Just out of reach

The ball flew over the midwicket region into the stands. The ground erupted. 40,000 people roared. Fireworks broke the sound barrier and lit up the night sky. Elliott balled his fist and celebrated. Vettori walked up to him and hugged. And it was done.

New Zealand are a good team; a great team. But they peaked recently. They hit a purple patch in those tennis court sized fields they call cricket grounds. But their celebrations after the match against South Africa were not ones of jubilation. It wasn’t a team of fifteen running in screaming from the pavilion, picking up Grant Elliott and huddling together to celebrate a victory that is beyond comprehension. Remember, this is a team that has never gotten to the finals.

The ball flew over the midwicket region into the stands. DeVilliers watched the ball soar over his head and collapsed in a heap on the ground. Morkel’s world crumbled around him as he struggled to hold back those tears gushing down his cheeks. Faf cared a lot less about what the cameras could record. His emotions had taken him over and he felt no shame in crying. In defeat. In sadness.

If South Africa had been defeated outright, they would have walked back in shame. But again, yet again, this was another close fought contest where another team edged their neck ahead by inches in the last moment. Another game where a couple of mistakes changed the complete course of the game. Another game where South Africa were extremely good, but not good enough.

A careless Gibbs celebrating prematurely, a dumb Allan Donald not knowing what the word ‘Yes’ means, a confused Duminy not knowing that Behardien was half a foot away - these are simple mistakes, but ones that change games and cost you a 3 foot tall golden trophy that you have never held in your life.

But as I watched the closing scenes of the game before Sanjay Manjrekar came on to give his ‘opinions’, thanks to his ‘expertise’ in ‘the game’, I saw something.

Grant Elliott picked up Steyn and consoled him. New Zealanders celebrated but not in South Africa’s face. It was almost as if the Black caps themselves knew that for some reason, in some deep crevice in their heart, they believed that South Africa deserved to win.

I may be wrong in assessing this, but I had a feeling that if South Africa had won, New Zealand would have congratulated the ecstatic South Africans, patted themselves on the back for having played a phenomenal World Cup up until now, gone back to their dressing rooms, gotten a few beers and carried on with their lives.

I may be trivialising New Zealand’s accomplishments. They equally deserved to win, if not more. But, for South Africa’s brutal past, the number of times they have gotten ‘so close but not quite there’, South Africa needed to win this. They needed a final.

The press conference where DeVilliers broke down, the vines of Steyn, Morkel and Faf crying - these aren’t going viral because they look emotional or funny. It’s because people all over the world cried with them. They felt the same amount of pain. They felt, as DeVilliers put it - gutted.

They somehow wanted South Africa to win this. They wanted them to huddle together and scream in joy and bounce around. They wanted DeVilliers to finally smile and celebrate. Not sit quietly in front of journalists and choke over his own tears. Not choke at all. Not ever.

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Vote for Mr.Nobody. Party symbol - Middle finger

There was a huge beach house party on Wednesday night celebrating your dog's first loose motion. You made it. There was an insane super-fun Raagini MMS movie marathon on Thursday afternoon. You made it. Oh, your girlfriend was completely helpless because she couldn't find her blue colored hairband and she always wears blue on Thursdays. You spent four hours finding it for her.

Yet, you couldn't spend ten minutes to vote. 

Of course you had reasons. I shall address them for you.

1. It was a holiday, dude. Rest time.

No, it was not a holiday. It was election day. Your wretched BPO reluctantly shut shop because they thought you would vote; Not eat chicken frankie and sit around in your boxers staring at wedding albums on facebook. It was a holiday because they thought if they give you 24 hours off, you might spend ten minutes to vote. Nope, you did not.

2. I live in a different city, bro. Like IRCTC problems yaar

If you can bunk a day for being hungover, I am sure you can bunk a day to come vote. It is your city. If there was no current, you take a grand total of ten seconds to say 'Chutiya MLA. Takes our money and swallows them.' And what were you doing when these chutiyas got elected? Getting drunk. *Slow clap*

3. My name was not in the rolls man. Government functioning is so shitty nah?

That is the dumbest reason ever. Here is a story. Your college decides to take you for an excursion and takes 10,000 rupees from everyone. They say they will have a quick show of hands to decide the place to go to. But on that day, you decide to go play footsie with your girlfriend in CCD because you are like cool and stuff. And then you come for the excursion with a huge backpack and the college takes you for a full building tour of Saravana Stores and ends the evening with a boat ride on the Cooum river. Would you be happy? Well, you Have to be, because when they asked you to help them sort it, you didn't.

The government gives you eight weeks to check if your name is on the rolls. If it isn't, it takes fifteen minutes to fill a form to include your name. It can even be done online. But you didn't. And that is the government's fault? 

4. Abey, no candidate is good enough man. I want to tell the country that everybody is bad, by not voting.

How on Earth is the government supposed to know you have such god forsaken reasons to not vote? Heck, you sucked at reading your girlfriend's thoughts. But the government has to read yours? They have an option called NOTA. You can honestly tell them that you do not like anybody. They will take action on it. But you never bothered because this is too low for your awesomeness factor.

5. Machi, even if I put NOTA, who else will put huh? Tell ra, tell.

You do not have to decide for the others. You are never going to know. If a newbie called Arvind Kejriwal can dethrone a veteran queen like Sheila in a matter of six months, I am sure your vote can make a difference. (Yes, Kejriwal screwed up. But you were excited when he got elected, weren't you?). Make a small difference. Everybody else will.

6. I don't care. I won't vote. I won't complain.

These are the kings of the reason world. They won't vote because they have no faith in the government, but they can't be blamed because they won't complain about anything it seems. You never know the storm that will hit you because of your indifference. When your building complex gets razed by a government official for building a mall and you come to the streets, you will. When your relative is dying of a heart attack and your government hospital is too inefficient to even treat common cold and he dies, you will. Basically, when shit hits the fan, you will, son. But then, you might be too late.

There are blind people voting. There are physically handicapped people voting. My maid came and told me she paid 200 rupees by auto to take her daugher and son to go vote because her polling booth was far away. But she was proud of it. There are people out there living with hope, doing their little bit to make a difference. An educated sensible person like you cannot throw reasons. Go out there and vote next time. India is never going to be a superpower if you keep eating chicken frankies and farting on election day. Just saying.

P.S: I may have offended one or many of you in the course of this post. If at all I have, just in the tiniest sense if I have hurt your sensitivities in any way, I just really really want to say, that I wholeheartedly meant it. Rot and burn.

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16th of November. That day. That man.

It has been my dream for twenty five years to step onto the Chepauk cricket ground. Every time I have gone there to watch a match, I would secretly pray that they would have left one of the gates open or unguarded, so I could rush into the ground and fall on the grass there. That they would shoot me down with a rifle is a separate story, but I always prayed I would feel a single blade of grass there someday and suddenly my life would gather some meaning.

Yesterday, a friend of mine took me to the MCC club for dinner. I sat in the pavilion and had dinner and then decided that I had had one too many bottles of water and decided to use the restroom. The waiter walked me into the restroom and wait-for-it, it was the restroom inside the player's changing room. This was the place where Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman would have sat and changed and stared at themselves in the mirror. The feeling was surreal.

I simply sat down on one of the chairs for a minute to feel the excitement brimming within me. When I walked out, the friend who had brought me for dinner dragged me to a gate and led me out of it. On. To. The. Ground.

I was walking On the cricket ground that Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar had fielded. His four had probably brushed the blade of grass under my foot. This was on the 16th of November. The last day of the last test Sachin had played. Slowly it struck me that Sachin would never step on this ground again. And I rushed back to the restroom and silently wept.

I am not some knowledgeable cricket writer. I am not a guy who can quote every innings of Sachin or remember his pet dog's name. I don't know his life by-heart. I am like one of you. I just love him. I just wholeheartedly love Sachin because that is who he was to me - A complete Indian cricketer. Every time he came to bat, I watched with amazement. I looked at his shot selection, at his ability to soak pressure and his at humility when someone mentioned his greatness.

I have seen enough interpretations of one in movies. Enough actors have tried giving me an enacted representation of it. But in real life, as a man of flesh and blood, Sachin Tendulkar is my hero. He will always inspire me. This is a man who when 40 years old, still played for Mumbai and single-handedly took them to victory. I shall never watch his farewell speech again because it has the word 'farewell' in it. It will remind me that Sachin will never play again. And every time I get reminded of that, I will weep like a baby. For when a hero hangs up his boots, who are we going to look up to again?

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The Magnetic Bum

Your post was supposed to be written four months ago, with a different title and different content as well. That post never got written. Your house has not been vacuumed in weeks. Your pants are still unwashed. Remember that girl you wanted to speak to? Well, she got engaged, married and her second son already is in jail for making #YoRahulSoDumb jokes.

Ever wondered why none of the above actually got done? Because, you forgot to get off your ass and do it!

Get off your ass!

Your ass has magnetic features. It simply attaches itself to certain areas and you just cannot get off, unless of course, if you tried. The problem is, we got older. (Yes, I meant you too. Just because you use Fair and Handsome does not make you any younger. Try Fair and Teens.) While getting older, we just became that much more lazier. We. just. stopped. caring.

"GMAT? Nah, I'll take it. This year. Or next year. Or sometime soon. Maybe. If I'm alive."

"Change the floor-mats in the car? Sure. I'll do it one of the coming weeks."

But do you know what the problem is, with doing it in 'one of the coming weeks'? Every frickin' week from now until your death are all 'coming weeks'. So, do you ever do it? Nope!

Get off your ass!

Every day I told myself that I should write. But I never wrote a single line. I tweeted instead. (And no, it is not the same. In fact, it is much worse.) I had a watch that stopped working on April 23rd 2013. A regular human being would've repaired it at least by May. What did smart little me do? Stopped wearing watches instead. We are so comfortably curled on our beds watching Breaking Bad or Miley Cyrus twerking (Okay, that was just me.), that we fail to realize the things that we should actually be doing that make our lives better. Psst. Here's a quick tip.

Get off your ass!

The only times we actually do something, is when we are pushed to it.

"Damn, Amma wants me to get married. Need to move out. I should quickly write GMAT, get a pathetic score, pay all my father's wealth to study in a college in the Sahara desert, so I can come back to India unemployed, but proudly with a Masters degree in Sand management from 'foreign'. Yay!"

"Cha, my so-called girlfriend said the car smelled so bad, it was like riding in an air-conditioned armpit. Damn. Should change car floor-mats immediately!"

It's amazing how we suddenly become the doers from being the no-gooders, the minute we know we have no choice. Maybe life would be so much more awesome if we decided to do things by ourselves. No, don't read this post and go back to your wretched Onida TV so you can continue on F.R.I.E.N.D.S reruns. (And FRIENDS? For Christ's sake, Grow up already!)

Just pick up that pant and soak it. Walk straight to your car and throw the floor-mats out. Call her. Just call her. Once you start the activity, you'll at least get somewhere with it. I somehow started, and wrote this blog. Your turn to, well, uh..

Get off your ass!

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The Hair and the Tortoise

Note: In between, when you find statements in italics, it is my alter ego responding to my writing. Really? And you thought this was a cool way of writing, why?

The title is not a spelling mistake. This is not the usual children's story, but a gripping tale of a struggling man from downtown Meghalaya, an effervescent Brahmin boy from Madras and a pair of scissors. Basically, you got a haircut.

Yes, I did. As a man, I have always wondered why men go to expensive saloons. When I was 9 years old, my dad religiously took me to the same Malabar saloon every time he thought my hair was too long. Your dad thought that every month. He is your dad too. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Every month, my dad used to leave me at the saloon, tell the guy 'Summer cut, pa. Clean cut.' and walk off. There were the same set of people with disheveled hair, reading a Tamil crime novel or staring at the then new Tamil heroine's 'hot picture' which was on the cover, while I innocently sat outside and read Young World. No, you didn't. You were trying to peek at the cover.

Okay, maybe I did. But I at least looked like I was reading Young World. A haircut then costed 9 Rupees. I was given 10, and was never asked for accounts for the gargantuan balance that remained. You bought Caramilk! Whoever buys Caramilk? Caramilk was the second suckiest chocolate ever after Nutrine Mahalacto. Mahalacto wins hands down because they could have decoratively packed a pebble instead of the chocolate and Nobody would have known the difference.

You're making me digress. When I got to college, all the girls were going to Bounce or Studio Profile or Naturals. I am sure all the boys went to a Malabar Saloon or a Dhanush Saloon, but nobody had the balls to admit it. When I heard stories from these girls, I swear I heard my wallet sob. They paid 900 Rupees and all for a haircut! You paid 900 once. No, that was including the price of the Philips hair-dryer I broke.

How can you pay 900 bucks to lose hair? In Tirupati, they cut it all for free; and you get blessings from Balaji too. Some girls paid this 900 to cut the bottom-most part of their tresses alone, which aren't even noticeable, and that's called Step Cut it seems. 

Anyway, now I go to this other famous saloon called Green Trends. They employ these Manipuri/Nepali barbers who have such ridiculous hairstyles. How can I trust my hair with a man who has an electric blue streak in the middle of his head? Some have gelled it and spiked it up like the shocked guy in the Anchor Switches advertisement. You should stop cracking jokes. Actually, on second thought, Good one, bro. *fist bump*

Why do they always ask me 'Sir, what hair style yoo freefer?'. Every boy in Tamilnadu prefers and knows only 2 styles. Summer cut and Medium!

If I say medium cut, these guys always go snip-snip for hours like a tortoise and finally show me the same amount of hair I had before I started. Always. Then I say 'Summer cut' and he cuts nearly all of it off, and then I come back home looking like Tom Cruise from Top Gun. No, you Feel like Tom Cruise from Top Gun. What you Look like, is a man whose head got caught under a lawn mower. 

So, yes. That is my debate about expensive salons. Then again, I know there's hygiene, standards, style and everything else in all these fancy salons. But Malabar Saloon had Vividh Bharati. I guess I just miss Malabar Saloon. And the front covers of some magazines. 

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The Trip Above

What happens when you die? Is there really a fork in the road where they have a huge corporation office with hundreds of employees who check your past history at each level and evaluate whether you go to heaven or hell? Does Hell really have molten lava flowing below and Heaven have roads paved with sweet nectar? Honestly, it’s quite difficult to ride a cycle if the road is overflowing with gooey liquids.

I have never understood death. There is no understanding to it. But it leaves a void - a gaping hole in your family, or in your friends circle, but if not all this, certainly in your heart. A person’s death is not what haunts you. It’s their memories that do. Those little things and thoughts they left behind in your tiny tender heart that make you feel the pain and longing. There have been no deaths in my family in the past 23 years of my existence. But this year has been quite difficult on me.

Love does not have definitions. Maybe it has borders, but my grandmother certainly didn't know of one. She loved us all, equally. My mother should not read this post, but even if she does I doubt she’ll feel bad knowing that I said that my grandmother was the best cook in the house. My grandmother could make dishes that could send one of those lame apron-clad chefs on cookery shows scurrying for cover. But I can’t have any of those dishes anymore.

When I was around twelve, just like the other boys, I wanted all the chocolates and tennis balls that were available on the stands. But with my pocket money, I could have barely afforded a Melody chocolate a week without running into bankruptcy. So I used to slyly pocket some change off my grandmother’s purse once in a week. I thought I was too smart for her because she was seventy five already then and I thought she wouldn't have a clue. One day she came up to me, gave me a fifty rupee note and said that I might as well have just told her that I wanted chocolates, and added that I should maybe take care of my teeth. I didn't lay a finger on her purse ever since. And ever after, she regularly gave me money by herself. But I can’t get any of that anymore.

For the most part of my teenage life all the way until I turned 20, my grandmother and I shared a room. She used to sleep on one bed. I had another bed to myself but I always stayed up late because that was the time when insomnia was like low-waist jeans. I used to watch random sitcoms and movies with blaring noises throughout the night, but she never once complained. Sometimes she used to ask me to explain the story line of some sitcom and patiently listen to me describe the entire story. I never once bothered asking if I was disturbing her sleep. But I can’t ask her that anymore.

My brother-in-law got her a transistor radio from the United States. He was just going to get married to my sister and he had got pre-marriage gifts for the entire family and she got a transistor. She cherished the transistor and kept asking me to teach her how it worked. My cousin tried it once and because of some wrong voltage it stopped working. Every day after that she used to keep asking me to go repair the transistor so she can listen to music and I used to keep saying I will, but I never got around to it.

Then suddenly one day she got really sick and barely a week before my sister’s marriage she passed away. It just happened in a flash and it was so quick I couldn't even fathom the changes. So these days when my mom and dad are away, I absentmindedly ring the bell. Then I realize there’s nobody inside and hunt for my own keys. Sometimes when I’m sleeping and the power goes off, I immediately look into my neighboring bed to see if she’s sleeping fine. But there’s nobody there. Worse than all this, I look at the un-repaired transistor radio that stands on top of my cupboard and tears come streaming down my cheeks. I don’t think I understood love, paati. But you did. And you taught me quite fine. 

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Dei Mama!

In the normal terms, your mother needs to have a brother. In some countries like the US, your mother herself responds to that call, though 'Dei' does not seem entirely the right prefix to that word. But in Chennai, there is one person with no blood relation or the slightest hint of a resemblance whatsoever who can take that proud status. He stands regularly at signals and check posts, mostly with a tea in one hand (which was sponsored by a poor tea-kadai owner) and a light saber in the other.

This is a different light saber though. It gives two colors - Red and Green. And the chances of the light saber working are inversely proportional to the weight of our man's wallet. Oh, wait. There is also a job called Mama, but Naukri dot com does not support that job profile, so we'll skip that.

To me, there are two types of people who will do anything for money. The bankers in the US. They are on Wall Street. The next are our city's traffic constables. And they are on EVERY STREET! They use a bare minimum of statements to extract every last penny you have on you. With bellies big enough to hold triplets, it's amazing how quickly they are able to run right out of nowhere to the centre of the road and stop your bike.

They all have a pattern. Every traffic cop greets you with the same statement, in the exact same intonation. Sometimes I wonder if they get training on dialogue delivery.

'Eyy Nirthu Nirthu. Vandiya orangattu.' (Hey, stop stop. Pull up on the side.)

You have to pull up. If you don't, they'll pull out your keys. And if they do that, feel free to add an extra hundred bucks to the amount you will normally expect to hear.

'Licensu, Aar see, insoorance edu.' (Please show your licence, RC and Insurance papers)

By the end of that statement, they have already made a mental note of your attire, the cost of your bike/car, how fancy your mobile phone is and printed out a thorough alphabetically categorized report of your social status inside their head. Then when they realize your papers are intact, they move onto their next standard question. (If your papers are also not intact, then the conversation takes a completely different course, but that can wait.)

'Paatha padchavan maari keere. Neeye ipdi panlaama?' (You look well educated. Should you be doing this?)

Then he will look at the offence you have made and calculate the amount you need to pay, using his equation.

X = Government's actual fine + ( 100 * The number of the current week in the month) + (A random 100 bucks service tax)

For ex, if you have jumped a signal on the 21st of the month - the actual fine is 100. Another 300 for it being the third week of the month, followed by the random 100, bringing it to a grand total of 500.

'Sigunal jumbing, not stobing at stob line, vandi le oru rearview mirror seriya ille. 500 reebees.' (Jumping the signal, not stopping at the stop line and one rearview mirror is not correctly placed. 500 bucks.)

Then you beg. You give your entire family history ranging from your struggling father, ailing mother and your waiting-to-be-married sister and your very poor current financial status. Honestly, you could've given a lecture on why Stone Cold Steve Austin is the coolest wrestler in the World and he wouldn't know the difference. They don't listen to a word you say. Eventually it all comes down to the same question.

'Seri, evlo vechirke?' (Fine. How much do you have?)

And then you pull out your wallet and search. By then he's already peeped. So you lie saying you have only hundred. Smart mama says 'At least 300.' (Because he has already seen that you have Exactly 300.). And you eventually pay 300.

And thus, Mama successfully does what he does best -  Wipe out your wallet. Then, Just before you leave, he will say 'Next time intha maathiri offence ellam panna koodathu.' (Don't repeat such offences next time.) Which in turn, means we should do the remaining offences next time. But hey, all is well. Mama prevails. 

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Littraman

The city reeks of garbage and filth. The lovely enticing aroma of fresh litter on the roadside greets you the minute you walk out of your house. You, being the ever responsible Indian civilian, do your bit for the nation by dropping your chocolate wrapper next to it, hoping that a small Hurricane Thane will come gently lift it off the road and into the pile of garbage which in turn, is not in the dustbin, but all around it.

Indians misunderstood the 'Go Green' commercials on television. They thought the commercials were asking all the green in the world to go away. Like 'Go Green, go!'. So they decided to do their bit by dumping as much plastic as they could around all the trees in the country so all the green will go away. Some Indians decided to redeem themselves for dumping all that plastic, by peeing on the same tree.

Brahmins are the worst of this lot. They will have a massive Homam (a religious function) to ward off all evil from their son who has just returned from the United States, by burning half a kilogram of wood bang in the middle of their living room, nearly suffocate themselves but still not open any door or window lest Goddess Lakshmi will leave the premises, and then host a sumptuous lunch on Banana leaves for the entire neighborhood. Then the lady of the house Mrs.Pankajam will dutifully take the degradable Banana leaves, drop it into a non-degradable plastic cover, and fling it super-maami style out of their window right unto their own courtyard. The banana leaves will stay rotting right inside the plastic cover which will happily sit there for a year, until the maama of the house Justice Rajagopalachari will write a letter to the Adyar Times saying that 'people' are littering outside his house and that the 'concerned authorities' have to take immediate action.

Then, there are these photographers. They will walk to the beach, pluck out their DSLR and take a lovely close up photo of the starfish which had choked to death inside a plastic cover and tag it with 'Death of a star' or some ridiculous tagline like that and garner a thousand likes and fifty 'Awww's but the plastic cover will still stay there, lurking for its next innocent victim.

There is nobody to save Mother Nature. Actually, it is an insult to call her Mother Nature. For the treatment she is getting, you can rightfully call her 'Mothered Nature'. So, Isn't there one person who can right all this wrong, clean all the filth and wipe out all garbage? Yes, there is. There is Littraman.

Littraman spares nobody. If you're responsible for some litter on the road, you better be a pregnant cat. If you're not, then you're a pussy. And Littraman will hunt you down and ask you to pick it up. If you're throwing plastic into the river, Littraman will cut your food for a day. If you pee on a transformer, Littraman will make you do beach cleanup campaigns for a month. So is Littraman a bird? Is he a plane? Nah! He's that wretched face you saw in the mirror last night. His costume is that torn pair of shorts you wore to bed. He is in every one of you. Wake him up. We display enough plastic in our smiles. Let's not display some on the road as well.

Yours,
Littraman.

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Matrimonial Matters

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?

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Tag! You're IT!

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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!

"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!

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.

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!

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.

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.