Buggo Buggu

Currently I’m bugged:

• By the people who keep calling me on a consistent basis – not because they care, but because they want fodder for gossip. They make it a point to know all that is happening in my life. Helps them to improve their IQ, you see. And then they add their own bit to it (after all imagination is a boon) and then call up others and pass on the news (what is life without sharing... kind souls, them.).
• By the people who take it upon themselves to advise me/ comment, at every given opportunity regardless of how much they actually know about what is going on in my life.
• By the dumb power cuts that is driving me crazy.
• By the heavy rains that have made things quite dull for the last few days.
• By the stupid allergy in the eye. It is very irritating. (Pun intended)
• By the lack of good Tamil movie release in the last one month.
• By Nanda’s character in Aananthapurathu Veedu. (What sort of a guy would get angry with his parents because they died in a car crash leaving him all alone in this world when he is just thirteen... I mean he keeps blaming them as if they planned for it! Seriously... stupid guy.)
• By the long wait for Enthiran.
• By the few Grisham books I recently read.
• By the change in perspective. I am not convinced anymore about the goodness of Lord Rama or the Pandavas. It is making me very uneasy. I grew up revering these heroes after all.
• By the eternal hatred shown towards Brahmins in Tamil Nadu. I mean it is ok when politicians say or do such stuff. You can’t expect much from them. But even learned and otherwise “wise” people raising to the bait and taking up Brahmin bashing with relish is disgusting.
• By the flab I seem to be accumulating at an alarming rate. It is giving me sleepless nights since I had belonged to the category of “Eat anything and stay chronically thin” for almost all through my life.
• By the relentless hairfall. Going by the looks of it, coupled with the above mentioned bug, I’m going to be round, weighing roughly 150kgs and totally bald in 5 yrs 2 yrs from now.
• By the fact that I have not travelled to my favourite city for quite sometime now.
• By the closing down of my favourite restaurant here.
• By my work – by the innovative torture techniques that our clients have started to use of late.
• By the fact that I literally feel like a sacrificial goat, every time I step into an aeroplane or a train.
• By the superbug that was in the news today. First Swine flu and now this. Great.

I wish to stop now. So many bugs in my life. Highly infuriating. Anyone with good debugging skills kindly contact me at the earliest.

Seven Idiots

Warning: People allergic to senti stuff are requested not to proceed further with this post.

********************
There is a line in HP and the Philosopher’s Stone, that marks the beginning of the legendary friendship between Harry, Ron and Hermione. It goes something like this – “There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.”
Same way, when 11 girls are made to live in one house, 7 of them belonging in the same year, sharing loads of stuff(willingly and unwillingly), it is but natural to end up being the best of pals.

(Left to right)Me, Singaari, Jakkamma, Scene Seemaati, Dubukku Sundari, Gujili, Aapamma (Our secondary nicknames)

Some of us were from villages about which even Google wouldn’t have been able to give information. We bonded way too quickly despite our diverse backgrounds and natures. Each day was filled with cute trivial things that made life a delight – like the constant bickering between Aapamma and Seemaati for extra biscuits, the day when they tried to race in the stair case and one of them ended up with a broken tooth, the moonlight item number by Singaari, the “murder dramas” on Sundays using the jam tainted knife, the refusal to eat food whenever there was oothappam for dinner and the way we relented when Jakkamma would make all of us sit in a circle and feed us at one go, saying “innum oru vaai, avlavudhan... “

Exams and unfinished assignments never worried us. We just used to sit together and try to wade our way through the pool of work, never bothering whether we were really getting anywhere. Our birthday bashes always turned out to be unforgettable and Holi celebrations were simply out of the world. Be it the 7 of us getting into one auto and scaring the daylights out of the driver by telling him that one of us needs to be admitted to hospital immediately and her life depended on his driving prowess.. , singing driver mama conductor mama in buses, using pen caps to whistle away in theatres, creating uproar in the college mess, running across the campus after rains and shaking the branches of all the trees and getting drenched to the skin, our trips to each others' villages and having masti in the paddy/sugarcane fields, endless chats sitting on the rooftop(at Gujili's house) in midnight... we have had fun - pure, unadulterated and without crossing the limits.

We were almost always broke towards the month end. That didn’t stop us from collecting chillar from everyone in a pichaikaara fashion to run to the corner shop to get a plate of bhel puri or a plate of molaga and onion bhajji. Durinng peak summer when our room was like oven, we used to pour water on the floor and once it dried, we simply used to lie down on the bare floor and go to sleep in a bindaas manner. Everytime one of us came back from a short trip to their home, their bags would get ransacked immediately in search of homemade delicacies. I still laugh uncontrollably thinking about the day when we made Singaari run through the hostel corridors threatening her with something that was her ultimate fear... the day when Aapamma fell on the feet of Singaari, the stupid fights over the single walkman we had, the fight for the cosiest blanket, the arguments between me and Dubukku Sundari(DS) or me and Aapamma or Singaari and Aapamma or Jaks and Singaari, the "stage performances" by DS, the Panchayat sessions by Gujili...
Despite all the madness, we also ensured that we were there for each other at times of need – be it someone falling sick or any personal problem or whatsoever.

Like all good things, our dreamlike college / hostel run came to an end so soon... we hadn’t realised the passage of three years in the land of Utopia we lived in. The last day at college and hostel was truly heart breaking. We took a resolution that we will never change. That was the last time the 7 of us were able to be together. Over the last several years, so many things have changed. Things other than our friendship have gained priority in our lives. But we have not given up. Some of us keep meeting every now and then and continue with the tradition of an outing to a new place each year(yeah, yeah, we have been visiting new places every year on a consistent basis over the last 10yrs.. cool na?). We still create ruckus in theatres or buses or wherever we go. But the problem is, it has not been the seven of us anymore. Two or three keep missing the get togethers due to constraints on work/family front. But luckily, the concept of con call makes it possible to continue the nonstop chatter between the seven of us, even if it is just over the phone.

All this build up makes our friendship fairytale like, na? But it has not been so. We have had our differences; our battles; quite nasty things said; and done. But then somewhere before things could turn real bad, we would receive a “kick” to shake us out of our reverie, to help us to discard the bad stuff as a horrible dream and come back to the real thing – our friendship. (Sorry for that. Still not recovered from the Inception Hangover!)

Even amidst the mad rush of the day to day life, a part of me refuses to leave the laughter filled hostel rooms and the mad cacophony of the college campus. It is those memories I turn to, to draw a breath of fresh air whenever I feel a little low or bored of the monotony. Over the past one decade, our friendship has weathered so many storms. But looking ahead, we have bigger challenges, given the fact that so many changes are lined up in our individual lives... Will we come out winners? I hope we do. Cheers to our friendship and a murmur of prayer, a genuine wish that it continues to go strong in the coming decades too.

Gender blunders!

Yay! I got tagged by DI and this is my first tag. This is a tag called Sinners Against Gender Stereotypes. Being my first tag and all, it could not have been more apt, given the fact that I lived like the book definition of tomboy for some good 10 – 12 years.

Now to the analysis of how and in what ways I have defied being a gender stereotype.

1. Ahem... Let me start with a sampler: In the building that we lived in, there was a narrow and high fenced corridor in the backyard. The entrance to that corridor always remained locked and the watchman had the keys. Sometimes clothes put out to dry in the balcony, fell inside this corridor.. sometimes, kids when playing, used to drop their toys there by mistake. Whenever the watchman (having the keys to this corridor) was not around, and it became imperative to retrieve the “fallen” stuff immediately, people would come to me. From the 1st floor balcony, I used to aim and take a jump to land on the window sill of the ground floor (facing this corridor), jump on to a tank from there, hold on to a PVC pipe, take a mighty swing and land perfectly in that corridor. I used to get back to first floor with the same ease. From age 9, till I turned 12, I performed this feat nonchalantly, as and when the neighbours requested. Finally my parents intervened in a big way and I had to stop offering this service. What kind of a kid I was, I now leave it to your imagination.

2. Also, as a kid, I always belonged in the boys’ gang. Have played more gully cricket than any other game. The adventures I’ve had with the boys’ gang is worth a separate post in itself. In case you are wondering, it included stuff like, leading them on an expedition to a deserted house to investigate certain things(of course inspired by the Secret Sevens and Famous Fives), climbing a 25 ft bamboo structure, going around “bhoot” bungalows in the night for winning a bet, etc...

3. I’ve never had a fascination for dolls or teddy bears.

4. I used my skipping rope to lasso mangoes and bhels and pluck them from trees.

5. My weird dressing sense (read boy like and also thank me for not going into the details) and a few mannerisms earned me the nickname “Porukki”(rough equivalent to tapori) in college.  The same set of friends have also been kind enough to remind me every now and then that words like graceful, eloquent, etc when prefixed with my name, sounds oxymoronic.

6. I never had a liking for make up or jewellery.

7. Have travelled in footboard of buses; have travelled in auto sitting in the front seat... (i.e., when the auto gets full, the driver moves a bit, offers 30% of his seat... so I meant that front seat!)

8. Blue has always been my favourite colour, not pink and am not a great fan of chocolates.

9. Was very insensitive, was a bad listener and always had difficulty expressing my feelings.

10. One of my greatest fears was to get spotted by others with tears in my eyes.

So that’s it. I could have said more but stopped here. Guess you people are lucky... So anyway before the girls/women out there seethe with anger and decide that my existence on this planet in itself is a bane to womankind, let me clarify a few things.. Except for points number 3 and 8, all the other above mentioned things have changed now... in a big way. To that, add the eternal fright I feel at the sight of pay-to-get-nearly-killed kinda rides at amusement parks, the endless number of times I’ve fainted at the sight of blood/gore, the secret crushes on handsome hunks, reading books like Digital Fortress and ending up liking the chemistry between the lead pair more than anything else in the book, watching movies like Alaipayuthey and Minnale more than 20 times, the crimson shade(literally) my face turns to when I get embarrassed or feel shy, the nonstop day dreaming that I do, the great love for rains, etc, might calm you down...Not much of a sinner anymore I suppose.

P.S. : I'm not tagging anyone and I love blue jeans.

Indian Cinema

A BOOM! A BANG! - That’s the entry of the hero;
Emphasis will be great, even if he is a zero!
His friends are many, it's him they worship;
And be by his side during his times of hardship.
They move about in a gang, doing nothing;
And suddenly form groups and start to sing!
They wriggle, twist and turn - calling it dance;
Exhibit it on the roads - nobody calls it a nuisance!

Hero meets the heroine, mostly in a collision;
It's his love at first sight as little hearts bar his vision!
He would love her passionately for no known reason;
And she ignores the poor guy all through the season.
She encounters a few mishaps and he is her (obvious) savior;
She falls in love, rushes into his arms and apologizes for her former behavior.
They erupt into a duet song and a dozen dancers follow;
Movements & words would be obscene, more than what we can swallow.

After that there is very little for the heroine to do;
It's about the hero, there's much ado.
Whether rich or poor, he'll wear great attire;
And have an unblemished character - as good as sapphire!
Stumbling & falling, hitting & shouting come under "comedy";
As a general rule, the comedian is hero's buddy.
Of course there's a villain - it could be the heroine's dad;
Or a much wanted anti social who is raving mad!

As a one man army, the hero is all set,
To give the villains, what they deserved to get.
Cars fly, bombs explode & machine guns roar;
Miraculously, the hero's still alive & what's more?
The villain is nabbed by the police who arrive late;
Hero & heroine are united - thanks to their fate.
They live happily ever after - And,
What are you waiting for? - That's the End!

Will you grant me a boon?

A forwarded mail

******

'How long will you be pouring over that newspaper? Will you come here right away and make your darling daughter eat her food?'

I tossed the paper away and rushed to the scene. My only daughter Sindu looked frightened. Tears were welling up in her eyes. In front of her was a bowl filled to its brim with Curd Rice.

Sindu is a nice child, quite intelligent for her age. She has just turned eight. She particularly detested Curd Rice. My mother and my wife are orthodox, and believe firmly in the 'cooling effects' of Curd Rice!

I cleared my throat, and picked up the bowl.

"Sindu,darling, why don't you take a few mouthful of this Curd Rice? Just for Dad's sake, dear. And, if you don't, your Mom will shout at me'

I could sense my wife's scowl behind my back.

Sindu softened a bit, and wiped her tears with the back of her hands. 'OK, Dad. I will eat - not just a few mouthfuls, but the whole lot of this. But, you should...' Sindu hesitated.

'Dad, if I eat this entire Curd Rice, will you give me whatever I ask for?'

'Oh sure, darling'.

'Promise?'

'Promise'. I covered the pink soft hand extended by my daughter with mine, and clinched the deal.

'Ask Mom also to give a similar promise', my daughter insisted. My wife slapped her hand on Sindu's,muttering 'Promise', without any emotion.

Now I became a bit anxious. 'Sindumma, you shouldn't insist on getting a computer or any such expensive items. Dad does not have that kind of money right now. OK?'

'No, Dad. I do not want anything expensive'.

Slowly and painfully, she finished eating the whole quantity.I was silently angry with my wife and my mother for forcing my child eat something that she detested.

After the ordeal was through, Sindu came to me with her eyes wide with expectation. All our attention was on her. 'Dad, I want to have my head shaved off, this Sunday!' was her demand!

'Atrocious!' shouted my wife, 'a girl child having her head shaved off? Impossible!'.

'Never in our family!' my mother rasped. 'She has been watching too much of television. Our culture is getting totally spoiled with these TV programs!'

'Sindumma, why don't you ask for something else? We will be sad seeing you with a clean-shaven head.'

'No, Dad. I do not want anything else', Sindu said with finality.

'Please, Sindu, why don't you try to understand our feelings?' I tried to plead with her.

'Dad, you saw how difficult it was for me to eat that Curd Rice'. Sindu was in tears. 'And you promised to grant me whatever I ask for. Now, you are going back on your words. Was it not you who told me the story of King Harishchandra, and its moral that we should honour our promises no matter what?'

It was time for me to call the shots. 'Our promise must be kept.'

'Are you out your mind?' chorused my mother and wife.

'No. If we go back on our promises, she will never learn to honour her own. Sindu, your wish will be fulfilled.'

With her head clean-shaven, Sindu had a round-face, and her eyes looked big & beautiful.

On Monday morning, I dropped her at her school. It was a sight to watch my hairless Sindu walking towards her classroom. She turned around and waved.

I waved back with a smile. Just then, a boy alighted from a car, and shouted, 'Sinduja, please wait for me!'

What struck me was the hairless head of that boy. 'May be, that is the in-stuff', I thought.

'Sir, your daughter Sinduja is great indeed!' Without introducing herself, a lady got out of the car, and continued, 'That boy who is walking along with your daughter is my son Harish. He is suffering from .. ..leukaemia.'She paused to muffle her sobs. 'Harish could not attend the school for the whole of the last month. He lost all his hair due to the side effects of the chemotherapy. He refused to come back to school fearing the unintentional but cruel teasing of the schoolmates. Sinduja visited him last week, and promised him that she will take care of the teasing issue.But, I never imagined she would sacrifice her lovely hair for the sake of my son! Sir, you and your wife are blessed to have such a noble soul as your daughter.'

I stood transfixed. And then, I wept. 'My little Angel, will you grant me a boon? Should there be another birth for me, will you be my mother, and teach me what Love is?'

Friend or Frenemy?

Today I learnt that a term called Frenemy does exist.

Flashback: Some eight or nine years ago, I had a "friend". Let's call her PV. She was a classmate and I was good friends with some girls from her "gang". Inevitably I ended up befriending this girl also. She had a sharp wit and always succeeded in bringing quick smiles. She was definitely good company, yes. But she was equally good in rubbing people the wrong way. If I had problem with something and confided in her, she would assure that she will be on my side and help me out. But when the time comes, she would just snub me in front of all and make a joke out of it. Later, she used to come back and do something incredibly nice to get back into my good books. At one point of time she had me totally bugged. What followed was a big fight. "Well, you are not my friend", I told her, at the end of it. "What then, your enemy?", she asked. I thought for a moment and said, "No, but a mixture of both. Guess you must be called Frenemy then". She looked at me for a few seconds, smiled and said, "Yeah, I feel the same way about you too". We had a good laugh later thinking about it. But anyway, we felt that term described our relationship aptly. (Secretly I felt proud for having "coined" it!) We agreed that our love-hate relationship had given a new(?) word to English. After that, we used to refer each other by that term only and on the rare occasion where we exchanged greeting cards, we signed them as "Frenemy". - End of flashback.

Have lost touch with PV but currently I do have a few "friends" belonging to the category of "Frenemies". (We are close, have fun when we meet but there is an underlying distrust nevertheless, so the category.)

Today evening, I was reading day before yesterday's paper (now don't look at me like that) when I came across the term Frenemy in a front page article in TOI Ascent. Was quite surprised and googled the term only to end up knowing that the term has been in use since 1953! So much for my hopes of getting the word added to the Webster's dictionary! :) :)

P.S.:  Definition of Frenemy: A person who is ostensibly friendly or collegial with someone but who is actually antagonistic or competitive (Source : http://www.answers.com/topic/frenemy-1)

A "Special" journey

It was on a fine summer day, several years ago (when I was still in school), my dad, on a sudden burst of courage and enthusiasm, decided to send me from Calcutta to Chennai on my own. It was a time when online booking and IRCTC had not become household names of Indian travellers. After endless hours of standing in long queues in the ticket counters, all he managed to get was a confirmed sleeper class ticket in a train called “Summer Special”. The guy who named the train thus must have been a master satirist as I found out on the day of my travel. The train was nowhere near the S of Special. It was an even more battered version of the original Indian trains, with dimmer lights and I don’t even want to talk about the toilets lest you state visiting this blog as traumatic.

As I boarded the train and was trying to find my seat, I was surprised to find a school friend in the same compartment. We found out that her aunt was travelling to Chennai and she had come just for send off. And her aunt’s seat was right next to mine. My parents were greatly relieved. Many of my father’s relatives and friends had started questioning him on the decision to let me travel alone and my parents had been steadily growing apprehensive as the day of the journey neared. So when they found that my friend’s aunt would be seated next to me, they were elated. They requested her to take care of me, told me that my uncle would be there in the Central Station on next day evening to pick me up and waved good bye as the train started to move.

Episode 1: My friend’s aunt(hereafter referred to as Big A), talked to me for some 5 minutes on something random and then went off to read a magazine. There was a family of three seated opposite to us. A man of about 40+yrs, a woman of around 35 yrs and a boy around 9 – 10 yrs of age. They were speaking in Oriya. After sometime, I got myself engrossed in a book. Big A tried to strike conversations with me and this time I was not interested. So she tried to get the Oriya family talking. Only the man responded and he didn’t sound very friendly. Anyway, later in the evening, I had my dinner and climbed up to the upper berth and continued with my book. It would have been sometime around 8:00PM when the train halted at a big station and the Oriya man bought some food and cold drinks for his family. Half an hour later, his son climbed the other upper berth and went off to sleep almost immediately. His wife was also half asleep. So he requested that we switch off the lights (it was just 9:00PM). Big A wanted the lights on for some more time but he kept on insisting that his wife was not well and so Big A gave in and lights were switched off quite early and we all went off to sleep. The next thing I knew was an ear splitting scream that woke me up. Being a heavy sleeper, I surmised that the screaming must have had gone on for some time before I woke up. I checked my watch and it was past midnight. Lights were on. The Oriya woman was screaming and crying and Big A and few other women were trying to pacify her. Some guys were running here and there in the compartment. The little boy was still sleeping in the berth opposite to mine and few people were shaking him vigorously in a futile attempt to wake him up. The Oriya man was nowhere to be seen. Even as I was watching, the crying woman got up and rushed towards the exit and immediately was brought back to her seat by others. In spite of all this confusion, I was not able to snap out of my sleepiness. So as her crying started to subside and people started to return to their berths, I went off to sleep, resolving to check later with Big A as to what had happened.

Next day I learnt this from Big A: It seems the man was not the Oriya woman’s husband at all. The woman and her son were travelling to their native in Orissa with a cash of Rs 10,000 for her elder daughter’s wedding. Her husband had come to the station to see them off. He seems to have been loudly worrying about the fact that he is sending his wife alone to their village and that too with so much cash. Suddenly the “oriya man” introduces himself, says he is also going to the same village and assures that he will take care of them. Husband happily agrees. Naive wife and son are happy. They can’t speak much Hindi. Once the train starts, this guy tells co passengers that he is her husband. When he bought them food and cold drinks, he had already drugged them. The unsuspecting folks, after having it have fallen into deep sleep. The guy had taken their suitcase with cash and had got down at the next station. When the woman realised that the money is gone, she has attempted suicide by jumping off the train. However, others have woken up and have managed to stop her. (It was at that time that I had woken up and was observing stuff in a sleepy state from my berth). She had actually had only little of the drugged food and that is why had woken up earlier. Her son, on the other hand, had had the entire drugged Frooti and so was not able to get up at all. So finally when their station came, with others’ help both of them had gotten down. Big A told all this animatedly. I was completely struck by the seriousness of the whole thing. It took some time to come back to normalcy.

Episode 2: It was some station in Andhra. A middle aged woman and her daughter (quite tall and stout) boarded the train and occupied the now empty seats opposite to us. I thought the daughter would be something 18 or 19 yrs old, given her build. Anyway, as always, Big A started talking to them in Hindi and English. She learnt that the girl was just 12 yrs old. This amused Big A in a big way. When both of them were looking away, she passed on the info to me and was shaking with laughter. I was also amused but didn’t say anything. But Big A was not good at controlling her amusement and kept on passing some rude comments to me about the girl’s physique. Sometime later, the issue of sharing the lower berth started between Big A and the other woman. This time too, Big A passed some comments to me about the rudeness of the Telegu woman. Suddenly the Telegu woman got up, got hold of Big A’s hair and started hitting her! I was dumbstruck and weakly tried to free Big A from her clutches. “You think I don’t know Tamil?”, the Telegu woman shrieked. “From the minute I got into the train, you have been passing comment after comment as if you own the train”, she continued her high pitched yelling. She was like a wrestling champion and I was of delicate build and could not come out with any heroics to save the day and Big A. She unleashed a torrent of abuse on Big A. She suddenly pointed her finger at me and I cowered. “I am going to register a nuisance case against this woman in the Rajahmundry station and you come down with us and be a witness”, she threatened. Big A was by now sobbing and was trying to put up a mild fight. I felt it was enough. I faced this woman and told that I am not coming anywhere as it was none of my business and then went to find the TTR. Luckily I found one in the same compartment and explained the situation to him. He came to our seats, heard stories from both the sides, sided with the Telegu woman and her daughter, but nevertheless moved them to a different compartment. Big A put up a brave face and told me that she could have single handedly “taken care” of that Telegu woman but had refrained since she had not wanted to stoop so low. Anyway, she became considerably quieter after that and I went back to my book.

We were supposed to reach Chennai at 6:30PM but our train was running late by 7 hours and we reached by 1:30 AM. I didn’t know whether my uncle would be there to pick me up given the untimely arrival of the train (We didn’t carry mobile phones then). Big A got down, found her son waiting for her and just said bye to me and went off without so much of a second glance. I was left standing with my luggage and with the coolies pestering me whether I need their help. I was new to Chennai and was nervous, thinking what I should do if my uncle failed to come. But luckily within minutes, he was there along with a cousin of mine. They asked whether the journey was fine. I gave them a big smile and a big nod and said, “Let’s go”.

After all these years, looking back, it appears to me that, that particular journey was just a trailer for the eventful life I was about to have in Chennai from then on...