Power play

This post is an exercise I tried out just now. I wrote whatever sentence came to my mind. No editing, absolutely. I did not plan on any plot, no ending in mind. This is just to see what I can come up with by letting my mind go free. I enjoyed it.

She opens her eyes. The chandelier is going to fall down. The bear yawned. On TV  Oh no, it is the actor who resembles a bear. A dog barks in the street. The aroma of fresh filter coffee decoction tugs her nostrils. She closes her eyes again.

The chandelier goes back up. It is just swinging on the elastic rope that connects it to the ceiling. A lone spider is spinning a web on it. How on earth does the eight legged fellow get any sleep, she wonders. She goes back to sleep.

The AC sputters and goes off. Power cut time. Ugghhhh, she groans, rolls over and gets up from bed. Ambles down the hall to brush her teeth. She is all fussy about it like this: "I have to wake up, walk all this way, open the tap, squeeze tooth paste, put it on the brush, and brush. Twice. Why god, why me?!" First world problems in the third world. That is how confusing the situation is in the country.

Newspaper. No. This is not 1990. Facebook. Twitter. Gmail. Whatsapp. Checked. Coffee consumed. Off to bed again. No, 2 more hours before power comes. Cha.

Goes to the veranda. Vegetable vendor lady passes by, shouting "Keeraiiiii". A man cycles by, shouting "Pazhaya paper!". A kid bumps into an uncle's scooter. Uncle is raising his voice and calling upon all gods in heaven and all devils in hell to lend some sense to the kid. The smirks and runs off after bestowing a kick to the rear of uncle's scooter. Uncle drives away, his shouts over the engine's roar still lingering in the entire street's ears.

Eyes on the clock. Not even an hour down. The balcony offers time pass activities similar to those offered by the veranda. One hour passes. One more hour to go. She checks the mobile. Charge available. It is 10 AM. She mentally eliminates areas without power cut and shortlists ones likely to suffer a power cut now. Besant Nagar. Ok. Now the list is sorted and prioritized  based on the ability of each of her friends in those areas to sleep in spite of the sweat during a power cut and the degree of boredom or irritation they are capable of producing. This exercise takes only 2 minutes for her practiced mind.

She places a call. 

"Hey power cut here. 40 minutes more for it to be up again."

"I know. It is total shutdown today. It will be back up only at 5 PM."

She knows this friend is always a harbinger of bad news. Now if power does come back in 40 minutes, it will be "hence proved" that the friend is a liar. If it doesn't she is bad luck. She goes back to the veranda and sulks.

Birthday Bums

Yes, you read it right. Bums, not bumps. It has been reported recently that there is a group that keeps invading birthday parties. The Birthday Aggression Beater Youths (BABY), a non-profit organization that aims to prevent acts of aggression in birthday parties, has done some really good work in carrying out relief activities in severely affected birthday parties.

BABY has done extensive and in-depth research on the modus operandi of these "bums". The organization says that bums are all around us. "They look very normal, and act like normal people. The sad part is that most of us do not realize it even while we are being attacked.", says a spokesperson from BABY. 

Bums can slip in as one of the attendees, and the worst cases are when a bum is one of the organizers of the party. Luckily, there are a few indicators that can help you judge whether your party is being attacked:

1. If the party seems to be going berserk with strange people entering and telling others what to do, you are under attack. Take the cake and run. Oh, take the birthday baby along too.
2. If the party is being held near a swimming pool and random people start pushing in other people randomly.
3. If no one is wishing the birthday baby but all guys are trying to impress some girl in the gathering and all girls are bitching about the same girl.
4. If everyone seems to be more bent upon beating the birthday baby than singing the birthday song.
5. If it feels like a nightmare and you want to leave your own party.

Most people can relate to the scenarios described above. So what can you do if you are planning a birthday party?

1. Plan a party without a cake. Bums avoid cakeless birthday parties.
2. Plan a party that involves a Carnatic music kutcheri. Even if there is chocolate cake, bums flee at the mention of classical music.
3. Never plan a party by the pool, that is like an open invitation to anyone who is roaming about joblessly.
4. Never invite pretty girls to the party.
5. Arrange for some strong bouncers in front of your house to throw out bums.
6. Plan party games. Something involving XBox for guys.They will be lost in it and not force you to play Smear-the-cake or push-me-in-water type kindergarten games.
7. For girls - Start a rumour that one of the guys is checking out one of the girls. Never name the guy or the girl. That will keep them busy and happy.
8. Now sing the birthday song, wish the birthday baby, and sit back with a piece of cake.

In case of emergency situations, reach out to the BABY emergency hotline (564-WET-BABY).
For post-attack post-traumatic counselling, contact (564-CRY-BABY)

The Chemistry of Love

One lesson that I have learned in life is that people in love are opportunistic. Not judging them, but I don't like it very much when they use me.

Do I sound mean? Yes? Yes, I am like that :)

The Chemistry of love

I am not going to name names, but just assign alphabets as aliases for real people. Let us do this like a chemistry equation. Just so that it sounds like it makes sense. I used to love chemistry at school (the subject). The one that existed between my fellow students - not much, in cases where they tried to use me.

Assume X and Y are a couple, or hope to be one. The best solution would be for X to ask Y out or vice versa and get on with their lives. But no, that did not happen very often. X and Y looked at each other. They stared at each other. They shot sidelong looks. Y specialized in executing the sweeping glance covering the entire class but lingering a few seconds more on X. Y would start laughing suddenly when we were having a serious conversation about the length of the ribbon on M's plaits that day. But that did not ruffle me because it just meant X crossed her peripheral vision with his hand on his sidekick's shoulder. I noticed all these things, because I was jobless like that.

X would visit the temple near school, because she wanted to see Y playing cricket in the ground nearby. She'd pull me along, because then we were two pious girls talking in the temple and not one girl gaping at a guy. The interesting fact was that I was the one who used to talk, and listen. She was busy checking him out.

We were the last ones to leave tution because then he could saunter over and make fun of ME so that she could laugh. Huh.

We were the only people to have lunch in the classroom so that he could ogle at her from outside.

I could not skip the boring field trip because then people would talk if she walked alone with him.

She cut my call (her call would have woken me up) the minute she saw his second call and expected me to wait by the phone.

And the conversations we had? They were always laced with "You know what that fellow said?" "I told him..." "He is so funny" "I hate him" "These guys n all..." You know how it is. One gets to nod and approve. Always. Even if you were bored. Even if you also wanted a chance to bore other people. (Yes, I got my chance now! I have a blog to bore people.)

What happened to these couples? Some of them got married and that was the last I heard of them. Some of them moved on and got married to other people. It does seem funny to me now. I can imagine how I must have looked when I was treated like a monkey in the game of throw and catch. Very funny.

So you ask me where is the chemistry part? Here:

X and Y's courtship should have been a simple reaction like this:

Unfortunately for me, they chose to make it a reaction that required the presence of a dummy catalyst, like this:

In case you don't know what a catalyst is, "A catalyst is a subtance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction, but which is left unchanged by the reaction."

I am still single. That says it all :)

#MadeMyTrip - A Hashtagable Memory

So, everybody had been off to trips during the holidays. I decided to take one too. Visited Sukanya - one of the sweetest girls on the planet. Has traces of lunacy but that is a family trait. Excusable. Similar lunatic strains have been detected to be present in strong proportions in her Big Bro(as she calls him), Bala. #CloselyKnitLooseFamily


We visited NASA. Strangely, everytime I read or hear "NASA", I am reminded of this famous scene from Annamalai. #VideoBreak


 Anyways, now that you are back from the youtube link to this post, let us continue. The place is interesting. There were a few puzzles in the booths there that left me slightly embarrassed in front of 8 year olds but you shall never get to know about that. There was a game in which one had to step on the alphabets to frame the word, which is the answer to a question displayed on a big screen. I am sure you were not able to visualize what I just said. Let us just say, it required the person playing the game to have considerable leg-brain coordination. Which I do not. I tend to twist an ankle every 2 days. And trip and nearly fall almost every day. So, again, kids from around the globe, with their parents, got to smirk and comment about me in their mother tongues. #Shakingoffdustfromshoulder


Moving on. We went on a tour of NASA. We took some pictures. I only remember one thing now - One of the engines in some XYZ rocket weighed 15650 pounds. And there was more than one engine in that rocket. That is all I remember now. #IDontRememberTrivia


The second most memorable trip was to the Houston Meenakshi Amman Temple. Sounds so odd no? But we went. Straight to their canteen. Hot Venn Pongal and Sambar. Delicious. But they did not have the one thing I have been dreaming of since I came here - Vadai. We went on Friday. Vadai only on weekends it seems. #VadaiPoche


THE most unforgettable thing was, we went to this small place by the lake where they had a few "Exhibition - Raattanam" type rides. Me and Sukanya's friend "Ethi-vittufied" Sukanya and goaded her on to take the roller coaster ride with us. Actually matter is, for me also Building-Strong-Foundation-Weak only, but Sukanya didn't know that. People mentioned that the "apparatus" was wooden and not metal and so it was uncomfortable etc. But yuvar honour, my problem was, I had a "falling" feeling in stomach. The ride started, Sukanya closed her eyes tight, and we went hurtling down at top speed and - screeeeeeeeeech. No, that was not the wind. My voice came tearing out of my lungs - "Ammmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa". My paatu teacher would have been glad to listen to me finally opening my mouth and singing aloud. I was so sure the train was gonna go awry and fly away from the rails. One consolation was, there was water all around. I would not have broken bones, or so I consoled myself. By the time I finished this risk analysis, the ride was over. We were dazed and got down. They said we could collect our photographs from some booth. But that booth was closed. So, there is no proof to record this historic incident in which we...err..I faced my fears and Sukanya did not. #HistoryWasMade


But, the one thing that upset her was - she lost her hair band. As for me, I found my voice. #NoHashTagForThis


Great trip. #Whattey


Claimer: This post is evidence that the author who has always enjoyed wasting time, now does that on Twitter. She is fascinated as to how the hashtag makes capturing the essence of complicated stuff simple and fun. #KeepItSimpleSilly

You have license??

"Step out of your car madam...You did not obey the traffic signal"

"No, I did...It was green when I crossed the junction..."

"I am saying no, madam..please come out first"

Grumbling internally, I got out of my car. The traffic cop obviously did not know my car AC's psychology. It hates the sun and hot weather. It refuses to work when its hot. Then what is the point, you ask? Well, I am not going to digress from the current topic and explain. My Ac's clock was ticking and I wanted to reach this new restaurant without being soaked in sweat.

A little background on the story - I had my visa interview that day(there, I bragged). The nice consulate lady approved my visa. I was happy and relieved and wanted to spend money to declare my happiness to the world. In this case, the hotel industry. Bala was with me(Good boy he is. Some times.) And yes, he is not Rajnikanth. But you are supposed to know who he is, if you read my blogs. Poke around the blog to find out, if you care.

This traffic cop stops me at around 1 PM under the merciless, blazing Chennai sun. Blistering Barbeque Nation I say!

"Who is this?" - Cop, pointing to Bala.

I internally smiled at the cop's question. If I tell his name, will you know? Do you read our blogs?

Anyways, I said, "Friend".

"You have license?"

"Yes"

"You crossed when the signal was red...Shall we tell your dad?"

"Dude, you dont want to, trust me" - Sound's mind voice.

I smile.

"It will cost you Rs.1500"

This time I laugh. I still dont talk.

A few seconds later.."Ok...give 350 and get the receipt"

"Sound, pay up. He has come down to 350...Lets get outta here" - Bala to Sound.

"Good that the cop cant hear you, Bala. Just keep quite. Else you will be the starter in Kodambakkam middle-of-the-street branch of Barbeque Nation." - Sound's mind voice. I still smile. I do that when I am amused, irritated, sad or angry. Translation for, always.

I look at the cop and still smiling, I ask, "How much should I give sir?"

He must have thought..."So, you are deaf?". Maybe he did think I was deaf. Because now the fine amount was reduced to Rs.100, only without a receipt. I did not need a receipt.

I paid up, got back my license and pulled Bala into the car before he could say anything else. Same side goal putter.

Had it been any other day, I would have stayed there and asked the cop to give me a proper receipt and would have even contested it in court. But, like I said, I got my visa approved that day. I was happy.

Yes yes, I just bragged again. And here is some more of it. I am leaving day after tomorrow and will not blog until I get a laptop, most probably. My last post in India :D

I am loving these "last" senti statements. It is fun.

Friendships – Do We Have Time for Them Today?

Time is the most precious commodity nowadays. Strangely, it is the only commodity in the possession of every human being in perfectly equal quantities, irrespective of his social status or any other humanly devised taxonomical term. In the age of globalization, when people get paid for devoting their time for any particular task, do we have time for people?

One day you get a call….”Hi…how are you…Remember me?”

Now that is quite a dangerous question… You have been in this situation before and you know it’s a deadly trap.. If it is one of your long forgotten cousins – you had better camouflage your poor memory by humming a hawing and keeping up a small general talk until mother arrives in the scene to take charge of the phone and at least save you by telling out aloud the name of the person at the other end. Then you sigh and forcefully take the phone from her and say.. ”Oh Satish… How is your girl friend da…Sumi right? You still have to give me a five star chocolate as I did not tell your dad about her the other day.. It has been 5 years since you got married to her!” (As if you knew all along that it was Satish to whom you were giving details like the exact altitude and dimensions of the clouds today)

But there is one breed of people and the memories linked with them that one shall never forget… Even the little tug of war you had with the bunny rabbit toy in LKG… The way you both had tried to bury your fallen milk tooth in the school ground… The exact number of idlis he took from your tiffin box during Chemistry class in the tenth standard…. The chalk pieces you threw at each other… The hours you waited for the result of the semester exam… The cups of coffee.. The movies… The teachers you had made fun of.. The classes you bunked for a nice afternoon siesta…

Is there not one huge archive of memories that seems to evade any new age memory ruiner like job stress or marital problems or the omnipresent traffic.. Don’t those memories always bring a smile to your lips when you reminisce about them… Don’t you leave out everything and rush to the hospital when you hear that your friend has met with an accident…? Don’t you plan your leave to attend your best friend’s wedding? Don’t you pray (albeit hurriedly) for your friend too when you stand before the gods every morning in your pooja room? Don’t her triumphs make you proud? Don’t you think of your friend when you get news about something she is desperately in need of…? Don’t you pick up the phone just to listen to her voice when you feel down?

Well…. Did anyone just say that people do not have time for anybody these days?

I say, we always have time, for those who matter, for those who care, for those people whom we care about.

Blood ties - we have none.

We dont always have fun

We are not colleagues

We dont meet up all days

We do argue

confide and giggle

We think things through

We laugh and we tickle

We are there for each other

Now and forever!

My dear friend,

Let us be the same

Till the end!