Taaaaaaaaaaaaag!! :)

Been tagged by Milinta with this rather nice tag I should say. I liked doing it!! :) because I have been really busy and have not been blogging at all (Mr.Chitragupta stop noting all this down. I am just kidding!! :-\). Anyway here goes!! :)

The tag:
Two questions in each category answer them and then tag your friends from the blog-o-sphere. (Simple enough right) Leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been tagged and you are all set.

Yesterday

Your oldest memory

Date : August 26^th 1992 – Madras – JYM Kalyana Mandapam

Partners in crime: Shruthi – age 6

      Preethi – age 9

      Ramya – age 8

Occasion: my uncle’s wedding

Circs: now JYM kalyana mandapam has two floors. Generally the girl’s family gets the ground floor and the boy’s family gets the first floor. Ground floor is sad. It is teeming with mothers who are always thinking that kids below the age of 9 will be up to no good, or teeming with relatives who want to wrench your chubby cheeks off saying “Preethi kutti Shruthi kutti, mama kalyanathukku vandhirkella?” (no. we are 6 and 9 year old suicide bombers planning to bomb this place. Duh-huh?? What else would we be here for?) or teeming with close relatives who go “Shruthi take this veshti to kicha mama” or “Preethi ask sarasu mani to go and give the white color packet to cheenu mama before muhurtham” or some such trivial errands.

First floor on the other hand is relatively free coz the wedding takes place on the ground floor and people normally don’t venture up. So Preethi, Ramya (less of a cousin and more of a local rowdy) and I were very glad that the boy’s “side” had been given the first floor. The first floor had a HUGE hall about 40 feet by 40 feet and many other smaller rooms and the scope of how much of fun we could have playing hide and seek, catch catch, cut the cake etc left us breathless. Here was a whole big house to ourselves, with no furniture to hinder our moevment and no elders to bother us. We started playing when a couple of pesky kids from the “girls” side came up (for the same reasons why we had come up) and wanted to join us (mind you, they just wanted to join us. They didn’t even ask for space to play alone. Now when I think of what I did I feel so silly but hey we were just 6 then. We are more mature now. God promise, mother promise!! :P) and this was the conversation

Them: naanglum unga kuda valayadalama? (can we also play with you?)

Ramya ( in the most authoritative tone. she was pretty much the boss. Preethi and I were her side kicks who stood on either side with our arms crossed like henchmen and showing attitude): Idhu yenga mama Kalyanam (this is our mama’s wedding)

Them: (confused): idhu yenga chitti Kalyanam (This is our chitti’s wedding too. or was it attai. I really don’t remember)

Ramya: mela payyan aathu kaara dhaan irrukanum. Ponnu aathu kaaranga keezha dhaan valayadanum (only the boy’s side can stay on top. The girl’s side has to use the ground floor for playing)

Them: konja neram valayadarome (can we play for some time please?)

Ramya: idhu yenga mama Kalyanam. Yenga mama ku naanga ungla ulla vittom nu theriya vandha ungla thoratthi thoratthi adipaar

(this is our uncle’s wedding. If he comes to know that we let u in he will beat u within an inch of ur life!!)

And they fled, probably thinking “oh my god. We are getting our chitti married to a man who beats little kids”. LOL. this is my oldest memory ever and even know when I think of it, it cracks me up. Shankar mama wouldn’t/couldnt hurt a fly and we painted such a gory picture of him. Am glad the kids didn’t go and complain otherwise Ramya solely would have been responsible for stopping the wedding!! :D:D

@preethi

Psssst. My oldest memory is Ramya telling pakathu veetu mama’s wife “unga aathukaar ----- pottukala” :D:D:D:D but jeez I cant write about that can I??? ;). This is a public space after all!! ;)

What were you doing 10 years ago?

1998 – Class 8 – JH Ambani Vidyamandir – I was the minister of discipline or cleanliness or red house captain or some such nonsense. I used to LOVE my school and LOVE Jamnagar then. Not anymore. The school has gone to the dogs, the kids are having love affairs in class 6^th, my favorite teachers no longer teach there and the principal has changed 4 times since I left.

Happy times those were. Times of school uniforms, sparkling white socks and black shoes, smart red sweaters, hair in plaits and ribbons, a life of innocence, fun, frolic. What a carefree life. The thing which I worried about most was the fail mark in Sanskrit. Ahhhh!! Jaane kahan gaye woh din!! :(

Today

Your first thought today morning

No thoughts in the morning. Got up only in the afternoon at 12.30!! Ah!! Vacation. I love that word. When else can u get up in the afternoon on a Monday unless it is august 15, jan 26 or October 2^nd!! :|

If you built a time capsule today what would it contain?

Hmmm. Books for sure (all kinds. Archie comics, tinitin, PGW to rohinton mistry to Gerald Durrell. Hmmmm. EVERYTHING). Couple of friends. (mandatory)

Jeeeez. I cant think of anything else.

Hmmm food maybe, music, couple of good movies and a laptop!!  (optional)

Tomorrow

This year ….

Started off on a euphoric note with me getting a call from TISS, then there was the double disappointment. TISS bombed and sis left for Dubai!! :P. after the crest and two troughs it has been just a normal monotonous year. And oh yeah!! Chennai trekkers, one of the best things ever to happen to me. made a lot of new friends this year thanks to trekkers and my blogs. 

Hmmmm. On hindsight i made a LOT of friends actually. After college got over I didn’t think I would make a single decent friend in office. But no. I have made some great friends and that too with people whom I have never met but only exchanged mails. Its an amazing thing when u have never seen a person but know that person like the back of your hand (Anu, am tagging u with this tag!! :). you get the GBCI award for revelation of the year and "nicest person whom i have never met" award too!! :D) I also spent a lot of quality time with college friends and now i m spending quality time with my parents.

on the whole it has been a satisfactory year with a lot of reading and writing. discovered a lot of great authors. Been reading some good fiction and non fiction. hmmmm. what else? two more months to go. lets see what they bring!! :)

What do you see yourself doing 14 years from now?

I see myself as a 36 year old. Nothing more, nothing less. :P

Sorry. But I don’t know what I am going to do 4 minutes from now (ok, for the smart ass who just went “you will be publishing this post Revs” – THANK YOU! :-\). I am eternally clueless and perpetually confused.

And heck!!! 14 years from now who knows if I will be alive?

Ahhh!! Now comes the exciting part where I get to tag people.

I tag

Anu

Preeti

Nive - new to blogger

Rahul (because he loves being tagged!! :P) 

Meeting with an old nemesis - Sanskrit and Mrs M

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Me: (saying); Thanks ma'am. bye!! 

 

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

 

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

 

A love ahead of time!!

a "romantic" short story i wrote for a contest in office.
a lame albeit sincere attempt at "ROMANCE" :D:D
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Lakshmi got up and one hand of hers mechanically reached out and turned off the alarm lest it rang and disturbed Gopal who was sleeping peacefully. Even without looking, even before it rang she knew what time it was. 5 o clock. Every night when she set the alarm Gopal would joke saying “your body’s alarm is more reliable than Orpat. Why waste time setting an alarm?”

She got out of bed, brushed her teeth and went about her ablutions in a mechanical manner. Getting the milk, cutting open the packet, emptying it into a vessel, adding a little water to drain the packet of its last drops of milk, setting the vessel to boil, boiling the water to make the coffee decoction. After making herself a cup of hot frothy filter coffee, she retreated to the swing in the balcony to watch the break of dawn as the dark blue of the night gave way to the cerulean sky of the dawn and a gentle breeze tickled her senses. Somehow the dark blue of the sky always made her think of him. His eyes. Those deep dark azure eyes of his eyes which spoke volumes though he was a man of very few words.

Lakshmi closed her eyes and it all came back to her like it had happened yesterday. She was 18 and it was the Navratri season. Lakshmi and her sister Vijaya had gone to Sarasu maami’s house for golu. She was the best singer in the neighbourhood. “MS kurral. Truly gifted you are Lakshmi” Ranga mama, Sarasu maami’s husband would say with a nod of his head. That day she sat down to render a Bhajan in the kapi raagam. She always closed her eyes while singing. Her concentration wouldn’t divert that away. That day as soon as she finished singing and was met with thunderous applause, she opened her eyes and he stood before her and for the first time her innocent eyes met his cynical ones. There he was standing with a smirk on his face with a book in his hand and his hands crossed across his chest while everyone else in the room used their hands to applaud her song.

“Nara, did u hear that?” Sarasu maami asked him. “How well she sings doesn’t she.”
He smirked some more and made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a cough and retreated into his room

Oh!! How she hated him.

Narayan was a black sheep of their Agraharam. “Iconoclast. Too much of education and spending time in the public library has made him like this. Disgrace to Sarasu and Ranga, such nice god fearing people” appa would hiss when he spoke of him. “Ayyo naastheekama (atheist)?? Shiva Shiva” her mother would chant. He had radical ideas and “is way ahead of his times” Sethu anna would say. None of this made any sense to Lakshmi. All she knew was that she hated him because he refuted religious customs, thought too much of himself and was a pompous ass who loved to smirk at her.

And then the rains came. She would never forget that day. The first time he touched her. It was pouring cats and dogs and she had missed her last bus home from college and as luck would have it, she had forgotten her umbrella too and was walking towards the shade of the bus stand to wait there till the rains abated. It was pouring so hard it was impossible to see anything in front of her or to see the road or make out if she was walking on the pavement or on the road. Suddenly she felt a hand on her arm and someone pulled her to safety as a car whizzed past her. “Are you crazy?” she heard a voice. She turned around and found herself staring into those eyes again. “Th…Thanks. I..I..didnt hear the car. It was raining and…”. “Never mind” he hushed her. “Here take my umbrella and I will walk you home”. He was still holding her arm. She pulled it away determinedly and said “No, Thanks. I will wait at the bus stand and take the next bus home”. There. There it was. That irritating smirk again. “Ok. I will wait with you” he said. She was extremely glad he said that but said “Suit yourself. It isn’t my bus stand for me to prevent you from waiting there”.

“So? College eh?” he said after an uncomfortable silence of 10 minutes

“No, I enjoy walking in the rains at 6 in the evening, getting drenched and getting hit by cars frequently” she said sarcastically even as her heart beat like 100 drummers were working overtime. She moved away afraid that he might hear it

He smirked again and she wanted to scream.

“ok. I am sorry I spoilt your hobby of getting hit by cars by saving you. Won’t happen again” he said

She smiled and looked up at him and time froze. She didn’t remember how long they kept looking at each other. He later told her that, that was when he had fallen in love with her. A car sped by and splashed water on them and screeched to a halt. “Nara, Lakshmi what are you doing here? Get in the car” Ranga mama’s voice came through the sheets of rain. Ranga mama dropped her home and that night she for the first time she thought kindly of him.

The bus stand became their constant meeting place. Maybe it was co-incidence, maybe it was providence or maybe it was how Narayan planned things but everyday when she stood in the bus stand he would leave the public library opposite the bus stand and walk up to her. They spoke about everything under the sun. Slowly she started looking forward to their daily meetings. She realized that contrary to what appa said he wasn’t an iconoclast but was just agnostic and liked to question things and just had un conventional ideas on many things, things about which she had been taught to think in a particular conventional way . He was like no one else she had met. He was eloquent, extremely well read, kind, sensitive, had an amazing sense of humor and she enjoyed talking to him. What she felt for him she had never felt for anyone. He completely changed the way she looked at life and the way she thought. He gave her life a totally new perspective. The first books she ever read were the ones which he loaned her, books which when she saw in the market reminded her of him. She read and re read those books and marveled at how beautifully they had been written. She was only existing till she met him. After he came into her life she started living.

After an year when she had finished her B.sc they started “maapilai hunting” at home for Lakshmi and she realized that she didn’t want to be with anyone else except Narayan. That evening when they met at the bus stand, their last time ever, she told him they were looking out for a groom. She still remembered how he reacted. They were sitting side by side and when she told her he gave her one long serious look, those azure eyes boring into her and said “Marry me”. That was that. They decided to tell their parents

That evening she confronted amma and appa and told them she loved Narayan. Appa blew his top.

“what??? That iconoclast? See savithri. Look at what your daughter has done. I told u not to educate her. You educate women and this is what they do. They think if they can read the paper, they can rule the world. Keep them at home and marry them off at 18. Look at what she has done. I cant show my face anywhere now”

“Appa, please. He is really nice. And you know Ranga mama and sarasu maami so well” she pleaded

“so?? Do u have any idea what he does for a living. How he will take care of you?”

She was stumped. She had known him for an year and not once had she asked him what he did for a living

“See. You don’t have an answer. You want to marry a vagabond, who doesn’t believe in God, who doesn’t have a job. Shiva shiva. We have found a nice boy for you from Kumbakonam called Gopal. He works for a reputed bank in Madras…”

And that was the end of it. She shouted, she screamed, she pleaded, she threatened to kill herself but Appa wouldn’t budge. She never saw Narayan again. He tried writing to her and the letter was intercepted by Appa and he tore it without reading. She wasn’t allowed to go out of the house. She hoped Ranga mama and Sarasu maami would come and talk but nothing happened. Gopal’s parents came approved and appraised her, a date was fixed and she was married
That was 30 years back. A lone tear escaped her eye and fell into her cup of coffee, gone cold now. Gopal was a good man. He was a decent husband, a good father, a very good son, brother and son in law. She had no complaints. Regrets? Yes. She had those. Her 26 year old daughter had visited last month from the US with her American husband with whom she had “lived in” for an year before deciding to get married. Gopal and Lakshmi hadn’t said anything or rather weren’t able to say anything. In their heart of hearts they were glad she had married someone of the opposite gender. They had a Brahmin style wedding and an American style wedding. When she looked at Priya, her daughter, she wished she had been born at a different time. At a time when falling in love wasn’t taboo, when a job in a reputed bank wasn’t the only thing parents looked at. If only, if only…..

She never heard from Narayan after that. After marriage she had moved to Madras and her parents made sure she never visited Trichy, making it a point to visit her when she felt home sick. Conversation was always careful never steering towards Ranga mama’s family. Once she had discreetly asked amma and she had promptly gone and told appa. That was the end of it. Narayan was like a chapter of her life which had existed only in her imagination. No record of him existed anywhere. She didn’t even have a photograph, a letter. Nothing. Just memories of a man who had taught her to think and now existed only in her thoughts.

“lakshmi” gopal’s voice echoed. She quickly wiped her tears away and responded to his call.

The sky was orange now, the sun high up, the beautiful dark azure shade completely gone.

A Wednesday!! Mind Blowing!!

I saw "A Wednesday" yesterday.
OMG.
it re-affirms a statement a friend once made about me when i told him i love richard gere and george clooney. He said "Why do u always have a thing for older men?"
Sighhh!! Naseerudin Shah for the kind of acting that you have done i have totally absolutely and completely fallen in love with you. you absolutely rock in the movie

1. the chacracterization of everyone in the movie has been done so well, somewhere in the middle of the movie you forget the fact that its a movie you are watching and thse people are "acting". its amazing

2. Deepal Shaw cant act. Deepal "beta" please go back to doing "mere nasseb mein tu hai ke nahi..." kind of nonsense wearing no clothes and the most disgusting pout i have ever seen. thats what u do the best. Werent you ashamed to share the frame with stalwarts like Naseerudin shah and Anupam Kher? ok. maybe i am being too harsh but she was just blecccch!!

3. Jimmy Shergill never looked so awesomely cute before. Kya attitude maara hai. Maan na padega. the centre of his hair kinds of stands up due to static or someting and he looks "O so cute" with that hair of his, when he is chewing a gum, wearing his coolers and walking down the alley to beat the bad guys. Sigh!!!

4. Not wanting to spoil the l'il "twist" in the end, all i want to say is that personally i think this country needs more "Wednesdays". Go figure!! :P

5. some of the dialogues are like AWESOME!!! there is one where anupam kher says "kya guarantee hai ki if i release the terrorists you will tell me where you have planted the bombs" and naseerudin shahs says "guarantee??? kya mai aapko fan bech raha hoon???". lol lol lol. :D:D you are so dude Naseerudin Shah. I so love you!! :)

6. Everytime the terrorists came forward and introduced themselves they would say "mumbai 1993 (name of the bomb blast and organisation) fakr hai" and everytime i heard it as "fuck*r hai". sighhhh. I have a really dirty mind. i oughta read more ramayana, mahabharata and scriptures!!:-\. :P

7. I heard that because of huge ego problems between Anupam Kher and Naseerudin Shah they refused to share the screen for more than one scene. i wish we see more of these two actors together. They are just AMAZING. i mean it seems like they started acting from the time they were born. my dad was so overwhelmed he is like "ask Naseerudin shah to act like a worm and he would do it with panache". i couldnt agree less. he is the star of the movie

8. My mom and dad who had already seen the movie and came with me just because i hadnt seen it were sitting on either side of me and acting all smug because they knew what the suspense was and i did not. how i begged amma to tell me what the twist was but all i got in return was a supercilious smile. i am glad she didnt tell me. the twist is worth waiting for in the movie!! :)

9. The Jamnagar which i had left looking like Mamta Banerjee some 17 months back has had a complete makeover and looks like Angelina Jolie (no kidding). we have a beautiful multiplex within the township which screen all the latest movies (it was a different thing that when the message "all patrons are requested to stand up for the national anthem" flashed on the screen only my parents, i and three others stood up in the whole theatre. we were the only "patrons" in the whole theatre!! :P)

10. Please go and watch Wednesday. its the best hindi movie in recent times. Trash like "hello" (based on the equally trashy book "one nite at the call center") oughta be banned or their directors should be blown apart the way the terrorists are blown apart in Wednesday (ooops!! did i just let the cat out of the bag?? :D:D)

In the land of the NANO!! :)

1. I hate travelling in second class sleeper trains. By the end of the 45 hour journey I am dirty sweaty and smell like a skunk and a stinky one at that. I was on a train which consisted of 300 christians coming back from a convention in channai. All the time I feared someone would come and burn the train down given the situation in Orissa and the sudden hatred towards Christians. I will never understand communal riots. Out of my closest friends, 3 are christains and one is a muslim and though it sounds very dramatic I would rather give my life than see them die.

On the other hand I love travelling in second class compartments. This is where you can see real india and its people, admire the green fields as they whiz by, capture a beautiful sunset, wave to the little kids working in fields, talk to people who try to convert u to Christianity by giving u books on the gospel of Christ, get invited to the house of some random stranger in ahmedabad whom u know for ten minutes and have them scold you when u politely refuse and tell them u have to immediately catch a bus to Jamnagar. Hmmm. I love this country!!

THE ELUSIVE SUNSET THAT I TRIED TO CAPTURE

2. I am yet to come across a toilet in second class sleeper trains without obscenities scrawled on the doors, near mirrors, above the commode etc. personally I think the toilets in Indian second class trains is where the Indian male gives vent to all his sexual fantasies. And its really not an advantage when u can read hindi, tamil and gujarati, the languages in which most of the obscenities are scribbled in along with graphic pictures. The reader might ask why this particular blogger wants to go and read the stuff written on the doors. All i can say is "Hey!! Two days in the train. I need some entertainment man!!" :P

3. After I got down in ahmedabad I had to catch an auto to reach a bus stand. I had been instructed by amma, not to give more that 30 bucks to the auto guy. Anything more would be daylight robbery she insisted. I catch and auto guy and try my rusty gujarati on the guy. Its been 8 years since I spoke gujarati with anyone and I do not miss a chance to practice. I tell him “mane paldi javoo che” including a nasal twang to achieve the authentic gujju effect. 40 rupees he says. Though this is the first time I am going to this place in ahmedabad I act like I own the place. I turn my nose up act like a seasoned gujju ben and say “hoon 30 aj aapun” (I will give 30 only). He smirks as if to say “I can see through u clearly, u pseudo gujarati” and says “Beso Beso ben” (sit sit sister). That’s one thing about Gujarat. Everyone is a sister or a brother. He drives in a way which would make schumi blush, skips all the signals and says ahemdabad has become a very unruly place. He asks me where I am from and I proudly say “hum to madras se aaye hain”. “Ahhh madras. Wahan to roads acche hotein hai na?” he says and I just gape at him and don’t say anything lest I blurt out the truth. In the end I end up giving him 35 bucks for all the entertainment he provided me.

4. I go to the travels guy and the luck of the Ramanan’s starts working again. I have been travelling fro 38 hours now and all I want to do is reach home, take a bath eat good food and go to sleep and this guy tells me he cant put me on the 10.00 o clock bus because only “gents” are there in the bus and he cant send “ladies” in that and puts me on the 11.30. I have 3 hours to kill. I eventually end up calling up all my friends at STD rates. I figure that since I am anyway not going to use my phone for the next two weeks I might as well talk and while away time. I also finish the last few pages of maximum city by suketu Mehta. One of the best books that I have EVER read and will ever read about Bombay. Its amazing. Thanks to maximum city I had no idea how two days flew by in the train. Amazing book. People who haven’t read it yet please do read it. Will do a review soon.

5. Reached Jamnagar at 6 in the morning to be received by two completely excited human beings who have been waiting at the bus stop for an hour now expecting me to come. My parents crush me in a hug and the bus driver smirks and says “utarne to do” (let her at least get down first). I have come up with a law for family. This is how it goes
a. If you visit home daily parents don’t care two hoots about u. you are scolded frequently, the food is on the table, the keys are with the neighbor, u can fend for yourself they say.
b. If you come home once in 2 months they worry about how thin u have become, make sure you eat your meals on time, there is ice cream in the fridge keys are still with the neighbor
c. If you come home once in 6 months you are a princess, your food is ready when u want it, your bed is made, you are fed sometimes, you are scolded very rarely and they don’t leave u alone and go.
d. If you come home once in 17 months (a la moi) you are treated like ROYALTY. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t get the kind of welcome you do. Your mom doesn’t say a word when without taking a bath you sit in front of the computer. She climbs up the stairs with the breakfast in hand and comes and gives ur breakfast to you. You just say “internet appa” and your dad disconnects his laptop and connects the PC to the modem. You just saunter into the bathroom and scream soap, shampoo, towel at regular intervals and have them handed to you without a word. 5 years back amma would have said “did u go to take a bath or go for a picnic” (I have never really understood the significance of this statement. I mean I thought people went prepared for a picnic. whatever).
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the daughter she sent looking like “Karnam Malleswari” comes back looking like “kallubai” the woman from the famine affected district in Orissa which hasn’t seen food in 10 days. Appa gives me one withering look and says “she has lost more weight than I did after my open heart. Feed her something” and that’s what I have been doing since I landed. Eating eating and more eating.

Yay Yay Yay!! finally finally, in spite of the presence of several anti social elements in my office my leave which i have been trying to get approval for, FINALLY got approved.So Revathi Ramanan leaves for Jamnagar this saturday for a 2 week vacation. After 15 long months and 4 long years for a diwali i get to go home!! yay yay!!

Good News:
i am going home
staying with parents
good food
no office
no java code
no bugs
no boss


Bad News:
no bar camp!! :(:(
No Chennai for 2 weeks :(
Jamnagar (eeeeeks!! how i hate that place)

I AM GOING HOME!!!!
Jamnagar you know how much i hate you so please behave yourself
Chennai you know i love you, don't miss me!! :)

Thanks!! :)

The other day i got a mail from one of the readers of my blog saying

Hi Revs,

Recently I had been to Los Angeles and visited this famous Chinese Theatre where you have hand and foot prints of many Hollywood actors.
Well I took this photo of George Clooney's hand and foot prints. Just after taking the photo the first person came into my mind was you :) (don't know why :D ) so thought of mailing it to you.
Not sure whether you will like it or not :)

Keep blogging :)

Regards,
Chintan

and he sent me the following pic



I couldnt stop laughing. and after reading his mail i had this faint hope that if my love for clooney had reached los angeles, the day isnt far when it will reach hollywood and Georgie will come and ask for my hand in marriage after acknowledging my true love for him!! :P

Here i am on Gandhi Jayanthi - a national holiday, sitting in office handling them null pointer exceptions, waiting for them SQL queries to run and fixing them javascript errors but life doesnt seem all that bad.
Thanks Chintan and be rest assured that i LOVED the pic!! :D
Now i have something to worship!! :P

Bar Camp for Dummies (read: me!! :P)

Bar Camp Edition 2 is here in Chennai on the 18th and 19th of October guys. This post if for all you people who are going “bar camp”?? does that mean like u know, ahem, errr.. a camp which gives you free booze ??(errr which is kind of how I went when I first heard about it!! :P)

So here is a bar camp FAQ which i compiled for people like me.

1.Ok. So what is this bar camp thingy and why such a name?
Ans: well, do u know this guy called O reilly who write books on Java and bugged the crap out of us in college? And remember how he used the words “foo” and “bar” to give examples of objects in Java? Well the “foo camp” was something which was started by open source publishing guy O reilly and was an invitation-only participant driven conference. And to counter the foo camp and have an unconference which was open to all and not an invitation only event the bar camp was started and is a very famous un conference with sessions being conducted all over the world. Just google for bar camp and you will know what I mean.

2.Eeeeeeeks!! You mean like a geek fest?? Where people will talk about technology and open source and the likes? I would rather be caught dating Rakhi sawant or Vijaykanth than be caught in such camp.
Ans: Jeeeez. no. That would have been the foo camp. In the bar camp everyone who attends it is encouraged to present or facilitate a session which need NOT necessarily be technical. You can talk about blogging, photo sharing, social bookmarking, pod casting, wiki-ing. Everyone who attends the session would be encouraged to pick a label which reads “I am blogging”, ‘I am tweeting’, “I am wiki-ing” , “I am podcasting” and the likes. It is basically a place for u to meet a lot of likeminded people and talk about your interests with people who share them. The bar camp was born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Some of the best conversations happen in the corridors and in between sessions where u can get to meet a lot of interesting people is what I have heard.

3.Hmmmm. Tell me more. I am not really convinced
Ans: first thing. You do NOT have to be a geek to enjoy/participate/organize a bar camp. Organizing, getting sponsors, getting a venue, setting up a wiki for this event are fun. Apart from that bar camps mostly contain an all night session where they have fun events (an all night hackathon where you are given a very secure site and asked to hack it is an example) and is basically and arena where you can learn a LOT not just about technology but about a many other things. This bar camp in Chennai is basically trying to shatter the “techie image” of the bar camp. So rest assured it will be fun.

4.Is this the first time it is happening here in Chennai?
Ans: Nope this is the second time. Bar camp is very popular in Bangalore and it just completed its 7th edition

5.So why are you talking about it on your blog??
Ans: Oh well!! Apart from being on the organizing committee (albeit a very very dormant organizer :P ) Cognizant is sponsoring this Edition of bar camp in Chennai and we are hoping to make it big and plus if you choose to be a part of the bar camp you have to help by spreading the word and doing your bit.

6.Naaaah. I am still not very convinced. Jeeez!! you are asking me to believe a half baked bean like you and come and attend the bar camp?
Ans: errrr. Ok. Fair enough. Do read about the bar camp in the following sites. I am sure you will be convinced. Though I take offence to the fact that you don’t take my word but choose to take Wiki’s word!! :P
Read THIS and THIS


7.Hmmm. Ok. So how do we register?
Ans: all right!!! Now we are talking!! :). Hurry up and register for the bar camp because there is place only for about 200 people and places are getting filled fast. Pass this around and tell a lot of people about it. Go Bar Camp Chennai!! :)

Click HERE to Register

Ganguly - Part II - Ganguly doesnt like Hide and Seek biscuits!! :P

Read PART I HERE

Slowly but surely ganguly became an integral part of our lives. We sought ganguly as soon as we came back from college and played with him till he got absolutely tired of us. He was adorable and the friendliest dog we had ever come across. His mother soon forgot about him and it was just us and him. He would mourn woefully when ever (if ever) we left for college and would wait eagerly for us to come back from college leaping on us with his forepaws on our body and his hind legs on the ground. In spite of the plethora of dogs on the campus it was ganguly who attracted us the most and was our favorite mainly because he was the cleanest dog on campus. All the other dogs were flea infested and growled fiercely and menacingly when we tried to shower our affections on them.

Ganguly apart from being clean also had class. He completely REFUSED to eat the mess food and turned up his nose at it just like us. We would coax him and cajole him and try to make him eat the inedible unpalatable muck dished out by the mess workers but he would stubbornly refuse. On the other hand give him anything which we bought from home or the college stores and he would eat it with relish. Milk bikis, ribbon from grand sweets, chicken biriyani from home, pulikachal from home would be gone in a jiffy. Keep a chapatti from the mess in front of him and he would stare disinterestedly at it and give us a look as if to say “you don’t really expect me to eat this do you? I have my standards” and refuse to touch it.

Another characteristic thing about ganguly was that he hated bourbon and hide and seek biscuits. It was fermie who discovered this I think. On the nights of exams when we would stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning studying (errr. We would have figured out what paper it was only at 12 in the night and hence it was mandatory to study till 5 at least to get the much coveted 36 marks) we would be ravenous with hunger and one of us would have a stock of some biscuits to keep the pangs off. Fermie, who loved ganguly more than any of us would keep at least 4 biscuits for him. This would be conversation between us

Me: (coming into her room) hey Ferm. Mi and I are hungry. There are still 4 biscuits left. I am taking this.

Fermie (usually a very soft and kind person would flare up saying): Adhu na ganguly ku vechirukken. (I have kept that for ganguly)

Me: Duh-huh?? I could die of hunger, I could faint at 7 in the morning and not be able to write the exam and you Fermie dear would be the only one responsible for this. Whats more important, my life or Ganguly’s?

Fermie: (making shrek pussy cat eyes at me): please Revs. He hasn’t eaten anything since dinner (neither had I but that didn’t seem enough to invoke fermie’s pity. I have often joked that Fermie would probably have liked me better and given me more to eat in college if I had had four legs, a pink color tongue hanging out and if the noises I made sounded like “Woof woof” or “bow bow”. Aaaaargh. Stop imagining me like that guys!!! :-\)

Me: Fermie please. Mi and I didn’t even have proper dinner. And u r wasting hide and seek biscuits on that mutt?? (don’t get me wrong. I loved ganguly but this was the heights. Given a choice between saving a malnourished kid in Somalia and his dog humanitarian that I am I would choose the kid. Fermie unfortunately didn’t think the same)

Fermie (with a determined look on her face): I am going now and giving it to Ganguly.

So I followed her and watched as she threw one hide and seek biscuit at him. He sniffed at it and looked away in disdain.

“Maybe we should feed him. It was kind rude of me to have thrown it at him” said Fermie

“Aaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh!!!” – that was me

So she called him close to her, opened his mouth and pushed yet another biscuit into his mouth. And would you believe it? Ganguly spat it out. 2 perfectly delicious, edible hide and seeks had been wasted all because Ganguly didn’t like chocolate biscuits. Eeeeeeeee!!!
Fermie tried the same thing with bourbon biscuits and discovered that Ganguly didn’t like even bourbon biscuits. KKK

In spite of our love for Ganguly, It was during exams that Ganguly irritated us the most. During exam times when we would spend sleepless nights and restless days worrying about how we were going to fare in our exams he would sleep peacefully, eat good food and play the whole day. oh for a life like ganguly’s is what we all wished for. Because he stayed with us we thought it was only fair that he should be made to study what we studied and know how difficult (?!?!?!) it was to be an engineer. And so we forced him to study thermodynamics, electronics, operating systems, DBMS etc with us. Following is a picture of muhizh and Tanya trying to teach him the basics of thermodynamics. Ganguly just wasn’t interested and only slobbered over the books and hence didn’t learn anything. I guess he didn’t want to become an engineer. I wonder why? Given the fact that most of us with an engineering degree work like dogs I wish he too had graduated with a degree



Then in second year when Ganguly was 14 years (ideally 2 but 1 human year is equal to 7 dog years) old he became an adolescent and before we knew it he went into heat and started fathering children left right and center all over the campus.
(To be continued)

Ganguly - Part I -Birth and entry into our lives

DISCLAIMER : Those of you who are reading this post expecting to read something about Dada and his unfavorable position with the selectors let me warn you that this post has nothing to do with him.

Twenty 17 years olds with no common bond between them, out of their homes for the first time in their lives, terribly homesick, hopelessly failing in all the class tests, ragged by seniors, awed by our “day scholar” peers who were “city girls”, apprehensive about everything and completely hating hostel life in an engineering college.

And then Ganguly happened. I still distinctly remember the day he came into our lives. It was 5 in the evening and the day of an India Pakistan match. Our seniors had bunked college and were sitting in the TV room watching the match. All of us (first years) had just come back from college, back to the wretched hostel and were sitting outside hostel, drinking a brown colored mildly warm, sickeningly sweet liquid which the mess workers liked to call tea and making polite conversations with each other about the day’s happenings when we heard whines and yelps from behind a bush where we were sitting. Having heard horror stories from seniors about how our hostel was infested with snakes (stories which we later passed on to our juniors!! :P) a few of us retreated from the bush while a few brave ones ventured into the bush to discover the source of the noise.

And there behind the bush lying next to his mother, looking at us shyly with black eyes which were limpid pools of innocence was Ganguly. The smallest, whitest, cutest and loveliest puppy we had ever seen. (Though I have many photos of Ganguly I don’t have a single one of his in that almost divine form of his.). we quickly called all the scaredy cats who had run away to show them the puppy (not christened as yet). We watched in unmasked delight as he shyly hid behind his mother probably embarrassed by the presence of 10 girls looking intently at him.

One of us (the only one who was in the senior’s good books – Fermie was it you?) called them to have a look. The match had just gotten over with Ganguly performing abysmally as the captain and losing out to archrivals Pakistan by a huge margin.

"Yevlo azhaga irruku" one girl squealed

"Eeeeeeeeeks. Rabies varum." Maintain your distance. That was me. I was a person who was very very scared of dogs (stress is on the word “was”. Ganguly completely changed my outlook and the day I make enough money and buy a house of my own, I will buy a German Shepherd or a cocker spaniel or german shepherd to give me company and name him Popeye!!)

It’s a boy squealed another one who had a dog at home

Yenna per vekailam? What shall we call it? this question was doing its rounds and suddenly a voice said “Lets name him Ganguly. The way he performed in this match only a dog deserves his name”. this sent peals of laughter and hoots of approval amongst all present and we turned around to see who had christened him. It was Sita akka. One of the nicest, seniors, then known to all of us as padips (a crude term used in engineering to refer to anyone who studied) and scholarship holder. So Ganguly he was and since his mother was friendly enough we gently lifted the little fellow and held him up high for everyone to look and admire while he yelped and whined for his mother.

Having restored him to the safety of his mothers lap (errr. What else would u call the part of a dog’s body where her children lie?? ), We spent the entire evening and a better part of the night looking at Ganguly, feeding him the mess food (which he refused politely, preferring his mothers milk to horse hide chapatis) and talking about him late into the night with the seniors.

At last we had found a common bond amongst us. At last were not scared of our seniors but were chattering happily with them about Ganguly. At last it looked like we were settling down.

(To be continued..)

Ganguly
For u guys to be able to relate better to ganguly here is a pic of him!! :)
Click to get a better image and to see Ganguly in all his glory!! (do check out his eyes!! :))

Of silly friends, the english language, office and marathons!! :)

1. So one of my closest friends Akila has gone to Sweden on an “on-site” trip. Being the first one to go from our group of “we-are-useless-and- we-hate-the-software-field-but-we-still-will-rot-here” group, all of us were enormously excited about her trip and asked her to mail us ASAP about Sweden, her hotel, her life, her work everything. Now Aki, nice though she is, for the life of her cannot write or type long mails. She uses all kinds of short forms whose meanings we are never able to decipher.
If I were to give an appropriate analogy I would say “Aki is to long letters as Osama Bin Laden is to world peace” or “aki is to words as maneka Gandhi is to non-vegetarianism”. You get the drift? She cant write.

So the other day we get a mail from her saying

(quoting her verbatim)

“hotel provides bf....thr r lots of stuff for bf...but then they don display the names”

And she sends this to our group of 6 friends all of whom are perverts in their own rights and whose thoughts are as straight as a Jalebi!!

One friend replies saying “they give u boy friends in the hotel?? Whoa?? Are they like tall dark and handsome. What do u care about the names of the ‘BF’??”

Another one replies saying “Aki, what the hell is wrong with u and what kind of a hotel are u staying in which provides blue films?? Eeeeeeyuck. And this is company accommodation??? And u want the names of the movies??? Eeeeeeee!!”

Another one thought it was buffet.

And not a single one of us actually understood that by ‘bf’ she meant breakfast.
It was only after she clarified, that we were enlightened!! :|

2.Sometimes wrong messages i.e messages of which you are not the intended recipient can be fun!! On Saturday I was to meet another very close friend of mine, Milinta, in bessy at 6 in the evening to share some high profile gossip about who’s going out with who and who’s marrying who. (Sighh!! Yeah. We are a group of sad individuals who meet at besant nagar ever other weekend, sit at Barista and discuss the lives of other people over a plate of dark temptation. Who was the dude who said “Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People?” Yeah, so we are small minds!! :P). So on Friday after a friendly round of unparliamentarily words had been exchanged and after we had politely called each other a “stinking pig” and “rotting piece of garbage” for not calling/mailing, we fixed up a time to meet and “discuss people” we hung up and I suddenly get a message from Milinta saying (quoting her verbatim)“I am meeting Revs tomorrow. :) :) :). God. I dunno y but I am so so so happy”

:D:D. I was flabbergasted when I saw that message coz among us friends we have a rule. No gooey sappy senti shit whatsoever!! Anyway not the one to let go a chance to throw some weight around all I can say is “Jeeez Mi!! I know I am smart and sexy and awesome and funny and intelligent and people are thronging and languishing outside my gates to catch a glimpse of me but do u really have to be so explicit??” :P

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww Mi!!wipe that embarrassed expression off your face. Now not only me but the whole world knows that u like me and die to spend time with me!! :D

3. I hate the English language. I think it is the most illogical and ridiculous language ever. This Saturday as I was volunteering at deepam and teaching the kids the spellings of a couple of words I was stumped by some of the questions posed by the kids. I mean sample this. I asked a kid the spelling of culture and he says “c-u-l-c-h-e-r” and I go “no, that’s wrong. Its c-u-l-t-u-r-e” and he says “but last week u asked me to spell teacher. Wouldn’t culture be spelt the same way?” and I am like “errrr. Ahem.. cough. That’s english” and the boy says to his friends “Yenna da indha akka ke onnum therila”!! :| :|. Pretty embarrassing u say and I completely agree. I dunno how to tell the kids that, that’s how the English language is where “feet smell and noses run” and “plural of goose is geese but moose remains moose” and so many other things. Next was teaching them how to use the “conditional formatting” feature in excel. Now I am pathetic at excel. I cant even add two numbers using excel and I have never heard of conditional formatting. Needless to say I made a complete fool of myself in front of 20 kids half my age with one of them telling me that I if I wanted to enter a formula in excel I must put an “=” sign in front!! :-\
Sigh!!! so much for having done “computer science and engineering”!!

4. my enthusiasm (for people who don’t know, I have been blessed with amazing levels of enthusiasm and energy and I very rarely get tired or lazy) reaches a nadir when I am organizing some activities in office. I hate office, I hate organizing games for people who are about as enthusiastic and interested as a wet sponge. I know I am being judgmental but I sit like a zombie in all the “Connect” (that’s what the “fun” group in my account is called) meetings keeping my mind shut and refusing to give any ideas and refusing to refute crappy ideas like “lets play housie or lets play antakshari (who plays antakshari except 14 year old school girls going on a bus to picnics)”.
This is soooo not me but I just cant bring myself to be enthusiastic about something being done in office. :-\

5. I ran the marathon. Yay yay!! I ran all 7 kms.
Ok. I walked 6.75 kms and ran the rest. Don’t blame me. There were about 50000 people running and there wasn’t even place to crawl let alone walk or run. The bottom line is that we finished running all 7 kms!! I ran mainly to get a “I love Chennai“ t-shirt but didn’t get it!! :(

So this Saturday fermie and I were in odyssey browsing through the books section to buy a gift for a friend.

Suddenly I notice this book called “World’s best short stories”. I open the book , see names like E.M.Forester, Saki, O henry and my BP goes up by several notches, my heart starts beating fast and with my fingers crossed I flip the book to look at the cost, give a huge sigh, realize that I have already bought this month’s quota of books and unwillingly place the book back on the shelf not willing to let go off it.

Fermie standing in front of another shelf is holding princess diaries part I (errr. yeah meg cabot is Fermie’s favorite writer. If u know Fermie you will NOT find this surprising). The book which she has wanted to buy for a long long time. She has all other parts except the first one. She slowly flips the book looks at the price tag, lets a huge sigh and replaces it again.

Suddenly she looks at me and says “Revs, u know what? I didn’t get u anything for ur birthday. I saw your reaction to that short stories book. I m gonna get u that”

And I go “U know Fermie, even I never got u a book for ur birthday. I am gonna get u princess diaries part I”

We look at each other for a minute and start laughing like crazy, get weird glances from an old man holding a book by Leo Tolstoy (weight of book = weight of old man) go to the billing counter and bill our books with a huge grin on our faces

I walk away with my short stories and she walks away with her princess diaries, with no guilty conscience of having spent too much on books. Buying gifts for friends aint such a bad thing, is it? ;)

Friendship - I just love that word!! :)

P.S: Ultimately we never got anything for the friend for whom we went to buy a gift!! :-\

P.P.S: Errr if any of u guys are having birthdays in the near future do come with me to odyssey. There is this book which I have wanted to buy for quite some time, and I am sure there is some book which you would like to have too!! :P

P.P.P.S: the book which I was referring to in the previous P.S is the entire calvin and hobbes collection worth 4000 bucks!! :rolling eyes:.

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - A Review

I have just finished reading 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry and though not the one to do book reviews I find it impossible to not talk about this book. At 600 odd pages the book might seem like an onerous read but it is not. Once you start reading you never know how time flies but only revel in how wonderfully the writer etches out the lives of each of the four characters and seamlessly integrates them to give us a masterpiece of a book.

The book is set in 1975 Indira Gandhi’s regime at the time of the emergency and is set in an “unnamed place by the sea” and it takes you little time to figure out that the author is talking about Bombay. And it talks about the lives of four people (two tailors, a widow and a student) who are innocent victims of the emergency, and how they co-exist under the same roof. Mistry defines the lives and background of each of the four characters beautifully and spends a lot of time building up the plot. By the time the book ends you don’t complain about the size of the book but wish there was more to read.

This is one book which can make you sit up and think. There are many parts in the book where you will go “Chiiii, disgusting!!” and you will try flipping pages to reach a good part and ignore the bad part when a small voice inside you will tell you that however disgusting it is and how much ever you try to ignore it, it is true and your not reading it wont change it. You realize that though the characters are fictitious their lives and stories are those of real people.

It portrays India in its rawest form, telling us about its villages, telling us horrific stories about how the lower castes were/are oppressed by the upper castes, telling us about the unscrupulous politicians, corrupt police officers, life in the chawls of Bombay. I could just keep going on. Mistry is such a wonderful storyteller that at many points in the book you find yourself almost pleading Mistry to make the protagonists have a happy life. The book is painful, depressing, sad, thought provoking and is bloody brilliant.

There is a particular line in the book where the widow asks someone if she should inform the police, which will always stay with me.

This is the conversation between them.

“Should I make a complaint to the police” asked Dina.
He gave her a weary look. “If you like. But you might as well complain to that crow on the window.” The bird cawed and flew away, he felt vindicated.

The sarcasm, light humor and irony of the line hits you right on the face

After shantaram this is one book which I badly wanted to write a review about. After kite runner this is one book which has made me cry, after thousand splendid suns this is one book which has made me empathize with the characters and after a long long time a book has made me sit up three nights in a row to complete it and I don’t regret it.

Do NOT pick this book up if you are looking for some light reading because this book will make you brood and think and give u sleepless nights, making your question your own insensitivity and blissful ignorance to so many crying issues in this country. This book gives you the raw truth the way no other book does.

Waiting to read Family Matters by Mistry

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

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

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

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

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

Me: passport size photo?

Lady: mhmmh kum ulla oklum

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

Me: eh? Sorry?

Lady: mhmmh kum ulla oklum

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

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

Man: look at the red light

I sincerely look at the red light

Man: chin up, eyes down

I Chin up and look down.

Man: small smile please

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

Man: give good smile please

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

Man: look to the left and straighten ur shoulders.

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

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

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

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

I suck!! :(

I cant talk to relatives. It gives me the heebie jeebies. With friends I am in my element. I can talk about that latest PGW book or she can tell me about the cute guy in her office who has been giving her the looks or about the sad lunch in office or about where to go this weekend and which movie to watch or about the latest pepe jeans, 60%(GASP!!) off sale in adyar or soooooooooo many other things. I never run out of things to talk about when I m talking to friends. I may run out of time (mostly), energy (rarely), patience (hardly) but I never run out of ideas.

But what do u talk about to a person whom you meet once in 2 years. What do u ask about after u have finished talking to them about the weather in their country, the weather in your country, your work, their work, their college, their trip etc. though these might seem like a lot of topics to talk about talking about all of this takes exactly 2 minutes and 33 seconds

Them: So, how’s work Shruthi?

Me: Yeah!! Good!! *GRIN*(I cant tell them that the query I tried to run did everything but run. It crawled, it stumbled, it walked, it made me cry but didn’t run. I cant tell them that the guy at on site has a certain funny of speaking and ends each sentence with a sound which errr sounds like a release of gas and most of the times I am caught laughing like crazy when I ought to be listening seriously. I cant tell them any of this so I say good.) you?

Them: yeah good. (they again cant tell me about so many things primarily because I wont understand)

Me: *GRIN*

Them: hmm. So nice weather in India

Me: yeah. Rains. How is London?

Them: good good. It always rains there

Me: *GRIN*

See. Maybe I was exaggerating when I said it takes 2 mins and 33 seconds. It takes even less.

It was different and great when Preethi (my sis) was here. we had a deal. Preethi would do the talking and I would do the grinning. No two ways about it. only the questions which were addressed to me would be answered by me otherwise by default it would be her answering. It worked perfectly. I didn’t have to listen to complaints from home about how I never visited relatives and neither did I have to talk much when i went visiting. But now with Preethi in Dubai I have to do it all alone. I mean imagine having to do the grinning and talking all alone!! :(

I miss Preethi. She is amazing. She loves to talk. She can talk to ANYONE. There is never a lull in the conversation when she is talking. Most of the times I just google at her in amazement. I mean how can anyone talk so much so easily. She will talk to them about office, about home, about how she has been putting on weight (while happily munching the chocolates they bring) about how she still uses something which they bought her 4 years back (how does she even remember things like this??) etc etc.

Like a cousin of mine says “Preethi loves everyone and everyone loves Preethi. You can either love her or really really love her. No two ways about it” . Needless to say all my relatives love her and feel uncomfortable around me and I don’t blame them. Its an irony. She loves it when relatives come visiting and spends the better part of the year waiting for my uncles to visit. She is crying buckets now coz she is in dubai and cannot be in india to visit my relatives. I on the other hand don’t exactly look forward to their visits the way she does. Mind you, I love them and all that but I cant talk. I can grin, I can smile and I can nod in agreement and even make little grunting noises but I cant talk.

So yesterday before visiting a couple of relatives, I thought I would ask Preethi for some tips on how to talk and this was how the conversation went

Me(mailing her): Preeethi. Call!!

(Tring Tring)

Me: Hello

Preethi: hmmm. Bol. Kya hua?

Me: (almost hysterical) Preethi. Help!!! I am visiting ABC and XYZ today and I have no clue what to talk about. I am going alone, all ALONE. Help!!! come to india NOW!!

Preethi: Shut up Shruthi. Is this why u asked me to call? I cant believe I am wasting an international call on this. Shruthi. They are ur relatives. You have known them all ur life. They have done do much for us. Why cant you talk to them. You are insensitive and ungrateful and cold and sarcastic and..

Me: hey hey!! Easy on the praises ok? I didn’t call you to get a lecture from you on my character

Preethi: see. That’s your problem. you are sooooo sarcastic. I don’t understand you man. you can talk so easily to friends. It’s the same with relatives. I have seen, you always do this. On the phone you will give the phone to someone else and run away, you wont talk or give straight replies. Maybe you should stop writing blogs. that seems to fuel ur cynicism. Frankly shruthi, what is your problem?

Me: ok. How about we have the “Lets psychoanalyze Shruthi” class later? Can u help me out or not?

Preethi: you are impossible. I cannot talk to someone who is as stubborn and receptive as a 100 inch thick wall. I might as well talk to the nearest wall than talk to you

Me: Right!! Thanks for being so helpful

Preethi: oh. Don’t mention it!!

Me: bye

Preethi: bye!! HUMPH!! :-\

So I went yesterday and made a fool of myself and came back. :-\. Not my fault. My sister wasn’t helpful!!

If any of my relatives are reading this, I am sorry I am such a boring and frigid person and I am sorry you have to put up with me. I love you guys, but I cant talk!!

I am jinxed

I am jinxed. I am soooooooo jinxed. Why why why why why me? Why is it always me? Why does Murphy like to **** (four letter English word starting with ‘F’ and rhyming with duck and truck to be inserted here) my life up always.

When I board planes they get cancelled, when I try to get into trains I don’t get a reservation, when I get into buses the bus will break down 9 times out of ten, when I go to withdraw money at the ATM the ATM will run out of money, my only favorite thing on the office lunch menu will miraculously get over EXACTLY when my turn comes. When I am driving the signal is always red, when I am walking the pedestrian crossing is always red, when I watch saina nehwal play a match, she loses, when I ask for a particular book at the book store it is never there, when I write code it, never works, when I am typing a mail or a post and forget to save it, 10 times out of 10 I will accidentally switch the main switch off with my leg, when I sometimes blog/read blogs from office my manager will pass by, when I do an exam well everyone in the entire country does it well, when I do an exam poorly everyone in the entire country again does it well.

I am SICK and TIRED of my wretched unlucky life.

The other day I had to withdraw some money from the ATM and went to the ATM machine in office. The machine worked perfectly for the person just in front of me. my turn came, I went in put my card inside and what does the blasted ATM machine do? It eats up my god damned card and says “Sorry, this ATM is temporarily out of service”. Here I am standing outside the machine without a single penny in hand and there the ATM machine happily gobbles up my card and expresses regret over doing so. I kicked the machine, pressed the cancel button, pressed the exit button, pressed the cancel and exit button together, pressed the cancel button and the exit button in quick succession but to no avail. So I called up the darned bank told them that their ATM machine has this weird problem of gobbling up cards and not giving it back, blocked my card and turned around and what do I see? The machine is working PERFECTLY and the person who was standing behind me is putting his card in, withdrawing money and giving me a condescending look which says “Jeeez, 22 years old and u cant even withdraw money without goofing up?”

I mean it could have happened to the person in front of me, it could have happened to the person behind me, it could have not happened at all but no. even inanimate objects like ATM machine sense a jinxed person and start acting up.

2 days back a friend and I were watching saina nehwal play against some Indonesian player. And she lost and I am like “Jeez. Maybe we shouldn’t watch when India plays in the Olympics. Thank god we didn’t watch Bindra shoot man. Heh heh!!” and my friend says “Actually no, I watched bindra’s shooting live. hmmm’. and I am like “ :-\. Ok great!! Then its just me.” Poor Nehwal she was leading by 9 points when i switched on the TV to watch her play. I mean heights.

I try my level best to be positive and optimistic and try telling myself that it could have happened to just about everyone. I try telling myself that there must be people whose mobiles fall into the lift shaft from the fourth floor EVERYDAY, that there must be people whose buses break down at 12.00 in the afternoon on a really really hot day EVERYDAY, that there must be people who get caught by their manager for having embarrassing messages on their communicator windows EVERYDAY , that there sure must be people whose ipod gets infected by a deadly virus and they end up losing 800 songs everyday!! :-\

I am tired of being optimistic also. I am tired of thinking that there will be a day when I will get up in the morning, open the tap in our house and find water coming out and not rush to my grandmothers house everyday to take a bath, tired of thinking that there will be a day when I will step out of the house and not have my white salwar splattered with dirty water by an insensitive motorist, tired of thinking that there will be a day when I will reach office smoothly without the bus breaking down or getting caught in traffic, that there will be a day when I will enter the restroom in office and find both tissues and soap present (everyday either one will be missing!!), that there will be a day when my code will run without issues, that there will be a day when I don’t accidentally switch off my comp.

I am not being pessimistic, neither am I being optimistic. I am just being practical when I get up everyday in the morning and remind myself that there will be no such day and tell myself “Your day is gonna suck Revs. You might as well be prepared for it and brace yourself.”. This at least makes me value the small things which bring happiness into my jinxed life, like a courier from a friend with a lovely note and a chocolate, a mail from another friend over the seas, a silly chat with my sister, chain mails from college friends, a word of praise from a reader, an uuuu from a friend, music by Rehman, Atif Aslam’s voice. Hmmmm
You know what? Life aint all that bad!! :)

P.S: Read Part I and Part II of Jinxed HERE and HERE.
Sigh!! Now i have started a series!! :(

I dont care!! :-\

I was not born to optimize SQL queries. My parents DID NOT give birth to me 22 years back for me to sit and optimize queries. I don’t care if a blasted query takes 200 seconds to run or 187 seconds to run. The fact that the queries I write are even running is a big thing and now I need to optimize it??? I don’t care if I overload the server because the pathetic queries I write tend to run twice as longer than queries that size are usually supposed to run. I don’t care if the left outer join I wrote cannot give good results, I don’t care about the number of seconds which can be saved by using an inner join instead of a normal join, I don’t care about the difference between a right outer, left outer, inner and equi join.

For all I care the wretched query can run all my life, overload the server, hang the database, kill all operations and sabotage the entire project. I DON’T CARE!!

Writing optimum queries and good code does not give me a kick. I DON’T CARE!!

I do not shed happy tears when I see “Query executed successfully” on my screen. Given the fact that I have to run 20 more similar queries which will take their own sweet time to run, the only tears I feel like shedding are the ones Sreesanth shed when Bajji slapped him. I DON’T CARE!!

I DON’T CARE, I DON’T CARE, I DON’T CARE!!! :-\

P.S: I started writing this post and running a miserable query at the same time. I am done with the post. Mr.Miserable query is still running!! :-\
P.P.S: it ought to be a crime to have more than 4 lakh records in a database!! :-\

Operation Sunrise - II and a perfect weekend :)

Read Part I of Operation Sunrise HERE

Sometimes in life there are moments which are so beautiful and perfect and their beauty is accentuated by the fact that they are so commonplace, so simple that you would miss them if u blinked. I had many such moments this weekend

Perfect moment 1: 2 o clock in the afternoon, four friends sitting in the theatre and watching dark knight, mouths wide open, eyes wide open and with one single thought in their mind. “Please please let Joker win at the end and batman can go take a hike”. Heath Ledger, I cannot understand what possessed you take your life after that absolutely mind blowing performance as joker in dark knight. Lets put a smile on that face!! Sigh!! Move over George(clooney), heath has my attention now.

Perfect moment 2: 6 o clock in the evening, three friends in a garment shop holding up a shirt, falling in love with it, trying it on, realizing that since they are errr horizontally challenged they cant get into it and looking wistfully at another girl who looks like she has a carrot for breakfast, cabbage for lunch and water for dinner reject the shirt because it is too big for her. Sighhhhh!!!

Perfect moment 3: 7 o clock in the evening two friends in odyssey, buying books left right and center without a care about the price tags (something which we have never done). Reason: errr. We were supposed to be buying books for my sister and she was paying for it. (ok Preethi. close that mouth of yours. i just spent some 2000 bucks of your money. you cant be angry with me for that?? *making shrek pussy cat eyes*)

Perfect Moment 4: 9 o clock in the night, five friends sitting in ascendas drawing a errr ummm graph writing in centre the name of the guys from college whom we liked as much as mallika sherwat likes clothes, china likes democracy and karunanidhi likes jayalalitha, and connecting their names to each other and giggling like a bunch of hyenas while commenting on the four losers sitting in our adjacent table who all had laptops open on their tables and were pretending to be really busy working. Further investigation told us that one of them was orkutting, another was chatting on yahoo and the others were errr watching pics not suitable for children under the age of 18!! :-\

Perfect Moment 5: 12 o clock in the night five friends watching re runs of Friends, laughing at Joey and the craziest of them screaming “Its twelve guys. Happy Friendship Day!!!” and all of them falling on top of each other in an attempt to wish each other happy friendship day.

Perfect Moment 6: 2 o clock in the morning five friends, one dressed in pajamas too tight for her, one dressed in pajamas too loose for her, another errr not very dressed, and the rest still wearing their dirty jeans and not changing out of sheer laziness, talking about extremely profound things like our single and happy status, about why XYZ and ABC who were going around were a not so perfect match and why PQR who told us about it and heard about it from LMN should probably tell EFG that she loves him but was EFG in turn in love with JKL who was broken hearted because UVW had ditched her and ended their relationship when college ended? And the sleepiest friend came up with the brilliant suggestion that maybe PQR wasn’t errr straight and liked people of the same gender!! :P

Perfect moment 7: 3 o clock in the morning, five friends in a dingy kitchen, one making maggi noodles and acting like she is making aloo gobi and butter naan, another one taking a video of her making maggi noodles and acting like she is PC sriram shooting a movie with the top hero and heroine in the industry, another taking an interview of her and acting like she is simi garewal interviewing tarla dalal, and the rest giggling like there is no tomorrow.

Perfect Moment 8: 5 o clock in the morning three sleepy heads falling over each other, one sleepy head complaining that she has to write a mock CAT and needs her intellectual sleep if not beauty sleep, one kozhupu edutha nai (errr. roughly translated as fat filled dog) who kicks the other four in unmentionable places to wake them up and says “Lets finish operation sunrise II. Lets go to the beach and watch the sunrise” and five friends stumble out of the house and walk to the beach to watch the sun rise over the bay of Bengal

Perfect Moment 9: 6 o clock in the morning five friends sitting on the beach, the waves touching their feet, not a word spoken between them, admiring the break of dawn something which we saw during the last operation sunrise an year and a half back and wishing the moment would freeze like that forever.

Perfect Moment 10: 6 o clock in the evening two friends at the beach surrounded by some acquaintances, looking at each other and asking “Where do we go for dinner”, both thinking for a minute, smiling and going “MIK” in unison. Errr. for the uninitiated MIK stands for Murugan Idly Kadai on besant nagar beach and if you haven’t had the butter onion utthapam and Sakkara pongal there you are missing out something big in life.

Is it plagiarism if you borrow a couple of lines from a friend and paste it on your blog??? Naaah. Its just called borrowing and never returning something which we guys have been doing for ages now!! ;)
So quoting Milinta from her post on THIS unforgettable weekend “Give me some memories, give me some laughter and give me some chatter. Or just give me my friends.”
Here’s to another successful Operation Sunrise, another great weekend and a great set of Friends!! :)