silhouette of my karma

New Year and all that

2011-12-31T09:50:00.001+05:30

Written by Shubha Mudgal, Vasu Dixit, Pavan Kumar KJ and Jishnu Dasgupta

http://swarathma.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/dewarists-track-by-swarathma-and-shubha-mudgal-duur-kinara-lyrics-and-translation/

Vo gaye balam

Vo gaye nadiya paar

Aap toh paar utar gaye

Hum toh rahe majdhaar

(Fragile memories,

Snatches of sound,

Faded photographs

Feelings unbound,

Birds flying in a V,

Homeward bound)

Doorada oorina katheya

Kelide nanna hridaya

Ee gaaliyali, nadiyalli

My heart has heard the tales of that faraway land

The tales that waft in the breeze, and flow in the rivers

Taayiya madilalli

geleyara nageyalli

Naa kandenu katheyannu

In my mother’s lap, I’ve heard these tales

In the laughter of my friends, I’ve seen these tales

Re gehri nadiyaa

Naiyya jhanjhari, duur kinara

Us paar saajan hamaara

Re gehri nadiyaa

(Fading photographs,

snatches of sound,

fragile memories,

feelings unbound)

Kanasolagina kanasali naa kande aa ooranu indu

In a dream within a dream I’ve seen that faraway land

In my mother’s lap, I’ve heard these tales

In the laughter of my friends, I’ve seen these tales

Yes,it was the year I saw that faraway land, poignant teary post for me this.
This year I have missed, my sister's warmth,my mother's cooking full of her love, I have missed it the most,when I was eating food prepared by strange hands, I missed my time with Appa, his laconic self, not finishing his sentences, reminding me so much of myself, I missed these glimpses of myself in an other person. At the end of this year I realized I would never miss all this again in the same gut wrenching way. And that just saddens me,realizing you can never come back again,In the same way.
In other news,Chennai beckoned the year 2012 in its usual brash way,with strong winds blowing threatening to blowing away our umbrellas.
I have discovered awesome eating places in the other city. I promise to write about them in the coming year.
Thanks to flipkart, I have managed to read a decent amount of books.
My software engineer's salary is making KSRTC and the Railways richer.
I wish I had a picture of Jayalalitha or Vijaykanth posters which dot the road I take to office to make this post more interesting.
p.s You missed Jayalalitha in a Ramadan cap :p

Happy birthday bugger

2011-09-15T23:33:00.002+05:30

Happy birthday Bugger. I know you are in some other continent and I cant even call you or wish you in the most stupid fashion one can wish their best friend on her birthday this time.Have a wonderful day tomorrow in whatever crazy timezone you are in.

Bugger-Are you high?
Me-No
......

Shall we down it?

Mokkai

2011-05-29T21:36:00.003+05:30

So it is summer in Chennai. I heard horrendous tales about how I would melt like Amrith vanilla ice cream, but nope , it looks like all the ice cream i have eaten in office cafetaria has comfortably settled around my hips and we can call it trainee engineer learning curve,just so that we can all feel better.
Anyway it is time to educate all the Bengaluru people with the Chennai Slang.
You never know when your offices might set shop in this city,considering the fact that our city is stretched to its limits and Chennai is ever expanding with its advanced MRTS and the new fangled metro which is being built at a pace which i find highly disturbing to my sluggish Bangalore senses.Anyway lets move on to the lesson.
The first lesson would be in Mokkai
Mokkai is your one stop shop word for everything. If the oxford dictionary had to define it , it would be defined as a 'poor joke'. But please do not be misled by such definitons. You can use it to prefix anything ,when i say anything , I mean anything under the sun. Such is the power of this adjecto-verb.A few examples to demonstrate the same.
What is all the fuss about royal wedding? It is so mokkai.
Or Mantri mall is the most mokkai mall ever.
Chennai weather is the mokkaiest etc etc

So you think mokkai is putting too much vetti scene?
HA!Caught you unawares,Did I?
Vetti scene simply put is showing off.
It is most commonly used in the form 'Romba scene podadhe' transalated to kannada, 'ThumBa Scene haaK beda'.
Alternative usages can be'Scene Party',used on unsuspecting well dressed colleagues from the HR.
You can use this phrase to slightly admonish colleagues who constantly complain about their unpreparedness for the CAT, but are secretly studying very hard on weekends that you spend playing angry birds.

Bulb
This word can be roughly translated to facepalm. Finds a high occurance of usage among madras vasis who seem to take everything to heart.
Few of my friends tell me that this words could have its origins in the IIT in this city.

Lastly the phrase without which my stay in this city would have lost its meaning to my ickle grandchildren, grand neices and nephews.

If they ask me fifty years down the line about how my stay in Chennai was, I am not as gifted as Orwell to just fling a book called 'Down and out in Mambalam and Tambaram' at them and get back to my reading and sipping tea. I can only tell them I 'Kuppa kottified'

It translates to emptying garbage.Succint no?

2011-04-13T15:14:00.000+05:30

Amma calls from office to check on me.
I tell her I'm up and she tells me to drink the watermelon juice in the fridge after I place it outside for a bit,so that i dont catch a cold. I drink it cold and watch made of honor, waiting for my sister to come back from college.
gee, i'm such a home-bird and i love it

Tinku

2011-01-14T09:38:00.004+05:30

I sit in the winter sun
In a red plastic chair
Tinku ,my neighbor's dog
stares bleary eyed at me.

It is a white and fluffy
pomeranian,
with rarely brushed teeth.

It barks at the kids
on tricycles
And Amma of course thinks
Its too stupid for a dog,
recounting the lore of
Blackie and Brownie
Who unlike our friend
Rarely threw tantrums
or asked for
Idli with ghee.

People

2010-09-12T20:59:00.002+05:30

Long back, Granta had a special issue about fathers and I came across some beautiful writing about people. The kind of prose which makes you truly happy. I have always wanted to write about people who are dear to me, but every time that I do make a beginning; it just doesn’t seem to do justice to them.
Today I’m just making an attempt to write about people whom I have known only by sight or exchanged a few words with. Ask any kid who has grown up in malleswaram, they will most certainly know these people. But I’m doubtful if they will remember the lady with the goats as my sister does not seem to remember her. The goat lady came only in the afternoon with a dozen goats and she kept talking to herself continuously while she fed her goats leaves from the trees on our street. You knew it was time for the afternoon nap on Sundays if the goat lady was near the gate. Her mouth was red and it used to mystify me (later I realized it was paan, of course). She was tall , dark and had wiry hair and I somehow feel she would make a beautiful subject for a painting.

Though the goat lady was a pretty common appearance, the haal cover man was a regular every two weeks. Back in those days he would religiously knock on every door step and collect the blue milk covers and would pay us two- three rupees with which twerp and I would rush off to buy lollies in Amrith. The huge basket he carried was a matter of huge curiosity to us and we would try peep into it when he was off collecting milk covers, Amma used to frown at the bottles he carried (you know what kind) in the basket. The funny thing I remember about him is, he was mostly toothless, wore a green lungi in classic Vadivel style and was mostly smiling. You can still probably see him on hot afternoons hardly uttering a sound (like some annoying guys who screeeech paaaaaaaaaaaaaper) going to all the houses he always goes to collect empty spirit bottles and haal cover.

The thatha who stands on the pavement of 4th main, seems right out of an idyllic children short story book with his silver mop of hair and a brown sweater .He lives on the very same road next to a school in a house with a long yard and rusty gates. Thatha spends most of the day taking delight in families which walk on the very same road. Some stop and talk to him and for others he is just a permanent fixture.
Then of course we still have the crazy man who doubles as a watchman, traffic regulator and you can always spot him at the center of festivities, whether it is the procession of urchava moorthy of Venugopalaswamy or the 8th cross Rayara Matha. Amma finds him scary for some reason.
I already wrote a post about dasaiah of course, he being my all time favourite.

The man with many bags as we call him of course is a legend. I only have a vague recollection of a scruffy man with too many round dirty polythene bags, oddly shaped like children. The family says that I used to finish my meals in a jiffy every time he was mentioned and how he had already carried away most of the fussy children in his bag.

These people seem ageless, some of them, the only reminder of times gone by. This post hardly does justice to these very abstract people. I wish I could paint them.

p.s- owe this one to buGblu and King

for all those bugging times

2010-06-12T22:53:00.002+05:30

this post is for bugger, whom it feels incomplete to know by any other name.
this is for all those things you mean to me
- for bugging me to buy a buy a phone in second semester and not be such a recluse
- i no longer get scared of stray dogs when i see them, i remember all the stories you have told me about Tiger and i have an unnatural kinship with them now.
- for always being there for me no matter what, in very little ways.
- for letting me sit silent through all the bus rides and auto rides, it is something i can only do with you.
it is impossible for me to bid you goodbye tommorow at the airport.

2010-05-06T23:49:00.003+05:30

We lived in a two storey house in a leafy neighborhood, my room there overlooked the busy road below, its beauty unmatched on rainy evenings. My sister and I would sit on my bed admiring it on such evenings, the dark rain washed road, sheltered by trees all of them ,almost of the same height, a sudden calm would descend on us, we acknowledged this only in the last few months there, my room of course of course was dusty and the bars on windows always blemished in spite of my maid's constant efforts at keeping them clean and the red oxide floor cracked, whose contours i can still remember. It was a place which had felt my presence for twenty odd years.
As i write this I'm in a room with beautifully painted walls, the bars in its windows a clean off white ,but they seem distant, to my thoughts and tears as i lie down and hence i resort to writing, in a place which seems faintly like home.

the story behind a sari

2010-04-26T22:10:00.005+05:30

shopping for saris can make three women so happy, Amma dragged me off to Girija's day before, to buy a sari for the college farewell ( i cannot seem to clearly define my emotions about leaving college, sometimes it is good this way, its over even before you start weeping or crying with joy ).Girija's of course is legendary and my aunt has piles of old green Girija boxes and she has a story for each one of them. Amma is right, saris are boring without their stories. Anyway, what would i tell people if they asked me the story behind this one- that it was an end of an other even semester? it was the last and we had projects to document, write exams,pictures to take, drinks to try, and was wondering how to wear my hair on the day which was supposed to be my last in college, and these were the only good things to sort out. At this point though, I'm at my lowest ebb, with all that unshaken belief i had, of being different, and knowing what i wanted completely gone. Would i tell them that?
I could have made this post humorous in that silly way of mine, i just did not want to.

gloomy doom and everything is a sham

2010-04-09T21:12:00.003+05:30

Its almost over. And doesn't look like I'm out of here on my own terms.

of flying caps

2010-03-27T21:58:00.002+05:30

OF FLYING CAPS
There are so many instances when you laugh your head off but that moment just dissipates leaving you with a light feeling in the head, this past week were full of these. Early twenties i guess , you earn your freedom, Amma and Appa fret, but not too much, they think they have raised you right, and apart from frantic phone calls ( they panic when you phone is out of reach or you dont pick your phone cause you are engrossed in a chick flick eating amazing potato fry), occasionally Amma will say that i have 'gotten out of control' and should be married off to the benefit of mankind, apart from this its all very wodehousian like a comfort read.
Anyway getting back to flying caps-
Naaandu and I are gearing up to ride all the way from suburbs of south to north Bangalore, when I with all my CAT cracking / engineer buddhi wear a cap to shield me from the cruel March sun.What happens? SUUUUUUyn, the cap flies inside S's Apartment, these two break into giggles and I feel stupid. But this is so not funny, when it happens in the middle of BEL road, with 401s, whirring past. Well, it so happened that it did fly off, and i told nanduuu about it. She stops the gaadi (no exasperation, trust me) and midst of laughter, asks me to go get it. Well i totally feared for my life and would not budge, one final threat and i slowly walked up to middle of BEL road to get it, all the while imagining what my Mum would say if lost an arm or leg in this adventure.
S makes amazing food, like your favourite aunt, who will add liberal portions of potato or cheese just cause you like it. I actually figured out how a kitchen works, and i make very watery maggi, also if you add pepper to maggi, the maggi goo in the end becomes sort of gross. I loved the tomato rice, cutting veggies and bonding over sour curd. waaaaaaah.
Driving at 1 am from jayamhal can be an experience, did you know that? Sounds godawful wannabe , but i would never forget that.
Girl talk is fun, and it so happens that, my humour turns willfully classic for the benefit of my friends, they call it my pillow moments. Otherwise I'm generally surly and sulky.
CTR/JANATHA totally pawn VB, Mantri mall will make me cry, haunts me even in volvos from banashankari to bommasandra. Sigh.
Waking up S and N can be a total pain. You cant even pour water on them, you save such priveleges for your younger sisters.Wooden snakes might work.
To the only boy who likes litchee cake, my brother jeep, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
There was a time when i was reckless happy, sometime in second year, i reckon certain things never change, though I feel very much at crossroads now, with too many decisions to make but this week was just perfect.
PS:whatever this template might say, smoking is injurious to health.

2010-01-19T23:56:00.003+05:30

every Sunday at about nine in the morning as I sit devouring the sunday supplement, the sound of conche would resound, and I would automatically take two rupees from the kitchen dabba ,which has change, run down the stairs and give it to daSSaya. Giving change to daSSaya was something that made me really proud as a little kid, it was an incentive promised by aunt when i refused to eat, other threats , when things got out of hand with me,included giving me away to the garbage man with many bags, she told me they all had little children in them and i still remember how he would threateningly glare as he took milk covers away, enough to make me eat boiled carrots for a couple of days she says. daSSaya of course still comes every sunday and day before i gave him the usual change and his smile lit up his ancient dark face, my neighbour's daughter all of four years old stood groggily waiting for the daSSaya.

2009-12-15T20:53:00.002+05:30

freshly hewn out of old wood
you are going to be my pride and joy
you were a part of all my fantasies
and though i always dream't that
you would be full wall length
now you seem so right.

will stack all my Austen,
and Blyton
in a mock haphazard way

you will grow old in your own way
all my books will find their home

a treasure trove you will be
i know
it comes from a child
who discovered the joy of reading
from her aunts old
english prize books
stacked away in a old bookshelf.

2009-11-22T21:44:00.003+05:30

looks like i'm finally learning to appreciate music. As i was telling a friend earlier today, i always had a vague sense of disconnect when i was listening, nowadays i feel that gap slowly growing small.
the familiar outline of eleventh cross is so soothing on a sunday night. the chill in the air, and the lights all around, the huge monolith of my school.

2009-11-02T19:57:00.002+05:30

faces you know so well
the laughter unmistakable
the places you grow up in
and play
all your little games
come back in a rush
you ask yourself
where is my piece of truth

deepavali

2009-10-20T23:49:00.006+05:30

deepavali has a routine to it ,not something planned early on at home but a sequence of events which just seem to fall in place during the festival, and at the end of it faintly reminiscent of all the previous ones.
It generally starts with Appa asking us in a mock serious way if we still want crackers , now that we are all grown up, we do not bother replying since we all know that he will be fiercely competing with us for rockets and his eternal favorite the vishnu chakra, all bought by K dodappa in Salem in the true spirit of a station master (oops!)
When we were small A and i would spend long winter afternoons bursting bijli paataki, days before the festival, our nails charred black at the end of it till amma shooed us in.
Every year we would always promise ourselves that we would buy better rockets for next year, not the standard standard ones.
The festival to this date never feels complete without S aunty(a Gujarati family friend, but more kannadiga than any iyengar ajji in malleswaram) bringing the customary jamoons and other khara stuff which i shamelessly devour ,talking to us in herfamiliar sing song kannada, exchanging recipes with amma, telling us that deepavali was the new year for gujju's and all that.

the crazy phone calls, new jeans , little cousins whom you can scare the hell out of, and of course shooting rockets on eleventh cross which is probably a near death hazard.

This year, we had two screaming NRI kids , opposite, who were just learning the ropes of bursting crackers, heavily chaperoned by their mum, and were awed by our bravado. (hahaha)
these hols were probably the happiest the whole of this year, and please don't talk of global warming.Obama ,will figure it out.

2009-09-07T22:06:00.003+05:30

this post is for A & A , the best set of parents one can ask for. And sometimes it feels like i dont need anything else to go on. this is so archie's card on the inside.
being the prude i'm i would probably never tell you guys this. let it collect dust here.

2009-08-23T00:38:00.002+05:30

so freaking scared.

one act play on a saturday

2009-07-18T23:31:00.003+05:30

characters
shivu- my 12 year old cousin sister
sanku 9 year old dragon ballzee obsessed brother
me - the clairvoyant grown up (hahha)
sanku ( points to the federer pictures my sister has cut up, lying around in a stash and cheekily says- shivu is that your boyfriend?
shivu gets extremely flustered and starts punching the now guffawing brat.
(i'm silently enjoying this universal sibling tiff and laughing)
shivu loudly complains to the 3 aunts in the living room about the 'badword'
hushed silence.
sankalp yaako aval praana thinthiya?

2009-07-01T14:48:00.003+05:30

I have exams, and analytical instrumentation tomorrow. Well , this subject actually made we want to study physics again and experience that leap of joy when you understand how something works around you. I’m studying engineering, and this is exactly what I should be experiencing on a daily basis, but to my misfortune its only been despair, well that’s for an other day. This is a purely self indulgent post about where I want to be few years from now. Now that I’m in final year( scary) and people all around me are making plans I’m totally in crisis mode. So I’m going to write this and see if it helps me.
1. Every girl wants to be princess. I can’t tell you how true it is. I have downloaded all the ten books of the princess diaries series and living my fantasy in them, or they rather gave me this fantasy. Arghh.
2. Election commissioner and a controversial one. I will totally aid the politicians I want to win, a certain saffron party will know rebirth in my hands. After my tenure I can travel around the world and teach ickle countries how to hold elections. Woooohoo. I can’t even imagine the joy.
3. Civil services- Ok, I have heard the line that I want to change the system hence writing Upsc some hundred times already and let me tell you I have no such intentions, instead I’m planning to write the exam so that I can somehow live in a nice bungalow in Lutyens, get calls from north block and south block, address the press as Secretary- ministry of XYZ (Damn you- Nirupama Sen).I could even become the Indian high commissioner to Pakistan or Sri lanka, if I get lucky Iran. Also this is the only way if I have to achieve ambition no- 2
4. An MBA and then work for a publishing house, but I still can’t envision myself in that corporate wear being a power lady (fantasies). My instinct tells me I don’t belong there. Darn.
5. Write a book or co author one with S.Become really rich , go around the world for book signings. May be win a man booker or two.
6. Quizmaster - I used to think of it when I watched bqc and mastermind as a kid. But RV sort of ruined it for me.
7. Marry Dalrymple.
8.Work in RV admin block. But I guess those guy’s are trained by management wing of ISI so no chances there.
9. Amma might implement plan b.
Being a software engineer doesn’t figure in this.
Ill go drown my misery in princess in pink.

2009-05-04T19:04:00.000+05:30

There was this period late last year when college was all about making up long winded stories about profs , the bureaucracy and certain self important specimens in our class. S and I would always promise each other that we would write all these master pieces down, for the future benefit of mankind. Neither of us actually got down to doing it, believing in its permanence. I would often ask her, and she would laugh off the (then) seemingly impossible idea of us not laughing.
I almost feel the world got envious of these times when we forgot it existed.

2009-04-24T22:41:00.001+05:30

The government girl’s school in the corner of thirteenth cross is idyllically romantic, especially on rain washed mornings like yesterday. This school is usually a picture of chaos on normal days, with gaggle of girls, walking in groups or standing in groups near yellow phone booths, or surrounding the array of hawkers who seem to materialize there every evening. All this seems to have completely clouded the old world charm and the simple beauty of this place. As we walked in, to cast our votes, I remembered how many summers ago, I learnt to cycle in the grounds of the very same school. I could still feel the exhilaration I felt back then, on gaining perfect balance and riding off into the road (very complan ad-ish , I know). The ground which is actually overgrown with unwanted shrubs is now enclosed with ugly green fences, which was absent. At the booth we were greeted by neighbors, with a grinning acknowledgment of my pyjama condition and P aunty to my sudden embarrassment asks amma ‘ yenri maGlige moog chuchisbitidira’ . The school seemed to have too much historyand it felt just right to vote in this cobweb filled place with dusty brown desks piled up against the wall. I spent the rest of the day watching TV, the usual election frenzy still hasn’t gripped me, and the media seems to have realized that Indian elections is a major selling point, fact I think which was almost unacknowledged till 2004, when a select few of us would secretly enjoy the hidden pleasures of it.

2009-03-14T14:54:00.000+05:30

I just feel like writing. There was a sudden pang of fear in the morning when I realized what if I had to put something down and I just couldn’t? This is exactly how I have been feeling for the past few weeks. I could give myself a concession; probably everything has been too over-whelming by normal standards. Turning twenty one was scary, for simple reasons like, your own mother will not ask you certain things which she otherwise might have, it’ s her way of acknowledging the emotional strength you are expected to have.
The past one week has been good, though there is a quirky guilt of not deserving it.
There is this new cat, extremely whiney, can’t mew well like my old one either, and we have concluded that it is extremely stupid with very un-cat like characteristics of wanting company.
Yes, I can still put words together.
I don’t really know if Guha is partial to Nehru but I’m completely awed by the kind of decisions he had to make. It only goes to show that choices we make are vital, it’s the act of making the choice itself not its implications which matter. I dint mean to sound like mother Teresa or Dalai lama in the last line.
I suck at this.

2009-01-06T14:32:00.000+05:30

I was cleaning my shelf today, to clear all the accumulated junk , when I realized it takes little time to shelve old text books ( with each one evoking few seconds of some kind of reminiscence ), next comes the school stuff, which I cant get myself to throw away etc etc.. finally I’m left with a pile of unclassified stuff, old computer sheets-new computer sheets, calculator user manual, data sheets and graph sheets -which appear miraculously now that I don’t need them, all in a steep mound in the center, staring at me and I usually stare back completely at loss. It’s the same with emotion , you can always put away well defined ones, others keep flying around.

2009-01-01T12:58:00.003+05:30

I’m done with exams, fifth set of semester exams to be precise. It’s not some great thing to be blogging about on new year’s eve, but well that’s what just happened to happen, thanks to my flawed choices, many many years ago (yea, feels like a long time). These exams taught me a lot in the worldly sense. Idealism which amma routinely drilled into me, absolutely forbidding me to learn only the ‘revision question’s which some of the teacher’s generously gave for the final exams, instead making me learn the entire syllabus (including all the hindi poems) ,guess this bout of idealism lasted out its course till today or sorta till yesterday, when I made this elaborate plan on ‘smart studying’. It is an open secret, the mantra of sticking to the syllabus book and living by it, atleast on the night of exam. This brahma sutra like mantra, is not taught in classrooms, it is realized by dunderheads like me after two years of plain stupid -ness and blaming oneself for not working hard enough. There is an other vital secret to this whole process of swaggering out of the exam hall and lamenting about the two marks you might lose cause you messed up the labeling in a diagram, it is then that people like me would shiftily walk out of the building thinking about exponentially decreasing graph of marks, self esteem and self worth- that is pschyoanalyse the paper, always, not yourself during those precious three hours. it always pays off.
Digressing from the hot topic of my mark sheets, exams have a nice routine to them. I could sleep blissfully till eight in the morning, amma would double check my blanket cover thinking I had been mugging all night and thinking this early morning sleep is very important, she would shoo everyone away. Then of course I would spend the rest of the morning planning elaborate schedules for the day, messaging friends to check ‘how- much -they -have- finished-and –what –units-they –doing’, slightly panicking when they have seemed to be making rapid progress , this increasing my normal attention span of one hour . Alarm clocks would of course play truant on the morning of the exam. Cursing myself, I would wake up to see it was already seven and a half- hour left to catch my bus. Maximum mugging capacity would of course reach its peak in the bus, since it’s a routine favorite of mine to procrastinate everything to the bus-time.
Also ,S and I almost helped airtel and bsnl post respectable financial results by dissecting authors (text book one’s) and making elaborate plans to file RTI’s , day dreaming about our vacations, sometimes even talking about how certain author’s have the audacity to dye their beards. This helped me build my resilience to the world in general.
I should make a mention of ernest o doeblin in this regard, it was he who inspired this post. If you think this post is a marked piece of creativity, you can always borrow my copy.

Of hope

2008-11-27T22:25:00.001+05:30

Well past the submission deadline, we sat in the ladies room giving finishing touches to our microprocessor’s record. My friend who came in a little later, with updates on the Mumbai fiasco sparked anger, a little later resigned to my fate, and thinking what would be running on jayanthi natarajan’ s mind (congress spokesperson to whom we owe many laughs to), this is what we thought of, it made the tension (of the record, not Mumbai) effervescent-
RS- my favorite man, sardesai
JN- well you know her
RS- how do you explain the lack of intelligence reports to the PMO?
JN- rajdeep( in a tone in which aunties admonish, little boy’s who throw cricket balls into their compound)- the prime minister and the cabinet had to keep the phone lines free, you see ,we were waiting for Mr Obama’s call.
Sigh, I’m glad I don’t have cable television, right now

trichy trip

2008-10-26T16:11:00.002+05:30

Things I don’t want to forget about the trichy trip
1. The fact that I got permission to take off with friends for the first time. I still can’t believe my parents agreed after ten minutes of hectic convincing. The fact that an uncle studied in the college some three hundred years back really helped.
2. Staying up till three in the morning, crouching uncomfortably because the other berths were lowered, talking to my friends with the cold wind hitting my face was the best part of the trip. I was completely at peace and very secure in the most unlikely place. No pictures to document it, but the approaching erode junction with the air smelling very railway station-ish , the ghostly shape of trees as the train moved away from the junction is a permanent clip in my head. We giggled as bugger had to deal with some people in a nice way even in this weird setting.
3. The campus was huge and that only seemed to impress upon us the scorching clime of this place. The heat reminded me of the in-numerable summers spent in salem, when we would play cricket in the afternoon, unaffected by it all. But now, I cursed and cribbed , one of the reasons could be my miserable mental setting after most quizzes these days. Growing up sucks, cliché take it.
4. We also slept a lot battling mosquitoes.
5. S, bugger and I had conversations, with all the new found unquestioned liberty which only three girls even a after a long day can manage. I also realized I missed out on some universal girl meeting where they teach you very essential stuff, it is becoming more evident by the day. Ganesha help me!
6. Food in general sucked. Iced tea is nice. Food court there was hell bent on stuffing us with North Indian fare, which was anything but edible. Somebody tell them we expect to be treated with the best of rice in the kaveri delta. The same reason prompted us to lunge at rice on the last day in the mess. Folks at home are very proud of this, my other achievements being zilch.
7. On the way back, we had to stop over at salem, to catch a bus back to Bangalore. Sat on the steps of saravana bhavan and discussed yedurappa’s supposed extra marital affairs and the power behind his throne at about ten in the night. Vijaykanth movies are extremely entertaining, even makes you soul search, when there is a friend, who is high because she smelt alcohol. S also predicted the storyline at about 2 in the morning when I was rudely shaken awake when the bus stopped in a shady bus-stand. There was some reference to Gabriel Garcia marquez, but my memory fails me.
8.Should buy a cigarette lighter . They are fun.

There were moments when I was really pissed off, sometimes when I was inexplicably happy. Don’t want to sound preachy but the trip was life in itself.Everything about this trip will make me smile someday.

news sucks

2008-10-12T21:47:00.001+05:30

I balk in surprise as I hear Malayalam hymns in the Vatican. The reason? A nun from an obscure village in kerala has been canonized.On account of the two miracles she performed. The timing of the event, people, surprises me. It comes at a time when the churches in orrisa and Karnataka have been attacked. This of course,has been a reaction to the rampant conversions of under-privileged hindus in deprived regions. I don’t have the authority to say this, with zilch research under my belt, but why is that I see tinned roof buildings converted to churches whenever the bmtc buses pass the poorer regions of my city? Coming back to our saint- talk, why was there huge a hue and cry when Mother Teresa was proposed as a saint? Her healing actions didn’t pass the muster we were told. Suddenly the bureaucracy in Vatican has been loka- yuktaed? The thousands of people who have congregated there all the way from god’s own country have been funded by the roman catholic church or was it the Indian government playing the generous uncle like it does every year to haj pilgrims?
P.S written at a time when I’m having 2 second mood swings.

yesterday

2008-10-02T14:06:00.000+05:30

Jayanagar was a distant far flung alien place for a true blue malleswaram kid like me, it was a place which cropped up in conversations with relatives when they spoke about how somebody’s uncle lived there, Appa also told me it was the first locality which was planned by BDA, hence its sculpted features. Now that I study in a college which is one of the landmarks of south Bangalore (no not BMS) though its in the fringes of the city, with a friend who is very jayanagar, my foray into this alien land has become more frequent. It’s a place out of books , with its perfect wide roads, innumerable parks with kids playing ( they have dasara vacations-dammit) and sheltered bus stops. All this is extremely romantic, but not if you are lost in 6th block like we were yesterday, with poor S in her home ground directing us in a maze of parks. Also there are lots of ganesha temples probably one in each alternate road, so it just adds to the confusion. Once we safely reached corner house , we gorged on our DBC’s and then moved onto a salad place which to my utter surprise seemed to worship ganesh, playing gaalipata songs through the afternoon. S was really proud and I was dumbstruck when the waiter there helped us out with our order in achh kannda. Proof that mass-influx from the cow belt has not affected this place, like how it has affected malleswaram and its people( extreme anguish and pain). The houses are beautiful, some probably built in the eighties when BDA first allotted the sites, the archetypal single storey with cobwebs with a faint trace of austerity, others a little more fancy. As NI and I walked back to the stop, we saw two ajjis in a quiet street talking in a hurried manner, something very clichéd which we talk about everyday, but hardly get to see. I really hope brigade and renaissance stays away from here, though I spotted a brigade classic to my displeasure. The Vani Vilas hospital is so Victorian. Why is it called vani vilas? Did kempe gowda build the Bangalore fort or was it tippu?

2008-09-30T21:41:00.001+05:30

These past two months have been different, I feel like I have been living in a completely different plane, the nitties- gritties of College has either become more tolerable or I have become completely immune to the monotony, the labs have become passe’, say analog lab and the second year kids will pee in their pants , in third year you don’t even flinch, the entire circuit which you rigged up painstakingly, muttering ‘BB roy of great Britain had a very good wife’ under your breath, has been condensed to an ‘ IC’ and voila , everything is much simpler. I have been ranting about this only to draw a parallel between my analog lab and how in the same way , everything I cribbed, cried, got depressed about doesn’t affect me anymore. Yesterday was a holiday, an extended weekend in the parlance of why-11pm-deadline people, I on the other hand spent the whole day lazing around, reading , dissecting the paper, watching private practice, washing my bags , helped amma arrange the dolls , spent an hour at the tailors’ taking lessons on aunty behavior. Now such a mundane day would have troubled me in the past, I would have hated the feeling of wasting time, for not pursuing stuff I like doing, basically finding more reasons to hate myself. I’m not troubled anymore by things I lack (not in the worldly sense). There is a faint sense of hope somewhere, that things will pan out, I’m scared that someone might call it overconfidence, and I will switch to the denial- anger mode. I should not be posting this, no no no.

rain

2008-08-28T22:19:00.000+05:30

The harsh sound of the sudden rain

Brings forth a gush of unexpected relief

The gentle patter continues

Keeping me company

As I fall asleep

2008-08-27T20:00:00.000+05:30

Why is it so difficult to accept certain facts, even though you know that’s how they are going to work out? The issues which we fight for, the relationships we share today fade away slowly, until someday you remember it with a pang or it just jolts out of smoldering memory and you don’t even care anymore. One day you wake up to find yourself on the other side.

P.S – this psychotic rant has nothing to do with my results, which the vtu has still not uploaded, maybe they are looking for a panchanga online.

22 july 2008

2008-07-23T22:39:00.004+05:30

Nuclear deal. Nuclear deal. 123. 123. Karat. Karat. Grand finale to four years of tumultuous marriage, thanks to a good divorce lawyer like Amar singh. The settlements have been made, we are told.Common souls like us do not understand what all the fuss is about, even after reading tomes about it in the HINDU. We should agree though that all the effort has been worth it. Entertainment on one rainy july day has made up for the year long dry debate and confusion. Cutting across to the point-

1.Rahul Gandhi- His speech was breaking news, as I drank my coffee all groggy on 22nd . We didn’t expect anything much from the congress general seceratry,. Few controversial remarks would have done the trick. Dammit! In the end it was a guarded speech read out to the lok sabha, I could clearly draw parallels between our youth scion and a school boy who is indulgently asked by a teacher to read a paragraph from the English reader. It was commendable that he stood unaffected as the bsp mp’s raised alarm, wisecracking with pilot, like he was expecting it. Foreign policy being debated in the Indian parliament is a thing of rarity we are told, this was one of the first and best opportunities for him to make his mark, to defend an honest politician like manmohan singh, instead he chose to make abstract connections between vidarbha and the 123 agreement, failing miserably as we saw. The sad part was that, the media tried really hard to save his ass. ‘ Rahul Gandhi brings about a human touch.’ A counter point raised by an other MP about poverty, which was only later clarified by our boy, made it to the news flash,- ‘poverty is directly related to energy security’. It is true that every election has been testing waters for him , the repeated defeats for the congress not helping matters, but too much focus on his apparent coming of age seems to have only made things more difficult for him. He is what he is because of what the media and people have made him out be. His grandmother was a fiery orator we are told , they also tell us that she was once a goongi gudiya, so we should just wait I guess?
2.Rajdeep- Man was in his element. Love him. Was at vijay chowk, to catch all the action live, I almost cried and threw a second tantrum for not sending me to Delhi, I could have stood among the aam jantha no? I would have stood outside the parliament drinking chai with the television crew, waaaaaaaaaaaah.
3.Omar Abdullah- Now our dear Raul can take a few lessons from him- about leaving an impression. Gave a passionate speech about how irrational it was to link the nuclear deal with anti muslim sentiments. He also set a precedent for next elections by talking about regrettable decisions he took when he was with NDA, some typical politician conscience talk, enjoyable though. He is damn cute also, he gave an interview to V once, years ago and I remember watching that channel ogling at him.
4.Missed lalu’s speech. Load shedding in our village.
Did Somnath chatterjee suffer from an heart attack? In the past four years? just asking.
P.S- S got to spend the whole day with a congress people and all.Was teeny weeny jealous but she wired some money into my account later. muaahhh

2008-06-23T20:42:00.001+05:30

Last math exam tomorrow.No more 'how was math?'. EVER. If it went well it would be a paradox. that is my excuse this time.

of overfed elephants

2008-06-20T23:12:00.007+05:30

Yedyurappa came visiting, to pay his respects to our 8th cross ganesha ,tv9 in tow on the day the government was sworn in, seeing our ganesha on tv I shouted the roof down. It was brushed off, appa reminiscing about the times Hedge used to visit, in a white ambassador waving to the smiling crowds in the temple. I was all sheepish at my ignorance of the celebrity status our ganesha held. Now that exams are here, I did the usual round of the all the temples , this time stopping at ganapathi temple, thanks to the yedurappa factor also my parents were kind enough to remind me that- ganesha being the highest common factor among all gods would help me in warding off the troubling shani( Saturn), who is ruling the roost for the next seven and half years. I desperately needed all the luck in the world to remember the programs for my lab externals. I haven’t been to this temple in a long time, in years in fact because we are usually tired after all the shopping and just too lazy to stop here after the matha visit, jostling the crowds there. The smaller ganesha closer home is much more peaceful,hence the neglect.Climbing the white marble steps in the temple, which are stained in a very temple way, I could smell the faint stale odor of routinely broken coconuts, which made me think of the times when I used to run up the same marble steps or race twerp to the main temple at the top. We went for the sankashtha puja regularly for two years,at those times,we wore frocks and had a boycut. The main attraction in this temple held for us initially was the shundal, which tasted very good here, I still don’t like the idea of boiled pulses at home though, there is something about shundal and temples. The priests used to come up with a myriad of alankaras to suit the general mood, my favorite one was the notebook alankara just before school started.In the same period the management procured an elephant calf to hoist the urchava moorthi, mostly to add to the essential grandeur of the temple. Once the baby elephant arrived the crowds spent all their time away from the gods , near the calf. The elephant had a childish air about it and spent all its time feeding on bananas from 8th cross market which the malleswaram praje brought faithfully. Soon the elephant acquired the status of a favorite nephew in a huge household gorging on all the attention and bananas,the kids vying for its attention. As the shankashtha phase for my parents came to an end, the elephant was suddenly taken away from the temple. We badgered our parents for its whereabouts, they in turn promised us that it had been sent to bandipur, for it was homesick and ill from all the food it had eaten. The indigestion theory was the best accepted among the masses , we blamed ourselves for it. There were harsh rumors that the elephant died of food poisoning, this theory was carefully shielded from us and I really hope it isn’t true. I'm still too small to handle it. All this makes mahaganapathi very next door, I cant blame myself for the initial surprise at his celebrity-ness.

pent up energy

2008-05-30T01:06:00.002+05:30

Its nine. A, L and I drive back in a haze, after a slew of phone calls, reminding us that it is raining. We stop at A’s place, the light drizzle becomes a strong enough reason for us to stand in her balcony , talking of trivial stuff , the conversation revolves around--why A cut her hair, helmet rule, one of them mention hazzaron khwahishein aisi'for god knows what, L is worried that I don’t have a jacket.. .. we don’t say it but it seems like yesterday we laughed with our ladybird cycles in between us.. we call Lava and ask her to come over. She cribs about her pyjama condition ,turns up anyway. We don’t hug. She asks us if we are staying over at A’s place? We call, beg, plead, but our parents say no, and politely remind us that it is ten o’ clock.
We still cling on, A teases her neighbour’ s 8 month old lab. He seems surprised to hear so much chatter at that time of the night , in the quiet road ,that he doesn’t even bark. And he has the brownestttt eyes ever.
I get dropped off , message the three of them that I reached. Now I cant sleep.

Q: why is he wearing a white t shirt? A :Election time

2008-05-19T21:35:00.002+05:30

Its in the air. Elections time, We know it. How? When certain tormenting beings ,self styled dictators in our classrooms , masquerading as lecturers are posted on election duty, you cant thank the EC enough, trust me. There are other signs too which you cant miss , even if you want too.
Blink. there is a new hoarding. For once, annavaru ‘s benign smile doesn’t greet us, Whether it is DR Rajkumar road or the one and only mysore road. Instead its madam sonia, rahul ji , Krishna and manDya Da Gandu Ambareesh juggling in the borrowed space . If you look closely, there are numerous others protégé’s , ‘we are thugs, but look, we are all clean shaven,making a great effort to smile and look respectable in here, so better vote’. The best one was muthappa rai ‘s poster greeting all muslim brothers ‘ID MUBARAK’, near circle, Model code of conduct anyone?
When I mention model code of conduct, there was no autorickshaws with rusted mikes goading us to vote on sleepy afternoons , ‘ I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard a wheezy voice calling out ‘kaMaLLake maTha needi’. Another sure sign was the tune of the conversations in all modes of transport, especially in the canary yellow college bus , our normally reticent driver whom Krishna ( almighty, not our ex maharashtra governer, ) would have been more than happy to point out as a model karma yogi, started talking about ticket distribution with his cronies. The route 276 in BMTC was vehement against hardanahalli’s famous son.The model right winger that I’m I loved eavesdropping on these convo’s, you don’t necessarily have to ;considering such talk is loud enough to beat the grunting of the engine and honking traffic. The most remarkable thing was the fact that Arun jaitley set the mood for the oncoming frenzy by kicking off his rally in malleswaram grounds, I would have almost missed him in my homeground, lest P’s timely message. Just made it as yedurappa signed off, handing over the show to this lawyer turned politician. Jaitley looked like he could do with a hair cut though I still wonder if it was a part of bonding with the masses strategy, he spoke in hindi , his public school English refusing to let him go. For once the kadlekai sellers, KWALITY walls ice cream guy and the beedi smoke didn’t bother me, the man was in flesh and blood , not on ndtv or ibn. Ananth kumar was at his sulky best ( driSHti Gombe for the entire show,trust me),acting like he was doing all thathas of malleswaram a favor by turning up. This man can compete with deve gowda when it comes to unpleasant facial demeanour. Everytime jaitlay took a dig at rahul ji, we clapped with the beedi crowd, landmark day it was, I was now determined to vote.
Other lesser known effects of Karnataka going to polls is the fact that my remote has stopped working and Appa thinks we should get a new one so that we don’t have to waste precious time over tapping the remote, while flipping through every news channel in our cable network. Yes, we might constitute the sole viewer ship of suvarna and Xtv.
Also pizza hut leaflets were briefly replaced by the bjp mla’s campaign leaflet,promising us stuff we couldn’t care less about.
The madness will continue till the counting is done. I will then sulk like it’s the end of an other habba or birthday.

election time crushing

2008-05-17T21:28:00.006+05:30

yes! he is cute. why am i twenty in the wrong age?

feeding my baby blog

2008-04-01T22:36:00.000+05:30

You have to name your blog before you start writing in it, dunno about you guys but I’m really bad at this, staring at my monitor, my mind blank with the colourful eblogger page staring at me, I cursed google and all the people who had fancily named their blogs sending signs of their cryptic undercurrents. The problem arised when I deleted my first born blog, in a fit of VTU depression [ one of the bonuses, blame all your inexplicable actions on them ] . I regret it now, as I write this not engulfed by remorse or anything , a twinge of guilt nevertheless.
The deletion of my blog was followed by a period of tranquility, when I didn’t think of my writing while brushing my teeth or writing data sheets [ all Freudian level thinking happens when I do this], few friends who read my blog earlier showed respectable amount of remorse , sighing, along with messaging their regret. People say time heals, but no, it doesn’t.
Anyway I start blogging again officially, one of the many reasons is to chronicle the tales of the place I grew up in, now that moving is sort of round the corner. Will also feed you with engineering kaalegu gossip and insight into my twisted political ideas. Of course, its all about looking through my perspective, don’t blame me, this is were I get to complete my sentences.
Intro post over!!! Yay!!!!