First Pour. Then Bite!

Matrimonial Matters

2011-10-10T13:49:00.000-07:00

Before you jump to any conclusion, let me put it out in the open that I am not remotely any kind of a marriage contractor. This post has nothing to do with any of the matrimonial sites either. But I dread the time when one of these matrimonial sites decide to collaborate with Facebook and puts 'Like' buttons below all the boys' pictures. Indian marriages would reach a whole new level. Imagine the conversations. 'Hey Ambujam. My son is Kausika Gothram. Simma Raasi. Eighty three 'likes'. Yours?'

I have absolutely no idea what to do when I go for a relative's marriage. If you look around in the city, you'll see every third building to be a marriage hall. But every time you have to go for a marriage, the marriage hall will be in the most remote part of the city, situated in a small alley that runs between a 'Ladies specialist' tailor shop and a 'Zam Zam Briyani centre' all the way in some faraway Kizhinjambakkam. If you search for the place on Google Maps, you might get a pop-up saying 'Are you kidding me?'. And the roads that lead you there will be like the surface of the moon. It amazes me how all the marriage halls inside the city land up being filled Exactly when my relatives want to get married.

Marriages have two problems. Number one - It's a marriage. Number two - Relatives. I postulated a Theory of Marriage Relativity.

1. The quality of the questions posed are the same for all relatives in uniform motion relative to one another around the marriage hall.

2. The stupidity of questions in a marriage hall, is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion, or of the age group of the person addressed.

The minute a 40+ relative walks up to you, you brace yourself for it; their primary question, the one that every human below the age of 25 dreads - 'Do you remember me? I used to come home when you were young.'

Well, the postman used to come home three times a week every week for 8 years. I don't even remember Him!

And if you're anywhere above 20 and remotely related to the person getting married, they'll go 'So? you're next?' and smile. Every time. They will have a smile planted on their face like they've just asked the final question on Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Why would they do that to us? When we go to an oldie's funeral and we're done mourning for the loss, we don't go up to the other oldies and say 'So? You're next?' And we certainly don't smile.

The only good part of a marriage is the food. I hereby petition that there be direct entries from the main entrance to the dining hall. When you're done eating, remember to pick up one very crumpled up bag containing a solitary coconut (that will help your mother make the next day's thenga chutney), two betel leaves (that your grandfather can chew on all night) and a packet of ghee-dripping sweets (that will help help provide some profit to your neighborhood heart surgeon).

Oh, If you're a regular at marriages, remember to carry one rupee coins. You need to put 101 Rupees in one envelope and give, no?

Tag! You're IT!

2011-07-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

Loyalty at Work

This is not my attempt at starting a comic, though that's been on my mind for long. I never can start a comic because I can write the lines, but I can't draw for peanuts. But hey, if I can Work my ass all day for peanuts, heck I can do anything for peanuts. I have not been writing for a long time. And that's because I was mostly busy being, rightfully put, a Soberman.

I once had this epiphany. I used to live near the beach. So every time I go to the beach, I see the regular hawkers who want to sell their home-made murukku and sundal yelling their hearts out to make a few bucks. Honestly speaking, even the Sundal sellers have a business plan. I call it 'Dwell till you Sell'. It means you dwell long enough around the same person, repeating the same things in the same tone, you disturb their activity, and in turn they will buy something from you just to shoo you off. End result - Product sold! The customers most affected are the poor gaja gaja couples hiding under boats, the oldies who go walking holding the hands of their hot granddaughters, the we-don't-know-if-we're-in-a-relationship-now friends who are arguing over the last 'mistake' they made, and most importantly the sad old husbands who want to take some time off from their nagging wives and come to get some peace. But all they get is 'peas'. Salted and peppered, from the pattani sundal seller.

I digress. Anyway, there was this one time when I was sitting with a bunch of friends and this hawker boy comes by.

'Anna, kadalai vangariya anna? Nalla irukkum na. Please anna, Kadalai vaangunga na. '

You see, that roughly translated means 'Anna, please get some peanuts. You'll love it. Get some peanuts'.

And I wondered. How much more peanuts can I get? Isn't that all I get at work? Well, I work at this IT company. I don't name it for legal reasons, my scrawny signature on some bond agreements, business relations rules and mostly because my company's name is too long and nodody really gives a damn anyway.

But I should have you know that I don't hate my job. I just want you to understand the following equation clearly.

Employee = Wet Garment.
Work = Water.
Manager = Dhobi.

And the job, is to Wring! They wring the work out of you, and as a lucky by product, squeeze the life out of you too. One stone. Two mangoes! Haiya, jolly! What is worse, is that I work at a service company. A 'service company' is just a fancy definition for 'International Slavery'. If you have heard of one those old Persian slave markets in your history books where fat Persian merchants sell poor Asian slaves chained in their necks, imagine the same Persian guy wearing a double breasted suit and a tie instead and the slave wearing an ID card tag for a chain and you're nearly bang on target!

Honestly, I should see them screaming "Brown Indian! Mid 20's! Robust. Twelve hours of code a day. Starting price 3.5 lakhs!", but instead they put it to us in a corporate way by saying 'We have submitted your profile to the client.' That's when it gets worse. It does not require a census and all to conclude that most managers are invariably fat. And their rotten biology teacher must have told them 'Beta, all body parts grow proportionately'. So the manager decides to put it to test, looks down at his belly, then looks up at his brain and thinks 'Tadaa! I must be so brainy!' So he decides to come up with 'ideas' for all round progress.

To put it frankly, he has only one idea in his head - To get his lipstick mark on the client's bum. So he does everything he can to make the client feel at ease. I have no idea how that rotten British accented white man who wants 'resolutions' to his problems, became God. But managers have to worship him, appease his every desire and if not, it gets 'escalated'.

God, how much I hate that word. I have grown to despise that word so much, that if I visit malls these days I mostly take the stairs or the elevator, because the minute I stand on the escalator, the only thought that runs into my head is 'You're being escalated.' and instead of heading to where I'm supposed to, I automatically begin to search for my manager's cabin on the mall floor. And it is not a pleasant sight when you stand outside Pantaloons, push the door open and ask the security inside 'Excuse me Sir. May I come in?'

I've always had half a mind to quit, and just move to the jungle and live on berries and greens. But the problem with the wilderness is, the chicken still clucks and the barley is still barley. For a man who looks at a chicken and imagines the Zinger burger and looks at barley and imagines Carlsberg, I knew it was going to be a torrid time living on berries. So, I let that option fly by.

I decide to move to better horizons soon, but for now, for myself and my fellow IT employees, here's a line of code I wrote for you to ponder over.

IF (Company_type = IT) && (Manager_size = Fat)
{
DoUntil (Death)
{
Work
}
EndDo
}
EndIf.

College Chronicles : The Smart, The Fat, The Geek and The Brat.

2010-12-07T14:05:00.000-08:00

Discounting the scanty few who either gave up because they had been diagnosed with a perennial case of writer's block, or had their houses ransacked thereby losing their trusted 128MB RAM assembled desktop in the process, or decided that blogging was too much to type regularly and decided to settle for tweeting instead, or plainly lost steam because their respective girlfriends/boyfriends/corporate jobs gave them only just enough time to do the basic everyday needs of brush, bathe, deodorize, eat and sleep, I think I can proudly proclaim myself the most infrequent blogger on this portal. Therefore, I decided to break out of the loop and blog. So, there.

This following is a brutally honest, long pending post that is dedicated to a group of four friends who went to college together; namely The Smart, The Fat, The Geek and The Brat. This might unravel and blatantly state some raw truths that either the referred four or victims of the activities of the referred four might not appreciate, but as one among the four, I don't give a rat's ass and I don't give a rat's ass about the ones who do give a rat's ass. So, Anchors away!

The four of them had met on the very first day in college and as fate had destined it or race/color(as we later classified ourselves) had categorized us, The Geek and The Fat sat together, thereby leaving The Smart and The Brat to help themselves. The bench was for two people and three could just perhaps have adjusted, but with The Geek and The Fat in a bench you could only possibly squeeze in Atom Ant in the middle. (There is so little space that, though small, an ordinary ant will still be squished and therefore it could only be Atom Ant.)

The Geek was mad about technology. He loved phones so much that it was rumored that he spoke more to his phone than on it. I wouldn't entirely call that a liability as his N-gage helped while away the time playing Tony Hawk's on it while the septuagenarian EC professor rambled away about circuits and his divorce. The Geek wore his pants on his chest, which The Fat loved to make fun of but which he hardly could because The Geek was predominantly in the other class for reasons aplenty. The only way you could identify the geek was with his always-planted killer smile and his ample usage of the term 'lol'.

The Brat was a happy-go-lucky fella as his name rightfully states and he had as much interest in attending college as Maneka Gandhi would have had in endorsing for KFC. The SFM professor threw him out on the second day of college and the EG professor had told him that his Engineering Drawing diagrams had so many board pin marks that he began to wonder if he was drawing in Braille! The only subject he loved was English. Sadly, the English Professor, a slightly 'synonym-of-happy' person had as much love for him. The Brat was known to hit on so much as a mannequin that dressed well and looked good. Yet he was found more in other colleges than his, thanks to the multiple cultural fests held in the city.

The Fat loved Subway. He loved Subway so much that he made everyone else in class love Subway. You see, The Fat isn't the kind of fat people you would see on one of those Subway brochures. He is just fatter than the other three, and plus Fat rhymed with Brat which made me helpless but to address him so. The Fat had the cleanliness of a skunk. His hostel room stank so much, that Onyx could have adopted it to use it as a model dumping ground. But it was a great place for us to bunk classes and watch the Fat's collection of devotional films or sit and do all the pending records. Well, the proud fact is The Fat was the only person to have an official relationship with another girl in class, which the other three invariably helped him with by buying or carrying veg puff or cold coffee or both.

The Smart was well, Smart. When the tests loomed, all four slogged just as much and while the three scored nearly around the same region, The Smart always somehow scored more. He had a mysterious past for none of us knew about his past relationships though we knew he did speak to someone over the phone. Yet, he helped the other three and took notes meticulously, so we never really could blame him. The Brat had one note for four years and other two probably had ten for the entire stretch. The Smart had one for each subject. The Smart was known to know it all. Krishna christened him rightfully so. The Smart made up new swear words, but the most favorite was 'Binny ke'.

Yet the four of them invariably hung out together, either to write fake letters and go play snooker or break out through fancy backside paths to go eat the Sub-of-the-day for lunch. Sometimes The Geek decided to stay with the other section and ditch the other three, but hey, he was The Geek okay!

To us, what was not cool was 'gay'. Our favorite phrase was 'Dude! That's gay'. All of us secretly loved the song 'Bubbly' by Colbie Caillat yet made fun of one another when someone was listening to it. Though The Fat thought he was in some way a 'West-coast Nigga from the hood', and The Geek nearly belonged to the other class and The Smart was ever so responsible and The Brat was always attending culturals or judging them, there was something that knitted them together. They were poles apart on so many different levels, yet chose to be one group everywhere. The entire college could identify them, for they stood out in every which way.

The credits though would be,
The Smart - Aadityaa Padmanaabhan. (You could master math by just counting the 'A's in his name)
The Fat - Deepesh Nair. (His bluetooth name was Fat, Black and Balding.)
The Geek - Dheepak Krishnamurthy. (He writes phone reviews now. I think he got married to one.)
Obviously, I am The Brat. I work at an IT firm now. Honestly if my life could suck more, it would have been a Eureka Forbes product.

But I think I survived my college life only because of these three, for their company was all that made me live through college. They helped, shared and stuck around as friends no matter how big a loser I acted as and I don't think anybody could have filled their place. If I could though, I should say thanks. But hey, that would be 'gay'!

Articles 377

2010-03-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with that controversial law. The pluralisation of the word stands testimony. The following is just to echo the woes of the enthusiast who yearns to get an article in his college magazine. He does realize that there are well over a three hundred and seventy seven articles under scrutiny and hardly ten make it all the way to the publishers’. So what does one have to write about that will effectively confirm his being one among the elite? For starters, never ask the editor or the editorial committee. For they would come up with their usual line “You can write about absolutely anything under the sun. But make it different and refreshing”. Fact is, most things under the sun are quite boring already and the remote expectation of something different yet refreshing under this sun would be a blue coloured watermelon.

If you were hanging onto the bandwagon that believes ignorance is bliss, you might go right ahead and write about something as mundane as your girlfriend’s pet walrus or the identical evil twin you wish you had. You skip watching a crucial show of Desperate Housewives, put in that hour’s thought, topped with continuous references to the thesaurus and bingo, you have crafted the most extraordinary article known to man. You are so completely satisfied with your accomplishment that you order in economic cheese bursts from Pizza Hut to celebrate the occasion and half way through your eighth slice, it hits you - Nothing about your article is good enough to make it all the way. Even those cool jokes you might have come up with about the uncanny resemblance between your girlfriend and her walrus would suddenly begin to appear stale.

The truth about a good article is a cult secret known to very few in this world. Some say it is humour, some say it is flowery language. The Johnny Bravos say it is better to write something boring and take the editor out for coffee instead. The glitch is, most editors are already male and I also clearly said we are not discussing Article 377 here. One who writes a good article takes something normal as a base and weaves something intriguing out of it. The topic is just a farce. Never think like a writer. Think like a reader and package in just enough so that they sit through your article and a smile plonks on their faces when they’re done. When you’ve begun to think like a reader, you’re already doing fine and dandy. There are only two ways to impress the editor - You either write something they love, or put a post-script mentioning the fact that you look extremely hot. So go get your paper and begin.

P.S: The irony in this whole plot is, I wrote this very article for my college magazine too. They didn't publish it. Honest.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to his Galaxy.

2009-08-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

I normally don't let random people on my bike, solely because the media has made such cataclysmic impacts on my paranoia and led me to believe that every hitchhiker is either after my blood or my wallet, predominantly the former as a threat for the latter. Yet, there was this shabby young urchin on the road, with his tiny little thumb jutting out as he longingly scanned the roads for a hitch. I never quite would understand why I stopped to pick him, but I'm glad I did, or I would have missed one of the most transcendental experiences of my life.

The boy saw my bike slow down and his face lit up like a torch, and he hopped on with glee. By the time he had thanked me for what I should approximate as the eighth time, I realized that his naked feet wouldn't even reach my footrest. Intolerably conversant that I am, I struck a conversation. The boy said his name was Satish. He was fifteen he said, but looking at his height, I'd swear that three feet four inches tops. He said 'I Should have been in ninth standard anna.' And when he said 'should', unless my rear-view mirror was deceiving me, I bet I saw his face shrink to the size of a hazelnut. He had hands that were unusually dark and bare with clear signs of cuts and burns. I asked him where he worked. He said he worked at a welding shop, eight hours a day at forty rupees a shift.

He beamed with pride and said that his brother was in the eleventh standard in a local corporation school and that he had chosen to work so that atleast his elder brother could go to school. 'I will also get back to education soon anna' he said, but my eyes were already moist. His mom was sick and couldn't work and his dad refuses to work, only taking rare shifts for a penny or two. He travels all the way from the middle of the ECR to R.A. Puram everyday so he could earn his forty bucks. He said he spared ten rupees a day for his bus and saved the rest for home. Unfortunately for him, his master had injured himself that day while welding and had called in sick. This little chap had worked alone all day, but had earned only four rupees. The closest stop from where he could get a four rupee ticket to his house was Adyar Depot, which is why he was frantically trying to hitch a ride, he said.

His day had been bad, and he had to forego his daily routine of tea and biscuits at Ravi Anna's stall for lack of funds. He said everything with the same stony face, with not a hint of pain or anguish while relating his agonizing tale. But my face was compromising generously for that absence. Life had come hit me full in the face and I was reeling in shock, trying to brace myself from the impact. I dropped him off at Adyar Depot and stuffed a twenty rupee note between his hands. I think he wanted to say a thanks but he couldn't. He mustered half a smile and it quickly faded.But I understood. And I smiled.

Superpig!

2009-08-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

Homer Simpson was close. Spiderpig was a revelation. Superpig is a pandemic. The flying swine is taking its toll and the nation's going berserk. Yet, on hindsight, what did swine flu actually do? Well, then there was boot-cut denims. Later came low-raise pants and slogan T-shirts. Now it's swine flu masks. It's the new fashion statement out there and it's catching up on people regardless of age.

Trust me, the aristocrat who sported a mask at noon and scorned at every coughing bystander at his workplace, shoves the mask on his convertible's dashboard and guffaws over the waitresses' lame humor as his scotch gathers dust. So, swine flu is cordoned off in fancy hotels is it? Swine flu isn't unemployment or poverty to shy away from the wealthy masses and the money-minting messiahs. This is a pandemic for Christ's sake and the kind of approach our nation is providing, only breathes new life in the hearts of stand-up comedians.

The media gives Swine Flu so much coverage that if God forbid, suddenly our country's premier passes away, we'd be informed a week after. Humans are paranoid and Indians are embodiments of the phenomenon. All that was required for them to knock the panic button was a scare. Boy, didn't the media give 'em one! Swine flu is just normal flu. Fine, pig flu. The symptoms are a little severe, but the deaths on average are one per a hundred thousand. The frequency of people dying out of road accidents is a fifteen percent larger amount. So will the entire nation begin to walk? Frankly, it would be a boon to obesity.

Swine flu should be handled delicately. People should be educated about its cause and effects. The swine flu masks should be worn with a motive, and definitely not because the girl next door smiles at you. She might be frowning under her mask for all you know. Administration of Tamiflu should be monitored. The nation needs a check, both financial and moral versions of it. Maybe if we did handle it that way, we might survive. God save me. For as long as there's something called Karma and someone called Murphy, it might always come right around to hit me and I should go hunt for my mask. Sigh.

The Education Proclamation

2009-07-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

Know not what education encases indeed,

A student in captivity, a quest to be freed;

A monotonous life, these jocks they lead,

Intellect a mockery, memory thy need.

A distorted concept, a theory begun,

by a man whose qualifications were financially won.

A professor by name, a teacher though none,

rambles incorrigibly about his plump toddler son.

Hours of agony, a timetable to fill,

Vodafone for company, yet classes to kill;

A mack truck amok, a rare ailment, we pray

hit our beloved professors, so make good our day.

Education, well fed should tingle one's brains,

though dismal if be, yields but no gains.

Children at heart, we students are same,

institutional education is homicide we proclaim.

Say E for Exams!

2008-11-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

"Remember Remember, the sixth of November for that is when my
semesters start.
And I find no reason why my exam season should ever be forgot."

This is just a famous statement from an epic movie called V for Vendetta, that I morphed a little to suit my troubled semester scenario. The big month has passed. We dreaded the month, we fought our way through it or rather crawled our way through it, but heck, now we are done, and boy, aren't we happy! I have said enough and more about my fancy educational system, but eventually when it all boils down to the big picture, we sure can't do much when we come to our exams, but put our hearts into it and give it our best. On the whole, I'd say I did a decent job. Frankly, for the kind of effort that I could muster, my class topper would have done better writing with his left hand, but hey, I am strictly not the kinds who choose my second revision over the final six balls of an action packed cricket game. I choose all fifty overs and then start hunting for my books.

It was a bright start, my first exam. See, there's this thing called effort and then there's thing called luck. When it comes to Anna University, you either give the former a full hundred percent, or spend your life at the church asking for a lot of the latter. Unfortunately for me, I give my best when it comes to the former, and then the latter is given in generous measure to everyone else in class. As usual, my percentage hovers around the same old vicinity. This time around, I can't really say how much of the former I gave or how much of the latter I got. Basically, I just hope both strike a chord. But then I realize that means I am again asking for the latter, because hope is just a decorative synonym for luck isn't it? Wait a minute, this is too confusing.

For those of you who have no clue what I study, I do Electrical and Electronics Engineering. If you've gotten through reading the entire name of my course in one breath, I suggest you give professional singing a shot. Everyone says that my course is comparatively the toughest. Because every other person who asks me for my course cracks the same 'You're gonna be an electrician?' joke. If so many of them have struggled to pass and landed up as electricians, it must be a tough course. Maybe it is, but I guess I'm doing quite fine and dandy. The only problem is, the dorks who frame the question paper somehow psychologically track what I know. And quiz me on the rest. I mean, the dorks are so thorough in their work that even if I study the book inside out, they ask what's out of portion and stump me again. At the end of it all, I'm done now and I'm a happy man. And hey, I think I might make a good electrician. I correctly fixed a bulb on the holder and all last week.

My phone - The I-phone!

2008-08-24T06:30:00.000-07:00

There! I've said it aloud. Now don't mock at me for announcing that my greatest fantasy is not some Hollywood celebrity woman with pink lips. Its the I-phone. To make things worse, the I-phone just got released in India. Unfortunately for me, the price is a little high for my budget. I am exactly a 30,870 rupees short. Fine yes, I have only a hundred and thirty bucks in my wallet, and I owe a couple of friends frugal amounts too. I was helpless. See, when the I-phone 3-G came out in the international market, it cost a little less that dirt. In today's rate of dollar conversion, it came to somewhere around nine thousand. I was like 'Whoa, that phone's mine'. I took all the massive price drop, stock exchange, dollar depreciation and all into account and calculated the Indian market's price to be close to atleast ten grand. And then it all happened.

Vodafone and Airtel are cheats! They promised the world's equivalent of goodies, but they never said they would take half your inherited fortune in return. The prices speak for themselves. A whopping 31,000 bucks for the 8GB and just a five grand extra for doubling your memory space. You Oh-so-clever people, now who will even go for the 8GB one? They would always pay that extra surplus and get the 16GB one. Extra revenue for those fashionable Indian tycoons. They should have just informed us that the I-phone's entry would be only for those Forbes India Money Minters' hot daughters and punk sons. The normal humans like us can keep fantasizing. And how!

The standard nation wide survey conducted by M.P.P (Murali's Poll Plaza. Its an international critically acclaimed psychological survey scheme that scans people's faces and deduces answers. Its 97% accurate.) shows that 80% of all I-phone users do not have any clue about 70% of the I-phone's applications. This point, yes this very point shows why people have money and they don't know what to do with it. Lets take a quick example. This business magnate whose name I refuse to mention, was one of the first who queued up to buy the I-phone. (It was actually his driver who stood in the queue all night, but this guy just took his place in the morning to pose for the daily papers.) He picked up the phone, unwrapped it so quickly like one of those toy-train sets to eight year olds, and then switched it on. The glee on his face spoke for itself. Then the stand up comedy started.

1. Muthu, where is that pen thingy which you press on the screen with? (He was referring to the stylus, which the I-phone does not provide.)

2. How do I make a call? The green button is not there! (To which the driver said 'It needs activation saab')

3. Can I atleast play games? Where is Snake? (Three onlookers were giggling so loudly, they could hardly suppress themselves.)

Then the man left, much to the relief of the Airtel office staff. This is why I wonder how money saturates in the hands of people who never know what to do with it. They either buy fancy cars, bikes or gadgets which they can never imagine complete utilization out of, or stock it in banks and multiply the amounts so they can start wondering what to do with it afresh. I really hope Dad increases my pocket money. If I start saving by tomorrow, maybe by 8017, I would have bought the I-phone. Donations are welcome.

The Educational Block.

2008-07-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

The title is supposed to be an intended pun. They built a brand new block for our department. Its huge, tall, spacious, breezy, attractive and unfortunately far far away. Its already quite a mess that we study in an institution that is placed a comfortable 38 kilometers outside the city limits. Now they want us to walk inside the campus too. We did not deserve this. They promised us air-conditioned labs, spacious classrooms, stunning architecture, great upholstery and a whole new approach to technical education. They just chose to hide the own blatant fact that could generate oodles of anger and frustration from an already disgusted batch of students. They built the block a mile away from the bus stop, a mile away from the canteen, and the biggest blow to this huge mishap - a glad two and a half miles from the main college gate. For all those foodaholic obesity endorsing KFC loving friends of mine, their attendance just took a bullet to the temple. They choose to bunk college rather than walk the extra mile which brings about disastrous after-effects like elongated classroom sleep and cruciating ankle and joint pains.

I do not blame my college. I can't do so anymore. If there were any more accusations that I could file, the book would be fatter than the bible. Sometimes if there is too much of something, you just wouldn't know what to do. In the case of my college, its area. Acres and acres of land are stagnating in and around, they just don't know what to do with it all. So they hatch a cunning ingenious plan - Start scores of new courses, build huge blocks in far away locations, and let the students walk to their misery. The block is just a fancy looking three-storeyed-so-far brick and concrete structure, with six acres of barren land for neighbors. Occasionally cows come right into the block, establish proof of their digestion and walk out with elan. Amidst all this, we students fight our way to grab some amount of education.

The block is not even completely constructed yet. There is still work going on, and occasional lectures are interrupted by deafening sounds and crunching noises that come as a boon to both the students and the lecturers. The lecturers, with no clue what they were teaching, could cover up saying they had said it right and that we had heard it wrong. The students cash in on the opportunity to slyly gossip amongst themselves and call the teachers names, with no worries about being questioned for the same. Sadly, there is a minor glitch to the whole plan. Just when you think you have come up with the coolest comment about the teacher, and you are yelling your heart out like you are atop a lighthouse, all the construction work will suddenly stop. Not just one or two of them; All of them! And your voice will echo all around the classroom with that sense of pride and establishment while the dumbfounded teacher will stare at your face like it were made of pure spotless gold. The rest, is all but a few breezy walks to the dean's desk and back.

Altogether the department has not gotten a makeover or gained a touch of class, as they promised us. It has just moved a few hundred meters away, is just as bad as ever and has only managed to generate a lot more dirt than it usually did. It was usually just in our brains, but now they are emphasizing it by showing live samples outside our block. It sure sounds like fun, to walk a mile a day. But for people with already caving in figures, and minimal enthusiasm to institutional education, this block is proving to be quite a block for and to academics. They misunderstood the phrase 'The Journey to Education'. God help them!

Not so 'New'ton!

2008-05-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

There have been times when I have wished that I could not anticipate my next step. Perhaps wish that my next step would be in Venice or Rome, but please please not back home. There is nothing to look forward to, nothing fancy that is going to happen. Every next step has the standard footing. You always step on solid land supporting all your mass. In Chennai, with lots of cows it might be a little different, but cumulatively speaking you can't really hope for something exciting out of your next step. That is why I love the concept of weightlessness. Now don't go classifying me under the list of geeky scientists who waited for fruits to fall on their heads so they could stumble on astounding phenomena. In my defence, it was sheer luck. I keep telling my parents that he was born earlier, at a time when 'It' was not found, and so when the apple fell, he just christened 'It' one tech-savvy name called 'Gravity' and bang, his showcase fills with awards and he becomes a scholar. Its fate, that's what it is.

Logically speaking, if I had taken birth back then, and say, a pomegranate fell on my head, I would have done the little math I knew and named it, well, say 'pomegravity'. See, I could do it too! He just jumped the gun, the lucky fella. Optimistic person that I am, I still sat under trees wondering if I could get a brainwave. Dogs chased me. No math there. I discovered this phenomenon called 'fear'. Now that I am part of the herd, I realized I should atleast bother to offend those great discoveries that eluded me. So I have always been bent on defying gravity. I've got everything that there is to go to outer space. Just that one thing, money. That's what went missing. So I'm still at home now.

Weightlessness is such a beautiful thing to experience. Imagine being at a place where your next step could be no step at all. Well, its like stepping on nothing. That nothing is not the literal nothing, it is, say nothingness, though there is no such word. See, its complicated. We'd have to get to physics and then you'll see how bad I am at it. No I don't think its worth the gamble. Think about having no mass to support you as you drop your foot on the ground. As in not ground, but yes, dropping it. Moving down like free-flow salt, feeling like paper, with everything zooming by, and nothing to step on, it must be an incredible feeling. I have always wanted to just get into an express elevator and like they show in all those action-flicks, bust the cable and fall down free. Weightless. Those few seconds are worth the death I tell you.

The sad part is, I live in Chennai and the tallest building, a meagre fourteen floored apartment was such a celebrated affair that they advertised for it all over the city. Eventually it became a residential complex, and as usual clothes came up to dry on the balcony rails. With buildings this tall, by the time the cable rips, you'd be R.I.P. To make things worse, lifts in Chennai are like aeroplanes. Children love going up and down in the elevator, and pressing the button is like free candy. They just keep running down flights of stairs, pressing the button, and rushing down again. Finally when I stop at the ground floor, I'd be monitoring a mini-creche, and two buttons would have come off the panel. Such an enriching experience. Oh, and that button-pressing thing - I used to be the fastest at that in sixth grade.

Its not practically viable, and I already got an earful for asking my dad for a luxury sedan. I don't think asking him for a time-capsule would sound very convincing. My space flight's become a far fetched wish now. I'm going to try weightlessness though. With my physique, the demands are that I starve for a month. If I do suvive the ordeal, I swear to God I'd be weightless. I hate to blame fate though. Damn you Newton!

-Supermur.

The Gen(d)eration Gap.

2008-04-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

Imagine being in an institution that believes all males are out to get every other female in the vicinity and the only way they could stop them is by being a not-so-co-ed anymore college. Yes, this is the dismal state of a score of engineering colleges in and around the city. My college does no such thing. The men and women are already at loggerheads. Blasphemous as the principle may sound, the measures they adopt to keep this strategy going will give you a taste of how extraordinarily clever the faculty here is like. Oh, so that's how they cut down on the count of all those love marriages in the city. Nip it in the bud. Kudos! Difference is, now men seem to have begun to look for women in other 'normal' colleges or sadly grown to become icons of singularity. Here's how they go about it. Women : The supposedly delicate fragile souls made of glass and rose petals, who just got teleported from Heaven's north end. Men : Hideous heartless women-loving, correction women-Only loving greyhounds who are ready to risk anything to woo a woman. I cannot deny the fact that there are men of that category, the ones with stunted brain growth, compensated by the size of their mustaches and who sit on low-lying walls and whistle at every woman who walks by and thinking one would actually reciprocate, walk up to them and express their undying love. Unfortunately their cheeks go red by then, and they become bait to a host of swear words and they eventually give up on their Machiavellian exercise.

Here's a quick list of the measures they adopt to pull down boy-girl interaction in the campus.

1. Reduce the number of breaks you get during the day. If one class is done, make sure you keep screwing the children before you see the next teacher waiting outside. Now Re-screw!

2. If a boy and a girl are found talking, call them for a disciplinary meeting. Warn them that if this happens again, their parents will be called. (Yes yes, I know you're rolling on the floor now, but we do have parent-teacher meetings in colleges here. This is to bridge the gap between the student and the teacher. Oh damn you, if that were your ambition, spare the darned women for us!)

3. Make sure that there are regular patrols to check for cross-gender interaction during class hours. If found, Attack!

4. Always have club meetings and cultural fests supervised by teachers. Put boys at the far back, so they can hoot. Put women in the front end. Faculty sit in the middle. No no, it cannot be the other way round. Because the boys will be able to turn around and see the women then. They should only be able to see their backs and that too beyond the drum sizes of their teachers if they try.

5. Men and women walk in separate files. Sit separately. Eat separately. Bathrooms are placed at either ends or on different floors. Most importantly, staff rooms should be placed at crucial locations between bathrooms. There is no sparing anyone here. This is war.

If this is not enough there are various other small-scale methods done to make sure men and women feel that its wiser they plot methods to rob the World Bank than try conversing in institutional premises. After all, we are not being observed, we are being Tracked! Fighting this killing spree, there were groups of men and women who got together in the weekends in places far far away from college and planned ways to converse in college. They found the bus-stand a probable spot because the staff concentration there was low. (My college did that only now.) Unfortunately for them, drivers were spies. Meet the parents! Again! They thought they could speak during their sports hours. Men and women were assigned different grounds. What could the children do? They did the one thing they could do best. Panicked. They tried to rise to the occasion and get back at the semi-barbaric staff members. One Guevara got suspended. The rest of them were never found again.

The Great Wall of Chennai
This is a famous story in the south. If you haven't heard of it yet, you're missing something. A college down here went to the very extreme by putting up a wall between the corridor and classified the left side for men and right side for women. This is so because they believed the men might step on the dupattas of the women and make fun of them. For the love of God, if the men were this jobless, they would have passed. Thus it so became that men and women go to the same class, traversing different paths and under the supervision of different teachers and so discipline and decorum prevailed and all was well again and all the teachers lived happily ever after. The students on the other hand, grew longer hair and formed rebel groups to fight back. Maybe they are still fighting to this day. My heart goes out to them.

-Supermur.

Its one Whole Mess.

2008-03-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered if the person who cooks for you might have previously worked for a large scale stationery manufacturing unit? Has it ever hit you hard in the gut that your eating, if spotted by others might relatively resemble a cow's? Have you ever been amazed how they could so meticulously make Natraj Rubber in the form of a perfect circle, adorn it with intricate striations and put it on a plate and give it with 'kuruma'? If yes, then you might be in the vicinity of the ever-glorious S.S.N boy's hostel mess. Welcome to my world! I'm not a hosteler. I perennially strive not to be one. But situations force me into residing there frequently, They make 'parotas' for dinner, or so they claim. I walk in, pick up their stainless steel plate, which has S.S.N triumphantly embossed on it, sparkles so brightly like those Vim commercials, you could look at your image on it and slick back your hair with pride, and a friend goes 'It's parotas today. Good luck!'. The 'Good Luck' part more or less spoke for itself. I should have realized I was going to have a dinner I'd never forget as long as my veins pumped blood into my arteries.

They serve Natraj Rubber. Correction! Natraj Rubber with salt! It didn't taste that bad. It just didn't taste. I cant deny the fact that I'm not that well built. But with ten slender fingers if you're not able to pull off a piece from a wholly circular parota, you're either under malnutrition or this must be the literal sense of explaining 'food for thought'! It doesn't come off, and the circumference is too large to pop the whole thing into your mouth. Even if you employed your muscular friends to pull off a piece, the chances of you chewing it down your oesophagus is one per thirteen million. Good luck with it. The kuruma is just fuel to the fire. Half-cooked vegetables straight from the shredder, boiled and dropped into masala water. That is the recipe yes, but copybook fashion doesn't work here. The kuruma warrants criticism. If there was some syndrome to nullify your sense of taste, perhaps then you might give this three stars. Sanity might just pop the finger. I stay in the hostel only because of basketball practice. If not for my passion for the sport, so endorsed by my previous post, I would be at one of those mobile consumer courts now.

They have a menu. They serve different dishes every day. Maybe they thought showing variety to garbage might entice the consumers. Their full course meals are a delicacy I must say. Their buttermilk, its sheer class. Here's how it works. Open the tap and show a spoonful of curd every 6.7 seconds, and Voila! Buttermilk in a cup. Oh, and if you have time, please find out if there is any company in southern Tamilnadu that makes 'Sriram bread'. Or 'Real' mix-fruit jam. Though their coffee is some consolation, expecting humans to survive eight hours of Engineering jargon on a cup of coffee is a little too taxing. The mess staff are opportunist too. I don't blame them. They are forced to eat their own food. Amul butter - The one branded item that is there on their shelves, and they stock it. See, we know Amul. It's the taste of India. Yet they stock that and give us 'Real' jam instead.

They don't let us into their kitchens. They guard their trade secrets with their lives. The mess meetings don't make a difference either. When you are a little happy that the new caterers seem to be making palatable food, some God-forsaken loser picks a fight with some worker and out of sheer emergency, they bring back the old guys. Its the same old 'A coffee a day keeps your senses at bay' life again. Imagine living a life where you slog it out on the court for four hours at a stretch to come back and eat something that resembles your pant for dinner. Its worse when your mother's a brilliant cook and you a foodaholic. It is by no means fun, having your eyes closed and using the other side of your spoon to push the food down your throat, so it doesn't touch your tongue. Crocin should be after food or before food, not the food itself. This is a blow to all human obesity. If you are trying to cut back on the finance, yet you want to knock off that little extra fat around your pot-belly, Fitness One isn't always the call. There are economical options around. Give this a shot. Visible changes in seventeen days guaranteed, or we sponsor your medical expenditure. Hostel Mess - The taste numbs you. Literally.

-Supermur.

I had a Ball!..

2008-03-04T11:35:00.000-08:00

Old men with pathetic knowledge about the sport come up with such beautiful phenomena sometimes. This septuagenarian relative of mine with his hair so nearly white, it would stand apart in the dark, once told my dad "This basketball is such a stupid game. I mean, why would you want two teams to go put it in two different baskets when one will do for one ball. They should either reduce the number of baskets or provide another ball. Why, football's worse. When they struggle so hard to bring the ball all the way with their feet, they put the darned goal outside the boundary line!" My poor dad had a tough time explaining the obvious, but coming to think of it. sport sure is demanding. Having dedicated half my life to sport, I seem to realize that, if I had saved all that time and energy I could have completed all my tasks with ease and had spare time go roam the world hunting for golden geese!

S.S.N College of Engineering does not boast of a brilliant basketball team. It doesn't have to. Others know that's the truth. See, we run by modesty! We are a strict no-no to endorsements. But we would appreciate it if you sang ballads in our praise. Maybe come up with witty nicknames like S.S.N.B.A ( You know, its the .. well .. the combo of S.S.N and N.B.A and the like. What's all that gray matter stagnating for? Knock up that top floor and come up with innovative stuff, people!) I mean, all this being voluntarily done by you. We don't ask you to. Practice being at at a fifteen to six in the morning, when the dogs still are asleep with their tails tucked in, waiting to snap at any object that moves, their ears pricking, their noses scanning for fresh ready-to-be-dug-into meat, players jog, jump, roll and sprint with dogged determination. And with sleeveless jerseys that let the cold air seep in and eat out your warmth, bring goosebumps all over your skin and make your fingers go numb, and with shorts so small, had they been any shorter you might not have much of garments on you, basketball players have a grueling, devastating time on the court. To come garnish our woes, it will rain at half past six.

Maybe its all by chance or Mr.Varun and The Madras Meteorological Department had some tie-up I do not know. But at half past six sharp, the showers come down and they sure come down with all the might they can muster. The cold pricks and the water runs down our backs chilling us and we go all 'Brrrr' yet we run. We run not because our college wants us to, not because we were born Olympic Athletes, not remotely because we could outrun the rain, but we run because its in us to run, it takes something to be a sportsman and we have scooped it up, and we shall hold it aloft , be it rain or shine. It does sound more or less like Rocky, I know. Why, with a little of Bill Conti and a backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial, this would be Rocky too. Difference is, we'd be around twelve to thirteen semi-naked 'Rocky's with S.S.N on our chests, signs of sleep in our minds and rabid dogs for security.

Coming to think of it, S.S.N came runners at Hindustan and got third at Crescent and at Rameswaram. Basketball sure does have its share of fun. So what if it means eating masala plastic for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and taking bath under gushing water from crevices in Corporation taps in the wide open, and sleeping in rooms with fans with a blade missing, and lights that work like lightning. Like lightning in the sense, they never stabilize. They just keep flashing like lightning and you eventually land up switching them off and playing 'Who's hitting who' in the dark. That's a fun game actually. You can go hit whomsoever you want and run around aimlessly. Nobody would ever know who has hit who. That is unless they don't catch hold of your hand or your watch or something. If that happens, you can just pray to the holy almighty that the sun never rises again for the rest of human existence. But in the larger perspective we get to play basketball for our college, get to go to class once every four weeks, and roam the world with not a care for all valuable education, and dedicate all that we have to sport, sport and sport alone. All Hail Rocky!

-Supermur.

Foolosophy!

2007-12-12T10:12:00.000-08:00

Before proceeding to bestow my disparagement on the very profession of mankind that students have unanimously developed a grudge against, I wish to courteously apologize for my dormancy in the blogging circuit for the past two months. I should attribute the reason to the so-called devoted attachment towards my textbooks that I reluctantly developed for fear of being grounded for eternity, a phenomenon which I strongly believed I would never brand until it started snowing in Chennai. After all, this was a dying attempt at salvaging the dignity I had lost due to my funereal performance during my first year, which was responsible for making me lose my beloved tresses(I'm laboring to restore them back to their lost glory now!) and for awakening the critic in my father. After all if I were an embodiment of cynicism, it should be apparent that it was a hereditary characteristic trait that attained saturation in the genes which were inherited from my dear parents. But what amazes me most is their incredible capability to steer any arbitrary random topic towards my performance and utilize it to wreck my stature. Why, last month I accompanied my dad to the vegetable shop and he tells the vendor 'Oh, How I wish my son's marks were half as appreciable as these carrots!'. I mean, Carrots?? Impervious as your heart maybe, no sane mortal can digest his educational footing being compared to carrots. I could picture myself riding the mule with a garland around my neck, and the music playing in the background. Alas! All I could do was bite my lip and romp back home, cursing my luck. There began the epic journey to improve my scores, and prove my parents wrong, which is why I was in volatile hibernation for the past few months.

I was always under the assumption that a Doctorate in Philosphy would be granted to those who had atleast the barest minimum of English knowledge, but three professors today came to shed some light on my hypothesis. The first class of my fourth semester was enough to help me get a stable idea of what I should be expecting from college in my near future. I promise you, either Satan himself worked at the employment exchange and appointed such highbrows or these losers were the only scapegoats ready to travel a solid forty kilometres outside city limits to teach students as disinterested in education as we were. At 8.10 sharp, the lady walks in, does not so much as bother to even introduce herself, and starts writing things on the board in such miniscule font, my poor classmates had to strain their eyes to even comprehend a fourth of what had been scribbled there. Her reason for the same being 'Children, I write so smallly because I don't want yoo to copy anything down, but imbibe everything into yoour mind'. Bah!. She stressed on the word 'imbibe' because I think she wanted to prove she had her share of professional jargon. The next period was no better because the professor introduced himself as Prakash, with a Ph.D in some imaginary institution, and went on corroborate his theory by lecturing on plain philosophy for the next fifty minutes, during which I had to be awakened twice by my geek-lord neighbour who was taking down notes(For 'precaution' it seems!). He spoke in such hushed tones, ears the size of Jar Jar Binks wouldn't do much good in deciphering his Greek and Latin lecture. When students have a strong notion that college textbooks are the sole reason for the wood-pulp and papyrus deficiency in this part of the Earth, what makes these professors come to this blasphemous conclusion that we would browse through our lessons before sitting for our classes!

The last person in this list of prodigious academicians was a man whose name I refuse to disclose but who I am very sure would have grown to become a fantastic motivational speaker had he been a tad more proficient in the English language. He rambled on for about twenty minutes about his rise to fame, parts of which I could unravel that included his struggle for existence in a remote village somewhere in the middle of nowhere, his passion for teaching and his 'girlfriends' back at school.(He giggled when he said that). But the best part was when he said that his present position should be wholly accredited to his vast English knowledge and communicational skills. Allow me to reproduce the exact statement implemented - 'I have come here to this level, mostly because of my large English skills which you will soonly visualize, and because I never dashed into anything, but took them slowly and steadily'. For the love of God, people with such staggering English knowledge and stunning vocabulary are bound to give budding lexicographers a whole new lease of life! Oh dear Lord, I loyally beg thee not to provide forgiveness by taking a dig at my semester marks, for having taken pot-shots at my lecturers. After all you do know that criticism runs in my very veins. Oh, and if there is any surplus amount of blessings remaining, you still have that I-phone pending! Thank you!

-Supermur.

Carry On Canine!

2007-09-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

Right from those 'Man's best friend' times to the present 'Ow! Take whatever you want but please don't hurt me!' era, dogs have unanimously established themselves as icons of evolution. They have grown to become rulers of the rayless roads, scavengers of the summer sun, perpetual stars as an embodiment of passionless procrastinating life where all that is demanding is food, sleep and scrutinised security to their area earmarked, by relentlessly barking their larynx off at other innocent four-legged trespassers. Right from my very childhood, dogs have always given me the creeps. Immaterial of their size, age and appearance, dogs have possessed this miraculous capability of terrorizing my glass-like soul, effortlessly generating goosebumps all over my skin and spontaneously sending that chill down my spine, giving me the feeling of suddenly being teleported to the North Pole and made to stand on my toes with the barest minimum of clothing to support my frail figure. Sometimes I get this Gandhian pump to fight the fright, ward off all panic and develop that aura of indifference towards those vicious hounds, yet there still exists that surplus minimum balance of fear that initiates those batteries on my legs to click to life.

Motion is the most uplifting spirit that these mangy curs could ever set their eyes on. They so appreciate motion that they find it a delighful hobby to chase anything that is on the move. Curse my luck, most of the times that 'anything' is me! I'm not striving to humour you, but pups are also spine-chillers to me. The minute I hear any female voice that might remotely resemble this statement "Awww, such darling puppies", I make sure I'm out of the picture in record time. Why, they are so intimitidating that every time I cross a litter of pups, I keep turning back to look if one has followed me, and even if I feel a slight brush on my leg it makes me flinch. Thankfully, it lands up mostly being a stone or an overgrown hedge. If I ever came face to face with a boggart, I swear to Lucifer, it would take the shape of a Scottish greyhound baring its pointed teeth, waiting to pounce on me and tear me to shreds. Brrrr!

The prime reason I should attribute this dreadful horror of mine to would be this incident during my early fourth grade. It was during those glorious pre-adolescent days when all happiness and enjoyment concentrated itself on whizzing by in my gleaming pink bicycle.(Lets face it! Am I to blame if the only cycle I happened to own was bubblegum pink in color? It paid off too. The freckled pony-tailed girl from across the road always wanted to ride it ok!). Those adrenaline packed cycle races refereed by our half-blind watchman with his wet green whistle, the petty quarrels on the finish line, exchanging cycles and comparing each others grandeur and finesse - Memories sure come flooding by. Now during one of my weekend lap practices, I happened to run over the paw of Jiggly or whatever that brown red-eyed hooligan dog was called and in a flash it had gotten up and started chasing me. I cycled fast, fast as in formula fast, trees flying by, with the gush of wind in my face pushing my eight-year old hair back, while the dog continued its heated pursuit. All of a sudden, Bang! No no not a truck, but a round smooth stone laid in the middle of the path trips me and I fall and bruise my knee. Yet it was not the physical pain that traumatised me but that lofty-tailed specimen on my very heels. But the lousy mongrel came closer and closer and eventually ran right past me into the wilderness beyond, making me wonder if I had been born retarded or if I just grew up so!

Yet, the damage had been done, and the fear factor stayed on which is why nowadays even if dogs come expecting compassion, I quietly slink away to safer enclosures and try and reduce the furious beating of my heart. I also strongly believe that Jiggly communicated details of my appearance to every other dog on Earth via some huge global canine broadcasting system, which is why every dog I see hates me or atleast appears to do so. I do understand I make funny weird punching and twisting actions at chained dogs, but that does not mean they should forego their iron-willed attachment to their beloved humans should they! I still keep my fingers crossed and wait for that one epic day when the actual bonding happens between me and a mutt. Until then, Cyonophobia will continue to haunt my sensitive soul and only time can tell.

-Supermur.

A 'Class' Act!

2007-09-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

It amazes me how the theory session of a bespectacled scholarly lecturer boasting of an engineering coupled with a doctorate degree, rambling on for eternity about the-devil-knows-what to a class of retarded nincompoops at a reputed institution could be overshadowed by the monotonous incomprehensible buzz of a timorous bumblebee, that seemed to appear so stoned and inebriated, it toiled to avoid the fan blades and thus produced such life-like swerves and fakes which if showcased might make the U.S Air Force feel that they sure have plentiful to be desired. A ceremonious welcome, gracious fanfare, thunderous applauding to its impeccable maneuvers and that incredible omnipotent feeling in its miniature heart - It sure was the winger's day out, I tell you.

It makes for no rococo news, the apparent fact that engineering teachers are spotlighted for this phenomenal yet counterproductive combo - Extensive knowledge and piteous communicational skills, but this incident sure proved to be an eye-opener to blind believers like me. As long as there exist those stereotypical girl gangs that sit together and host round-table conferences about the new 'cute guys' in town, who are willing to excitedly shriek and screech to anything that has the closest resemblance to an insect, teachers around the world will continue have a reason to despise the power of nature. Insects have this inconquerable power of bringing out the diversity in a class. This one visit brought to light those unsung heroes who give their 'swish swish' swatting actions to woo the abominable female crowd, those groups of weirdos who act gallant but are internally dying of fright, those normal people who act indifferent towards the bee's flight and most importantly those flopshots who laugh at others who shriek, and yet produce an encore when faced with a similar situation.

So the next time you are caught amidst a cruciating theory session, give this a try.(Statutory Warning : Method might not produce similar results in non co-ed institutions.)

1. Get a bumblebee with a belly diameter of a minimum of one and a half inches.(That is to prevent it from entering people's ears, though I strongly oppose that theory. What on this holy Earth, makes you think that the bee would choose to explore your elongated wax infested tunnel over the refreshing outside atmosphere?)

2. When the teacher turns to make his/her graffiti on the board, gently let the bee loose.

3. Start an initial mellow scream to rejuvenate the lifeless sleeping beauties in class.

The rest is history my friends. Just watch the action!

Review : Simpsons - The Movie.

2007-08-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

Hilarious one-liners, subtle but wry humour and an involuntary inclination towards nature's assets is all that this animated motion picture promised its viewers and it sure gives liberal measures of them, and how! Largely influenced by run-of-the-mill comedy flicks infested with over-dramatic exhibitionist schlock jocks on fast cars, making fruitless attempts at active comedy, watching something like The Simpsons makes us feel that we ought to appreciate its makers for bringing about such mellow witticism on screen. Aptly chosen to be the messiah for propagating environmental concern, Green Day sure does give the film an electric start. Though making mincemeat of poor Mr.Flanders' dignity appeared a little gross, the introduction of Homer Simpson as the cynical, indifferent and buoyant citizen brings about quite a few loud chuckles from the audience. And just when you feel that they have made a hash of the film by making Homer adopt a pig, the hilarious Spider-pig number has you in splits. Young Lisa Simpson, being the sole environmental activist makes for some serious viewing, though they should have cut down on all those indifferences shown by the citizens of Springfield, which included her mother.

Homer's attraction to burgers and the pig-crap disaster might sound a little far-fetched, but dunping it into the lake, getting into the back of the car and asking 'pig' to drive - Hilarious! The Bart-Flander bonding brings about some stirring moments, while the Alaska trip and the clap induced avalanche propel us into bouts of side-splitting laughter. Homer's ignorance to choose glue over Jetpacks, and the hands stuck on pants incident are clear indications of the maker's prowess at timely humour. The last dying attempts to dispose off the bomb and Homer's daring bike in the ring stunts were anticipated, but the bomb bouncing on the hole's circumference sure provided some edge of the seat moments to the crowd. The ultimate duel with Russ Cargill, and Homer's rollicking compliment towards Maggie prove to be highly memorable moments. Even if you happen to be wholly unconcerned about Mother Nature, the next time you drop a candy wrapper, images of Lisa Simpson holding her pamphlets in one hand and her boyfriend's hand in the other are bound to flash across your mind and try to arouse some diffidence. Altogether, if you want that bulky load off your heart, you really don't so much as bother about content, and are game for some worthy laughs over soda and popcorn, believe you me, The Simpsons is your safest refuge!

-Supermur.

The Battle for the Tresses!...

2007-07-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

Overcome by grief, misery and sheer sorrow, I surprisingly fumble for the keys on my keyboard as the eligy keeps resounding in my eardrums. Visions of oneself in the mirror is uplifting to most normal civilized mortals, yet today every time I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like I'm staring at Medusa and death swallowing me whole seems to be a lot more delightfully satisfactory. The change is unequivocally apparent, too prominent to warrant omission and too cruciating for my delicate soul to digest. The damage has been done, and whether striking compensation and metamorphosis to indemnify the loss will occur, only time can tell. After five and a half months of fierce war, raging battles and conversational hostilites, my parents finally persuade me, or rather horsepower me into losing my darling honeybunch tresses, my treasured possession, the love of my life, the essence of my soul, and now - Gone! Gone with the wind, gone for eternity, either swallowed by the vast emptiness of Onyx recycling plants, or manifested itself in the depths of the plastic bin outside the salon!

Ouch! It Hurt! As the sparkling aluminium scissor blades went 'snip snip' I could literally feel my heart being placed on the platter and a school of vicious piranhas feasting on it with delight, devouring them as if there were no tomorrow, thanking their lucky stars that Christmas had come early - Hallelujah! Being born into an orthodox staunch Iyengar family (And no, you ignorant dorks, Iyengars have nothing to do with Kabbalah. Why, we don't even listen to Madonna!) there are certain mandatory regulations to be upheld. But I guess luck shone in the horizon, my family were not the 'gaga' kind, whipping children with manicured fingernails and electric blue hair-streaks. Yet they were a little skeptical about my sporting eight inch strands of conditioned hair down my face while going for weekly poojas in the temple, and occasionally they raised a feeble complaint but which were drowned by my pitied pleas for its existence. Over a period of time, I guess they learnt to overpower my petitions and with my recent results being a dismal letdown, they grabbed the platinum opportunity to drop the axe. No points for guessing that I had to oblige, and here I am - with stereotype short hair which makes me look like some kind of retarded inter-galactic bounty hunter scanning the ether and being so jobless to grow staggering long hair and then mercilessly slice it off immediately thus making the efforts futile and bland. But lets face it, I liked it unkempt and messy. Well, you have complaints too? Try a wishing well, because I'd turn a deaf ear!

Life is comparison, and having witnessed the wavy slicked back hair seventeen times a day, it makes me feel so weird to stare at myself in the mirror. Even the darned comb runs through my hair so fast, it brings cherished memories that prick my already auburn oven-roasted heart! And the look on my face - No mastercard would ever fit the bill this time! Its priceless! Even the guy at the salon reciprocated my nostalgia as he humbly did his job to perfection and watched me transmogrify into a freak! Such is life people. It gives you pleasures you could drool on and suddenly takes its toll, leaving you stranded, wrecked and swamped by insignificance, making you feel wasted and spiritless, while your shouts for assistance get immobilized by your own melancholy. After this fiasco, I needed no Bodhi tree to stimulate my wisdom! My advice - Don't grow long hair when you feel you might be opposed. But if you want to, well then Fight! Fight till the very end people, because life more or less boils down to Charles Darwin - Survival of the fittest!

- Supermur...

The Ultimate Choice

2007-07-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

"It's choice--not chance--that determines your destiny."
- Jean Neditch

Words of wisdom, aptly put forth by a woman whose enlightenment can be attributed to her valiant struggle for survival.

Choices are inevitable, quintessential components of every mortal's existence, which could prominently make his destiny, dazzling or devastating, depending on the outcome. There are such moments in life, when pursuing that epic journey to paradise, after painstakingly crossing a winding stretch of road where life was highly fatiguing and laborious, we find ourselves at a fork, where all our past industry is let to hang loose by a thin delicate length of string which goes by the name 'choice'. When situations become this demanding, instead of focusing on a befitting selection, we keep brooding over the consequence of negativity and as our minds get shrouded by the mist of tension, we falter and eventually end up making an incorrect or unsuitable choice. These are the times when we should learn to boost our confidence coefficients and work to getting ourselves out of the mess unscathed. Sometimes, I feel it is wiser to go for the straightforward choice that might not boast of any attractive yield, but has lesser to lose, than go for the hazy one which you think might be vaguely productive.

Priorities are of paramount importance in this material world, where the hierarchy if flawed could lead to cataclysmic after-effects. The reason for my substantiation on this very subject is the result of a gloomy period of life generated by a series of rash decisions, inaccurate prioritizing and a deficient approach towards tackling tight situations. Choices need not necessarily be the ones faced when our dear future is placed on a precarious perch, the course of which lies in the hands of the decisions indeterminate. They could lie in the simplest of places and in the gentlest of times and yet be so taxing that they would make you wonder if pole-vaulting the Great Wall of China would have been a little more unburdensome.

Life is not always a walk in the park and those who have emerged victorious were not just proficient, skilled workaholics, but were ones who had made precise choices at approppriate stages, because after all, the ability to choose is not a blessing, but a privilege. At any point of time, whatsoever be the endeavour to be undertaken, there is always a choice and failure can definitely be eluded. If it becomes otherwise, it might only be the culmination of a previous erroneous choice that has brought the person to the edge of the cliff.

Wisdom as a germination of bitter experiences is always a prized possession that will have a lasting impact on the delicate human soul. Lessons are best learnt from one's own blunders, and it is mandatory that they find application in the near future. Ignorance is bliss is a philosophy not worth utilisation when it comes to choices. Excessive scrutiny might also lead to jeopardy at times, so it is essential that we make right choices and quick ones. Though the products they endorse might not be worth a penny, watching Telebrands does pay because it was what told me 'Choose Wisely - Live Well!!'.

- Supermur

Devil's Play - II

2007-06-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

I have always imagined the devil to have two sharp serpentine horns, a creepy round face with a bloodcurdling vicious smile and a long pointed pike in his hand !...Unfortunately, the devil I saw in reality, had on khaki garments, a roly-poly belly, a caterpillarish moustache and just One horn, which the darned bummer kept honking like an ass!..In the other hand he managed the steering wheel, and simultaneously kept releasing smoke like a 5th century Merovingian chimney!...Lush green countryside and soothing peace and quiet would make such an outstanding combo, but unfortunately I was not blessed with much of the latter, thanks to the solidified perseverance on the driver's part to never let go of his devastating hobby...I drove my earphones so deep into my ear, they played touch-me-not with my ear drums, yet I could not make head or tail of poor Chris Martin's 'Yellow', because of the same dull, monotonous, jarring noise of the horn that was so deafening, it made me think of the landslide queue ENT doctors would have to face if people continued to use such means of transport!...Even if I tried snoozing, I got horrendous images of his face, with the devilish cackle of laughter, and of course the intolerable cacophony of his horn playing in the background!.. His theory - If there is a vehicle in front of him, he honks till they move, or he goes so close and kisses their rear bumper, they automatically move aside for fear of getting run over by the mean machine.

The remote village I had to visit, can be reached only by buses(No private travels function on these roads, so its just the government ones!).Airports are just far fetched illusions here, and an occasional plane in the skies would signify days of excitement for the kids in this village, whose prime source of entertainment is rolling rubber tires on the streets or playing goli-gundu!..It does have a railway station though, which is adorned by a lot of dry leaves and sleeping mongrels, and I don't think the people from this loserville would have seen a stationary train on its tracks since the near Mughal era!..The government buses here are a matter of admiration, with seats so upright, your backbone would resemble a Camlin ruler, and the engine so Ferrari-like smooth it would displace all other sources of sound, and evacuate the acoustics around, making it look like a perpetual sound-free zone!(Please be sane enough to realise that there's a dollop of sarcasm melting on top!..) Oh, I nearly forgot the fact that my bus was a DVD coach!...There were two miniature golf-ball sized television screens playing some rotten movie, where the hero looked like a martian with an Elvis hairdo, while the female lead's alarming face popped up only a couple of times and the rest of the scenes did not show much of the face area!... It was similar to those first generation movies where there were just pictures pasted periodically on a three mile stretch which people have to relate by themselves, formulate a plausible plot, and assimilate the movie, while sounds played in the background, because this import quality trademark brand "Panosenic" DVD player did not show scenes, it just got stuck so frequently, it made the movie look a Windows slideshow, and I did not take too much effort to check it out anyway!..

The bus would like a compact tinderbox from the outside perspective, while the insides will be a collage of weird advertisements, making it look like a life-size newspaper classifieds page!...The front windshield had "Ku-blah blah Transport Service" written in a blinding kaleidoscopic array of colours, with 'Colour DVD Coach' pasted right beneath it. This was a revelation drive for me, and I'm proud to endorse!..Bringing to you - A one time golden opportunity to ride in the palace on wheels, the carriage of comfort, the A380 on road, for just 44.50 per head(Inclusive of all taxes) to hell, and back!..If your life has taken a turn for the worst and you have chosen suicide as your alternative out of your own free will, and you are game for a painful death, they welcome you in with arms wide open!..Choose my way on the highway!...'Ku-blah blah transport service' - Live the experience!..Die Hard!...Good Luck!...

- Supermur

Band Aid!!

2007-06-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

As usual, I should announce the real essence of my topic before you
jump to conclusions!...No! I'm not a jobless Virender Sehwag with
stunning performance coefficients shown only in Asia-Africa matches
and Reebok commercials, endorsing for Johnson and Johnson's now!
Oh wait! Wasn't that Hansa-plast?..Do I even care?...What I intended
to talk about was this perennial craze of mine to play for a band!..So,
this represents an open petition to all my readers to aid this so-called
band I'm planning to inaugurate in a short while!.. I might invite Ozzy
over to render an inaugural vocal, so don't you miss it!..

I have always fantasised the paradisiacal portrait of myself with long
hair flying around like cotton candy, guitar in hand, rocking my way to glory as girls from the audience gave out 'oohs' and 'aahs' as I plucked at the guitar strings and gave a perfect rendition of 'Musical
Magnetism'(By the way, that will be the name of my first album) with
my mesmerising rugged voice that floats through the hall enthralling
listeners into captivation!..Gee! Fantasising can be quite an entertaining pastime!..

Guilt being an integral factor of every human soul, I should accept
the fact that myself being in a band would unequivocally be a figment
of my vast imagination, the possibility of which would be so miniscule, V.R.V Singh might begin to bowl straight balls by then and
Vijayakanth might have won an Oscar!...That is solely because my
voice or my musical skills are not worth singing for any band, why not
even for so much as my servant-maid's rubberband and because the
only musical instrument that I presently own would be my 17 year old
rusty mouth-organ!...But watch out people, stargazing could hit the
walls of reality sometime, and there would be a day when I really will
play for a band, exhibit a perfect 180 in my Lamborghini Diablo VTR,
and reject Beyonce's compassionate proposal, as my pilot devotedly cleans the right wing of my lear-jet!...Until then, I'd have to motivate myself with "Dream on kiddo, reality might be only a few leagues away!..".

P.S : I wonder where this incessant grudge against the Indian Team
materialised, but I only hope Percy Sonn's image does not come haunt
me every night for this!..After all I'm not Scrooge, I'm just me!..

- Supermur

'Bulb Fiction' by Funtin 'Mur'antino!

2007-05-06T03:00:00.000-07:00

The title has perfectly nothing at all to do with my post. That is just some stupid name I came up with while working out math, which I thought I would name the film, if I ever could bring together the makers of the 'Scary Movie' series and make a spoof of Quentin's original creation!

It is eerie outside. The imaginary black cat with eyes like burning embers waiting to pounce at every brahmin individual who stays up after 2 'o' clock in the night, continues to haunt me. I guess I'm hallucinating. But I simply could not delay this post any more. It had to come. Solely because the topic I'm about to discuss is a rage among today's youth and children. (And No, it isn't low waist jeans!) and because I badly needed a break from my so called hectic study schedule!..Anyway here goes!...

Disclaimer : The bearer hereby declares that by posting this blog entry he means no harm to any individual living or dead and any cynicism direct or indirect is intended to merely tickle the funny bone and any damage caused is unintentional and purely coincidental.

Though I did provide a disclaimer, for those of you who have amassed enough wealth to override my disclaimer or have renowned criminal lawyers as parents, using which/whom you wish to file a case against me and send me off packing to the Andaman Prisons, I beg for mercy!

Though the chief reason for my sudden visit to Bangalore was to have a study-friendly atmosphere, I really did not get much of it, thanks to the extremely sleep-inducing weather and to the considerate Bangalore Municipality for having built and inaugurated two new malls this year. Citing moronic reasons like having to visit the Apple Centre, to my mother, I made my way to The Forum mall. It was a tuesday and there was'nt the usual bustling crowd, and swept by the wave of boredom I slowly made my way to Landmark. Professional Window shopper that I am, I walked in and directly headed for the books section, and the first book that caught my attention was this - "What will happen in the 7th HP book, The Deathly Hallows" - A Mugglenet publication. A 282 page hardbound paperback edition it is, which the mentally retarded publishers have priced at a whopping 495 bucks!.I do understand that Harry Potter is a craze among the youth but writing a book like this is a little over the edge. I mean, Come on people, Get a life!..Curiosity getting the better of me, I picked up the book, hunted for a cozy corner, found a chair and seated myself.

This book had a contents page with a variety of predictions by millions of HPFs(I guessed Half-witted Prosaic Fools, but the index said 'Harry Potter Fans'!) with sufficient proof to substantiate on the predictions. The publishers have put up a disclaimer too stating that this has nothing to do with the works of J.K.Rowling and is solely the work of spirited HPFs!...Bah!..Believe me, the compiler must suffer from stunted brain growth because he actually knows every single word in every single page of all the previous six books! And he has painfully researched on all the plausible conclusions for the 7th book. He has also taped every single interview of J.K.R and has extensively scrutinised it for any valuable information. I really am assured that he lives at some 221B Baker street or atleast somewhere close by!..He could try working for the CCP!..Veerappan would have fallen prey ages back!..

If only he had applied the same amount of effort on his subject books, I swear he would have given most Harvard professors a run for their money. All that was pardonable, but here is the best part!..I was flipping through random pages and I stumble onto this conclusion - "Why Harry and Ginny would pair up". The proof says " Ginny is an epic name that synchronizes with 'Ginevra' which is the name of the wife of the Great King Arthur. Harry's character represents that of a successful individual like King Arthur who was victorious in all his endeavours and was an icon of bravery. This is mighty proof that Harry and Ginny will unite". For a split second I thought I would fall off my seat with laughter, clutching my tummy. I mean, this is as blasphemous as saying all Pakistan bastmen are high-profile commerce graduates because they have "CA" written on their bat stickers or something of that sort! What is with the world today?..It is a book after all. I think people have surpassed the stage of being fans of HP and have now become fanatics.

Perhaps, they would all unite and form a clan, and fight for their rights. Maybe there would be another clan, say, for the Lord of the Rings. They could fight!...There could be a battle, The Fourth World War!. LOTRF (vs) HPF!... Maybe I could be opportunistic and write a book about it. I could call it, well, " The War of the Words".. Jesus Christ!...My spontaneity is on an all time high!..Let me get a grip on myself!.

I just don't understand how a book could make this colossal an impact!..I feel HP is one of the most over-rated books in the history of fiction. HP has become an addiction now. It might eventually replace Gin and Tonic and maybe even tobacco!..You just can't say!..People might start going around to potti kadais and start asking for HP books. No, that would not be economical!...Maybe pages!...They could ask for 20 pages of one of the 7 editions at say, 20 bucks!..God help me, I sure am high!...

All this is atleast digestible, but while I walk out I see a girl, mid-teens, balancing herself on 'Liberty' stools, who was actually picking out a brand new 500 rupee note to pay for the rotten book!..I told myself that she must be either so filthy stinking rich that even her Porsche's drivers resided at the Malibu Club, or her sanity is up for auction somewhere in the Arabian midlands!...My humble apologies to those who are enraged after reading this post and are waiting to butcher me and put me up for sale under Good-Life Chicken. I cant deny the fact that I do read HP, but I only READ! ..If you are otherwise, and are willing to be a part of the epic war, please provide me with specifics. It would help me enhance the quality of my book and make it an entertaining read!..

- Supermur

What a Blow!...

2007-05-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

Oh for Christ's sake, No this is not another of those needless meaningless blogs about the 47 day gala Australian celebration event which I determinedly refuse to address as the 'World' Cup even if you threaten to put the U.S National Army on my very heels!..It is a sheer sin to all mankind to host such an event which would have effectively portrayed a lot more grandeur and magnificence had it just been the Australian National team parading the cricket grounds in regal and aristocratic attire waving their flag and the Cup, while cute adorable little Australian children played under-arm cricket on the Kingston pitch..! It would be a mammoth blunder if I forget to mention the plight of the Indian team, which should be immeasurably glad for having been blessed enough to travel free till the Caribbean and be merry watching the Australian Parade and eating excessively salted Masala Dosai from the Saravana Bhavan branch in eastern Barbados and try to inherit some 'rosham' from it!...Maybe they wanted to return home sooner so that they could stare wide-eyed at their television screens as the highly knowledgeable queen of cricket, Miss.Mandira Bedi sat cross-legged wearin a multi-flagged see through saree that could effortlessly generate blasphemous controversies, as she put forth intellectually sound questions like "Why does Sanath Jayasuriya's bat have a blue colour sticker on it?" to a bewildered Charu Sharma!...But I better pauperize my cynicism because the Indians are untarnished at certain aspects of the game, well atleast at batting and bowling!...Why, Mr.Virendar Sehwag is getting a lot more professional at batting his eyelids as the ball whizzes past him, knocks down the stumps, flattens them out and continues to delightfully embark on its cruise to the boundary line, as he trots back to the pavilion, glad that the ball has somehow reached the fence while he was at the crease, immaterial of whether runs were granted or not !...And the only time I happened to witness the star Mr.Irfan Pathan bowl, he got nine pins in one attempt and a perfect strike in the other!...Hats off, all you humble Indian citizens!....

Spare me a second!...Why am I trying to elaborate on the very topic that I swore not to talk about!..Well, what I intended to talk about was this emphatic accomplishment of mine - I learnt to whistle!...Gone are the days when I had to accompany my friends and watch them gleefuly whistle aloud to 'Pokkiri Pongal' and dance like the world had just been gifted to them in a lovely little cardboard box and they were intoxicated with happiness over becoming Mr.Loser Almighty, while I dormantly sat, murmuring to myself that the only things I lacked were the two ponytails on the sides of my head and a dazzling pink designer skirt!...Because I can whistle now!...(I'm jumping up and down with joy right now, and I hope you dance a jig too on my behalf, because I consider happiness to be an epidemic!)Yet it is true that I presently am striving to complete my portions for my semester exams which commence in a short while, but at times when boredom is at its peak, I tend to blow out some air, and a week back, as I blew out a puff of air, I heard a faint whistle...Not exactly a whistle, but something like a tweet!...And with a lot of sheer determination-driven vigorous practice, I blew out a shrill whistle today morning, and while I was engulfed by happiness, I could practically feel myself floating my way to cloud nine!...

Blessed be my soul, Life is Good!..I should accept the fact that mine is just the mouth whistle and not like the two-fingers-bent one, though I did attempt doing the ghetto one, landed up being futile and eventually concluding that my index finger was slightly saltier than my thumb!...My whistle might not be effectively loud enough to lead the pack of wolves, but I am pretty content that I can atleast join the bandwagon!...The determination to learn came from this embarassing incident where I went for a movie and I heard loud shrieks and deafening whistles from my right and as I turned, I found this not-so-cute-but-I-wouldn't-mind-if-you-said-hi kind of girl whistling in merriment as her neighbour, another similar girl yelled "Tommmmmmmiiieeeee"!..Terrorized by the sound, I scanned the hall as I hastily tried to recollect any established rule banning bushy-haired pomeranian dogs in cinema theatres.(For those of you who wonder how I predetermined the dog to be pomeranian, I have to tell you that such animated names are only given to those breeds!).But to my bliss, Tom Cruise walks onto the wide screen which was facing me, thus clearing all my cruciating doubts!..Though there was some temporary satisfaction, the long term embarassment factor remained!..Which is why I proudly am announcing my accomplishment now!..The joy of success is indefinite, my dear friends!...For those of you who are already maestros at the art of whistling, I take a bow!..And for the rest, I have a trademark wicked smile that I put across my face as I walk back to my untouched Chemistry text!...

Happy Birthday Supermur!...:D

2007-04-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

It was destiny that the bearer had to catch his first glimpse of this lovely world, on this very day, 18 years ago, born to etch an eternal mark in world history, treading the paths of prominent greats like Chaplin and Einstein who had stepped foot on earth, this very same day!..

Here's wishing Supermur a joyous, sparkling and an amazing future and he wishes to utilise this opportunity to thank all those who remembered to wish him and to those who wanted to, but were engrossed in various forms of academic pursuit or were effectively intoxicated by slumber!...

Thank You!

Of Woes, Rows, Blows, Muttakose and those nice sweet crows!!...

2007-04-15T05:02:00.000-07:00

“Smile, even if it's a sad smile, because sadder than a sad smile is the sadness of not knowing how to smile.”
- Anonymous

By dusk yesterday, I had come to a conclusion that God had invariably chosen to go for advance booking of the blue devils on the 14th of April 2006 for this innocent but gentle boy called Murali living somewhere in the heart of Besant Nagar!...

I had an electric start to the day, or rather a 'non-electric' start to the day, as I wake up, not to the regular chirping or cooing of the blue-winged bird whose name I still am unable to find in most encylopaedias, or to the loud but totally insignificant conversation between my mom and dad about the vegetable seller's late arrival, or to the vibration of my phone whose ringtone is perfectly inaudible, but because I was sweating like a dog, as the fan was not working due to the absence of power!...I also had only forty minutes to get ready and rush to Satyam for the screening of '300' failing which I would be flooded with phone calls and messages questioning my delay and simultaneously butchering my so called dignity!...

I rush to the wash-basin and grab my brush and I see the shelf adorned by two lovely candles givng me the effect of having a candle-light dinner with my own image which was facing me from the mirror!...Torpedoes continue to fall, as I find the geyser and the iron dormantly staring at me from their respective places!..."Plagued be thy life" said voices from the ether, as I aimlessly wandered around the house hunting for solutions. I finally get ready, fill my hunger by staring at the bread loaf and rush to the theatre at supersonic speed, smiling at yawning traffic-policemen, thanking my lucky stars that I don't live in the U.S or in Britain and return home two hours later, after having had compensation for the early morning woes by watching a decent flick, and I try to smile and Bang!...The voice speaks again!..Oh Shoot!..

A row with my mom is generally not an appreciable event as the aftermath continues to keep my day engulfed by guilt, shame and regretfulness. My mom is a good cook. She might be no Sanjay Kapoor but she surely is not the kind who makes people pray before eating!...I wonder why she made that wierd curry thing yesterday. It had a mixture of tomatoes and muttakose in pathetic proportions cut in hilarious angles.(For all those Tamilnadu immigrants and Shakespeare enthusiasts out there, 'muttakose' means cabbage!..)..I always thought it was a miracle how feuds could crop up in the most unexpected of situations and yet manage to magnify themselves to such vast proportions that they scare you out of your wits and rob you of your sleep for two full nights!...After yesterday I had no choice but to believe that it was one's own fault that quarrels materialize!...I just blurted out a perfectly needless, stupid and not-so-funny-at-all statement that made my mother defend her cooking skills and thus a verbal war popped out of thin air. I have to say that it was totally my fault that my mom had to walk around with that long face all day!....

As I work at accomplishing this gargantuan task of bringing myself out of the day's misery, I realise that as I keep getting myself out of one problem, there always arises another to substitute the former. Here's the next. I sit on my computer and do what I'm best at - Nothing!...Sometimes it is advisable that I just keep my ears and eyes inactive and try gaining some peace..But I'm either unique or plain stupid which is why I landed up being the victim of the next disaster in the sequence. I hear my sister yelling out that my college senior was singing on tv and as I run, I fail to notice that my study table is slightly moved to the left(I guess since I never studied much in the near past, the study table must have chosen to punish me by itself!....) and I bang my little finger against it.(Ouch!..It hurt!..)To add fuel to the fire, the singer landed up not being my senior at all!..

There are incidents that might be small in magnitude yet might spark a burning flame in you!...This incident was responsible for restoring my sleep, peace and happiness, though I strongly wish the boy burns in hell!...Trouser-clad boys with no slippers and no money to equip themselves with the same are always a menace...There was one such specimen who happened to be armed with a catapult and the mean machine that he is, he aims at a crow on the ground and hits it perfectly!...Bulls Eye!...Jesus!..He was so accurate, I cursed the Olympic committee for not having had this as an official game!...For a change India might have had a gold!...Oh wait!....Why am I praisin him now??!!...The boy went to pick up the bird and suddenly, out of nowhere a whole gang of crows come swooping down and stand guard for the injured. They made this unintelligible noise which was a bad combo of a shriek and a caw, but was scary enough to make the boy turn a 180 and run for dear life!...

Such is relationship!...I must be mentally retarded because I was unable to realise its importance yesterday. I walked home, struck by the hammer of wisdom and I apologised to my mother and...Oh I'm really not good at the serious talk, am I?...I must conclude by saying that it was one dramatic day and I swore that if it were ever made into a film, I should only be the director and never the protagonist!...

Lets Get Reco(ta)rded!...

2007-03-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Record Work - A Herculean task which students across the world, or atleast in my college, loathe to do but are forced to do so solely because the teachers cherish pushing innocent students like us (I'm just not referring to myself!..I'm generalizing!..But any cynicism in the form of comments intended to slaughter my image are most welcome!) into Hell and laugh at our plight as we struggle to be victorious in this perfectly needless exercise!...

I would rather appreciate walking into a room filled with hot molten lava, guarded by vicious menacing canines(I totally freak out when it comes to dogs!) equipped with 1500 watt speakers playing Avril Lavigne at an ear piercing volume, but I simply can't write records!...
Statutory Warning : All this is just a figment of my vast imagination, so please do not try putting me into any of this torture!..

I just do not understand why these retarded fools (My Teachers!..) make us act like xerox machines and photostat pages and pages of crap that is already there in our manuals!...They also give us such short deadlines and we are forced to sit all night and work so that we get permission to enter the lab during our semester practicals. (Or atleast that is how they threaten us!)..

I also am clueless to why most respectable colleges employ such devils to conduct our practical classes!..A standing example would be my Electrical Engineering Lab In-charge, whose name I refuse to disclose for personal reasons!...She is such a ruthless merciless semi-barbaric tyrant female who, had she been born a hundred years earlier, would have sent Adolf Hitler himself scurrying for cover!...She effortlessly puts that I'm-the-sweetest-female-on-earth smile and captivates students into believing that she is a nice person but once you land up entering class with your records incomplete, you are done for!...She might tear your image apart with her heartless statements and massacre you in front of your class!...But the ones who laugh at you are the ones who get a better dose when their turn comes up!..:D

She is also a professional at tearing record sheets and she does it with such perfection and elegance that I always wonder if she would have previously worked at a cinema ticket counter tearing out tickets for people!...Thus we land up bunking classes and sitting and writing her records all day (Not that we would'nt bunk otherwise but even a half-witted fool would prefer munching on mysore bondas at the canteen rather than doing that slave driver's work!...)

Now she is just one among the list of countless dictators in my college though if I had to rate them, Miss know-it-all would win hands down!...I guess you would have now understood why engineering students use this trademark statement "Engineering is sooooooo tough da!!"...

Now comes the worst part...After we work like slaves and complete all our records, the lab attendants (They are pretty nice people though, but their level of partiality is gender oriented!) drive a rusted iron nail through my record!...(Now that's how they can show that the record is completed and signed it seems..A practice followed in most schools right from the 10th!)When I see it, I literally am able to feel the long pointed steel pike piercing my teenie weenie delicate little heart!...But such is fate and we are compelled to undergo this inhuman torture for the next three years!...

I'm venting out all this not to gain your sympathy, but to portray the plight of us!...There are no solutions to this problem, but feel free to put forth your views on this subject but please understand that if your views are not against this topic your probability of getting into my bad books is reasonably high!...Oh wait!..I still have not done my record index yet... So I must bid farewell!...Adios!...

S.L.E.E.P - Sheer-Laziness-Effortlessly-Encouraging-Procrastination!...

2007-03-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Slumber - A simple yet contagious syndrome affecting most students facing exam tension!...God!...If only I could write my records during my sleep, my life would be a splendid replica of paradise!....Alas!...Now my life's turning out to be a perfect catastrophe thanks to this entertaining and enlightening activity called Sleep!..

I guess books (Only the academic ones!..) have this inbuilt sleep-inducing mechanism that could by far, be a lot more superior to most excellently conjured intoxicating potions in wizarding world!....Hmph!...

Now to the procrastination part....Once sleep creeps into me, however energetic and vibrant I may be, I find all my energy sapped out of my body and I crave and long for my darling pillow and my lotus-soft mattress!...And to add fuel to the fire, my college books are like pillows themselves, and bring out captivating images of me hugging my Cathy (By the way, thats what I call my pillow...Makes it a lot more simpler to stimulate sleep!..:D)..Thus I always land up having to choose between studying while I duel my sleep or to go flatten myself out on the bed!....

No points for guessing that my option is predominantly the latter!...Which is why I land up postponing most mandatory jobs for the next day..Now this keeps happening every day until I land up standing in front of my teacher, my tasks still incomplete, my eyes scanning whether my boots are well polished, and hers, boring unto me expecting answers for her billion-dollar questions!...

I still am spiritedly hunting for that one solution that would eradicate this problem of mine..But right now I have already begun traversing my path towards dreamland and I guess I lost control over what I was typing quite some time back...My humble apologies if there are errors...

By the way, all comments, suggestions and solutions to this devastating problem are most welcome!....Im already drifting away!....Yawn!....

Life - God - Success - Oh and my first Blog!..

2007-03-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is supposed to be my first blog!..I thought it would be advisable if I started with the one thing that my mind is generally preoccupied with at all times...Bingo!....It is God!..well if I have to contemplate on the concept of God as such it would take me another 1600 blog entries and a lot of patience and even if I actually land up being succesful in this herculean endeavour most of us would be octogenarians and India would have won their second World Cup(or so I hope)....

Oh now back to the topic...Why did I start off with this topic?..Well as my first statement suggests I am a God-fearing person (Though I call it God-loving) and so I visited the temple as a part of my regular routine...I happen to see this girl(I saw her praying!...So chill!...I am a strong-willed person when I am in temples)..The girl was in....Conversation with God!...Standing in front of an Idol and whispering out dialogues..or rather petitions...And from my point of view it was a futile one-sided conversation(If it was one sided WHY would I call it conversation?..)..Now let me come to that!...This girl, an innocent girl that she is, whenever she saw someone observing her, she reduced her decibel level to a very hushed tone or she generally stopped...I kept observing her during my rounds (They call it 'pradakshanam'...If you aren't very much into all this, then skip the last statement) and I realised that she was pursuing her petition session with vigour.

Now what intrigued me was the result of the girl's ..ub...session as I would like to call it for now..She had this broad smile planted upon her face once she was done with that...And after her share of rounds she walked out....Now here's the turning point..The dangerous part...After few months comes the second half of this incident... my mom was on her way to a grocery shop and since I was at the peak of boredom and I fancied a walk, I tagged along with my mom...N suddenly my mom yells "Shrutieeee...."...N lo behold!...Its the girl from the temple!..My mom's like "Epdi ma exam ellam panne...Results vanthacha?"(vaguely translated as "How did you do your exams dear..have the results come out?")..And to this she replied saying she had got over 90% and was the second highest in her school....And after a small talk with the girl, my mom continues to walk...And she tells me "Epdi vangina ne therle da...Saatharnama thaan antha ponnu padippa"...Which means "I have no idea how she did so well...She is a very normal student"!.....

Now that's how the concept of God materialised in my mind and I have been all the more involved in it!...Well if it still has not struck your dumb brains, her performance is attributed to the conversation with God(refer to my 2nd paragraph if you have lost touch)...And thus I justify my topic.... Life - God - Success!...:D