ur humor is clean n neat n u never make fun of others … Ur posts tells us tat revs is a simple , down to earth and very approachable gal…And thanks for linking me in your post … I was so happy to be linked by u … Please continue d great job …Keep Blogging !! Keep Rocking!! Kudos to u!! J
Bye,
Sona.

Thanks a lot Sona. You absolutely totally and completely made my day. :)

Since I have had a great week till now obviously today/ Thursday had to be a spoiler. Got up to find no current hence no motor and hence no water (Aaah!! I know what u guys are thinking. No!! the next statement is not hence no bath). I rushed to my grandmother’s place early in the morning to take a bath. Fought with an absolutely irritating auto fellow in the morning. I hate these fellows!! Seriously. Almost missed the bus and on top of it I have this absolutely infernal cold which refuses to go away so my eyes are constantly watering!! Sigh!!
Anyway I will get back to work. And yeah Happy Birthday Namu!! Hope u have a great day. You are one of the nicest people I have known and the past 11 years of knowing you have been fantabulous!! :). Have a great day!! Love you!! :)

Today is the birthday of one of the most important people in my life. The person I love most and respect lots. She turns 66 today and I hope she lives for 66 more!! :)
Love you loads and loads paati (I know u will probably never read this but still I just felt like writing this). Wish u a very very very happy birthday. My grandmother by the way is one of the most special people in my life and the only person whom i listen to.
LOVE YOU PAATI!!! :)

Conversations

People are the most interesting creatures on this planet. Maneka Gandhi and the late Steve Irwin might not think so but personally I just love observing people. Have u tried listening to random conversations around you when you are alone either traveling or sitting in a theatre or in a shop? Sometimes these conversations can be very interesting and provide the much needed entertainment you need when you are alone. This is not called eavesdropping. Eavesdropping is when you listen to some conversation which has something to do with you. Listening to the conversations of some random people and compiling them into a blog is what I call research!!! :)
Here I write about some conversations which I have heard when I have been traveling in the bus, train or in theatres etc

1. Heard in the bus. A conversation between a girl of about 20 and her boyfriend on the phone. I could hear only her side of the conversation so I conjure up the boy’s side.
Her: Hmmm. Then what else. What did u have for breakfast?

Him: idly

Her: hmmm. Just idly?? What did u have along with idly?

Him: chutney

Her: what chutney?? Coconut or tomato?

Him: Coconut

Her: Hmmm. Then what else?

Him: I need to go. I will talk to you later. I love u

Her: Hmmm. Bye. I love u too You keep the phone down. Last time I hung up first and u didn’t speak to me for 35 full minutes

Him: No. you hang up first. I promise you I won’t be angry. And I love u more.

Her: No sweetie. You hang up first. And no I am sure I love u more.

(the “you hang up first” and “I love u more” conversations go on for about 15 minutes after which the girls mobile goes out of charge and she is forced to cut the call. By this time I have lost interest and I am afraid I will lose my breakfast too if I listen some more and move onto the next conversation. I have never understood what two lovers talk or why they talk for such long duration. I mean I am sure they don’t discuss about global warming or about the condition of slums in India or about the agenda of the world development report. I think the worst thing that service providers like airtel and hutch have come up with are CUG or groups where they provide unlimited free hours of talking.) Note: My friend Milinta has written a whole blog on this “talking for long hours phenomenon”. U can check out her blog too!! ;)

2. This was the conversation heard between a mother and her son in the theatre when I had been to watch some animation movie

Boy: Mommy. Why have the switched off the lights

Mother: so that we can see the movie

Boy: but I thought u needed light to see

Mother: Yes. But only if they switch off the lights we can see the movie better. If they switch on the lights the picture won’t be very clear.

Boy: Why does it become dark? Why can’t we always have light?

Mommy: because the sun goes down in the evenings.

Boy: why does the sun go down in the evenings?

Mommy: because like u there are other children on the other side of the world who want the sun so the sun goes to meet them

Boy: other side of the world?? Where is that?

At this point I lose patience and move on to the next conversation. The boy kept asking questions and the mother patiently kept answering. A child’s inquisitiveness is amazing no doubt but something which is even more amazing is a mother’s patience. I swear had I been in the mother’s place I would have scolded the child and asked him to watch the movie quietly!!


3. Following was the conversation I heard between a husband and a wife outside a change room in a clothing store. She would go inside, change into something and come out and show her husband.

Wife(wearing a green kurta): Sathish how about this one. This is the the same kurta which preity zinta wore in Lakshya.

Now Mrs.Sathish by no stretch of imagination looked like preity zinta and to be very fair to her, Mr.Sathish also by no stretch of imagination looked like Hrithik Roshan.

Anyway mildly put the kurta wasn’t exactly flattering her figure and was hugging her at places which are best left unmentioned and I was expecting Mr. Sathish to say so much

Husband: Ummm..Errrr.. Well actually this color doesn’t really suit u.
He picks up another blue kurta which if it were worn by Jayalalitha would be loose for her

Now this is the color which would really really suit you

Wife: what u are trying to say is that I look fat. That’s it. Isn’t it??

Husband: no Uma. I am just trying to say that blue color would suit u much better than green.

Wife: ok. I will just go and ask if they have this green kurta in blue. Except for the color everything is fine with the green kurta right?

I am beyond myself with laughter as I see Sathish squirm. And I did not envy his position when Uma came with the same green kurta in blue color and told him she was going to buy.

Sathish: ummm… maybe we should just visit some other shop Uma. The prices here are too steep!

Uma: Are u crazy? This kurta’s original price in 650 and I am getting it at 300 after discount. There is no way I am letting it go. Why are you so apprehensive?

Sathish: (He is really gutsy I decide) No it’s just that maybe this kurta is a little tight for u. maybe we should try the next size!!

Oh my god!!! You guys should have been there to witness what ensued afterwards!! Phew!! They had such a big fight and they kept on fighting. Yours truly just left the place!! ;)

4. This one was while I was traveling in the train from Chennai to Bombay. Some of the moments of my life which I cherish are the train journeys when we as a family would travel from wherever-in-India-we-were-at-that-moment to Chennai. So I love observing families when I am traveling alone. It takes me back to the good ol’ days. Anyway this particular family had two daughters, a mom and a dad and was ur usual gujju parivar.

Daughter 1(called Pinky): mummy!! I want the window seat

Daughter 2(called Sweety): mummy!! Nahi. I want it. Remember last week when u were talking to gupta aunty on the phone and the milk was boiling in the kitchen I asked u if I could have the window seat u said I could have it.

(I pitied mummy and appreciated sweety’s cleverness. The best time to ask a parent for a favor is when they are extremely busy, totally un-interested in what u have to say and cant wait to get rid of you.)
Pinky: but mummy the last time we went to madras Sweety sat at the window seat

Mummy: we had 2 window seats then Pinky and both of you were sitting at one.

Pinky(obviously not very pleased): but I want it.

Daddy: Pinkyyyyyyyyyy!!!!! Sweetyyyyyyyy!!! Bas Karo!!! Enough of ur nonsense. Pinky will sit for half an hour then Sweety will sit for the next half hour

Pinky: I get to sit first.

Sweety: no!! I do. Daddy tell her.

And the fight went on. I didn’t think pinky and sweety were being childish. My sister is 25 and I am 21 and we still fight for the window seat when we travel together. : I have always maintained that it is good to have a bit of fighting/squabbling between siblings. (I am not sure how many parents concur with my views though)

5. Following is the conversation which took place between my mom and my dad when I was in class 7 and till date remains one of my most favorite conversations

Mom: (talking to my dad): Shruthi (yeah that’s me. That’s what I am called at home As to why I am called shruthi at home, well that deserves a separate post in itself) has been really naughty. I have been getting lot of complaints regarding her behavior from all her teachers.

Dad(reading the newspaper): Hmmmm

Mom: She actually put horns on the head of her computer teacher and it got reflected on the monitor and she got caught (this is completely true. This did happen and till date it has been the funniest and most embarrassing situations in my life).

Dad: Hmmm

Mom: And preethi doesn’t study at all. I am worried she will hardly score in her 10th exams.

Dad: Hmmm

Mom: Maybe we should send her to coaching classes

Dad: Hmmm

Mom: you never listen to anything I say

Dad: I don’t believe it. I just don’t

Mom: what?

Dad: in a country with 1 billion people isn’t there a single doctor who can find a cure for Sachin Tendulkars shoulder injury??

Mom: *&^%*%&**^.

Errr. The scenes that followed were errr. Not very pleasant and hence I shall refrain from elucidating for fear that some children by chance might come visiting and get scared!! :P
There are many such conversations which stand out in my memory but this post is getting way too long anyway. Maybe I will do a conversations part-II. :). So till then Keep Talking!! ;)

Tolerance

I really really need to control my anger. I really do. I am generally a very nice person(Really. I swear :P) but if I get angry I just seem to completely lose control of myself. And the minute after I have literally raped the object of my anger with the choicest of words I begin to feel sorry and wish I hadn’t done it. The other day a certain colleague of mine and I were having this discussion about our favorite authors. This is how the conversation went

Me: Oh cool!! You like Grisham too?? I love “The Client” written by him. Have u read that?

Colleague: oh yeah!! I loved that one too. And Erich Segal's Class and Doctors is simply mid blowing

Me: oh yeah!! I just completely fell in love with Class. And more recently, did u read khaled hosseini's kite runner and 1000 splendid suns

Colleague: Oh my god!! Yeah yeah yeah. Absolutely loved them both. I cant believe our tastes match so much

Me: (Moving on to the acid test): Hmmm.. errrr. Then I presume you like PG Wodehouse

Colleague: Shucks No!! I HATE him. I just can’t stand the way he writes

Until this point I was genial, friendly and nice, even cracking little jokes but once she said I hate PGW I think I completely lost it. u can tell me stuff like "I think your father is a terrorist Revs, and he is the master mind behind the WTC bombing" and I wont be provoked, or u can say stuff like "I think ur sister is a cannibal and the only reason she calls u home so frequently is so that she can fatten u up well and then eat you" and I would probably just give u a little smile and say "Oh!! Is that so??" but if u say stuff like "I hate PGW" I get livid. Come on. My dad can turn terrorist (errr.Appa if you are reading this u know I love u!! :)), my sister can turn into a cannibal (on second thoughts she already is one. Preethi if you are reading this c’mon sis it’s time u faced some facts). Both these events are not entirely impossible but hating PGW?? Now that’s impossible. PGW aint a writer. He is a magician who plays magic with words.

Shit!! This is exactly what I was talking about. I need to simmer down. I just need to.
Anyway after my colleague made that statement I went "What??????? You don’t like PGW and u call yourself a person who likes to read books??" (Now, I realize that I was being entirely unreasonable. I cant understand a word of what Paulo Coelho is trying to say in alchemist and I don’t understand why the boy must speak the language of the desert. call me shallow, call me un-philosophical but that’s the way I am but then when I was at the peak of my outburst I wasn’t really thinking reasonably). But the point I am trying to make here is that there is a world of difference between saying "I don’t understand what PGW writes" and saying "I hate PGW". The former statement I can tolerate,even understand, the latter, I have realized sadly is beyond my tolerance level. Needless to say after that little outburst of mine my colleague hasn’t been very cordial to me to put it mildly.
Same thing happened with a friend of mine who said she didn’t like the way Atif sings and I again went "What???????*&^%^##@$%&"

I just need to get a hold on myself

Following are some of the things I need to do

1. Need to tone down Sreesanth like behavior
2. Need to visit the Himalayas and have a look at how the sages live
3. Need to apologize to my colleague
4. Need to be more tolerant
5. Need to accept the fact that not everyone likes Wodehouse and not everyone can appreciate Atif's singing. (But for crying out loud how can u not like stuff like this "A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of someone who had searched for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle" or "I should like to start by saying that since the first human being crawled out of the primeval slime and life on this planet began nobody has ever loved anybody as i love Gertrude Wnnkworth".Sheesh I am doing it again.)
6. I really need to follow this need to list!!

Shantaram!! Awesome!!

For the past one week I have been staying up nights and trying to spend every waking minute that I get reading Shataram by Gregory David Roberts. I still haven’t finished reading the book. It’s a huge book about 1000 pages and I still have 100 odd pages left to finish but I just cant help writing a review. What a book man what a book. I am usually lousy when it comes to reviewing books but there are very few books which I have really really felt like reviewing and this is one of them. It’s been a long time since I read a book which has been so stimulating moving and un-putdown able. Its non-fiction and I generally hate non-fiction and self help kind of books. This book is a kind of a self help book too I would say.

The real life story of a man who has been through sooooooooooo much in life and the way he has written it is BLOODY brilliant. I have just completely fallen in love with the way he has written. He describes India and Bombay so beautifully that it especially appeals to a person like me who has this “crazy almost bordering toward madness” kind of love for India. I cant really explain what I love about this country but I just love it with every fibre of my being and to hear my sentiments being voiced by a foreigner, to hear my country being praised by him felt so good.

And another astounding thing is that Gregory david Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after the prison guards destroyed the first two versions. Each version was around 600 pages. And to have continued writing after having his first two version destroyed tells you about the kind of amazing grit, willpower and determination this man possesses. It is very very hard to believe that it has been written by a prisoner, an armed robber and a hopeless heroin addict. There is a part in the book, around 50 pages, where he talks about his stint in an Indian prison. It just completely moved me to tears and threw light on the kind of circumstances under which prisoners in India live and the way they are treated. (But according to Roberts such is the case in every prison in this world.).

Shantaram is a riveting read which is at once moving, touching, humorous, dark, thrilling, full of suspense, compassionate, sensational and erudite. I am running out of adjectives to describe this book. Please do read it. Don’t let the size of the book intimidate you. Trust me it is worth the read.

Next on my list is Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Snow’ and ‘My Name is Red’. I generally do not read books written by Nobel prize winning authors because most of what they write is a bouncer for me but I am going to try. So any reviews on these two books are most welcome!! :)