Tagged!!

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

Last movie seen in a theatre:

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

What book are you reading?

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

Favourite board game:

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

Favourite magazine:

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

Favourite smells:

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

Favourite sound:

silence, howling of the wind

Worst feeling in the world:

splitting headache + lots of work + bad food

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

is the bathroom free for me to take a bath?

Favourite fast food place:

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

Future child’s name:

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

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

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

Do you drive fast?

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

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

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

Storms - Cool or Scary?

Cool

Do you eat the stems on broccoli?

I hate the vegetable and eat no part of it

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

black. Nothing beats black

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

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

Favourite sports to watch:

cricket

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

linux stud

What’s under your bed?

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

Would you like to be born as yourself again?

absolutely!! I love myself!! :)

Morning person or night owl?

night owl most definitely.

Over easy or sunny side up?

sunny side up!!

Favourite place to relax:

home. :)

Favourite ice cream flavour:

chocolate

You pass this tag to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. swami and friends by RK Narayan

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

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

6. The lord god made them all by james herriot

7. anne frank’s diary

8. fountain head by ayn rand

9. a twist in the tale by Jeffery archer

10. all enid blytons

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

1. one night at the call center by chetan bhagat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am like this only ya!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmmmmm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Cute guy: Hi uncle. Can I speak to Revathi

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

Cute guy: is this Mr.Ramanan’s house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trip to Bombay - Part I - TISS!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makku!!! :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Slice of my life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!! :)