Saturday, June 30, 2007

kEep wAitiNG

most of the calls I make home are sad nowadays.

no no not sad as in depressed sad, i meant as in pathetic. i call international to talk to 'family' and this is how it goes.

family: hello ?
me: yeah its me.

family: so when u sending them ?
me: sending what ? wat r u talking bout ?

family: sending the photos. i asked u last time. send the photos of u in a zoriani sari.
me: what ? sari ? where the heck will i find one here. i'm not sending any snaps. forget it. i told u already am not doing it. its an extremely dorky idea.

family: oh i know u will.
me: wat ? i'm saying i won't. what do u mean u know i will ??

family: i just know u will listen and not disappoint us. me who carried u in my womb for 9 months and looked after....
me: yeah yeah i know the drill. but i said i'm not and u can't make me.

family: i'll wait. i've already spoken to a couple of potential 'prospects' i told them i'll get them next week.
me: keep waiting. don't hold ur breath.

family: listen, the family honor is at stake. i already told them. u cant do this to me.
me: u shud have thought of that before agreeing for stuff without informing me.

family: now listen, be reasonable. they were asking for ur contact number. i didnt give that did i ???
me: oh by all means please do. i'd like to take a crack at that guy and see if he's still standing after that. its getting a lil slow over the summer anyways. i need something to entertain myself.

family: hey u cant talk like that.
me: ur right. its ridiculous to waste international calling minutes for this drivel. i'm fine by the way. i'll call again when i forget bout this conversation.

click.

its the same. week after week.
unfortunately i've got goldfish complex. i never remember after a week the disaster of the prev call. and keep calling to repeat it.


ooh here's another one.

ring ring.
me: wtf its 6 in the morn on sat. whos calling me? {pick up} mom?
ur calling ME?? wat is it ?
mom: u need to shape up.

me: huh wat ? {still groggy}
mom: i know u become a total slob when ur studying. u care for nothing else. listen lady ur not doing a phd. uve become a slob. i heard from obnoxious aunt. she told me everything. U R NOT CONTINUIING ur phd. complete ur degree and get back here.

me: huh wat ?
mom: u heard me.

me: u called me international to remind me to comb my hair??
mom: not only that. u have to ..... beep...beeep (censored coz not suitable for other audiences)

me: ARE U NUTS ?? i work 2 jobs here and a project. U called ME international for THIS ???? Ur crazy.
mom: i don't care what u say, I think .....

me: watever goodbye. click.

snoooz.

hey uts saturday. and 6 in the morning. i'm most def not a morning person.

Friday, June 29, 2007

mOrE tO iT

Am in a hillarious mood today,

my boss is off for a meeting and I can peacefully pretend to work without having to worry about getting caught.

Yesterday I found my 2 absolute favourite cartoons online, and i can really look forward to a very nice cartoon filled weekend.
I remembered the joy of reading "The wheel of time" and i, once again, have hope in my heart that I can get hold of the remaining 8 books of the series.
Its a really long story. 12 books long.

in my idyllic , dreamy state, i think of how heaven wud be like.
whats your idea of heaven ?

mine is a library, filled with comfy chairs and butlers serving chocolates.
mebe some idli sambar also.

cool. dark , soothing and peaceful. like the mellon institute library. now thats a library !!
none of that new fangled modern tables and chairs and rude lighting thats designed to keep you awake.
this library calls you and says , its ok to fall asleep in one of its sofas.

not many ppl around .... plenty of nooks and cranies so you can pretend you have the whole library to yourself.

if i had to spend a lifetime on this planet. i'd rather spend it here than anywhere else......

aaaah.. makes a nice picture doesn't it ??

there's more to life than just grades and degrees and making a living folks. trust me there's more.

Monday, June 25, 2007

beAUTiFuLL dAy

yesterday was the first time.

the first time i did it.

i sat in Barnes and Knobles for the first time and read a Calvin and Hobbes book.

I had a chocolate Orios dream brownie while doing it.

It was sooooo freakin AWESOME !!!! :P

man, i thot i had died and landed in heaven. ofcourse the friend I was with , fell right asleep in front of me. sorry pal, but you gotta do watcha gotta do, right ??
supposed to go to the mall shopping, and buy stuff. which was a gud plan to start with.
until we were at a loose end for a while and i thot , what the heck, lets spend halh hour in this place. never done it before and friend needed a coffee.

3 hours , 2 coffees later, friend fast asleep. me finishing up a whole book. and very very pleased. it was a TOTAL HIGH DUDE :P

i was VERRRRY HAPPY.

verrry

heeeeh. life is gud now.
best part is that ofcourse its there back home too.. i shud have done this sooner..
aargh i wasted 2 yrs .....

Sunday, June 24, 2007

rOaD tO noWhEre



so. what's your excuse?

i'LL dO iT TomORRow




in the last 2 days i've watched 4 movies.
my eyes water coz theyr completly overstrained.

ton of things left undone. i guess not only am the queen of disaster am also empress of procrastination.
how many times have you simply put of things for later when you KNEW you shud be doing that thing right bout now ??
the phone call to an old friend, that email to the prof.
the weekly shopping, the phone bill, all of the bills....

whaddaya mean never?

oh come on dont tell me ur one of them ? the one's who do stuff on time.
who have to-do lists ?
who organize, categorize, exteriorize ???

gaawd u gimme the heejie beejies.

hmmmmph so YOU ARE one of them. the mass that keep things in their place. who remember!!!
ur phone is ALWAYS charged. NO chance that once in 3 days ur stranded coz ur phone is dead coz of low battery.
no chance YOU forget ur laptop charger in some obscure corner of the campus and then spend a couple of hours trudging around searching for it....
NO chance that when its reeeeall important no one can reach u coz ur phone is dead, ur laptop is dead and ur stuck miles from home with no money.....

ofcourse these things cud NEVER happen to u....

me? oh heavens no. i'm very careful too !
wat do u take me for ??

i was just talking of ......ummmm......aaaahhh .....of my friend.
yeah thats it ! my friend. she keeps getting into these scrapes all the time.

u an me. we're totally the same.
honest.

no no i know ur not convinced. i'll call you and explain..

oh darn !! the phone is dead.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

hAVe tO gEt thiS oUT




This is a repeated video for sure. maybe a repeat post. but I don't care.
I HAVE to write this down.

this post is dedicated to all those who are away.
u'll see.

listen to the song while ur reading this. ofcourse the video has nothing to do with the post. its just the song.
its a writer's prerogative. don't worry i wudn't presume to say author's prerogative :-/

while i sit in my lab and look outside the window, its bright outside.
i think of where i am and how far i am from home.
i think of everything this place stands for and how different it is from home.

everyday people ask me incessantly.
"when are u going back?".
"ARE you going back ?"
"when are you coming back home?"
but no one asks, "WILL you be coming back home?" ...

thankfully.

For the folks back home. its not a question of 'IF' but a question of 'when'.

i think of this place....
calm.
cool.
regal.
clean.
cold.
sanitized , synthetic, plastic.
SUV's.
organized roads, organized lives.
azure pale skies.
land of the paleface.
self righteous of its importance in the world.

and think of home
messy.
noisy.
warm , hot, wet.
land of smells ...
i can smell my grandma's mango pickle ... my mum's biryani
see the riot of colors ...
holi , rangoli, feel bollywood everywhere u turn...
terrible roads
autos, autorik drivers, buses, bus drivers ...
smoke and smog
people
there's nothing neat about us.
nothing ordered or organized.
multiple languages !!!
people !!
land of songs..loud ..boisterous songs...
and us, all of us
impatient
ambitious
restless
clamoring for attention from the rest of the world.

the smell of wet earth
the paddy fields
the roasted nuts u get anywhere for 10 bucks
tea
skinny cats
college kids lounging around ..( worthless loafers... but hey i miss them too )
packed malls
vegetarian food
the crammed humanity that makes you cry out for one square foot of extra space on this god's green earth so we have a lil more elbow-room.
and you look around here.... oh yeah there's plenty of space all right.

what exactly are you pining for?

u know you complained when you were there. you waited to get out. you were curious to see the world at the very least. and now you've seen some of it. NOW what do you think ?
oh don't get me wrong. it's excellent here. like a golden cage.
very 'posh' some wud say.
they would.

so what exactly are you missing ?

close your eyes and think of the last time you were home. with your parents and uncles and aunts and cousins.
what were you doing? were you happy ?
did you have coffee that day ? how did it smell ??

i remember eating mangoes and jackfruits. remember sleeping under the stars. i remember SEEING stars!
loud voiced relatives i cudn't wait to get away from.
a grandma who .......
i remember a baby cousin. she must have grown now. i remember an aunt hugging me like she'd never let go.
i remember papad left out to dry, thinkin how nice it would taste with rasam. and drinkin tender coconut.
remember tender coconut ?
the feel of the rain on your skin and the smell of the wet earth.

friends.
going thrips on a bike in pouring rain to a dhaba to have icecream.
dhabas.
dhabas and friends.
running away from cops , getting caught , paying fines....

hot, messy, noisy, wet, loud,
in your face.
refusing to be ignored.
refusing to let you win.
refusing to give up on you.

sure its not perfect.
some people are quick to point out... the corruption, poverty, the roads, the traffic, pollution, the despair..
but thats no reason not to go back home

home.

its still home.

with all its filth and people and dust and mosquitoes.

its still home.

yes i'm going back.

yes i'm coming back home.

stop asking.

gO fORTh bLiNDly

undeniably there are some things to be admired in this country.

its the same thing that strikes you first. strikes you hard as soon as you land here.
hits you right in the face....

there are footpaths along each road and people actually are safe walking on them !!

now, in b'lore walking on the footpath is statistically more dangerous than walking on the road. i can prove it you know. my friend was walking on the footpath while she got blindsided by a drunken bicycle rider !! she had her foot in a cast and suffered terribly for the next 2 years... hobbling around till the torn ligament sorta healed..
ofcourse not a single of my friends who walk on the road have been hit by a drunken bicycle rider. heck, they haven't been hit by anyone.
hence statistically with an 30% probability ur gonna suffer if u want to walk on a footpath in b'lore...

but out here??
u can blindfold yourself. plug your i-pod to your ears and take a stroll in which every goddamn direction you wish. people WILL politely give way. no one will "accidently" push you onto incoming traffic. and when u cross roads, everyone will wait patiently till you bumble your way across.

heck , pittsburgh will also give out friendly cuckoo calls to let truck drivers know that potential imbeciles like you might be crossing...
the country is amazingly pedestrian friendly ya know ? i remember times in b'lore, rainy times, when the road was flooded and to avoid being stranded we've driven our bikes/cars on the footpath. it was not a footpath per se, more of a mud gap before shrubs growth. and we've cursed optimistic pedestrians for presuming the footpath was their domain.
and when we walked? we had to call on all the survival skills passed on to us, by our pre-historic ancestors, monty and carla.

you keep a sharp look out in all directions, you triple check before sprinting accross roads (coz you inherently know, velocity of oncoming traffic increases rapidly when the driver catches sight of you), you make sure you don't bump into smelly suspicious looking people who might relieve you of your purse/wallet. you make sure that red bus drivers can see that you exist by making random movements to attract their attention (like waving hands , else they might just plow you down and plead that they didn't see you ) and when you do reach home, you check to make sure you have all your limbs. phew ! you won't do that again in a hurry ....

so you see the difference ? no wonder we're sharper on an average. coz living out here just dulls the senses ... and makes you about as dull as ummmm aaa ummmm a tortoise ?? no offense to you ofcourse...

no no, am not saying your a tortoise, let alone dull....
well actually you could use some of those brain excercises .. umm.. no i didn't mean your stupid..

awww wat the heck.
take a walk,

in bangalore.

Monday, June 18, 2007

mArvELs oF tHe miND

so

Laura a Bionic female. they implanted chips in her brain that control muscle movement for her. i kid thee not. go ahead, look it up.
well we've reached. we have finally reached the stage which was depicted in cartoons when i was 11. u know the half person half robot cartoons.

Now going at this rate, what I'm really looking forward to is the realization of the tranformers cartoons. u rem them. the ones where 5 cars wud join to make a gigantic killer robot.
HOW COOL WAS THAT ????

i mean there were these chumps. and then some other chumps. but they had these reeeeaaaaaaalll snazzy cars. and THEY JOINED !!! to MAKE A ROBOT !! fired missiles and all.

aaaaahh those gud old days of stupid gullbility. when all this was not only possible, we actually looked out for them in the real world.
ok ok only I did. is it such a crime to love them so much ??? is it? is it ???

but now that we have a bionic female. just makes u wonder what else we can do with it u know.
blind ppl , paralysed, ppl with mental health issues, amnesiac. all of them can get chips that suppress , simulate, stimulate parts of the brain.
take it a step further criminals ? psychotic ? schizos ? addicts ??? liars ? ppl who giggle too much ?? can stupidity be cured ??? terrorists ? can genius be simulated one day ? well why not ?

interesting huh ? u know how they did the operation. she had to be awake. and then they had to listen to the static of the electronics equip while they pushed the pieces in place and she responded to questions to show she was allright. when they heard the sound that indicated it was in the right position they stopped and tested her. can u imagine that ?????
how the heck did they even know what the right sound was ???

years and years of research !!! totally awesome !!!

ok ok u want to read the actual thing , well go ahead

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19265007/

nEveR neVEr LaND

ok the previous post caused a small riot. (ofcourse it did. in never never land. who's talkin bout this country/planet/universe/dimension ??? )
so I have to write something to calm the teeming masses.

CALM DOWN will ya.
there that shud take care of it.

now back to business. thanks to my penchant for long sentences, purple purses and potato chips, my life right now is not exactly where i want it to be.

where i want to be right now is in Disney land. Hey ! its summer. where else would i want to be?
but I'm not. obv this is not gud and we dont have to be rocket scientists to realize that becoz we all know 2+2=5 .... oops 4.

what ? ur surprised the random sentences make no sense?

do u not know me?? oh u must be new.

i shall explain. kindly go thru prev posts. u shall realize that any attempt to make any coherent sense out of these rambles which are as gentle as a cool breeze on any warm spring sea side park are as futile as me trying to get a degree in trapeze acrobatics.
u obviously need to meet me to understand the impossibility of me ever learning trapeze acrobatics. obviously.

oh tosh. don't get in a huff. i'll give u something sensible just to make u feel better u haven't wasted all of your time.
the dollar rate is going down.

thats it. Hey if u want to know more, go read the news. der's a lot of it. am not particularly inclined to spell it out for u here...

what ?
oh yeah ? the same to you too Sir. hmmmph.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

nOT hAPpenED yEt

apparently this is some topic of interest to the masses.


NO I HAVE NOT GOT LAID YET.

BACK OFF.

who knows , maybe THAT's EXACTLY why i'm yellin :-/
oh stop giggling like a high school girl and grow up will ya.

and don't tell me ur actually shocked.
no i said not to tell me.

stop right there.

..

..

..

..

hmmph well if u DID get shocked, my work for today is done :P
oh btw this message is dedicated to a dear dear friend who asks me only one question every time we talk. you know who u are. no hon, it hasn't happened yet. sorry to disappoint :D

bReaKinG nEWs

so i got some friends. i dont say many.
thats like a ....totally relative term. there are ofcourse folks on this blessed planet with like ..a gazillion friends. not me. i got SOME.

23 to be exact.

now u know a person is pathetic if a 4 year old can count upto the number of their friends.
u know.
how? oh tosh don't bug me.

so , now i try to keep in touch with them, see? like everyday i ping them and ask them how they are.. see?
and the most common question of all time is "so wats new?"

new? NEW ?? WAT the heck can BE FREAKING NEW ??? i spoke to you last night before i fell asleep. and its been , wat ? 12 hours since then ????? i was asleep for TEN of those hours. so WHAT in the world makes u think that theres something NEW ???? no there isn't anything new. stop pestering me will ya. i just wanted to say hi coz ur in the order of rotation. see ? ur the 17th person in my list and i'll ping you on the 22nd of every month.
u do ur dance, i'll do mine. and we'll call it done. theres no NEED to ping me in b/w u know. coz i've already updated u with all the news yesterday.
I NEED ANOTHER freaking MONTH to collect the NEW and scoop it to you.

kapeeeesh ????

hmmmmmph. ppl.

huh, if they knew how boring my life actually was , they wudn't even be caught dead talking to me. u really want to know watsup ?
here's some breaking news for u. i finally saw page 3.
4 &%^$**&^ YEARS after it got released.

how pathetic is that ?? there's your NEW. go **^&%%%^ up your &^%$^%#$ .....

oh great , now i have only 2 friends. and thats coz THEY haven't read this yet.
oh darn , now I gotta reschedule.

Monday, June 4, 2007

sTAy awAY frOm tHE bAnK



Listen carefully and u'll hear an old old soul talk back to you.
echoes of an era gone by, of a past that you'd rather deny.

close your eyes and listen.
absolute tosh ? maybe , but hey the song is still darn good.

oh what the heck , i had a minor disaster today. since listening to my escapades and laughing at me is the only way to brighten ur day, i'll tell you all bout it.
so i wanted to check my account balance , and i found i had forgotten my online banking passwd. i wanted to reset that, but i had forgotten my debit card pin. i wanted to reset that but i did not know if i even had a telephone banking pin. i wanted to reset everything and called customer care , but when they asked for an account number i realized i had lost my cheque book. thats the book that has the account number printed on it.
:-|
u see where this is going ? yes am loosing my mind. thank you for telling me. now i need to go order a new cheque book.
now, where's my phone ?

oh darn !! .....