Sometimes i wonder why there are so many things which being a girl i
should be immensely interested in but which do not interest me at
all...
here are a few examples

1.HAIRCUT:
There is this friend of mine who cuts her hair every fortnight(I m
NOT kidding!!)..she cuts it every fortnight and then the next day she
comes and stands in front of me and our conversation is somthing like
this...

Friend : hey Revs notice anything new in me??
Revs : er...hmmm...(squinting my eyes as if i m really making an effort
to notice her)
Friend : oh c'mon yaar...isnt it obvious??
Revs : of course it is..i m just thinking of how i shud put it(this is a
terrible lie..i notice nothing new and just dont want to hurt her)
Friend: my haircut u moron!!! i have done a step cum layer cum crew cum
mushroom cut(ok i made that up..but seriously she did say something on
those lines)
Revs: ah!!yes ofcourse..i noticed it the minute u came into the
room..dint know the name of the haircut though(this is another terrible
lie..very frankly speaking her hair looks just the same to me.the
length is the same the texture is the same and the colour is the same
and she spent 150 bucks to achieve this effect)

Now i have literally no hair left on my head(courtsey hostel water and
food) and so i get a haircut only when my grandmother tells me "ur hair
looks like the end of a rats tail"(not very flattering i know but
grandmothers are not exactly known for their panache)

2. PAINTING TOENAILS

I have never really understood the whole idea behind painting toe
nails..i mean seriously speaking how many of u out there look at ur own
toe nails?? i ll be very frank..the only time i actually notice my toe nails is
when i m getting jacked by a prof for not submitting assignments on
time or for not writing a test and i m standing with my head bent
down(trying to look ashamed)..i hardly listen to what those anally
retentive professors have to say so i stand silently and admire my toe
nails(not painted of course!!!)

Many of my friends take great pains to wash their feet well,pat it dry
and then spend half an hour deciding what color would suit their toe
nails and then start applying one coat of paint, then wait for fifteen
minutes for that to dry and then apply a second coat(when asked why a
single coat wouldnt suffice i have been given looks which say "huh!!how
can u be such a dumb witted moron"...apparently two coats ensure that
the paint on the toe nails lasts longer and doesnt chip off, which is
useless according to me becuase after two days they take a solution
which smells worse than a public urinal and remove the paint to paint
their toe nails with another color that matches their dress!!)

3. WEARING EARRINGS

One more thing which leaves me flabbergasted is why people make asuch
a big issue of not wearing earrings

This is the conversation which takes place almost daily between my
friends and myself

Friend: ugh!!!u r looking horrible

now i have no illusions about my looks but naturally when some one
makes a statement like that u tend to look into the mirror, which is
what i did and finding the result quite satisfactory i asked

Revs : why?? i look fine..
Friend : the hell u do..where r ur earrings?
Revs :(looking into the mirror and confirming the statement)yeah so i
havent worn earrings so what??
Friend: wait!!she disappears into her room, takes a huge box(she has got several(one for
earings,one for rings,one for chains...thats when i stopped
counting))...
she comes back with a pair of earrings which are a feet
long and waves them at me and says "wear these"
Revs: ughh!!blech..
and i run out of the room
Needless to say she wasnt very pleased..

I had a serious talk with my friend and according to her if u dont wear
earrings and chains it means that u come from a very poor family and ur
parents cant afford to get u such things..such trinkets are the signs
of prosperity..i was so appalled that i just refrained from commenting.

4.SHOPPING

Phew!!though this does sound surprising i just CANNOT stand
shopping..my kind of shopping would be going into a shop picking a
dress paying for it and coming out..the whole process should take 15
minutes...but my idea of shopping is very very different from my
friends idea of shopping
They go to this hellhole called Tnagar(which at any given point of time
in the day and at any given point of time in the year is
crowded,hot,sultry and dirty) and u should see the grins on their faces
when they see a discount or sale..
And then they go into a shop and this is the conversation which takes
place
Friend: Show me the green one on the extreme left pile,the third from
the bottom
SalesGirl obliges
Friend then checks the color, texture, material, price, length,
breadth, volume, area, density etc for about half an hour and then
says: Not this one show me the blue one.

This goes on for about two hours after which the most shocking thing is
that my friend turns to me and says "i dint like anything in this
shop..lets go to the next one"
Revs(thinks) :What the #%$^&*????
but i willingly oblige..sigh!!the pains of friendship...

5.SHOES

The kind of shoes which some of the girls wear, shock the wits
outta me..i mean personally i feel that u should wear shoes,sandals
which u are comfortable in..and the look of the footwear should only be secondary..but the idea of comfortable footwear is taboo wit my friends..the more uncomforatble it is the better..some of my friends wear shoes which have pointed heels and have one string in the toe area and one string in the heel area both of which eat into their skin but it doesnt bother them as ong as it looks good..
me!! i wear a pair of black floaters which are torn on one side and have lost the velcro strap but i still wear it because it is so damned comfortable..

Phew!!i swear i havent exaggerated at all in this post..and i find some of the things which these girls do downright silly...i love my friends but i cant help but laugh at their idiosyncracies!!:):)

MURPHY'S LAWS

I have lost 1500 bucks in the past two weeks in cash and about three photocopies of my notes all of them amounting to about 100 bucks..

No i m not complaining...but still it would feel nice if Murphy(of the law fame) wouldnt always target me...i have had a really crappy week with everything going against me...

It all began on sept 15 when our dept symposium was scheduled...on sept 13 i was cutting a piece of thermocol with a blade at 12 in the night and i cut my finger deep with that rusted blade and the wound started bleeding like crazy and with absolutely no first aid or medical facilities i just tied my hand with a rag to stem the bleeding and had to go get a tetanus the next day
i proved one murphy's law

• You will cut ur hand in the worst possible way only when there is a lot of work to do and when there are no medical facilities

And then all of us had worked our butt off for the symposium and were under extreme pressure to perform because we as final yrs were conducting the sympoium and as luck would have it, it rained on the night of sept 14th at 11.00...at first i just dint believe it..all our high profile decoration of the campus was getting washed away right in front of our eyes...the great database which had been developed by a couple of guys for online registration couldnt be used and we had to switch over to manual registration...as expected it did not rain on the days when the other departments had their symposiums...i have a strong feeling that had i been in any other dept it would have rained then...if there is one person who truly and wholly loves me it is Murphy..he might as well have written his laws for me...
i proved two laws

• If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
• Things get worse under pressure.
  

Then came sunday and i had to give my mock CAT...i was talking animatedly to my friend and suddenly someone was said "u can start writing" and i furiously started working out without reading the instructions and i mistook all the two marks for one marks and vice versa..and for those two and a half hours i was so thrilled that i knew so many two marks..i should have known it was too good to be true..and i totally messed up my CAT..not that i would have done any better otherwise but my scores reached an all time new low because of this..

i proved yet another law

• If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

After that i broke the news that i had lost 1500 bucks at home and i got jacked bigtime with ususal dialogues like "u do not realise how hard amma and appa work to give u such luxuries in life..u r careless,u r irresponsible......" and many more things but after about 25 seconds i just stopped listening...my mom then spoke for about half an hour about how responsible she was when she was young only because she cared about her parents

i proved another law

• The effectiveness of a telephone conversation is in inverse proportion to the time spent on it.

And then there was a test on monday and since i had done miserably in the first two tests i actually sat and prepared for it...(a shitty paper called Environemntal scinece and engineering)..and i came on monday confident of passing and they told me that the test had been postponed
i proved another law

• The probability of a test being held is inversely proportional to ur preparation for the test

There were many small things which happened that week but seriously i dont have the patience to go into all that..
everything seemed to go wrong all at once proving yet another law

Quantization Revision of Murphy's Laws Everything goes wrong all at once.
and finally
You never run out of things that can go wrong.

Sigh!!!Murphy i really appreciate ur concern for me but i really wouldnt mind if u shifted ur affections to someone else for a little while..i really wouldnt!!!

NAVRATRI

Its been five yrs since I left Gujarat...I have been living in Chennai for the past five years and I just love this place...I have never ever missed Gujarat even once. ..Trust me...Maybe because I m the kind of person who just adapts and blends with the surroundings but seriously I have fallen head over heels in love with Chennai. Except for those nine days in the year...Those nine days which just personify the word celebration if I had been in gujarat...Yeah I m talking about navratri and garba celebrations...oh man....do I miss Gujarat or what???
Here in Chennai navratri is stacking up dolls on an odd number of shelves and calling virgin girls to sing...No, I m not a cynic...I love golu too but nothing ,absolutely nothing beats the enthusiasm and fun of those nine days of dancing...Phew!! Even just thinking about the amount of energy which is exuded each night makes me tired…Dancing till 2 and 3 in the night in wonderful dresses ,the best thing I like about garba is that young and old alike dance away to glory with everyone and without a care in the world…and the music and beats are just outta the world…it is a perfect mélange of fun, excitement and friendship…some of the best times that I have had in Gujarat have been during navratri…
Here in Chennai no one even knows what garba or dandia raas is…hilariously the word garba is very similar to the tamil word for pregnancy (garbam) and when I ask people if they like garba I get these really weird looks because of which I have even stopped using the word garba…I have had enough of people looking at me like I m a weirdo escaped from a mental asylum…
Sigh!!! I could just kill to go to Gujarat now, spend nine days and then be back in Chennai which is really where I belong…I wonder when I will learn to strike a balance between the Gujarati and the Iyer inside me???

It is funny how u enter a total state of total denial when u have a million things to do...right now my room looks like it has been hit by Hurricane Rita (Sis if u are reading this dont wince!! i know u cant stand a mess but i just love my mess..and anyway i dont think i could be like you...you actually arrange ur wardrobe so that all ur dresses follow VIBGYOR order...violet dresses first,indigo next...ughhh!! i would consider myself lucky if i actually found a dress to wear in my er...um..wardrobe[u could call it that i guess])...i have got a truck load of clothes to wash (i am an optimistic person so i consider that good news because now there is more space in my wardrobe!!heh heh).. i have got two tests and an assignment and if i dont write those i can kiss my already dying internals goodbye...i need to fill in my online application for IRMA(Institute of Rural Management Anand), i need to go for badminton practice (if my sports secretary reads this i m dead) and about hundred other small things...
But right now all i want to do is take a nice hot bath, curl up with a good novel and go to sleep shutting out the rest of the world...
Well i m doing the next best thing...Blogging :):), and chatting with some equally jobless ppl on orkut...i just dont want to acknowledge the million things that are just waiting to be attended to...hmmmm..wouldnt it be nice if u just closed ur eyes and then opened it to find all these things taken care of!!!
Sigh!!! No surprise that a wise person once said.."If wishes were horses beggars would ride"...

Regarding the sudden change of the name of my blog, all i have to say is that i have decided that i am going to blog more frequently and not just about serious issues... right now in life i dont have anything much to do anyway...i have my CAT to prepare for and it is about two months away...but my preparation has for CAT has taken a turn for the worse...it is deteriorating at an exponential rate and frankly speaking i dont give a damn...my mock CAT scores havent exactly been very encouraging to say the very least...let me give u an example...my scores in my mock CAT equal the All india ranks that a couple of guys in my class get...they get an AIR of 20 and i get a score of 20...depressing...yeah...for the first few mock CATs it was very depressing...after that u just become numb i guess...and now after about 12 mocks i dont give a shit...(i sure as hell hope none of my parents ever read this blog..but given the fact that my mom doesnt know that u need to press enter to get to the next line i think my worries are baseless ;);))
Hmmm well anyway so with nothing much to do i have decided to hang around in blogosphere for some time...Happy Blogging Revs :):)

SUICIDE

Today I tried to commit suicide… why did I do it??? I don’t know…I keep asking myself that question and I don’t get any reply from myself…I knew it would hurt…I knew that if I was rescued I would surely cry for taking such a step…despite knowing all this I decided and tried to end my life…people had warned me that it would hurt but hell when have I ever listened to what ppl say…I always believed in trying to experience the actual feeling…and man it hurts like crazy both physically and mentally…

Yeah today I went and watched KANK!!! Damn !!I knew from my past experiences with karan johar movies that it would suck but even after knowing that it was sure death I went ahead and watched it…

I watched KKHH and I swore to myself that I would get a CD(pirated of course) for his next movie and I wouldn’t waste 90 bucks on his gooey sappy diabetically sweet movies…( tusi ja rahe ho???tusi na jao!!!says a sickeningly sweet sardar kid in that movie...Oh man!! How corny can u get?)

Next came K3G and johar promised that it was a ‘family’movie…once an idiot always an idiot…I actually believed that karan johar might probably be dishing out some good movie and I went to the theater(another 90 bucks down the drain) and went and watched it…after I came out I told everyone that wild horses wouldn’t drag me to the next movie by karan johar…the movie was so horrendously bad and logicless (not that hindi film directors really know what logic is but still I expected at least some kind of plot) that I was speechless for some time(and If u know me u will know that it is very very difficult for me to be speechless)

Next came kal ho na ho (KHNH) and I m proud to say that I kept my promise and did not watch the movie…I m stupid but not that stupid…and then the next day ppl came and told me what a great movie it was and how it touched their heartstrings…hmmm…yeah u r right…old habits die hard and experienced idiots never learn… I went and watched KHNH too (thankfully only 70 bucks down the drain this time)…and after I came out I looked for the nearest gutter to put my head into or the nearest torn slipper(pinja serrupu) to hit myself with…pulling at my heartstrings???? The only thing that movie did pull was money outta my purse…sharukh as usual tried to “act” by crying buckets and buckets of water… (and damn I thought I could derive sadistic pleasure by laughing at sharukh’s funeral when he dies but karan johar has to play spoil sport…he dint even show sharukh dying let alone his funeral…the closing of the hospital door was his symbolic way of telling us that F**(k)ing khan had died)…well whatever as long as he died I was happy to see preity go with saif…

Then came KANK…hmmm what can I say…the first time when I saw KKHH u can probably say I dint know…the second time(K3G) u could have excused me saying “koi baat nahi…she must have been attracted to the huge star cast”… the third time(KHNH) u would have grudgingly conceded that “she must have watched the movie for saif”…but the fourth time there are no excuses…it was suicide plain and simple…I knew how it would be, I knew it would hurt and I knew that I was being an idiot but I still went and watched it…and oh man!!! what can I say…I have read so many blogs by people giving bad reviews for KANK that I don’t wanna write about that nonsense…all I can say is that KANK does to ur system what a laxative does to ur loose motions…

I don’t think I need to say anything else…:D:D

WEDDINGS

I hate weddings...no…let me be specific...I hate Indian weddings...no...Let me be even more specific…I hate south Indian weddings…this might sound like a hypocritical statement coming from a south Indian but I haven’t attended any north Indian weddings and hence I have no right to comment…

I must blog about a wedding which I attended about a week back…my cousin was getting married and I was chosen as a representative from my family to attend the wedding(that’s the problem if ur parents stay in a godforsaken place called jamnagar where they know no one and send u to Chennai to study where they know everyone)…well anyway so I was sent to attend this wedding…and to give me company was my sister(who got married an year back and was representing her family)…I already hate weddings and when u have a sister who has the IQ of a jellyfish and the sense of direction of Columbus for company let me tell u that u have had it…

We were to attend the janavaasam at 7.00 in the evening… my sister was supposed to come and pick me up at 7.00…by the time she came it was 7.30 and we left at about 8…the kalyana mandapam is about 2 minutes drive and fifteen minutes walk from my place… but my sister(r’ber I told u that she has the IQ of a jellyfish) suggested that we avoid all the traffic and take a shortcut to the wedding…when asked if she knew the shortcut well she gave me the kind of look which I guess was last seen when Hitler looked at the Jews… well anyway so we set out on a street which had never heard of the terms sodium vapor lamp and mercury vapor lamp…the street was pitch dark and preethi(my sister) decided she would take the road parallel to the kalyana mandapam and very accurately turned at a street which was exactly perpendicular to the kalyana mandapam(I told u she had the sense of direction of Columbus)… and we came to a stop at a deadend…she took a U turn and tried her level best(well…. the best which her IQ allowed that is) to catch the road parallel to the mandapam…well this went on and finally we reached the road only to discover that it was a one way…so my sister suggested we park the vehicle and walk the distance to the sathram… by that time I was so pissed all I wanted to do was reach the mandapam and eat…so we started walking towards the mandapam…we walked and walked and walked but there was no sight of the sathram…I suggested we ask someone but preethi suggested we go back, get the vehicle and try to locate the mandapam…so we took the vehicle and reached the mandapam only to find that it was about 100 mts from the place where we decided to go and get the vehicle…aaaaargggghhhhh!!

Well anyway so we finally reached the sathram at around 8.30 and the function was over and most of the guests had started leaving…but thankfully the food was still there…but we thought it would be extremely rude if we directly attacked the food without even saying hello…so we went and met my cousin, saw the groom and paid our respects to my grandmothers 86 yr old sister…
After that one of my periammas took the responsibility of introducing us to the rest of the relatives…

She told us “there are nine ppl in our family sita, gita, vasantha, balaji, rajaram, sudha, ramakrishnan, ramdas and shankar narayanan” and pointed each one of them to my sister and me…

My sister and I: (only half listening): oh!! Appdiya…yevalavu periya kudumbam..

Periamma: ippo yelaroda perayum thiruppi sollu paakalam!!

My sister and I(thought) : what the $%$^$%&????
But just politely smiled…

And then we met a couple of relatives…the following was the conversation which took place between two of my relatives and my sister

Periamma 1(introducing my sister to another relative): meet preethi- graduate of BITS-Pilani and working for sathyam…preethi meet Sandhya ur grandmother’s sister’s first daughter’s second daughter and also the brother of Sridhar

Preethi: (striving for an intelligent _expression): Oh!! Eppidi irrukel??

Well after this conversation we went and had our dinner and after dinner there was another conversation which went something like this

Periamma 2(pointing to Sandhya[(the same one as in the previous conversation]) : Preethi…do u remember Sandhya ??

Preethi : Of course I do…Sandhya!! Sridhar’s wife!!

Sandhya : (with a sour expression): actually I m sridhar’s sister not his wife…

LOL!!! Well now u know how bright my sister is…needless to say sandhya was not very pleased.

Next I had about 13 different ppl coming and pulling my cheeks apart and telling me how they had last seen me when I was in diapers and how much I had grown in the pat 19 yrs!!ugh..what do they expect..that I will still attend the wedding in diapers eh?? Naana sonnen ivalavu naal yenna paaka vendam nu?? Cha!! That is one thing I cant stand in weddings “yevlunda irundha nee ivalavu perusa aaitiye”…

And how can I forget the kutcheris..
Some poor soul will be singing away to glory with not a single person carrying two hoots about the music..this was the conversation I heard between two maamis in the first row when the kutcheri was going on

Maami 1: yen di Ambujam indha podava nee yenga vangina??

Maami 2: indha podava naa RMKV lu vanginen...super collection…

Maami 1: aana nethiku dhaan rangam idhe madri pachai podava yum araku border um potundu vandhale…ava sundari silks lu vanginen nu sonna…nee yevalavu vela kooduthu vangina?? Ava 3000 rs kuduthalam??

Maami 2(with an expression of triumph on her face): oh ho!! Appdiya..na discount lu 2500 rs ku vanginen

All this while that poor soul was doing heavy alabanai in keeravani…ayyo pavam…

There were actually many many more incidents which happened that day but I m not able to recount them and this blog is getting way too long anyway!!

My next blog will be on the advantages of weddings and why i like them...;);)

P.S: Preethi if u r reading this then I m sorry but it is time u came to terms with the fact that ur IQ is equal to that of a DUMB jellyfish!! :D:D

Our stint with Association for India’s Development (AID)

STATUATORY WARNING: Before u begin reading this blog let me tell u that it is a huge blog and might not interest most of u…so if u don’t want to know about what we did at AID please do not read further…I basically wrote this blog because akila and hema persuaded me to and it can get quite boring!!

I have wanted to pen down my experiences with AID India but never really found the time...OK!! Let me not bluff. I had plenty of time but no inclination to write about it till now...

Well let me begin at the beginning!!

The first day of my hols I called up AID Chennai’s office and got the number of a volunteer called prabha...i called her and spoke to her...she told me in brief about the activities undertaken by AID-India. She patiently answered all my (somewhat silly) questions. When I expressed my interest to be a volunteer she gave me the number of another lady called Chandra who was in charge of volunteers...

I called Chandra and she was equally helpful and polite and asked me to come and meet her around 11 pm...Next I called my friend Akila (who also wanted to join AID) and told her about this and together the two of us went to the AID office where we met Chandra and she briefed us about what AID is and asked us what kind of work we would like to do

--> Field work
--> Desk work

We told her that we preferred to do field work and she said our primary job would be to teach Tamil to children from rural areas and slums. Initially I was a little apprehensive because my knowledge of Tamil is....well the less said the better...I m not exactly thiruvaluvar when it comes to Tamil if u know what I mean..

But Chandra assured me that all we had to do was teach the kids the basics of Tamil. I thought I could manage that so the next day she asked us to come so that we could be trained on how to use the reading and balwaadi kit

The balwaadi is basically a place where we have kids in the age group 1-4...really small kids and our task was to teach them the basic colors, shapes, animals and teach them rhymes. The kit basically has a lot of other stuff too but I don’t feel like going into detail
Well we came the next day and a volunteer called gomathi explained to us how we must use the reading kit and the day after that we started teaching. Before going into that I would like to mention that the most touching thing about these volunteers is that they have devoted their entire lives to the cause of AID. They get a monthly salary of 2500...today almost everyone’s monthly salary is equal to these peoples annual salary. But still these people after having done engineering, medicine, banking and such respectable courses have devoted their whole lives to a cause. It is really assuring to know that such people still exist in the world...

Well I m deferring from the topic. The next day we went to the balwaadi where we spent an hour with really small kids from really poor and rural backgrounds. They were underfed malnourished and naturally lacked basic cleanliness and hygiene. We started off by singing songs, playing with those kids, showing them the different shapes sizes colors animal’s vegetable fruits etc...


That’s me telling the kids a story(most of them seem to be looking at the camera but I assure u I m a good story teller. After all I write exams conducted by anna univ ;);)!!)

The best thing about these kids is their ever cheerfulness... i mean I cant even begin to imagine the kind of dreary lives these kids lead...I was sure that most of their fathers were drunkards and the kind of filthy language and profanity that these kids used didn’t leave much to imagination about the kind of language used at their homes. But they were all so cheerful and happy as if they possessed all happiness and didn’t want anything from life
We have a lot to learn from them. I mean we are never satisfied about anytihing...we always want something bigger and better...its not wrong to be ambitious but not at the cost of happiness. These kids have nothing and yet they are so happy. And us? Let me take my example...I begged my parents to get me a cell phone and now that I have got it I want a better model...if I get a better model I will want one with a camera or better features. It just goes on...
There is no end to our desires.. But these kids are a perfect example of "we have one life. Let’s make the best out of it"

Next after finishing the balwaadi we went to the nearby corporation school where we had to teach fifth std kids the basic Tamil alphabet (for ppl who know me QUIT laughing. I know Tamil quite well now!!)...I was quite shocked when I heard that fifth std kids studying in a Tamil medium school didn’t know the basic alphabet. apparently it is a government rule that irrespective of the fact whether the child attends class or not he is supposed to be promoted to the next class…initially I thought it was absurd but later after I thought about it kind of made sense because if the children fail the parents immediately pull them out of school thinking that they are not learning anything. so corporation schools figure that it is better to have children who are failures than not have children at all… (personally I think the parents must be educated first. I mean these schools provide the children with books uniform and a midday meal. what more can these parents ask for? but no the parents have to crib and give some excuse for not sending the child to school)

But seriously this kids were pathetically hopeless(I use pathetically hopeless for want of a better adjective) and everyday given my short temper I flew off my handle umpteen number of times and felt like strangling those kids…thanks to hema and akila there were no causalities!! Patience is one more thing that I began to learn in those fifteen days…I learnt to be patient with those kids because they are not our normal kids with normal upbringing and background. they are kids who have been abused ill treated not fed properly and what not!

Hema and Akila teaching the kids Tamil..

Later the teacher/staff of the corporation school told us about the backgrounds of some of the troublesome children…one of the child’s mother had attempted suicide by trying to immolate herself but was rescued and now is in a state of depression(which obviously tells on the kid)..another child’s mother had been in an accident and had lost an arm. yet another child had a father who was a drunkard and abused the mother in front of the kids. it is at times like this that I feel we live in a really cocooned atmosphere with absolutely no knowledge about what the real world is like. our sphere of understanding covers only our parents (who obviously shield us from such things) our friends (who are with u most of the times to chill and have fun), our teachers (who cater to our academic growth)…we never really get time (or lets say never really want to) interact with ppl who are less fortunate than us…personally I feel that god has been very very kind to us and we should count our blessings each and every minute of our life!!

These fifteen days have truly been a learning and eye opening experience for me…I have no idea what these kids learnt from me and what they will be in future but what I have learnt from them is priceless and something which I hope I will never forget all my life!!

All Smiles :D:D

Hems Akil and I with the kids!!!

PLACED

WOW!! placed..that word feels like music to my ears...i have been placed..i am no longer unemployed..i belong to a company called Cognizant Technology Solutions...from an absolutely jobless dog one second i have a become a Program Analyst Trainee..it is a euphoric feeling.. i mean it might not be offering the greatest salary or might not be the best company...to me being placed is all that matters..i have this feeling that somehow these three years of engineering studies have paid off(though deep down inside me i know that they havent..i m still as ignorant as i was about three years back..only improvement being the fact that i write stories more efficirntly in my exam papers thanks to anna university!!!)..nowadyas with the huge boom in the S/W market it is not all that tough to get a job, with almost evryone making a job with a minimum salary of 2 per annum it is not such a great thing to have a made a job but i have this peaceful and relaxed feeling..and personally i guess making a job is just a matter of luck..u need loads of luck..u need to get into the right interviewing panel, get the right amount of questions correct in ur aptitude(some companies have an upper cut off and if that is crossed u dont get thru the aptitude..so some ppl actually underperform to get thru the aptitude)..the fact that a moron like me has been placed makes it very clear that it is indeed a matter of luck and also gives u a fair idea about the kind of job market out there...never in my wildest dreams had i thought that i would be placed in the first company..well i guess i just have to thank god for this absolutely brilliant stroke of luck...now i am just gonna sit back and relax and totally enjoy the final year of my engineering!!

ME into controversy with the controversial book

Well I just had to blog about this incident because this is the first time something like this had happened to me… I had been to spencers with a couple of my friends for my friends birthday and we just ventured into Landmark for some window shopping and browsing through the new arrivals(c’mon seriously now who goes to that place to actually buy something)… and after killing time for about 45 mins we left the place…now as we were leaving the place we had to pass through this security check…never having been caught in one I just sauntered past it lazily knowing that it was just a formality but would u believe it the bloody thing beeped as if I were carrying a few AK-47’s, some dynamites and stuff like that… naturally I was psyched…I thought that it had probably beeped because of the keys and loose change I was carrying in my bag…but even after I had removed them the darned thing continued to beep…and the security guard at the exit asked me to wait separately and there I stood like a criminal waiting for the judges final decision with all the customers staring at me as if I was gonna steal their belongings the next moment… then the manager or some big fart came and asked me to empty the contents of my bag which I gladly did….and I took out the book “how opal Mehta got kissed got wild and got a life” which I had borrowed from my brother in law, some old cd’s, my purse and laid them on the table for them to examine…and he gave me a withering look picked up the book and started turning the pages(expecting to find what??some ganja??sorry I m not Rahul Mahajan)… and he stopped on page 171 with a triumphant look on his face…where did u buy this book?? He asked me waving it in my face…now how the hell am I supposed to know where my BIL got it and said so…. And as if he were the combination of sherlock holmes and hercule poirot he said “well madam if this is your book why aren’t u able to tell us where u bought it and other details”…”well because its not my book u moron” I wanted to scream but all that came out was a meek “its not my book..i borrowed it”…by this time I was dying to know what that fool had found on page 171…it was a bar code tag of the book which is usually present outside the book and which when u buy the book is removed by the person at the counter…some dumb person had removed the tag from the outside and stuck it inside the book when my BIL had bought it… till then it didn’t strike me that I had checked in my bag at the baggage counter at the entrance… finally there was a kind man who came in and asked the person at the counter to run the bar code through a check and they found out that the book had been “bought” and not shop lifted about 3 months back…phew !!!It was then that I breathed a sigh of relief and passed through the check and thankfully the thing didn’t beep and the first thing my friend said when she met me was “stupid u had checked in your bag at the counter…u could have said that!!”…shit!! that didn’t strike me I squealed…
All this nonsense because of a dumb book which wasn’t an interesting read also..cha!!

P.S: it was much much later that I realized that that book had been banned from the shelves of all book shops because of copyright issues and I could have used that also as defense!! : D: D

WHAT IS WRONG if….

1. I decide to sleep at 4.00 in the morning and get up at 12.00 pm…after all my body needs eight hours of sleep and it is up to my body to decide which eight hours of the day it must be…I have asked a lot of people this question and I have got really dumb answers the dumbest being “only prostitutes stay awake during night”…LOL :):)…I m sure the call centre workers wont take that accusation lightly

2. I decide to study just two days before the exam after wasting the whole semester and also the study hols?? I mean anyway whatever I study early in the semester doesn’t stay in my head till the exams. I anyway have to study everything afresh before the exams. Why do double work?? Might as well study everything before the exams itself!!

3. I decide to eat chocolate ice cream at café coffee day…I mean just because it is coffee day doesn’t mean I have to necessarily drink coffee. I hate that concoction anyway..i get really pissed when people ask me “you are eating chocolate ice cream at coffee day” as if I was caught taking drugs at coffee day!!!

4. I decide to do something that not everyone is doing… let me give u an example.. in the fifth semester we had choice to take any elective which we wished..we had to choose from numerical methods, advanced java and multimedia.. now I opted for java (only 13 people from a department 130 opted for that elective)..and I had people coming and advising me to take multimedia because everyone else was talking it and take numerical methods because it was more scoring.. I actually had people in the dept taking up either of the electives just because their friends were taking it…it makes me sick… don’t they have a mind of their own?? I think I took java not because I exceptionally skilled in the subject or anything but just as a challenge to show that I could do it…ok I probably did not score as much as my friends in numerical methods but that is not the point…I cant stand sheep mentality i.e. doing something just because scores of other people are doing it!!!

5. I laugh loud and long… I mean laughter is the best medicine right?? Well I have had people coming and telling me not to laugh so hard because it is not lady like!!!now I cant help it if I laugh like a hyena...that is just the way I express my happiness…and if they tell me not laugh like that because it disturbs them then I don’t mind mending my ways but not to laugh like that just because it is not ladylike just bugs the shit outta me…I cant stand people who titter and giggle because that totally irritates me…

i cant think of any more whats wrong if's but i ll keep updating this post!! :):)

Angry!!! :-\

I m angry!! oh yes I m very very angry..actually anger doesn’t even come close to describing what I feel now…are all men like this??? Or is it just a few…no I guess it must be just a few coz the few men that I have known in my life have been decent…if u r still wondering what I m talking abt..well I m talking abt EVE TEASING…nothing gets on my nerves more than being eve teased…whistling I can take, even singing songs to some extent but trying to get physical!!!!!!!!yuck!!!! its unsafe to go anywhere on the roads in the buses in the electric trains and so many other places…its not even about the physical torture, it is about how emotionally abused u feel..u feel like u have no self respect left… u feel so disgusted that u don’t want to complete the work u set out from home to do…it is at times like this that I feel it is better to be a fisherwoman or a woman who sells vegetables..Once I was on a bus and this bastard puts his hands on a fisherwoman and oh man!!! He gets totally ticked off by her…she says “unga amma mela kai vepaya, unga thangachi mela kai vepaya #%$^&&%$$ (bad words) and he says “aaaman nee periya kannagi..unnaku selai vekaren”And that does it..she screams her head off at him and he gets off at the next stop..i m not saying this is going to stop him from eve teasing but the next time he even thinks abt it he will aleast think twice..i think it is only the middle class woman that has to suffer all this…I mean the fisherwomen somhow manage with their rough ways and the ultra rich have never been inside a bus,train or worst on ranganathan street..so they don’t know either how it feels to be abused just because u r a woman!! All these men should be castrated infact I wish I could mete out a punishment worse than castration!!

I was just going thru my 12th farewell photographs and found one snap of my math professor a.k.a CV…if any of u sankara ppl visit this blog then I m sure this blog will make a lot of sense to you and I just had to share this incident with u..;);)
I have had lots of interesting converstions with CV..this is one of them!!

1. first was the time when i had just joined school and i was summoned by CV in the staff room(the mortuary like room near the commerce section) and this was the conversation which took place between us..

CV: Vanga ma Revadhi(spelling mistake intended..thats how he pronounced my name)

Revathi: Good morning sir

CV: Neenga dhaane ma Gujarat lendhu vandhurkenga??(grins brightly showing all his "flawless teeth")

Revathi(thinks): ayyo pei!!!!!!!!!!!
but
Revathi says: yes sir...

CV: have u learnt sex in your school ma?

Revathi(thinks): what the @$*%^@&^*#*??
but
Revathi says(with a flabbergasted expression):Sorry sir??

Vijaya ma'am pipes from the nearby chair: U would surely have learnt sex in 7th ma!!

Revathi(thinks): duh!!

CV(irritated): yenna ma muzhikarenga?? sex padichadhu ila ya??Venn diagram,Major sex,Minor sex...etc...

Revathi(with a sigh of relief): oh!!!!!!sets a sir(stressing on the letter 't' )..yes sir padichiruken!!

CV: Good ma..i was going to teach something related to sex and i just wanted to know if everyone had done it

Revathi(thinks): Shit man wish i could roll on the floor and laugh
but
Revathi says: thank u sir..(for what??teaching us sex??LOL)..May i go now?
CV: yes ma ..just tell everyone that i m going to teach sex next class
Revathi with a grin: sure sir!!

LOL!! i had a great laugh that day!! :D:D:D

A MISUNDERSTOOD GENERATION

After reading the hindu in chennai (which if i may say is a really good paper with impeccable language and content) it was quite a shock for me when i started reading the Times of India..i mean u have stuff like "Naomi Campbells's dress plays peekaboo at a recent fashion show" right below the heading "TIMES OF INDIA" on the first page..and its not just a rare occasion..everyday the Times makes it a point to put up some really cheap article as its headlines...once there was a headline which said "Kylie Minogue shows her middle finger at reporters" and one more "Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes to sell pictures of their baby for 1 million dollars"... i mean do we really need to know such stuff..and the best part is that these items occupy hardly ten lines on the left corner of the 13th page..seriously the times has to come up with some other strategy to attract readers.
Now for the part which really shocked me..when i expresed my revulsion towards such articles in the times to my mom she says "well the Times caters to readers like u doesnt it?? you enjoy such articles and i m sure it is the piece of news you read first..youngsters like u enjoy page3 articles and he has got a newspaper to sell..and he is willing to use any strategy"...well i will not be a hypocrite..yes i do read news items like that..but that is not the first thing i read...i mean y would i read something on the left corner of the thirteenth page which only mildly interests me..the first thing i read is the sports page and then i got to the sudoku and then read the rest of the paper..but i was just thinking about the way my parents and scores of other parents feel about youngsters like us..my mother thinks i m so enamored by celebrities and their lives that the only thing i read when i get my hands on the newspaper are page 3 articles and no amount of my explaining my stand had any effect on her...
Makes me think that we are a really misunderstood generation sometimes...:(:(

I was just reading the times of India today morning when I came across an article in which an IIM A graduate had spurned a 7 lakh per annum job to open a school in surat... I felt so insignificant... it made me think if I had ever done anything that made me feel happy and satisfied? And the answer was nothing... next year this time I ll probably be working in some software company staring at the computer screen for 12 hours at a stretch and totally and absolutely hating what I do... do I have the guts to spurn a job offer like that guy did?? Do I have the guts to put my foot down and say “no I won’t do this? I m going to open a school or an NGO”...No!!! The only thing I have ever done is talk about social issues but I feel ashamed to say that I have never taken a sincere step towards anything... its always “what if my studies get affetced”,”what if my future isn’t secure” and so many other what ifs.. I hope someday I have the courage to do what I really want and achieve it!!

RHYMES

Last week my cousin was teaching her three year old kid some rhymes and being the ultimate vetti that I am I was just listening to them when suddenly I felt that the English rhymes which we teach children and those which we have grown up learning are in really bad taste. here are a few examples

1.
humpty dumpty sat on a wall
humpty dumpty had a great fall and so on…

now tell me does a three year old kid have to read such violent stuff about poor humpty falling and cracking his head(and the book my niece was reading had pictures of humpty falling and cracking his head)
they could atleast have ended it on a positive note by saying that the kings men were able to lift humpty…but no..they have to be as crude and heartless as possible
I felt like re writing the poem like this

Humpty dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty dumpty had a great ball
He liked to play with one and all
Or something like that…

2.
little miss muffet sat on a tuffet
eating her curds and whey
there came a big spider and sat down beside her
and frightened miss muffet away

now again we have poor miss muffet being scared away by a mean spider and not able to eat in peace..and they also give pictures in these rhyme books where miss muffet upturns the whole bowl of curds and whey on herself and my niece promptly wanted to try the same thing with her bowl of cerelac..

3.
jack and jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water
jack fell down and broke his crown and jill came tumbling after

this is one of the worst rhymes ever…I mean what is the purpose of having rhymes..just have easy small words which rhyme with each other right?? Well I can think of so many words to rhyme with water and down..for that matter I can change this rhyme with the same words in the following manner

jack and jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water
jack came down and found a crown and jill came running after..

see what I mean…I can think of so many other examples.. about little bo peep losing her sheep,ten little soldiers standing on a wall and one by one they fall and finally the last one commits suicide or something like that…. as if we don’t have enough violence in this world we expose our children to stuff like this even before they start teething…
but if u take our own traditional rhymes in our regional languages we have so many sensible and sweet lullabies and rhymes
I can think of a few which my grandmother used to say to put us to sleep..

One was “nila nila odi va..malia melai odi va….”
Another one was “amma ingey va va..aasai mutham that ha….”

And so many others…
Personally I have nothing against the English language or anything but after I listened to my cousin teaching those rhymes to her daughter I just felt that we could have better and non-violent rhymes with morals like our regional languages..

3 POWERS TAG

Tagged by LOGIC

What kinda power(s) would you choose, if you could undergo bad-ass mutations? You can mention a maximum of 3 powers you'd like. And try to be imaginative....

1. to be able to go home whenever i miss home and to be able to come to hostel whenever i miss hostel..

2. to have good food whenever the cook in the mess dishes out some unidentifiable,inpalatable,inaesthetic looking food..

3.to be able to have a good novel as soon as i hear of it instead of waiting for someone to finish it and give it to me or waiting for the librarian to issue it to me...

i tag anyone who is jobless enough to read this ;) ;)....

EXAMS

Aaaarrghh!!!its that time fo the year again..EXAM TIME...
Shit!!!why why the hell do we have exams..i mean who the hell are those bloody pompus people sitting in anna university to test my knowledge and keep exams..why do they have to screw us EVERY six months????the past four months have been pur bliss...even as a formality i havent picked up my books..and as for those pathetic misnomers called "unit tests" i have never really cared....

we had our college culturals called INSTINCTS and i had amazing fun for two weeks...and then we had the farewell for the seniors..hostel farewell department farewell...so almost a month gone in that..this semester has more or less flown and before i can say "what"??? the exams are looming on top of my head with people rushing to take xerox,borrowing books from the library(ugh!!) and booking tickets to go home for the study hols..and before i know the study hols(another misnomer) will be over and we will be writing our exams...and then it will be the time for 3 o clock in the morning chais,can-u-please-wake-me-up-after-5-minutes and ofcourse damn-i-havent-studied-a-thing just 12 hours before the exam.....

well basically the bottomline and the reason i wrote this blog is because i absolutely LOATHE exams and i dont wanna study!!:(:(:(...

P.S: kindly excuse this blog..i was in a highly strung state when i wrote this :):)....

LOVE...

Phew!!! I never thought i would get around to writing about this cliched topic...infact when i started this blog i promised myself that the one topic i wouldnt discuss about would be love...but for the past few days i have heard of so many incidents of people who have been in love for a long time that my hands are itching to write about it...incidentally these people have been in love for a long time but i was unaware of it..and for people who know me i m still angry that u dint care to tell me:):):)..thats what i found kind of funny..when i asked one of my friends as to why i had been kept in the dark about her affair she told me that i wouldnt understand and also because i was against love...

well yes i agree with the first part...i just cant understand how people fall in love and can forego going home just to stay with their er ah um....boyfriends/girlfrineds(i m serious..one of my friends refused to go home during the study hols coz she wanted to spend "quality time" with her boyfriend)...i cant imagine putting up witnh the hostel food,washing my own clothes just to stay with my BF..and i dont think there would ever be a day in my life when my parents(who incidentally are the people who have taken care of me for the past 20 yrs before mr.x er swept me off my feet) would occupy a lower position in the list of the people i love..i think i ll always be indebted to them for what they have done for me....and for petes sake how can some person whom i have known only for a couple of months be more important tha ur parents...

anyways coming to the second part of the insinuation against me that i m aginst love i completely put my foot down...i mean i really respect people who are in love..most of these people who i know have been in love from their 11th std...now in the elventh i couldnt even make descions like whether i wanted to have idly for breakfast or bread!!and i still cant for that matter!!!!!and there were people who had actually decided whom they wanted to spend their whole life with..i mean i m sure it would have taken tremendous courage on their part to actually take such a major decision in life..that is one thing which i respect about them..another thing is how brave they are..none of their parents know that they are in love and all of them are extremely confident of the fact that their parents will eventually come around to it..one of my friends who is a brahmin loves this guy who is a christian and i cant even imagine how they ll react in her house!!!so i guess it take a lot of bravery and courage to go and fall in love without caring a damn about the odds...but like one of my friends says "u dont go around asking abt the guys caste and financial status before falling in love..it just happens..it is a feeling i cant describe..it is something which u have to experience"...well as an experienced person i guess what she says is true!!!

so finally for all those people who thought/think that i m against love I RESPECT U GUYS :D:D:D:D....

ABCD's(American Born Confused Desis)

"Can i have one more of those salty donuts"???asked my 5 year old cousin in his all american distinct twang looking perfectly adorable in a power rangers T-shirt and with a bar of candy in his hand...salty donuts???i was stumped....a food item which i was not aware of??it took me quite a while to understand that he was actually talking about our local medu vada!!!

i looked at him and wondered about his future and the future of all the ABCDs..he was an american citizen(owing to the fact that his parents had been in the states for the past 15 years)..how would he view himself 20 yrs from now...as an americanised indian or totally american??what would he say if his parents(who had their roots in india) told him that it was wrong to date at the age of 15??and when he faced the outer world would he be discriminated because of his brown skin and distinct indian features and a name like adarsh subramanian(which by the way has been shortened to adash mani by the americans..wonder whats so difficult about adarsh)..before sept 11 i dont think i would have worried so much..but with the security becoming tighter and tighter in airports and when everyone with a different sounding name and a beard is viewed with suspicion i m not so sure..

Coming back to my cousin when i asked him if he would like to come back to india he told me "the waterrr(spelling mistake intended) here is so salty that it makes me wanna puke and the bugs(read mosquitoes) bother me.i think i like baltimore better"..at that time i laughed but when i gave thought to it i realised that they are so used to luxuries that even if they decide to migrate to india its going to be tough for them to adjust..they cant imagine sleeping on a mat,eating with hands,walking to a place(its always "are we gonna drive??") and so many other things.

And as for me there is no place in this world i would rather be than india and particularly chennai..india with its politics,oppressive weather,reservations in educational institutions and poverty has something so attractive about it that i dont think i could ever leave it let alone thinking of getting an american citizenship and being confused all my life about whether i m an american with roots in india or an indian with a life in america??i would rather be in a country which has been my home for so long and where i have the freedom to do anything and be close to my near and dear ones than be in a country where i have to slog to get a green card,visit my country only once in two years and give up my culture just for the sake of earning a little extra money..Though it may sound cliched "There is no place like home" and wild horses couldnt drive me to the US of A..and who knows if we just wait long enough maybe we would see a day when the economic times headline screams "one dollar=1 rupee";);)