Tagged!!

Aravind has tagged me and because i am as occupied and as busy as a 90 year old woman and have as much work to do as Parthik Patel does in the indian cricket team this weekend i decided to do it. So here goes the taggg!!

6 whatever’s about me:

1. I have two completely contrasting personalities. Revs-1 is a brooding, morose, silent person who speaks only when she is spoken to, doesn’t like the presence of people around her, wants her personal space and enjoys solitude.
Revs-2 is jolly, extremely talkative, speaks all the time, silly, needs to have people around her all the time and can get depressed when she is alone.
People who know Revs-1 cant believe that Revs-2 exists and vice versa. Mt attempts to merge these two personalities have not succeeded.

2. I am extremely scared of sharp things and fire. Surprisingly when I am holding a knife or a candle I am not scared but I get the heebie jeebies when someone else holds a knife or candle.

3. I suffer or rather used to suffer from severe obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) but thanks to a friend of mine who told me about it, its under control. I used to do crazy things like
--I have this fear of odd numbers. I dunno why. When I get into the bus I try to make sure there are even number of people in the bus. When I am walking from one place to another I count the number of steps in between and if its an odd number I decide I am going to have a crappy day.
--I cant stand it if one hand of mine is wet and the other is dry. I feel the need to necessarily wet my other hand too. Apparently this is because people suffering from OCD need to have a feeling of evenness
--I also have this obsessive habit of adding up the numbers on all the number plates of the vehicles I see. There have been times when I have ignored a signal change and gone on adding the numbers
--if I see a square flooring I do the knight walk. I dunno why but involuntarily I take three steps forward two steps right when I am on a square flooring.
--I have this obsessive spell check habit. If I am typing on MS Word I HATE the red and green squiggly lines I see. I have this habit of doing away with all the errors however small and silly they are. Most of the time I end up doing an ignore all but still I must do it
And many other such weird habits.

4. I don’t dream. I have never had a single dream till date. People tell me that I dream but I don’t remember them but personally I think I don’t dream at all

5. I am a very very very absent minded. I pull push doors and push pull doors, in the rest room once I dropped my cell into the dust bin and put my tissue into my bag, weekly at least twice I board bus no 38 though the bus which goes to my place is bus no 39 and I end up walking at least a km everyday, I cant carry two things. If I carry my handbag and another bag I misplace one of the two, if I carry my handbag and a pen or book more often than not I will lose the book. Sometimes I think I lack a brain.

6. I hate milk. I cant stand the sight, color and smell of milk. In spite of threats from my mother who says if I carry on like this all my bones will crumble and fall due to osteoporosis at the age of 30 and I ll die a premature death I find myself unable to assimilate the goo.

5 things I miss right now:

college life. My carefree existence. My friends. My room. My room mate. My warden. The hostel food. The hostel dog ganguly. The snake catching pit behind our hostel. Our gossip talking nook behind the mess. The culturals. The symposiums. The crazy night outs. The insane semester exams. Makku. Watching 5 movies a day. sleeping till 1 in the afternoon. The trip to stores. The walks to the temple. The miserable cup noodles. Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! I wish I could go back to college.

errrr. That’s 20 things I miss right now. I hope that’s ok.

10 things I wanna achieve in a decade:

Achieve?? Naaah!! I don’t like that word. Makes me feel like Anil Ambani. I have small dreams which I hope to fulfill by the time I reach the age of 35 and they are:

1. To go on a tour of India with nothing but a backpack with four pairs of clothes, a good pair of shoes, some friends and some money. To climb all the mountains, at least those in India. To go on a trip to the north east and see arunachal Pradesh, imphal etc.
2. to go bungee jumping
3. to do scuba diving and go in a submarine
4. to adopt a girl child
5. try my level best to not get married
6. to start an NGO
7. to start and be the editor of a good youth magazine
8. Build an independent house with a large library with all my favorite books and huge couch for me to sit and read all day, a small garden lined with flowers of all kinds, a white picket fence, a swing and slide in the back yard for my little girl to play in and a golden retriever called Popeye in one of the following places. Goa, Chennai, Pune, Bangalore.
9.To ride a black bike wearing black clothes, a black helmet on ECR in the dead of the night and to learn to drive a car.
10. Earn a lot of money to be able to do all the above!! ;)

I have already done the boring book tag so I am skipping it. I tag the following people

Kilpauk Mental (Have fun. I cant wait for ur tag and the crazy answers!! :))
Jass (Muwhahahahahahaha)
Sree
Sowmini

Lessons learnt by Revs - Part II

1. Sometimes little things which you do can make people really happy and you don’t even realize it, until they write or tell you about it. So I have been going around feeling as benevolent as mother Teresa, though I haven’t done a thing but because someone else thought I did!! :)

2. Never make new year resolutions. I have shamelessly gone and broken all my new year resolutions. I am PATHETIC. Earlier this year I promised myself that I would be nice to everyone, write accounts and do more of what I like and I have broken all of them.

--I was rude to a really really nice person and u know what’s the worst thing about being rude to a nice person? The nice person doesn’t mind it and says “Naaah. That’s ok!!” and gives a benevolent smile when u apologize to them making u feel lower than Mallika Sherwat’s neck line, lower than the blood levels in Vijay mallya’s alcohol stream, lower than the lowest form of aquatic life which resides in the marina trench of the pacific ocean (errrr.. the lowest point in the earth). Sigh!!! you get the drift?? Really low!!

--I stopped writing accounts two months back and my finances have again gone for a toss. I withdraw whenever I feel like and I have been doing quite a bit of withdrawing and my account looks malnourished as usual. When I was writing accounts there was some kind of control which doesn’t exist now.

PJ: what’s the similarity between Revathi’s bank account and Kareena Kapoor
Answer: both of them are a size zero!! Ha ha ha ha!!
Sad joke!! but then I am a sad person!!

--And despite lofty promises to self I have hardly been doing the things I like. And in fact I have been doing the things I dislike more and more. :(
--The only resolution which I have been keeping successfully is reading books. I have been religiously reading good fiction and spent most of my salary buying books, reading and re reading them but sigh that’s one resolution which I knew I would have no trouble keeping, given my inexplicable love for books. I always take time out to read however busy I am. Always!!! Its like taking a resolution to brush daily (I really do guys!! Cross my heart and hope to die!! )

3. It is not a very good idea to listen to music when you are working. Last week I was listening to “Love me Tonight” by John Denver and without realizing while listening to the song, I went “Kick of your shoes, turn of the lights, love me tonight”. Apparently I was really really loud and the men in my team have been maintaining a safe distance ever since. Sigh!!! I wonder what they think about me!!

4. It is best to read and re read your mails before u send them to others. Yesterday I had to send a mail to a team mate saying “Hi XYZ, mandatory fields have to be marked in blah blah use case” and I ended up sending “Hi XYZ, mandatory fields have to be naked in blah blah use case”. And I quickly scanned the mail for read marks and not seeing any I sent it and needless to say was the butt of all jokes the whole day with some perverts asking me what pleasure I got out of looking at naked mandatory fields!! :

5. Never grow up – It sucks: Lately I have been reading asterix and tintin comics over and over again thanks to my 9 year old cousin (I added the word cousin while re reading the post and editing it. before that, it read “thanks to my 9 year old who seems…!! Eeeeeks!! Thank god I corrected my own mistake!!:P) who seems to have taken a fancy to it. I completely LOVE asterix. Every time I read I am like “oh my god!! Now where does this guy get his sense of humor from?”. Will I ever grow up and stop reading asterix, tintin, archies and tinkle? I hope I never do.

6. Be careful what title you give your posts. I have been following Feedjit carefully for the past 1 month and I noticed that I had maximum visitors for this post. Not that my other posts are great or deserve to be read but this one is definitely not one of my good posts. A little bit of sleuthing ke baad I found out that when u say “lost my orkut account” in google the first link that google throws up is GBCI!! Eeeps!! Sigh!! no wonder I got so many visitors for that post. The number of people whose life orkut rules must be slightly more than the hair on TR’s face, slightly more than the number of pimples on my face and almost equal to jayalalitha’s weight. You get the drift? So I am sure that every day there must be at least a few addicted souls (whose idea of entertainment is refreshing their orkut page to check for scraps, idea of fun is replying to scraps and idea of passing away time is checking out the profiles on unknown people) who lose their orkut account who must be visiting my page!! Hmmm

7. I have decided. I don’t want to get married and I don’t want to study further. I want to go trekking and climb all the mountains in india. Sigh!! I just came back from a weekend trek to tada and it was amazing!! sigh!! will upload someone's pics soon!!

8. It’s a bad bad idea to say “Jeez!! Go jump into a well. You depress me” to a person who is depressed. They, I have noticed, don’t like it. my relationship with a certain friend of mine is at its breaking point coz I couldn’t really understand her mood swings and depression and wasn’t patient enough to listen her out. :S

Me, my family and other Animals!! :P

1. With my sister gone, I feel completely uninspired to write. If you are completely out of your mind (read: if u have been following my blog for an year) you might have noticed that most of posts revolve around my sister, her husband, her house, her habits etc. When she was here she would give me so much of fodder to write humor. Everything she did or did not do would make me laugh. Her non existent IQ, her silly expressions, her stupid talk, her obsessive compulsive cleaning disorder, her insane conversations with my BIL.. Sample the following conversations between my sis and bil

Sis: its your turn to make the bed today.
BIL: mmmm ok
(after half an hour)
Sis: I noticed 4 creases in the bed sheet and my pillow is at an angle of 30 degrees to your pillow and you have folded the bed sheets inside out.
BIL: duh?

And she would proceed to do the whole thing again. I never did understand why she made him do it first because she would invariably find some fault and do it again. My BIL at least would try. I would deliberately make a mess of it because I figured that when she was anyway going to do it again what is the point of me doing it.
She would give me so much to write about and it is not a coincidence that since she has left for dubai I have been writing sad posts!!

2. my mother whenever she calls nowadays doesn’t talk. She only squeals in excitement. She goes “eeeeeeeeeee shruthi, wheeeeeeeeee. Oh my god we went to the niagra falls yesterdayyyy and I cant tell u how wonderful it was. We went behind the falls in this ferry called maid of the mist. Ooooohhh shruthi!! You should have come” or “Shruthiii, today we went and saw the place where wordsworth sat and wrote his poem on daffodils, we saw shakespeare’s village and it was sooooo much fun”. She sounds like a happy 5 year old who has finally been given a chocolate and taken to the circus and seen a clown. My father composed and serene as ever goes “hmmm. Nice place. I played a little but of golf and have been reading quite a bit”.

Their contrasting characters never fail to amaze me. My mother is this round ball of never ending energy and enthusiasm, always excited and always raring to go and do something. She joined dance classes some time last year and an year before that she was studying vedic mathematics and learning telugu in correspondence. At the age of 44 she went on a 25 km cycle trek on rough terrains, up the mountain and my dad and her were the only people above 30 to complete it. Knowing hindi, english and tamil well she helps translate books from tamil to English and hindi to English for this NGO called AID india. She lives life on her own terms and what a life she lives!!! I feel stupid, lazy, incapable of doing anything and uninspired when I compare myself to her. Coming to appa he is this laid back, relaxed, take life as it comes almost saintly person who enjoys a good book, piping hot coffee and my mothers company. I will never be able to understand how two people with such contrasting personalities exist together. Anyway they seem to be having a great time in the US and UK. I am glad.

3. my cousin sister has gotten admission in Amrita Coimbatore and she leaves for Coimbatore in another two days. For the past 2 weeks we have been shopping and packing and buying stuff for her to take there. I am the most excited person. I know how exciting it is to go to a new place, meet new people, set up your room in hostel, get ragged, eat miserable hostel food, be homesick, cry, make friendships, break them, wash your own clothes and sigh!! A part of me is jealous of my sister. I wish it was me instead of her going to hostel and back to college. I wish it was me people were giving advice to saying stuff like “be careful about the friends you make, study well and be careful of ur stuff in hostel”, I wish it were me going to Coimbatore (a place I have never been to though I remember getting admission into CIT- chemical engineering, but later dropping it.) to start a new life, I wish I was going to study there and not just drop her off. She is feeling quite apprehensive and I hope she makes a great set of friends because frankly in college friends is what matters. Studies, I personally think are a very very trivial part of college, something which I don’t remember doing at all except the night before exams. I hope she has fun because that’s what college is all about.

4. I look at my grandmother and I feel sad. I hate old age. There is no one in this world I love more than her and every time I look at her, the fact that she is not getting any younger and that each of her siblings are suffering from some ailment and not surviving it, is very very unsettling. Though a part of me refuses to accept it, I know that there will be a certain weekend when I wont be able to say “Na paati veetuku poren”, that there will be a day when she wont twist my ears and say “thayir sadam saapdu. Odambu naiya irruka”, that there will be a day when I wont see her wearing over sized spectacles, a pale violet saree, sitting on the floor and reading anandha vikatan or talking on the phone. The more I force myself to not think about it, the more I find myself thinking about things which I would be much better off not thinking about. Sigh!!!

5. I have been bugging the shit out of people for the past 3 months by writing and subjecting them to sad poetry written by yours truly. A friend of mine bought a car and I wrote a poem for him, another friend got engaged and I wrote a poem for him and yet another friend of mine has lost his marbles after I started writing sad poetry about him because now even he has started writing poetry. I wish i could copy paste some of that stuff here but all the poems are errr kind of personal and if the concerned person were to know that i am making it public like this i would cease to exist!! :-\ The result of all the curses which I am sure I would have received from the afore mentioned people is that the coding phase of the next stage of my project starts soon and sigh!!! This means no more useless chats on the office communicator, no more sad poetry, no more blogging and no more calvin and hobbes in office hours!!! Back to dreaming about Java, JSP and servlet pages, back to drinking 11 cups of tea in 11 hours, back to blank eyed stares at the Null pointer exceptions and quick 10 minute lunches. oh Java!! how much i hate you!! :(

P.S: please check out the photos of our skandagiri trek here. i havent taken any of these!! these are a compilation of the best pics!! :)
SKANDAGIRI SNAPS

Tagged!! :)

I have been tagged by Sanket with this weird tag where i have to pick up the nearest book turn to page 123 find the fifth sentence and post the next three sentences. Reminds me of the movie Taare zameen par, this particular scene where aamir tells ishaan's parents that he is dyslexic and hence cannot process multiple instructions like turn to this page, so and so paragraph, so and so line.

Can i like pretend i am dyslexic and skip this tag?? :P (rolling eyes)!! but seriously i wonder who thinks of SAD tags like this. i mean it would at least make sense if you were asked to make your own story out of those three lines or something, but just writing three lines??? SAD!!! speaks of the tag maker's abject lack of creativity. Anyway here goes the shortest tag in this world.

The nearest book is Jhumpa Lahiri's "unaccustomed earth" gifted to me by Akiiiii!! :) I have COMPLETELY fallen in love with the way she writes. i mean her stories are about ordinary people and the ordinary lives they lead but the way she writes it is extraordinary. i mean she can write about something as mundane as a housewife washing the dishes but the way she writes it i am like WOW!! her stories might not be great but the reading experience is out of this world!! :)

anyway here goes fifth line of page 123

He saw an open box on the table containing a few eclairs. The sight made his stomach churn up in hunger, and he picked one up, consumed it without pause.

"Looks like we missed brunch" Megan said. After a while she added. "You have chocolate icing around your mouth"

Lacking a napkin or the wipes he always had with him when was with the girls. he drew the back of his hand across his lips.

Phew!! done!! and for a change i tag no one!! but if you want to u can take up this tag!! :)

1. Everyday when I look at the mirror I see the face of a stranger. There are no profound implications of this statement. Its just that I have been shedding so much hair that everyday when I look atthe mirror I see that my hair line has receded further and have trouble in recognizing myself. It reminds me of the protagonist in the movie crouching tiger hidden dragon whose hairline used to start from the middle of his forehead. I used to crack up every time I looked at him when the movie got released but something tells me that pretty soon I will be like that given the exponential rate at which my hair is falling.

2. I have been reading gerrald durrell’s “my family and other animals gifted very lovingly to me on my birthday and I just LOVE the book. I dunno how I hadn’t heard of gerrald durrell so many days. He is one helluva writer and I would rate him next only to PGW, James Herriott and Richard Gordon in humor writing. Typical clean English humor. I just discovered that I seem to enjoy all books which either deal with animals or talks about them (doesn’t help that my favorite character in PGW is the empress of blandings or that I grew up reading tinkle where kalia the crow was my favorite character!!) what’s wrong with me? I mean I have heard sentimental and romantic people read mills and boons, adventurous people read spy, detective or adventure novels, serious people read philosophical books etc. and I read animal books. So where does that put me? (P.S: on second thoughts don’t answer that question. Milinta and Kilpauk Mental, I don’t, I repeat DON’T want any wise cracks in the comments section about this from you guys. I was just thinking aloud)

3. This weekend I attended the marriage of a very close friend in sivakasi. She is 22. How, how HOW can people get married at the tender age of 22? As her fiancé tied the mangalsutra around her neck I suddenly felt like shouting and saying “Stop!! This is illegal. This is child marriage” but all I could manage was a whimper and a sob as she went from Miss to Mrs in a few seconds. Sigh!! I mean I have known her for five years and she is the kind of person who cant even fold a bed sheet properly, let alone cook and clean and the very thought of her getting married, running a family, cooking and being a daughter in law and wife is very unsettling. I dunno how she is feeling but I am worried sick. Personally I think the legal age for marriage should be pushed to 25. Come to think of it, even my sister got married when she was 22. How the hell did she do it? Now that I am 22 I think I can vaguely understand how apprehensive she must have been.

4. I have the worst luck in this world. I mean its amazing how much pleasure Murphy gets out of seeing me suffer. And my bad luck affects everyone around me. On the way to sivakasi on Friday evening we reached the station in the nick of time after a friend of mine left her bag in office and came to the station without it and we ran all the way back to office and got it. and then the next day the train was 5 hours late and we reached sivakasi at 12. on Sunday after the marriage I was to go to Madurai to attend the engagement of another friend and I caught a bus at 12 to Madurai. As luck would have it the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere, it was sweltering hot, absolutely no shade or trees and I was the only one going to Madurai. Everyone else was going to virudhunagar and got into another bus and I waited and waited and waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally a bus came rumbling and was jam packed and there I was, stuck between a woman who had never heard of the word deo and a man who had obviously never taken a bath and I reached Madurai at 4, only to discover that I had missed the engagement!!! And then the next day morning the train again reached Chennai 4 hours late and i had to miss office (ok. this is the good part!!!:P ). It was all I could do to prevent myself from screaming out of frustration. Why me? I mean there are 137899853226839 other people in this world and Murphy has to play with me ALWAYS. Sigh!!

5. I am not able to decide about my views on many things. I mean I thought I was a pretty broad minded and open person and thought that nothing could actually shock me. But the other day I was in coffee day for a friends treat, a place I completely avoid going to because rather than having one coffee/milkshake there I would rather have bajjis at subbaiya’s for a week. Anyway I was there and I saw a couple getting extremely cozy right there in the middle of coffee day for everyone to see and I was disgusted. I don’t understand. What does being modern translate to? Does it mean having an open mind or does it mean wearing minimal clothes? Does it mean shedding your inhibitions and flaunting ur BF/GF to the entire world? What was the couple trying to prove? Their undying love for each other? Or that they didn’t care a damn about what people think about them and were exercising their freedom of expression? What is the limit for PDA or public display of affection? Don’t get me wrong. I am not a messenger sent by Bal Thackeray whose job is to track down all the people in love and shoot them down. But yes I get uncomfortable when I see a guy wearing jeans so low down on his hip that I feel like buying him a belt or something to pull them up, and I feel embarrassed when I see a couple doing anything more than holding hands. Call me old fashioned, call me conservative, tell me that I am behind times but it will take some time for me to assimilate this new definition of modern.

6. For the past one week I have listened to the song “You Fill up my senses” by John Denver and “Tosey Naina Lagey”(dunno which movie) approximately 5876 times. Both of them are beautiful songs and I just don’t tire of listening to them. Tosey naina lagey is soulful Hindustani music and is the kind which can move u to tears and listening to “you fill up my senses” will give u the feeling that all is well in this world. What an amazing voice John Denver has.

I love birthdays!! :)

I love birthdays.

I love being wished on my birthday.

I love it when people who would normally not call me, call me and wish me.

I love it when someone says “Happy Birthday Revs” and I go thank you thank you!!

I love it when my sister who normally cannot stay awake beyond 10 in the night is the first person to call me at 12.00 and says "Happy Birthday Shruthi". ( the fact that dubai is 2 hours behind us and 12 for us is 10 for them can be discounted. It’s the thought that counts)

I love it when my friends act all “ooooh!! We forgot to get u a cake man” and have a forlorn expression on their face and then at 12 ,drag me to the terrace and make me cut a beautiful chocolate cake. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I saw the "cake world" cover in the hall when they got it.

I still love cutting a cake, blowing out candles on my birthday and listening to the happy birthday song.

I love it when people who normally only pull my legs or tease me say / write nice things about me on my birthday. I know how difficult it is for you guys to write nice stuff about me. I mean I can almost imagine u guys going “Revs..errr..ummm ahhh!! Nice girl with smelly feet, bad hair and bad teeth. Heh heh”. Lol. So all u guys who wrote wonderful things about me on the cognizant birthday blog Thanks a lot!!

I love it when one of my best friends forgets my birthday and I message her saying “you forgot my birthday. Wish me NOW” and she calls and goes “jeeez I am sooooo sorry.”. yeah I am super shameless. When people don’t wish me on my birthday I message them and threaten them to wish me.

I love it when my grandmother says “kazhudha vayasu aaiduthu aana moola mattum valarave ila” (roughly translated as you have reached a donkey’s age but still have the maturity level of George Bush)

I love it when my friends tell me that they are gonna buy a book for my birthday and ask me what I want. I have to be the most shameless person because I sent a message to all those people and asked them to buy a book which I wanted!! :P (Psssst Mi!! I just finished reading my family and other animals and I fell in love with it. Thanks!! :D. others!! I am still waiting for my gift!! Humph!! :P)

I love it when my friends have good fun at my expense. Yeah!! It’s a long story. Will blog about it some time. In short one of them kept a bouquet at my desk in office, led me astray and kept me guessing about the sender of the bouquet till evening. Aravind, Sree, Sow, Trich, Jass - u dawgs!! Thanks for the bouquet and err thanks for having fun at my expense. :)

I love the fact that I can still love birthdays and not worry about the fact that I am actually getting an year older.

Its not fair. Why cant I have more than one birthday an year. :(

???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L'affaire Skandagiri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Five point someone

2. One night at the call center

3. Three mistakes of my life

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

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

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

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

Jokes apart i do miss her!! :(

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

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

Of relocating sisters and brothers in law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travails of house hunting - Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Travails of house hunting - part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tagged!!

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

Last movie seen in a theatre:

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

What book are you reading?

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

Favourite board game:

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

Favourite magazine:

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

Favourite smells:

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

Favourite sound:

silence, howling of the wind

Worst feeling in the world:

splitting headache + lots of work + bad food

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

is the bathroom free for me to take a bath?

Favourite fast food place:

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

Future child’s name:

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

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

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

Do you drive fast?

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

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

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

Storms - Cool or Scary?

Cool

Do you eat the stems on broccoli?

I hate the vegetable and eat no part of it

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

black. Nothing beats black

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

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

Favourite sports to watch:

cricket

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

linux stud

What’s under your bed?

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

Would you like to be born as yourself again?

absolutely!! I love myself!! :)

Morning person or night owl?

night owl most definitely.

Over easy or sunny side up?

sunny side up!!

Favourite place to relax:

home. :)

Favourite ice cream flavour:

chocolate

You pass this tag to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. swami and friends by RK Narayan

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

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

6. The lord god made them all by james herriot

7. anne frank’s diary

8. fountain head by ayn rand

9. a twist in the tale by Jeffery archer

10. all enid blytons

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

1. one night at the call center by chetan bhagat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am like this only ya!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmmmmm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Cute guy: Hi uncle. Can I speak to Revathi

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

Cute guy: is this Mr.Ramanan’s house

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trip to Bombay - Part I - TISS!!

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