Maydumb.

I never should have gone back to college, but I did this weekend, to get my PDC and at the end of it all, i was not only ready to start smoking, but was ready to finish an entire pack twice over. yes thats how much nicotene i would have needed to calm me down, to prevent me from doing some serious property damage. if you happen to be a fighter pilot reading this, and they give you a coupleof bombs to blow up, please bestow those on my college's administrative building. Nothing would make happier than seeing that building blown to smithereens.this is what happened.

frankly i felt quite nostalgic on seeing college again, after all, this place enabled me to make loads of moolah via quizzes. i went to the admin building to apply for my PDC and thats were i should have retraced my steps and gone back home. First up, gentleman at the Examinations counter,
Me : "Sir i need an application for the PDC"

him: "What Maydumb, you've come very early for it", (mark the dripping sarcasm)

after procuring the form, go to the cashier for his exalted signature.

Me:"Sir, what is the exact amount i have to pay in the bank"

Him:"What Maydumb, you don't know what amount to pay?"

now if i did, we wouldn't have any need for him now, would we?

Me (still persisting):" Sir, i know its 125, but is there any additional fees to pay?"

Him: "Maydumb, you first pay and come"

bitch.
after you pay the fees, you then have to go on a grand trip of places you've never ever visited whilst in college, like the library,sports building and the HOD's office, so that they can ascertain for sure, you don't owe them anything. Nice.

HOD's office
the man sitting in front of the HOD while he's signing my form with marked in difference : "What Maydumb, you people earn your degrees without actually learning anything"

I'm glad, you've finally caught on boyou.

Library

Librarian: "What Maydumb, your ID card doesn't exist, theres something wrong with it"

yea, it expired when i finished my degree, smarty, the comp knows it, when will you?

Sports building: "What Maydumb, you said you'll join the athletics team, you never came back afterwards"

why don't you try, after an accident, huh?

back to the exalted cashier

him: "What maydumb, you haven't paid the alumni association fees?"

the bank had closed when i went bank to pay the effing AA fees, so i stood outside and begged and pleaded to let me pay the fees.
bank teller:"what maydumb, when will you people learn to be responsible?"

back to his exalted royal highness, the cashier, who had gone to lunch when i came back. when he deigned to come back after his sumptuous repast of (i presume) curd rice, the man signs and frees me. i waltz back to the admission section only to find that i have to visit the biggest kahuna of them all, the principal, who as my luck would have it was in a meeting.
the office told me that principal had better things to do than sign my form, bbecause he was busy making fallacious MOU's with obscure foreign universities, that i had to get it signed by the vice-principal, who as it turned out was also in the same meeting, making fallicious MOU's with obscure foreign universities. when the meeting ended an hour later, i mistook the wrong guy for the vice principal, and thrust my form to his face.
Mr. Mistaken Identity : "What maydumb, don't you know who the vice principal is?, what kind of students have you all become?"

rhetorical questions needn't be answered, i knew that so i proceeded to the right dude, who signed my form, also with marked indifference. I'd come to love that marked indifference.

Finally, i handed my form back to the examination section, and the man took it with soo much smugness and i knew what'd ensue in that nasal tone of his, i left before he could open his mouth, i left college for what i'm hoping will be longer than eternity and then i got stuck in a 2 hour bangalore traffic jam.

You know I didn't smoke a single ciggy that day, you know why?, because i knew that i'd be leaving soon for a more tolerable place and thats Hyderabad.

getting along just fine.

yea no exciting news from my end. i just work---sleep----work and I can't comment on the weekends because 2 of them have been spent house hunting and getting tipsy and one was in bangalore with a sore throat. Hyderabad is such a quiet place and when i get back from work, and i've morphed into the person who doesn't want to get back from work and feels good about it, i just read to fall asleep. I really hope theres a *Bomb* ineffable plan for us pathetic people.

well, to spice things up, i mooted an idea to throw a house warming party. My building needs it. all techies doing their mundane techie things, i swear they need to hear loud garrish Hip hop music to wake them up from their stupors. My hommies in my office agree. CD my buddy vehemently agrees that soporific people have no right to exist and vows to throw a party even if i don't consent to it, but i do. but my roomates arn't too enthusiastic about it, because their boss lives on the 2nd floor and their thinking about their techie career path, what if their techie boss gets pissed off?

why can't people show their boss their Hip hop moves i say?. oh speaking of roomies, one of them read a book of mine, the kiterunner, when i was out for the weekend. I'm glad she did, because now we can talk about books, but she read it even before i did, and thats kinda sad, because well when i give my book to somebody, i know the plot, i know what pages they're gonna love, what pages they're gonna blanch, but she knows that now, and claims its absolutely wonderrful.
sigh.
why can't i get my way??

My baby's got ooooooooooooh angel eyes

what do you get when you combine a rather unsocial city and a free gym membership?. well, you get the resurgence of the gym maniac. yes i'm back to my freaky exercise ways even though this gym has distastefully loud pop music. My prevoius gym had world space membership and since I'm the queen of gyms, (i'm the queen everywhere baby), i always manipulated the music to the Mike kauffman show, i miss that soo much, does it still come on?. gyms are verry interesting places. you get all types and by that i'm referring to the male species only, my eyes don't wander around to the women, but yes occassionally when another woman has a bitch figure and then I monitor her exercise routine and obsessively wonder about what i ought to incorporate into my exercise routine ,yadada, but men, aahh them i survey freely, and ofcourse they know you're watching and then they lift those weights or pedal that cycle with extra oomph. In my previous gym, this guy came upto me showing off his iPod. ofcourse i didn't know then what an iPod was, i just saw his playlist and blanched, backstreet boys, codered, blue etc, eeks why can't a guy hit on me with say coldplay on his playlist? but my present gym is pretty cool, largely filled with techie guys and interestingly they even gym like techie guys. techie guys do all things like techie guys, they even eat pizzas like techie guys, lemme know if it isn't true. lotsa interesting things happen at gyms, and this is my favourite gym tale. in my previous gym, i was listening to radiocity while on the tread mill.

RJ : we have a caller who wants to make an announcement to the whole of bangalore city.

caller : yea i do

RJ : go on, what do you want bangalore city to know?

caller: Bangalore! I'm in love with my cousin sister.

RJ: *silence*

caller: *silence*

me: *fallen off from the treadmill*

lol, anyhow back in bangalore for the long weekend but stuck with a sore throat, and no, it was to get 2 weeks of laundry done and not because i miss this city terribly, because i kinda don't, its easily the greatest city around, but somehow its fun living in an alien city, where you need a map to navigate through, where you don't understand the language, where the transportation is totally effed up, where there are umpteen continental food massacres. yea, inshallah its been fun.

Independant Woman update.

the weekend was a glorious sleep deprived one. i think i've slept for about 6 hours the entire weekend, which obviously means i'm getting along fine socially for the moment and i have enough ghost stories and faux pas tales to last me a life time. also did a lil bit of sight seeing. i saw the charminar, and by the looks of it, they ought to maintain it a lil better. hullo?? it has domes on it, one ought not to maintain it like a paan shop. then we proceeded to the salar jung museum, which obiviously was a museum on the life of salar jung, who i gathered was a nawab of this place, but gosh they all but displayed his diapers there. oh i moved to my new apartment this weekend. also fought with the guys who transported the wrong mattress to my place. jallu was there to be the "man on the scene", he also took pics of my place, from his snazzy new phone. thanks jallu. then i dealt with uber control freak roomate's mom. i swear there should be a Nobel prize for taking shit. and today i got my checque book. yahooey, i'm working womwn, who's getting paid, and i can sign checques now, oh arrite from the 1st of next month.
ok i'm done. i'm off now.

*Selecting A Reader*

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty from not having money enough for the cleaners. She will take out her glasses, and there in the bookstore,
she will thumb over my poems, then put the book back up on its shelf. She will say to herself, "For that kind of money, I can get my raincoat cleaned." And she will.
Ted Kooser

thanks to a co-worker who generously passed on this poem to me.

quasi home.

finally, after numerous betrayals, (i'm guilty of one btw, i'm sorry but theres no way i'm gonna be happy living right outside a cowshed. err looooooooong story), i finally found meself an apartment. i'm sharing it with two other girls and yayyy i'm finally gonna have roomies!!!. i always fantasized about this moment. me livin an independant life in an alien city, in an apartment with roomies...i always somehow imagined my roomies to be a hair dresser or this total bohemian DJ type chic, you know, completely different from me, well it didn't exactly turn out that way but i'm extremely satisfied with the outcome. i have me own wardrobe now and soon my own cot and my own mattress, and my own bed spreads, my own linen.....
aah yes, i'm a satisfied independant woman , scrounging but independant. yay!!!.

oooooooh very exciting news just in, managed to rope in some girls and we're gonna go out and experience some "nightlife". double yayy!!!

....take me home to the place I belong

yes folks out there who are curious as to what happened to me and even if you aren't i'll tell you anyway. i've been out house hunting. no thats HOUSE HUNTING!. lower case just doesn't convey the requisite emotions.

my house hunting sojourn began on friday evening. when a friend's friend called up to show me a house and i went forwith, with eager anticipation, romanticizing the entire hunt as a coming of age of age ritual, when the heavens burst open, it is after all, the "rainy" season and literally drowned the pretty picture. trust me on this, the landlord isn't impressed when you show up all dishevelled because of the rain. the aforementioned flat was good but the location wasn't. which is the story of all my house hunting. the flat is good but the toilets arn't, the toilets are good but the location isn't, the flat is good, the toilet is good, the location is good, but sadly the budget isn't.

if that wasn't worse i get stuck with weird people. for one, a schizophrenic fellow house hunter (SFHH) who can't decide between living with the relative and living on ones own. i swear SFHH ruined my house hunting. when SFHH turned judas, i was stuck with over critical mom of friend's friend house hunter (FFHH). over critical mom who thought i didn't know hindi and proceeded to tell FFHH that i didn't look like a "nice" girl. very sweet . thank you. then SFHH would, by now, do a predictible, volteface, and find us a apartment to inspect. infact SFHH found this great apartment on jubilee hills, a 3BHK deal, and the land lord took us in a green ford IKON to inspect the apartment with. the house was fabulous. the view, no thats VIEW was fabulouser. but sadly since another unreliable fellow house hunter (UFHH) was in chennai, we couldn't seal the deal. you the know the woman living in front of that fabulous apartment was a popular telugu actress???. i don't know her name, but imagine i could have landed a role in tollywood!!!, i could have gone to new york, london, paris, egypt for song sequence. i could have had a zillion people dancing behind me!!!.

now that i think of it the whole thing has become a bit too complicated. SFHH, myself and UFHH were a trio and we were supposed to house hunt together. but myself being very smart also secretly teamed up with FFHH, and kept a parallel stream going. but alas! smart won't get you a house. UFHH wasn't interested in the dream apartment, SFHH has decided to stay put with relative , FFHH found a house and is happy and what about me you ask?

STILL NO HOUSE. godammit!

..and so it goes.

work is cool. lots of benefits. this place is stocked with things that are totally nutritionally wrong for you.

New beginnings

my god! does work sap the creative juices or what?. i feel thoroughly disoriented, for one, there's an over whelming majority of girls in our office. imagine, my plight then, coming from 4 years of mech class. jeez its not easy. brings back haunting memories of the girls' school experience. and then hydie sucks, i'm saying this only because i got thoroughly ripped off over 4 passport photos. but i'm hoping things will change, and no cute guys!!!, darn it, i think i'll push for a transfer to the mumbai office when it comes up!

but my workplace is great, we have a uber cafeteria, and i'm waiting to sneak in there again for a second helping of lemon souffle, but they're having a meeting there. double darn it!!!. still looking for an apartment, but i'm put up in the company guest house which is a villa if you please!. i swear, i won't leave this place without a fight. lots and lots of stuff to do, before i can finally reclaim my bangalore mental equilibrium, i wonder if i'll ever get that ever again. that insouciant life where someone else paid all the bills, where your vocabulary did not include rent, immersion heater,water bill, electric bill and 3 day weekends.

i'd never thought i'd say this, but the word thats in my mind right now is "rich husband"

I'm leaving on a jet plane.

actually more like Sahara..... err bad joke. but its true! i'm leaving Bangalore to a place that has "high" and "bad" in its name and inspite of it, the only thing people have to say about it, is that the biryani there is very good. but what i ask, if you're not into biryani?. then??

so today i went shopping, and i dig most forms of shopping, books, music (very rarely these days, all hail torrents), shoes, oh my shoes is almost a fetish, and handbags, and the "unmentionables", but i abhor, shopping for jeans. yes i hate it. its an ordeal, and it morphs into a tragedy, if you can't walk properly. for the first time in my life, today was not a shopping i looked forward to by a mile.

we landed at central, and i with great trepidation made my way to the jeans section. oh right, i forgot to mention why i loathe jeans shopping. ever seen a typical south indian woman? that nice child bearing hips? now see the world is an unforgiving place, we (south indian women(SIW)) my dear folks, are the perfect child rearing machines, ample bosoms, wide hips, slender waists, you get the picture, its like the creator of the universe put in a favour to us SIW to propagate the species and can you say "boo!" to the creator of the universe, can you say, no i'd rather not, can i have normal kate moss type hips please? ofcourse not, and how does the world repay us? by giving us horrendously ill fitting jeans. 28-30-32-34... bitches this isn't an even progression, its waist sizes for heaven's sakes!!. ever hear of midsizes?

well anyway, i'd rant if i hadn't found perfectly fitting jeans on my 14th attempt. yes i did!!! and i heard bells ringing, and the hills came alive and the lark tripped on the brook, the works.

my beloved SIW, its called lycra, embrace it.

* folks out there, i'm moving to a new city for the first time ever, so any tips/advice on moving, finding apartment, things to take etc will be most welcome.thanks.

Scaramouche,scaramouche will you do the fandango?

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening......

i'm sorry, i absolutely dote on the bohemian rhapsody, its one of my favourite songs to lip-synch. and i lurrve to lip-synch. i can't sing, no siree. simply can't, but hell i can lip-synch! and i look so cool, if i do say so myself. i realised i can't sing when my mom used to record our (bro & mine) recitations of nursery rhymes and play it out to visitors who came home. that was a maternal subliminal hint i caught on to rather early. but i wanted to sing like a popstar, i wanted to look cool and my world to look like an amy grant video, (hopeless, i know!!) so it wasn't long before i substituted the remote for a microphone and started lip-synching. a compromise i'm very happy with. with time, the remote gave way to the hair brush, this happened when i got my very own tape player in my very own room. too cool. sooo much room for antics. and this week there has been a progression in my lip-synching career. i've got a new microphone substitute. My tripod walking stick!!!

well, admiteddly, i wasn't very thrilled when the doc prescribed a tripod walking stick (knee surgery remember?) for me, like hullo i'm 21!!!, but the depression soon gave away to thrilling optimism, when i discovered its hidden raison d'etre. it looks exactly like a microphone stand. the handle looks like a microphone, and its long and slender and stable, dude!! now i can rock lip-synch!!!. i can do, what eddie vedder and axel rose do to their mics. i can twirl it around and totally put up a convincing rock act. and if i only had a high stool, i'm sure i can even do a unplugged version of "the man who sold the world".

yeah i'm thrilled, but mark, i'm very aware that i'm pretending to be a rockstar, unlike these guys. shame on you INXS for desecrating michael's memory.

Edit : humongous hugs to vaish for this.

Tales from the plains, planes and a little bit from the hills

well, now since i have a lot of time on my hands, beacuse of the injury lay off, the only thing that's keeping me going is arrested development, books and the my pet project, my travel blog. the most delicious feeling in the world is looking at those photographs and reminiscing and reliving the entire experience. more importantly reliving the entire experience when my mobility knew no bounds. sigh. well, heres are some of my notes and observations on travelling through north india. i lost all my notes at the Kashmir airport, as previously mentioned. but i managed to remember a few.

>>>> there are three classes on a plane in india. the business class, the economy class and those with seats near the toilet.

>>>> travel to the north during summer only if you are a sadomasochistic fool.

>>>> Delhi indulges in its tombs.

>>>> why would you travel in a bus called "Panicker"?

>>>> gult crowd fighting with punju bus driver, in hindi, ( over kaput A/C) is the funniest thing ever.

>>>> never support a gult crowd fighting with a punju bus driver, in hindi.

>>>> the aforementioned punju bus driver has the power to put you on another bus (with A/C) when the A/C fails just to spite the aforementioned gult crowd.

>>>> beware of taxidrivers with streaked hair, they might take you for an another ride altogether.

>>>> Bhakra Nangal damn makes your chest swell with patriotic pride, till you read that the Brits initiated the project and us guys only "completed" it.

>>>> where there is water, there are hippies.

>>>> where there are hippies, theres no point shopping.

>>>> don't venture eating israeli food in a place called "Hotel Parampara"

>>>> fields of lavender anyday.

>>>> mountain air these days consists of diesel fumes, smell of roasted bhutta and wails of a petulant two year olds.

>>>> statutory warning that should be present on all touristy snow capped mountains : Beware of Horse shit.

>>>> avoid public hotsprings, unless you're into flabby nude people.

>>>> 15 hour bus journey in treacherous terrain on a bus with no suspension can bring about a spiritual change

>>>> there is a coffe day 4km into the climb to vaishno devi. (???????)

>>>> a 3 sec darshan after a 12 km climb. someone doesn't like you.

>>>> border road organisation rocks!!!!. favourite signs include, "Be gentle on my curves" and
" If you are married to speed, divorce her!".

>>>> what is "100% pure vegetarian" food?.

>>>> kashmir is beautiful, but don't follow an army convoy, chances are, it will get blown up.

>>>> and if it does get blown up, nobody cares.

>>>> kashmiri pulao will make you want to have "100% pure vegetarian" food.

>>>> snow fights are fun!!!!

>>>> they grope you a LOT at kashmir airport and its all legal.

>>>> Sahara is the worst airline, and Kingfisher air serves chocolate mousse.

>>>> if you ever ask a mumbai cop for "Sundance restuarant" chances are he'll point you to a nearby toilet.

>>>> colaba cause way is a riot of colours.

>>>> i love mumbai.

and since pictures speak louder than words, heres my travel blog. i've yet to blog about vaishno devi, kashmir and mumbai. i'll do that soon. and if anybody wants any information about travel in these cities, feel free to contact me.

lonely planet, here i come.

The rain in spain falls mainly in the plain

commiserations to my fellow mumbaikers about the rains. or should that be bombayites?. gujju today, told me that calling a bombayite, a mumbaiker is the ultimate affront. ok i'll compromise, how about mumbaiiytes? (bombayker doesn't cut it, even i know that!!)

My dad who's an out and out bombayite ( i'll bow to gujju's demands, after all, the poor chap waded in squelchy water for 5 hours before reaching home) told me, to my surprise, that the media was sensationalizing the entire issue and that most bombayites were rather enjoying the whole ordeal, secretly atleast. how could they?. how could anyone enjoy wading in knee deep water, that wet miserable feeling under gloomy ominous skies?. i told my dad that it was impossible to be even cheery under the circumstances, so the idea of enjoying it is plain daft. but then he looked at me as if he couldn't understand why it wasn't apparent to me. " its a part of their lives" he said, " it happens every year, and as with most things, they take this in their stride"

i love bombayites. i really do. they are so tough and i feel like a spineless wimp infront of them. they make me feel small and puny and without no guts whatsoever. very very few people make me feel that way, but i'm always overwhelmed by a bombayite in bombay. i call it the local train sassiness. most of them have spent a significant portion of their lives travelling by local train, and i still can't postulate how, but i'm sure there is a correlation between local trains, chaalooness and zero slouch tolerence. everyone i know in mumbai, works so hard, the city brings about such a ferver in one, that its unthinkable to rest even for a second. thats why holidaying in mumbai was a bizarre experience. i got stuck in Dadar station, waiting to rendezvous with my bro, and all around me, people were moving about with a purposeful worker frenzy, as if there was no time to be lost, and the trains zipped by barely stopping for a few seconds, and i felt i had transgressed just by standing there purposeless.

oh, i'm sure, you guys will get through this, you guys are tough bastards. and god bless you for that.

"How many boards would the Mongols hoard, if the Mongol hordes got bored?"

...............and since i have nothing worthy to blog about, except perhaps that i'm now in a position to rate every reality T.V show ever made and that desperate housewives is way over rated, i shall proceed to demonstrate my proclivity for ink on paper, only because he forced me to do so.

i sound so smug.


Total number of books I own:

hmmm, there are about 4000 books in my house and only 800 of them are fiction and own 500 in that. on an unrelated thought, my mum wrote a book called " fruits and their medicinal properties", and you should know that darker the colour of the fruit the better for you. anti-oxidants are good for you baby!.

Last book(s) I bought:

The hours by Michael Cunningham : well, because he's the mentor of Manil Suri, who's absolutely *Hawt*

Farewell waltz by milind kundera : to reinforce my lit exhibitionism

HP6-HBP : I'm going to stick to the tacky abbreviation.


Last book(s) I read:

HP6-HBP : The less said the better.

Breakfast of champions: this one by kurt vonnegut jr. is stellar. this one just laughs in your face and asks "why do you take yourself so seriously?".


Five books that mean a lot to me:
hmmm,

the folk of the faraway tree( Enid Blyton): this was where the journey began, i shudder to think what would have happened to me if this book was hideous read. i love it still. i also love the the find outers and the malory towers series, aah some of my finest afternoons came from these books.

To kill a mockingbird (Harper lee) : purely for atticus finch.

one hundred years of solitude (Gabriel garcia marquez): solely for the departure from tedious reality and ofcourse, who can forget the levitating priest?

The Complete works of Oscar Wilde : i read this one, right before i entered college, when i was goin through a pretty rough time. oh my god, he made me laugh and cheeky!

Death comes as the End (Agatha christie) : probably her finest mystery ever, and oh the protagonist is my idea of the perfect man.

What am i reading now?

Haroun and the sea of stories (Salman Rushdie)

oh btw, i have 1000 bucks worth of coupons from premier book store, any suggestions for what i should buy?

Books i could not finish:

Anna karenina, Dr. zhivago and Crime and punishment, why? why? can't i ever finish a book by a russian author. someone please help me, i really really want to finish Crime and punishment.

Hyped beyond belief

the fountain head (ayn rand) and The hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy (Douglas Adams), I'm not elucidating further, i got thrown out of a bookshop for dissing howard roark. sigh!

ok, people who are reading this, i'm not tagging anybody because i'm sure they've been already tagged. and oh, please help me with the 1000 bucks.

where'd all the good people go?

i'm not exactly ecstatic. there's cause for much bitterness.

My pre-ordered copy of half blood prince hasn't arrived and the internet is rife with spoilers

i'm walking like a penguin without support. oomph and riding, what the hell was i thinking?? (hey that rhymes!)

all the guys i fall for, go abroad in 6-18 months. why on earth am i not going abroad??

but i'm not overtly depressed either

i've been listening to jack johnson's in between dreams, and its stellar, i love it

i've also been reading breakfast of champions by Kurt Vonnegut jr, which is utterly cynical and funny. the other day when i was out at a traffic stop, watching the ensuing traffic chaos, i thought to myself, "why are these people hurrying, almost killing each other to reach their destinations? don't they know their lives absolutely don't matter".thats such a typical kurt thought. he's helping me become indifferent

and i found this on guardian today, they ran a dumbledore's death scene contest, where folks have to write in imitating another author's style. this one was hilarious.

when was the last time you did something for the first time?- Contd.

Yeah so that was the scan and the prognosis was weren't very good. See what happened was, about a year back, March 22 2004 to be precise i had a bad fall from the scooter, and I have decided to come clean about it. It was my fault. totally. really tired and guilty about blaming it on the "vehicle in front". I tried to ride with some oomph and unfortunately there was a bad patch of sand and since oomph and sand, never ever go well, i skidded and fell. This happened right outside college and I'm really really lucky that the RV bus didn't run me over. That fall busted my knee, which saw me go to the lecherous Knee doctor for diagnosis ( Ofcourse i didn't know he was lecherous when i first went to him. Just clarifying). He said it was a knee sprain and suggested physiotherapy exercise and hot water packs. It seemed to heal and i began to walk and everything seemed fine, but whenever i attempted serious sport, it buckled. I was unable to run etc and things came to a head at Vaishno Devi, where even my parents could descend better than me. My knee completely gave away. After i came back, i went to an orthopaedic surgeon who suggested i take an MRI. when he saw the scan results, he said it was a ligament tear and the only way out of it was Surgery.

it's probably one of the scariest words in the language. you go numb on hearing that. You don't want to do it, but you have to do it. so my surgery got scheduled on the 2nd. i don't know why, but before surgery you apparently needed to starve, so what if they say " you can't eat anything"?, deprivation is deprivation. my surgery was scheduled at 4 pm, so i starved. then one of the docs came into the room and asked me to sign a bunch of papers basically stating that if something should go wrong, I'll not hold the hospital responsible. very sweet. and then the doc asked me " what kind of anaesthesia do you want?". what can i say, I'm a surgery virgin, i had no clue as to what he was talking about. so i said "I dunno". " Do you want the safer one?", he asked, trying to help me make my decision. I wish i had the wonderful ability to raise my eyebrow, which would signify, major alarm, disgust and mortification all at the same time. but I don't. so i said, " the safest" in what i thought was a stern voice. " No, no, no" he protested, " All the methods are safe only", and then he sat down and proceeded to explain the various types of anaesthesia on offer.

type one: spinal anaesthesia, where an anaesthetic injection is given to the spine and the body below the waist becomes numb. type two: nasal anaesthetia, where tubes are inserted into the nose, where an anaesthetic gas is sent in and the entire body is anaesthetized. Type 3 : natural anaesthetia, where the patient awaiting surgery faints upon hearing of spinal taps and nasal tubes.

when i got finally wheeled in to the OT, the anaestheologist asked me if i was nervous. i said i was ravenous, which he somehow heard as "nervous", said that i should not worry as all the doctors were "Top doctors". but how does one know? with their masks, it could be anybody. and then to distract me from the spinal tap, he asked me my name. they didn't even know my name!!!. and since i have a quick thinking brain, i also assumed they hadn't read my case file, did they even know it was my knee they had to operate on? did they ? did they?, so without any context i blurted " It's my right knee doctor, the right knee". if they were startled, i couldn't see with those masks and i couldn't care less. i didn't want these jimmies to open my heart out.

Anaesthesia is a very trippy experience,theres a electrical discharge which feels wonderfully weird and then the whole area goes numb and heavy. i couldn't feel my legs at all. then the obviously loquasious ana..gist asked my bio data, which college?, what degree ? yada yada and then proceeded to give me some sound career advice. thats was it really, i didn't want to be awake while this man bugged me and told me i was wasting my degree, i asked to be sedated.oh, i also mentioned i was mangalorean, which went down very well with three of the doctors, they told me that i really needn't worry now since i was mangy and all, they promised to take extra care. before i passed out, i muttered "right knee" one last time and my last thought before succumbing to sleep was the plight of poor non mangy folks.

sometime during the fag end of the surgery, i woke up and though i was still feeling very groggy and drugged, i could hear the docs talking. they are such blabbermouths. the air was thick with gossip. they were talking about this doc kiran who was apparently parting ways with this hospital, Sagar, or was it the other way around?. well anyway, they were speculating as to whether kiran/sagar was actually fired from kiran/sagar and if this guy was stuffing everybody about quitting. then i heard a drill , some more about the plight of kiran/sagar and then drill again. i wanted to shush them. i wanted to shout, " shutup! you pikeys!! thats my knee you are messing with!!". thankfully, the surgery ended soon after that, and one of the docs made a joke in tulu, which was really funny, so i came out of the OT laughing. probably the only person to do so.
which is a great sign, alive, kicking and happy.

when was the last time you did something for the first time?

me?

umm 30th july when the buggers sent me through an MRI scanning machine.now godforbid, you ever need to pass through this machine, but it needs to come with a warning. in English!!. right so what eis this MRI machine? its like a giant tube where you are sent in and scanned, right down to those carpuscles, simple enough. but right before i was sent in, the operator put a couple of headphones on my ears, "you'll need this", he said. "You'll hear a couple of sounds, don't be scared". they should never give innocuous warnings. leaves you completely unprepared. so once i was in, the machine started and after 10 seconds sent a barrage of mettalic sound for the next half hour. the sequence?
drilling, firing from a machine gun by a person essentially bad at shooting, egg beater, nail-on-a-blackboard, refrigerator gone bad, drilling, this time probably a pavement, more machine gun firing, and then finally "red alert" sound. if you're a star trek fan you'll know this. its the sound that comes on when the enterprise goes on "Red Alert", rather like an ambulance.
My thoughts on the MRI machine, allthough they gave the guys who created this the Nobel, it could also find dual purpose as a torchure machine.
i wonder if they've used this in guantanamo bay.

That was 6000 Kilometres and it was bloody good fun.

6 cities, 30 Km trek up a hill, snow fights, bomb blasts and a mumbai in monsoon later, finally glad to be back in nanna bengaluru. i landed at the airport and the pilot said that the temperature outside was 24 degree celsius. 24????. i'll tell you. Delhi was 41, Chandigarh was 43, Manali was 32, Jammu was 46, Srinagar was 35, Mumbai was 32 (and ofcourse utterly humid!, I always wonder what will power keeps those Mumbaikers from running down the streets naked because of that dreadful humidity), and my hometown was 24??, we should have taken residence at the Leela Palace instead and sipped pinnacolada poolside for 10 days, that would have served the purpose. wherever we went, the thermometer touched record temperatures. the trip was awesome but this will prolly be the last time we travel as a family, as 4 finicky adults in an alien landscape.

I'll probably have to create a travel blog for my travel experiences but i made note of a lot of interesting things, and since i didn't have paper on me, jotted them on boarding cards and such, but as things went, had to dump them all at Srinagar airport because the scraps of paper were becoming an embarrassing liability. Srinagar airport has , probably, the tightest security in the country, they check you 6 times before you board the plane, and everytime they do that, they open your backpack and strip it of all its contents and scrutinize it thoroughly till they find something. at the first security check right at the airport gate, they nearly freaked out when they saw the iPod. even more when i told them that battery isn't detachable. they didn't believe it was an innocuous music player and i had to play them some music till they finally let me go. i was frisked 4 times and the CCTV clip would probably make for a B- rated girl on girl video and then there was utterly embarrasing, show- me- your- purse searches.It is, when your back pack contains things like mobile charger, knee brace, a copy of crime and punishment, dozens of cold tissues, boarding cards, air hostess appraisal forms and all sorts of entry tickets with scribbles on them. I had to dump all my scraps of paper after mom told me that the contents made me look like a pack rat. Anyhow i do remember what i wrote and i'll eventually get around to blogging them.

Big things are once again afoot and i can't talk about it right now. Inshallah, i hope the next few days go well.

P.S Nag, you know what to do, incase :P

That would be about 2000 Kilometres

well, after about 4 years, the Iddya clan goes on vacation again. Mark, i said vacation and not holiday, because you should see the bloody itinery. Bangalore-Delhi- Manali- Jammu- Srinagar-Delhi- Mumbai-Bangalore in 15 days. fantastic. i'm soo looking forward to this.
wasn't there a bomb blast in Srinagar the day before? . lovely.

see our family vacation can never be a holiday. it's incapable of such a noble quality. My parents don't believe in "Rest & Relaxation", they believe in Mall roads, Taj Mahal, Viceroy's summer retreat, Botanical gardens (why the fuck have they still preserved raj relics? they should destroy such things and build a golf course in their place), Valley point, Suicide point, waterfalls, Scenic point, River view point, chuk chuk train museum, butterfly cottage...err you get the drift. I'm cribbing about going to Kashmir for obvious reasons, so incase I don't make it back, a few messages to people who matter.

My parents : Thank you for having me, not that i had any say in the matter

My friends: Thank you for teaching me things i should have known.

My lovers : Thank you for teaching me things i should not have known ;)

My animals: Thank you for being furry and for emotionally blackmailing me with those liquid eyes.

The Asghar Family : Thank you for feeding me exotic mediterranean cuisine, although i still can't pronounce those names.

Quizcorp : You owe me a bloody T-shirt.

Abhishek Nag : I owe Eloor Library 3 books and 160 bucks, please do the needful and clear my name. and oh, owe jallu 500 bucks, clear that also.

umm thats it i guess, I'm off.
Take care world.

Another spirited performance

More tales of bacchanalian revelry.

Well last Friday, my brother’s best friend Harish and Vaish got married, and my brother was best man, which in south Indian weddings, means that you are fed a lil more and get to be in nearly all the pictures or sometimes even take the pictures because well you are Best man, you just can’t sod off and be idle, know what I mean?. Well anyhow my brother used his best man pass and got me invited to the party meant for close friends only, in a rather embarrassing circumstance. He marched up to the groom and said, “ invite her to the party, da”. So well, there we go, Saturday night partyyyyyyyyy!

The party was at Sheesh Mahal, and I didn’t know the place existed till I saw it. Its on lavelle road, right next to the Rice bowl, btw. Anyhow I enter the place with bro and I see the bride talking to her group, don’t know anybody there, see the groom, standing next to the bar, that scene looked more promising and so after wishing the groom eternal connubial bliss, (I used the very same words!), headed to the bar and ordered my first drink. See when the drinks are on the house, and there’s someone to drive you back home, you take full advantage of the situation.

The party, like the wedding was like a reunion of the class of 2002. And that freaked me out no end. It was like a trailer to my life 3 years hence, where I’d be at the weddings of my classmates, posing for posterity with a plastic smile on my face. Like someone said, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Of course not, but it’s a very bad thing if you are single and relationships for you have the same degree of difficulty as climbing Mt.Everest. Then imagine in 3 years, my classmates, who are in the same single boat with me now, will be gushing over with matrimonial ecstacy, while I most possibly will be single. Am I the only one who finds weddings depressing?

Soon, I was sitting, nursing my second drink, spinning, feeling very happy with myself. Like I’ve mentioned before, its my favourite part, I become the monarch of all I survey in my giddy world. I struck up a lively conversation with the ginsoaked gentleman, who told me that all bong men have a fetish for a dominatrix type. Then the party got even livelier ‘cause everybody took to the dance floor, I couldn’t because of my knee injury, the better for it because I got to witness some audacious (read comic relief) dance moves. The guy I kinda fancied at the party was dancing with this girl who was tryin some major salsa moves. Sigh!.

I dunno when exactly, but late into the party, I found that I was having trouble walking straight and keeping my balance, and when I told the afore mentioned Ginsoaked gentleman that my bro had used his photo to test the features of the new digicam, I realized I’d had a little too much to drink. I was not drunk, just feeling egregiously blunt. That was when bro dearest freaked out. If my dad came to know of my state, he’d be dead meat. So he bundled me into the car and drove me home. I tried to avoid my folks, but mom came into my room and asked me if I’d had alcohol. Her theory being that men consider women who drink to be very “loose”. I told her, without batting an eyelid, that’d had very little and conducted myself with exemplary dignity. Thank god, she didn’t ask me to walk right then. I can really lie very well, one of my special talents.

Next morning, I woke up with a nasty hangover, and it’s not nice when you have a puja to attend to. I felt lousy, everybody present with a fresh pious exuberance and I with a headache. I wanted to eat but apparently you need to starve till the puja was over. I felt guilty too, somewhat less spiritual, all till the pujari’s cell phone rang and interrupted the puja. That bugger is going to hell before me, he put god on hold!.

its the spirit that counts.

we always experiment with restuarants when we go out to dinner for dad's birthday, not so with mom's. Mom's birthday is always celebrated in a tried and tested restuarant and even the dishes are usually the same, soups,starters, main course and dessert. Theres no definite thought process involved in choosing restuarants in dad's case. we'd be in the car, and then one of us would suggest a restuarant, and the night's gastronomic experience would depend on the strength of that capricious opinion. Yesterday it was my loud mouth that suggested a certain restuarant, i'll not reveal the name because certain events occurred, which could result in the aforementioned restuarant losing its license.

So, we entered the restuarant with anticipation and grumbling insides, and surprisingly even got seats without reservation. the flip side to our capricious decision making is that we never make reservation and more often than not, wait outside the restuarant till we get seating. right, so far things were looking good for the restuarant and the ambience and plush seats elicited a warm approval from Dad, till he saw the menu. " They don't serve alcohol???". shit!!!. and of course my bro didn't help. "she brought us here". i got accusatory looks from all quarters and a full fledged glare from dad. i knew from then on there'd be some fine grumbling.
"this is not how i envisioned my 56th birthday, with apple juice!!!".
" 56 years, and you'd think a man derserves his rightful drink, and its not apple juice!!"
" Two kids over 21 years and they still want apple juice!!"
as a last ditch effort, in sheer desperation, my dad asked the waiter if it was possible they'd serve alcohol, nevermind the costs. the waiter shook his head, but also beamed slightly and winked a little. My dad an old hand at this game, then called the Maitre d' and asked him if he'd serve alcohol. surprisingly, after exchanging broad grins, the latter told us he could serve us Bacardi white with sprite and pass it off as fresh lime soda but it had to be done covertly because the restuarant did not have a liquor license. That bought the twinkle right back into dad's eye. all apple juices were cancelled and we got Bacardi in disguise.
i Dont drink that often, and i have this tendency to get tipsy with a little alcohol. i once started singing all the songs from the "Sound Of Music", after few sips of wine on lysh's terrace. it must have sounded really bad because apparently, a neighbour threatened to throw a shoe at whoever it was that was singing, and not one to be deterred, i apparently yelled back that if he threw a second shoe, i'd end up with a pair!. I'm sure she made this up, I was not drunk!!!. Anyhow, back to the night in question, soon i was spinning happily, looking dazedly at the splendid food before me and leaning on the plush chair for comfort. i like this part, theres contentment in all aspect of me.
the night ended peacefully after that, it was not a disaster. My dad had a memorable birthday, and the next time i suggest a restuarant for another birthday, i will not be poo-pahed.
thanks, Maitre d' of the restuarant that shall not be named.

Out, damned cold! out, I say!

my immune system sucks, a little night chill and i get a damned cold. many things have happened over the last week which deserve a whole post each, but im too tired and i'm walking around like johnny depp in the pirates... because i'm groggy with cetrizine, so lets see then, a brief recap of the week past :

monday: aah yes, the RVCE farewell, well what can one blog about something called the "at home function"?. gowday extracted a promise from me, that i blog extensively about it. i will. eventually when i'm bored to death and have nothing to do. i'm not a saree person, my previous two experiences with it have jarred me for life. first time was at the 10th standard graduation, where i kept tripping on the hem and the second time was at the 12th standard graduation, where i needed to go to the loo urgently but couldn't do so because, a saree is a volumnous bulky shit and makes life miserable. forget bras, burn sarees. i honestly can't imagine how women like me mum work in them. where are you madhu kishwar? our nation turns its lonely eyes on you.

oh btw, gowday gave me a free ride to coll and back, so chics who read my blog, hes single and ready to mingle, i'll pass on ye resumes to him, and i promise no sting operations

tuesday: the house was spruced up to get it ready for my brother. i was asked to wet wipe my room so that the dust wouldn't affect the phoren returned. it reminded me of the times when aunts and uncles, returned from the states, trundled about with boiled water, crinkling their noses at all things indian and telling their kids not to drink colas and other stuff because it contained "germs". No wonder all of them grew to be such sissies.

wednesday: well dear anna came out from the immigration at midnight, and we all hugged, rather a huddle. that indian cricket team is a bloody bad influence. when we got home, we all talked, mom & dad slept, but anna and i talked till 5 am!!!. i got a pink ipod mini. yayyy. hoot.
okay, i confess, i didn't know the ipod existed till i saw it in the september issue of cosmo last year. it was featured in the girly girl's "must have" section. my bro vehemently objected to pink, but for me white is albino and i don't like my posessions to be white, because after a while it will become dirty and then i'll wistfully look back at the time in which it was white and then chide myself for not handling it better. white has such potential to be tainted. i hate the feeling!. so pink it was, even if it was just 4 gb. its so girly i love it!!!

thursday: went to forum and shopped for anna, the man hasn't bought any clothes!!!. just a huge suitcase filled with chocolates to keep the relatives happy.

friday: went shopping with kay for some "unmentionables". my favourite kind of shopping. i love girl friends because they coo so soothingly from the outside when you're infront of the fitting mirror, thinking aloud that you're fat. went shopping for shoes too, i got two pairs of real trendy low heels from Soles. i can't wait to start working and spend my pile on shopping. after that i went shopping with anna again, this time to central. i love shopping malls. clothes, clutter music, escalators, price tags, ingratiating smiles from the staff, aching feet... my future is retail baby. Mango here i come.

saturday : submitted my project report, developed a sore throat and gave up tickets to bunty aur bublee. the latter ofcourse was the silver lining to a gloomy day.

sunday: slept all day. the sore throat developed into a full fledged fever, i'd like to think it was anyhow. one gets more sympathies when its a fever. i hate being under the weather. it dampens the vivre.

and before i go, some posy poetry.

well there, that was my week,
my life is a bore and my throat is sore,
the drugs are taking over, i'm off to sleep.

goodnight world.

From inside the quizcorp "huddle".

shiny happy people

thats right, we can-can !!
ashanka

last tango in RVCE. *ing: gowday and jalan Posted by Hello 

at your own peril

been busy. anna's come home and i'm feeling pretty neglected :(
not really, he's bought a huge stash of chocolates and got me a new ipod mini, so yayy! anna

anyhow, acqueising to gowday's demand for farewell pics, i'll put it up, but readers be warned, these quiz corpers in no way reflect my mental state and oh, im not putting up any pics in which i feature in a saree or feature at all. that would be priceless wouldn't it? :P

Before Sunrise

i just finished seeing a wonderful movie, you know the type that you recollect when you're watching scenary from a moving bus or that brief interlude when you're just about to sleep, when you watch the ceiling and silent images come back.I have poor taste in movies sometimes, i really don't understand supposedly brilliant cinematic techniques, the only ones i like are the ones that come back to me on the ceiling.
its late in the night and my time, i've just learnt is finite. i have my very last internals morrow, i don't give a hoot naturally, but i think that if not spectacular, i should atleast make a graceful exit. but my nonchalence has been dented somewhat, knowing that the time between my internal and now is finite. But it is filled with so many possibilities. i can do so many things while the clock ticks away, i can study, watch another movie, the sequel, talk to strangers, do something terrifyingly exiting, hmmmm. i'm going to say something very trite, but oddly feeling good about it. finite time but infinite possibilities.

Sur la Table

thats the dessert restuarant i will run when im done saving the world.

yes this is a random post, where i ramble on topics as i please with no regards to structure or metre.

what did i do today? well i made money, the only way i can, by quizzing. its the the only thing that has saved me from impecunious circumstances, largely. i like quizzing, i really do,hell it even got me on t.v, but i generally found that i had a dichotomous attitude towards it. i liked it but i also consciously tried to keep away from the nerdiness often associated with it, i tried to be the hip and cool quizzer and today i realize what i fool i was. i drove all the way to the back of boon docks to take part in a quiz today and i get nostalgic about sunday morning quizzes at the KQA. i finally realize. I'm throwing my lot in with the nerds. *hugs*

the UTPT blog looks awesome, Bib and Ganj put up two superb posts. i miss those days, when we were the juniors and had these guys to look up to. i miss that. its such a comfort when you have someone to look up to. i went to IISC today after coming back from the aforementioned boondocks. put up the UTPT poster in and around IISC, un-aided by a roll of terrible scotch tape. i HATE badly behaved scotch tapes. but the poster looks great though, jalan, has done a fantastic job and its absolutely magnificent, makes you feel small and significant at the same time. the awesome picture of the buddha is by Mando gomez who acquiesed and allowed us to use his picture for the fest.

my house is an accent wall mess. mom's busy painting the house and my main pre-occupation these days is coming up with ways to avoid being in the house. the flooring is on, everything is displaced, construction goin on and mom is generally armed with a million shade cards, harassing me to pick colours. sigh. She's majorly into accent walls this time. she saw one at a friends place and now we have one in everyroom. the living room has a bright orange accent wall, dining chrome yellow, my room has a purple one, the kitchen has a buff coloured one......... sigh. momsy they are called colour consultants, for heavens sakes!

found a couple of good links on the guradian, simon schama my favourite historian talks about the recent elections in the U.K. i loved Schama's "the history of Britain" on the beeb. i've always loved history, but this show was so stellar, that i often stayed up till 3 am to catch the second telecast. British history is fabulously checkered. Drama, intrigue, lust,sex.... like a toe curling soap opera.

also found Margaret Atwood's excerpt from her new book "curious pursuits", in which she talks about her first visit to europe. i've always wanted to do that, backpack across europe armed with a lonely planet guide book, inshallah, one day i shall.

A little house on memory lane

well i'm back to my curling up with a book habit. people from RVCE will flog me if i say i didn't have time to read because of engineering, but the truth is i had a little falling off with reading, ( do people have that? hmmm) half way through my engineering, can't think why, anyhow finished quite few books in the past week and really utilizing my Eloor membership.

i don't know why i picked up Chetan Bhagat's Five Point Someone, i scoff at all things IIT, i can't stand the mythic hype that surrounds this institution, and the inside cover said, Mr. Bhagat graduated from IIT and IIMA, and was now an I-banker (yawn), obviously this book was going to be one annoyingly cloying ode to his Alma mater right? (he even dedicates the book to it!). inspite of all these disconcerting misgivings, i began reading the book and did so for five hours straight till i finished the book.

it was absolutely antithetical to my preconceived notions, far from an ode, this book is a rant against the entire IIT system right from page 5, but thats not why i liked this book. i liked it because it made me utterly nostalgic about my own engineering experiences. its a story about the trials and tribulations of three guys, Hari, Ryan and Alok and their attempts to sucessfully complete the mechanical engineering course at the IIT. Right from the start when the protagonists groan at Manufacturing process classes, i remembered my own class, their fidgety doodling, bored yawns, those smart ass comments that elicited a tired chuckle, those nerds at the front benches, licking their lips and axiously copying notes, it brought back so many memories, this book started a nostalgic movie in my head.

Ryan the bored genius in this book reminded me of one such guy in my own class. i used to sit next to him and during classes he would drum his pencil on the desk furiously, fidget and sometimes even sing handle's Messiah, give everybody the "can't believe you want to listen to this crap" look, then go on to design a radically different dog clutch, and would give me a triumphant look and say " these classes kill creativity!". he was right! and i felt like a pro-establishment loser.

the mention about machine labs reminded me of the first time i handled a lathe machine, a serious boys' toy. being the sentimental fogey i am, i desperately wanted to keep my first ever machined part, but was not allowed to do so. now during machining, the metallic chips have this beautiful way of curling up. watching them curl up was like watchin a waterfall, or waves breaking, it was mesmerizing. i even took the curled chips from my first machining endeavour and made it into a bracelet and wore it so proudly, showing off to all my classmates, who rolled their eyes at such "girly" antics.

semester exams brought back tons of memories about my own harried semester exam preperation (rather the lack of it!). the all nighters, midnight SMS's to find out what to leave or to check the status quo of the other person, the smart alec who tells you 30 minutes before the exam that a chapter you thought insignificant was infact very very significant, the subsequent panic attack for not studying the aforementioned chapter, the malicious determination to cause panic attacks among other people who have also not studied the said chapter, the bored genius traipsing through as if life was sunshine itself, and finally dying a million deaths during the exam, because the only chapter you did not study features prominently. you know the last bit has happened so many times that i'm sure theres a science to it

i did not review five point someone because tonnes of people have already done that and my reading was too intertwined with nostagia for me to be objective about it, but i really liked the writing, it had some chuckle worthy smart lines and ofcourse the three of them are such goofy idiots that they are utterly endearing, but it would be really interesting to get a non engineers perspective though.

soon, college will be over for good. our farewell is in the last week of may, and i owe a full post dedicated to the idiosycracies of my all male class and as one discerning senior rightly pointed out, sometimes, nostalgia is opium enough
sigh

Who's gonna drive you home tonight?

i hate riding on bangalore roads, absolutely loathe it. i've been riding on it since i was 15. those were the halcyon days, i was one of the very few kids who got to come to school on a bike, and perks included, running the school security guard over, (truly fun!). mom wouldn't send me out without a helmet, so i looked like a mysterious school girl biker chic lol. mornings were fun, school was at 8:30 and i left home at 8:15, and covered a nice 8 km in 15 minutes, not bad huh? on the way i'd meet guys from the boys' school and well it was fun racing them, i did not like to "race", but those guys used to get severely affronted every time i overtook them, and so gave these smirks when they in turn over took me, i can't handle men smirking, it wakes up the feminist demon in me and so a race was on.not any more though, driving has become a nightmare. i used to be a rather timid, unadventerous person before i started driving, it unleashed the thrill seeker in me. but now, i'd rather trek through leech infested forests than drive in bangalore traffic.

its a bloody nightmare,honestly, trained baboons can drive in a more orderly fashion. people yell, honk, take atrocious turns, swerve, brake, speed...... so i've had it with atrocious driving, i really want to educate people about scientific driving. yes, theres a method to this madness. bangaloreans please start taking notes.

#1. If you can't drive, don't drive.
cardinal rule methinks. people who can't drive, shouldn't, or if they wish to, should do so with a giant L sticker on the left of the road where all the other inconsequential things are

#2. Right, left or centre
believe it or not your speed should determine which side of the road your vehicle should be on. since you can over take from your right (on the side of the driver's rear view), the fastest vehicles should move on the right of the road. so if you are zipping home to have sex you should be on the right, but if you are puttering around taking in the sun, stay to the left, and if you are pacing yourself, stick to the centre of the road

#3. don't go hamlet on the lane
this is driving that would make a schizophrenic feel pretty well adjusted. i hate people who change lanes to suit their convenience. when traffic on one lane gets blocked, mr (or ms.) selfish decides to switch lanes causing an "in situ" traffic jam. urgh. and then theres the tiresome business of reading these "to be or not to be" souls. they swerve madly from lane to lane, its almost like watching a tennis match

#4. yellow yellow, makes you mad and mellow
i personally hate it when the green changes to yellow, just when im about to cross the signal, but the done thing is to stop at the signal when the yellow comes on. people are such rotters that they move on even when the light turns red, thus blocking traffic at other signals.

#5. don't dream when its green
this is especially for those people who are making grocery lists when they are at the forefront of a stop signal. isn't it odd how people with the slowest response times always tend to be on the frontlines and you, who just want to bolt, is at the back, honking madly, trying bring attention to the fact that the light is green?

#6. scourge on the free left blocker
this for those people that block a free left at a signal because, they duh, obviously don't want to turn left, but they just have to encroach on the space, move to the front of the line and make grocery lists. hate you guys.

#7. send those running pedestrians to the olympics
damn straight!. people just dont understand how uncomplicated and unimportant their lives really are. i don't get why pedestrians scoot, scram, bolt to the other end of the road in between busy traffic. all you have to do is wait at the pdestrian crossing till the walk sign turns green, and then you can stroll about, breathe in, listen to the birds, swish your hair a lil bit. no., they insist on running to the other end of the curb, when the green signal is on, when most vehicles are going full throttle on their accelerator pedals. honestly its olympics or road kill

#8. you ruddy fool, when you have an indicator light, use it!
my favourite pet peeve. people who don't indicate which way they want to turn. its like they're going, ..going, still going, and suddenly they have a "oh fuck theres my right" moment, and swerve suddenly. people, indicator light is to INDICATE which way you're going, not because its particularly psychadelic. sometimes, a person intending to go right, goes to the very left of the traffic signal, usually by squeezing & snaking through traffic, and then when the green light comes on, its diagonal movement towards the promised land, without using the indicator.

#9 you ain't no moses and the red sea ain't gonna part
when you are stuck in a signal and some car outhere cannot seem to start, please don't honk your annoyance out. everybody knows its green, and its time to go, so honking really doesn't serve any purpose, it just makes the driver of the car more nervous, unless its me, then the honking could be counter productive because i refuse to start my car in excess din and when my chi is broken so :P. why do people honk at a traffic jam any how?. its bizzarre. traffic's not moving, you are on a road thats like the lunar surface, life sucks and then you honk.(???)

#10 antichrist is an autorickshaw driver from bangalore
ummm, nothing much to add to that one. yup nothing.

there goes people, if i think of a few more i'll let you know. meanwhile the cutest thing happened to me while i was riding back home. i stopped for this guy who was crossing the road. (cute too), and then he stopped to let me pass, i smiled and indicated that he should pass, but he stood right there and gestured at me, to pass, and then i smiled at the irony of chivalry, and said " pedestrian's right of way", he gave the broadest smile ever, also sensing the irony, how chivalry, is not a male bravado act, but something that shows people you respect them

oh i bet he was married!, he had that "happily married" aura :(

Discography of me- part deux (the rise of the radiohead)

as we know in episode 1 (here i'm inclined to mention that there wont be an episode 3, ever, i really don't want these posts to sound like star wars prequels), i put forth my musical influences till standard 12 and left off saying that music in college was a raging inferno. actually that last bit was a bit of an exagerration, i'm not sure if it was an inferno as much as it was different.

very few will say that an alarm clock changed their musical (i meanter say, taste in music) preference for ever. ok a bit dramatic. actually my alarm clock had a built in radio. it also had that inventively clever snooze button. ordinary alarm clocks, jangle the firt moment of waking existence, my snooze button was so hip i got 4 minutes of grace snooze time everytime i hit it, and well you know would politely wake me up in stages, from deep slumber to light slumber to breakfast aromas, and then finally to "oh shit, im fucking late for school (or college)", oh yes about the built in radio, well see it required 4 extra batteries, and we are not quite the household that leaves 4 extra batteries lying around, so i never did use the radio for a long time, till my brother scrambled out and got them to hear cricket commentary for an important match when we had a power outage. so i fiddled with the knobs, i quite like the radio disturbance, the crackle of mangled sound waves, infact i read recently that these crackles have the remanence of the big bang, (kou!) anyhow i came across unknown stations, i love listening to AIR news, the person reading the news has such a "all is calm"quality, and one day while twisting the knob hoping to get some good music, i got this voice, a voice that was so soothing and strong and comforting, that melted my insides into a fine goo, a voice that i'd like to have for a blanket, and amazingly, that was talking about western classical music. that day i realized i was going to marry a man with a great voice and that i liked western classical music. the show was preetham koilpillai's friday night rendezvous, he introduced me to the music of my life, beethoven, bach, mozart, swan lake, so much so that i took up violin lessons for 3 years after that. trust a man to introduce you to these things!. its funny how men have influenced me the most in my music. my brother influenced me because he was the feudal lord of all the electronics in the house, and wouldnt let me play any teeny bopper song, the men i've been involved with introduced me to artists im still hooked onto.

the radio scene started to pick up and bangalore got its firts FM (private) station, radiocity 91 in 2002 (july 4th). im a radio person, im not one for videos, for me videos distract from the essence of the song. 91 fm was a english station and i loved all their shows especially the late show (10pm- 12 pm) hosted by priya ganapathy. she had the most endearing of giggles, now i sincerely believe that if you can't be a beautiful idiot or a brilliant lunatic you should atleast have an uplifting giggle, she played the most amazing of music and introduced me to the doors, when i first heard riders of the storm, i wanted to die right then, because surely there could none better than it. the late show was this period of calm and stock taking everynight. priya giggled, gave words of advice, cheered us up and crafted a wonderfully hum world filled with great music, if i ever meet her, im going to gush unashamedly. she also hosted the retro show on sundays and i never ever missed it. there were specials on bob dylan, the disco era (fav), divas (fav), nina simone (fav), elvis presely,( i got on air for this one!!). then one fineday they went hindi, inexplicably, and the music stopped. i really miss the english 91 fm, they used have this show on relationships and sex, after 12 and people used to call in about their sex problems. one time, this guy called up and asked the expert if size really mattered, and the "expert" told him that 2 inches was sufficient !( yea right, for conceiving!!!). jonzy and santosh gnanakan had this metal head show on thursdays, where all these "serious metal heads" (oxymorons!!) would call up and ernestly ask for metal, thats where i heard sound garden. im in love with chris cornell and his "spoooonman" voice. especially, the humming interlude in audioslave's "show me how to live". aah soo delectable.

college was such a sea of change from school. for one thing there were men around, coming from a girls only school, a very big plus. and when there are men around, you can be sure there arn't posters of the backstreet boys. i too had that mandatory pink floyd year, and the mandatory angst that came with it. some people thought of it as the ultimate sensory deprivation tank. on retrospection pink floyd was the anthem for every non conformist in the first year, the us versus them, the che guevara affiliation, where we promised to see each other on the "dark side of the moon", yea the conformity of the non conformists, lol. my pink floyd year, was nicely wrapped up by the roger waters concert, that concert was fun, he sang time, and shine on you crazy diamond with an anti-commie animation as a backdrop. it oddly reminded me of 1984 and i never listened to pink floyd again!. i had great seniors who were into a lot of great music. through saigo i got urban hymns ( verve) and 14 albums of the grateful dead, and i guess friend of the devil is a friend of mine.

well my radio phase is still alive and kicking. im on internet radio now and its simply fabulous, any and every artist is on it. i once got onto radio guyana, where all the islanders called in to request, and a scottish radio station where the RJ had the yummiest scottish accent ever!, well now im hooked to the radio station i customized on yahoo's launch cast. its plays a lot of jazz, lot of REM, mazzy star, a lot of my favourite divas, not too much rap, some hip hop, a good deal of experimental music, an album of nick drake's........

yea im happy now.

currently ruling my playlist 

Fumbling Towards Ecstacy

stayed up late last night waiting for a sarah mclachlan torrent to finish downloading and im beginning to resent the fact that torrents are determining my waking hour. i have no idea what it is that prevents me from shutting the comp down and sleeping, but no, i can't leave for the life of me when 80% has been downloaded and the time remaning comes to an hour. this phase for me become psychologically critical, im hoping and praying fervently that the download rate continues, that no additional leecher comes and spoils my perfect world, all i want is for that bloody download to end, yes in this phase i start morphing into an obsessed psychopath

after getting broadband, i've noticed a huge change in my existencial well being. my state is determined by the health of my precious downloads, when one of my downloads is going particularly well, getting 15 KB/s, i feel so elated, rather like god's specially anointed angel, for whom the red sea of downloaders has parted to make way for an unobstructed download (DL from now on), and when some of them remain poised at 0%, life is filled with anxiety and existencial queries. i've noticed a rather scary phenomenon, when the DL reaches 99% i become really nervous, hoping that no destructive force on earth will come between that DL and me. i don't feel this possesive of any guy for that matter. these days oddly most of my DL's are getting stuck at 99%, leading to a whole day of restlessness, and sometimes even questioning the ineffable plan, (i did that for the CSNY DL)

thats half the story, once the album has been listened to, and if its not particularly enticing it opens another flood gate of issues, damn im unlucky in life or why do i get rotten quality etc, so i've devised my own method of time and more importantly emotion management. artists like alison krauss, REM, CSNY, rufus wainwright, fiona apple, pearl jam are generally good return on investment (time & emotion), where as radiohead, portishead, mazzy star, well it can sometimes get weird. i think i've become a sort of guru about the art of downloading and one cardinal rule is to read atleast 6 music reviews to really gauge how excited you must get about the album.
wait, am i really that weird?
well coming back to my sarah mclachlan DL, i can't express how excited i got about it. i almost nurtured it, made sure my other DL's didn't get in the way, kept the comp open for 7 hours refreshed my connection when i thought the speed was slowing down... well im extremely happy to state that she didnt disappoint, fumbling towards ecstacy is stellar, but then i've been in love with sarah's voice, i almost want to fall asleep enconsed by her voice, ah theres nothing like a good diva's voice first thing in the morning( ok i admit its noon now)
well im off to lunch with kay, and well the lil psycho me is happy, thanks sarah

Agaetis byrjun

i've been wondering how to describe Sigur Ros's music. someone called it " whale in heat music", while k called it "the music of radiohead and enigma's mutant child", but methinks it has a rather pagan wombish quality. like the ideal background music for the floating ophelia.i first heard Sigur Ros's Svefn-G-Englar on the OST of Vanilla Sky and the odd thing about it is how free it makes you, so free that you want to save the rain forests, baby sea lions, erase third world debt.... hmm its a pagan music that makes you feel like Bono at Davos.
i've never understood why all these people "in business" scramble off to a posh ski resort to talk about business and irritatingly third world debt. Bono talks of it, Bill gates talks of it and most annoyingly Koffi annan talks of it, in switzerland, where all they are concerned about is the alacrity of the cuckoo in their clocks.when you are in a place where everybody is talking about the "pooahrest of the pooah" (POP, for convenience) who gives a damn, when everybody is pretty much giving the same soundbites ? now if Bono ( lets not forget the shades) went to the hinterlands of mozambique, among the semi clad natives and rallied for third world debt erasure, that would make for good television, but when you're in a ski resort the only thing one should do,is ski, me thinks.
well anyhow, heres the link for Agaetis byrjun, its a free download, (many thanks nag)

Not with a bang but a whimper

i'm very happy that the cricket series got over. i was tired of having to see all my programmes on the second airing, or sometimes even the third, just because my cricket crazy family didn't want to miss a single second of cricket. i'm not as crazy as them. partly as a reaction to the affection shown by my family to the game. my brother, who was by all accounts the daimyo of t.v, would mercilessly switch from a paul newman movie (that i'd be watching) to a kenya- zimbabwe highlights faster than one could say kamikaze, mom on the other hand can belt out match stats that could make Wisden blush with shame and dad has sent the remote on so many aerodynamic journeys, following every middle order collapse, that im seriously contemplating putting shock absorbers on it. but me? im generally fruit cake, oblivious to any cricket brouhaha. simply because sports for me is entertainment and eye candy, and cricket has none of it. its grossly over rated me thinks.
entertainment is watching sportsmen display sublime fluidity of motion. like zidane's poetry etched football play or motion like a delicate brush stroke emanating from a maestro's hand, like roger federer's tennis. when i see cricket, it looks ugly.cricket these days is devoid of delicate wristy shots and more inclined towards ugly and loud slog shots. its obscene. like serena williams's tennis. entertainment, is watching unbelievable consequences of human motion, like zizou's goal vs england at the euro, or Hoogenband's desperate 50m dash to defend his olympic title, and watching these feats make you feel like a sinner redeemed, purged and pure. cricket just doesn't have that excitement. and as far as eye candy goes, i can't fathom how the women of this country voted tendulkar as the #2 sexiest man in the country(#1 was shahrukh khan, i can't fathom that either!), flanneled men are as charming as onion icecream on the female senses, unlike those footballers, in their cute shorts with a hint of finely cut muscle peeking out (slyly), now thats real eye candy *wink*
and finally, after what seems like an eternity of DD coverage, and an unpardonable assault on the english language, "the batter is now facing the baller", i really wish, black holes had a thing for DD's comentary team (post match analysis "experts" included)
wishing and hoping

Irony is the best medicine.

few people can experience in their life times what im experiencing right now. the left butt is on a painkiller induced la la land trip, while right butt has no clue whatsover. so when i walk, things alternate between sensation and no sensation. like the butt (punster, funster) of a very obscene joke. so without further ado, i shall launch into how these things came to be.
i blame it solely on Oprah.
she flaunted this theory of substituting muscle for flab ,yada yada , long story, and which resulted in me lifting weights and i prolly lifted a little too much and i ended up with terrible back spasm. i thought it will pass in a few days, and heck a lil pain is nothing compared to what i shall experience bearing quadruplets, so good training and stuff. yes i know one day i shall end up writing a sucessful self help book , about turning negtives into positives and such. finally the pain was unbearable and i had to see the doctor.
i was adamant that i wanted to see a female orthpedician only, i didnt want some guy to fondle with my back, especially after my lecherous knee doctor. but as the receptionist at the hospital put it, " madam, if you want a female orthopedician, you'll have to leave the country!". pig!!. anyhow. my dad reassured me he'd blow the doctor to the moon if he tried anything hanky panky. and so we chose the oldest geriatric doctor available.
when the doctor heard that it was a gym mishap, he burst into peals of laughter,. bag of bones, enjoying himself goes, " you want muscles to become a female wrestler?" ho ho ho hahahahahahahahahha heheheheheheheheheheh hoah hoah hoah tsk tsk tsk. after a lot of needless mirth, he asked me what the need for weights was?. i can wax eloquence on a lot of things, but infront of a doctor who was laughing so uncouthly, i lost my confidence and said, lamely " ironically, it was a back strengthening exercise". hohohohohohoho hahahahahahahahahahahha hehehehehehehehehehhehe hoah hoah hoah hoah tsk tsk tsk and whole bit of phlegm ratteling also.
finallly, after he wiped his tears, he wrote me a painkiller, which a mallu nurse expediently administered to me. in the left butt which is now in lalala land, while the other is rather befuddled by all the fuss.
anyhow, part 2 of my magnum opus will be a little late in coming. my back is still weak and when the back is raring to go for a spot of strengthening exercises, ill get around to it.

discography of me- part 1, (albeit a little too hyphonated).

although, the comments don't reflect it, certain sections have subtly (and not so subtly) hinted that its getting too diatribe-ish, vendetta-esque, ranting looney- like (oooh i'm liking this hyphonated odyssey).
so to cater to the palettes of those subtle (and not so subtle) epicurean connoisseurs, i shall present the decent aspect of my personality, my taste in music. when i started writing this blog i thought i'd include music reviews of artists forgotten by the world at large , to serve the double purpose of appearing like an indie- arty-bohemian-chutzpah type and ofcourse attracting more traffic. to be honest i've had notions of people flocking to my site and the stat counter swelling and me getting a fabulous book deal because of my astounding talent and writing the fabled book in an exotic place, say marrakesh,and abetted, by a fabulous bronzed muscle-ey muse. sigh......
anyway, before i start reviewing music by little known artists i thought it prudent to put my own musical history upfront. like everything else, this too is a story.
it didn't begin in 1983. ofcourse not. but much before that. when my mom was pregnant with me and dad decided to play the saturday night fever soundtrack till the tape frayed. then he switched to boney-m , and before they could ra ra rasputin for the billionth time, mercifullly i came out into the world. but relief was shortlived in a house that swayed to "shes crazy like a fool, but what about daddy cool?". it was only a matter of time before dad switched over to cat stevens. i admit i like cat stevens. that song about morning breaking and what not is an eternal favourite. but not too much boney-m or the bee gees, (too girly)
then dad got tranferred to mumbai for nine years and these years i refer to as halcyon days because dad brought some eclectic music from mumbai, marathi bhajjans to samantha fox i listened them all. between dads marathi cuss words and the bhajjans, i can say i even learnt spoken marathi. i developed a huge crush on morten harkett, the lead singer of A-HA who looked like a perfectly chisled norse god.

i had a terrible time in school, during the nascent years, because nothing made sense. everything was confusing and i was always falling sick. i used to fall sick for months on end, and be alone at home with my grandmom. she had this wonderful habit of keeping her pet transistor near my ear and this mellifluous voice, would break out in karnatic rhythms and restructure the haze in my mind. karnatic music is one of those wonderfull genres of music, that bring order among chaos. i loved M.S, gangu bhai hangal and bala murali Krishna , the latter especially, singing, “bhagyada lakshmi baramma”

when the 90's broke and MTV came into our house, i got my first lesson in culture. women abroad dont wear six metres of cloth. it took 3rd standard intelligence to fully comprehend that shock. I was finicky eater (still am ), and would steafastedly refuse to eat lunch, so dad decided to literally hand feed me in the morning with the treat that I could watch MTV most wanted. This is my favourite memory in life. The first video that made an impression on me was chris de burgh’s lady in red. My mornings rocked. I saw the video of November rain and was utterly bowled over. It was so popular that it was requested every morning, I could even guess the timing of the video. Then there was this cool song by john secada, that my father absolutely loved and the food plate would start to sway. But my favourite video was one by Madonna oddly (and we are talking strictly of videos here). It was for this song called “my playground”, and the video was in the form of a photo album and very gimmicky. It was oddly stimulating.

Because of my poor eating habits, my parents put me in another school. I loved it. It had a swimming pool right in the middle. It was so calming, and all the other girls had this snooty habit of calling you a nondescript “girly”. I loved it there. sadly the early morning hand feeding from dad came to an end. The upper class girlies predictably welcomed the backstreet boys with open arms and made them richer by buying their posters by the droves. The snooty clique, whom every would copy, used to coo and purr when BB went “ quit playing games with my heart”, and that whole wet clothes in an basket ball court routine, had the entire school drooling.(retrospectively, Egad!). In an 8th standard hottest men pole. The backstreet boys occupied the first 5 slots and boyzone the other five. In 9th standard, there was a huge upset, boyzone occupied the first 4 slots (Stephen gately declared he was gay, and thus broke hazaar hearts, incidently that announcement saw a massive drop in boyzone merchandise), peter andre came in 5th, while the backstreet boys evidently on the wane, occupied the last 5 positions. Since I was not in the snooty clique, I was not privy to such polling, then some of them got married, many girls shed a lot of tears, BB posters were burnt, the tapes were abandoned , or passed down to hapless 8thies, if you were especially sadistic and everybody parted company in the 10th in relatively good spirits, owing partly to numbers like the Macarena, the spice girls etc.

It was in 11th and 12th that a huge musical tide swept me. This one was of the world music variety. Alyesha and I had become best friends and I avidly drank up her arab music collection. I’ll unashamedly admit to being partial to Amr Diab. No one can quite muster “habibie” like he did. I listened to a lot of arab tribal music, good bit of Arab pop, learnt some fine points about belly dancing and interesting stuff like that. Alyesha also had the entire collection of the Eagles. Since “hotel California” was done to death and literally put out to pasture, piqued, I sampled “hell freezes over” and fell in love. “tequila sunrise” is a song that gives you a taste of what it feels like to be in love. It was a bet between ‘lysh and me that got me listening to simon and garfunkel. Reading the poetry of T.S eliot and listening to S & G, are the memories that stick with me of 11th and 12th. What a charming prelude to the raging inferno that music experience in college turned out to be.

Dan Brown and associated farts

as i stated in a previous post, i finished 148 pages of "Angels & Demons", at the airport book shop before i was shooed off. Since i hate leaving books unfinished, i asked a ardent fan of DB to pass me an E-text of that book. nobody should ever buy any book by DB , infact he ought to pay us for reading his tosh. and what a tosh. Angels ..... had the lamest ever ending of all the books i've encountered, Five findouters included. dear god!!! and what makes me really really angry is that his books get accused of being Literature ( blasphemy) and that he has revived the art of reading among masses. this is to all the "masses", go obese, become fat, drink lot of beer , see t.v develop a high cholestrol but don't for heavens sakes read DB or read DB and say what a effing good author he is because he so is not!!!!!.
DB is essentially a Sidney Sheldon spawn which is what makes him a fart in the first place. he apparently read a Sidney Sheldon book while holidaying in Tahiti. thats what makes him a bigger fart. who reads while sitting on a beach in Tahiti?? what a loser!!!!. and who gets inspired by Sidney sheldon???. Sidney sheldon is another fart, who has an avid fan base in Khalsa college if you please. so DB , all inspired decides to pen an international racy thriller called "Da vinci code". and now i shall gleefully proceed to trash this magnum opus. this book is shitty to say the least. get this, a dead man with arms and legs spread out in the da vinci gallery of the louvre museum, and our hero, robert langdon goes on a pentacle rant. and 80 pages later realises that the "clue" is prolly the vetruvian man. and no sex!!!!. what kind of racy thriller has no sex?? and she was french for heavens sakes!!. bobby is prolly the only protagonist to have made it to the bestseller list without demonstations of virility. sad.
im not angry with DB for laughing all the way to the bank, bill gates, another fart, who makes far lousier products is the bloody bank. no it ain't that. what makes me angry is that this clever manipulator is hailed as the messiah of reading!!!. hes a terrible author with a penchant for ultra lame endings and people who think im wrong can go obese, become fat, drink beer, see T.V and develop a high cholestrol!!!
oh before i forget woe betide any quizzer who uses DB "fundaes", IM Pei indeed, stop being a fart !!!.

as Jack Sparrow says, "Savvy?"

its been an eventful week. not necessarily a happy one, but definitely a happening one. it started off great. we won the KQA metaquizzicks anniversary quiz, last sunday, for the second consecutive year, and i had this nice post i wanted to write then, about how we, Tonic, were the quizzing equivalent of weapon of mass destruction, the australia of college quizzing and barring the moon landing generation, superior to all( yes, including a certain moody liar), but couldn't quite write it because i developed a sore throat and writing isn't fun when you feel like arthropods are scurrying down the hatchet. that sore throat developed into a full fledged fever by monday and by tuesday i was wheezing like steam engine . savvy?
wednesday our guide at IISC decided, that we were a bunch of squeaky clean no goods and ordered us to fill sacks of charcoal, so i was drenched in charcoal dirt and wheezing like an engine, some heat and i would have made stephenson proud. thursday i lost my sex drive. i don't use it much, but i really like the feeling of knowing its alive and kicking. i also saw this newsbyte on NDTV. seems they are about bulldoze Delhi's oldest and beloved dog shelter. and the clearly agitated lady dolittle went " don't they realize that if they bulldoze this place, it will go literally to the dogs!!!!". sigh. she had my sympathy, till she uttered the last sentence. some people are stupid and dogs arn't despicable creatures, they are the visage of heaven.
friday was my brother's birthday. mum decided at midnight, (india time), that we should call him and " all of you yell, loudly, happy birthday!", so thats what we did, it was 5 A.M, where he was and the poor guy could only muster, " couldn't you all have waited", i must say that i thoroughly did my bit. friday i realized that i needed to finalize my seminar topic. on a whim i decided it to be "ergonomics". its not going to be fun.
saturday, i come home to no cable. but it could have been worse. a friend's friend died under a moving train in the same week. it certainly could have been worse.

What a wonderful world.......

......without Air Deccan. personally, methinks, it should be renamed Snare Deccan. If ever there is a death trap in the air, this is it.
when i was informed that i had to fly to hyderabad on Air Deccan, i wasn't too freaked about it, because i'm not too affectionate about AD. everytime i've noticed, the flights are always delayed and how can anybody forget the inaugural flight, when the plane had to make an emergency landing because of engine trouble?. but (as few people know),my byline being " will try anything ....once". i was ready for the experience. atleast i thought i did.
so, unsurprisingly, my flight was delayed by three hours. to pass that time. i went to the airport bookshop and started reading dan brown's "angels & demons". the fun part of reading books for fulooze (free), is that the folks at the book shop are angry but are always too polite to snatch it away from your hand, and heck, i'd never want to own a legit book of dan brown, the man idolizes Sidney Sheldon for heaven's sakes!!!!!. i had finished 78 pages when i got the call for security check. i finally made it to the plane, strapped my seat belts firmly, and insouciantly looked out of the window to see 3 mechanics fiddling with the engine. not a pretty sight considering in a few minutes its going to be air borne. then mechanic 4 runs up with a multimeter and shakes his head in the negative. that was it folks. my flight was cancelled for that day.
since i HAD to go to hyderabad, i was back again the next day to catch the flight, when, surprise, surprise, it was delayed again. this time round i progressed to page 146, when the proprieter of the bookshop gave me the nastiest look ever. i finally found myself on the plane, and it took off, mercifully, when suddenly , insect repellant started emerging from the ventilator system. why? because the the plane was swarming with mosquitoes!!!. people say that the journey is more important than the destination, but with AD, its the other way round.
i learnt how important competition is to the consumer. AD treats its passengers with disdain because it has no competition. its the only ailine offering low fares and ergo it thinks it can behave like a flying cattle van. competition is the only way the consumer can punish the errant airline. i'd never thought i'd say this, but hugs to those chubby mamas of Indian Airlines who dish out soggy sanwiches, atleast they care!.

war of pastry chefs

i dunno if most people see star one. i do. actually it sits pretty between star movies and HBO so i generally end up giving it a dekko. During one such dekko my heart almost stopped. there was Upen patel, a confirmed hottie (*hawt*) making ham quiche on a cooking show called "cook na kaho".now upen has been replaced by another hottie and much better anchor, shyan munshi. so this week, cherie shyan decided to make chocolate brownies. i have no problem with men cooking. it adds a nice dimensiion to their protector & defender image i have of men. the sight of men cooking, those arms doing the sautey or teasing the barbeque is arresting to say the least, but when they go scrambling for oven mittens, its mildly disconcerting. ovens are strictly female territory. truth be told, i've never made brownies, and cherie shyan gave me quite the complex. and to add insult to injury, K popped up a couple of days later , with "what, im making brownies hoy!". k amazes me no end. here was a man making brownies at midnight, because he felt like eating one!!!. between his scrambles to the oven to check on the brownies, i decided, heck i was making brownies too. im not going to tolerate brownie making men anymore. i was going to show them. but first a little history...

he Iddya clan has always taken to baking like fishes to the sea. the mittens are our shields and we swear by our egg beaters. apart from mom, who ofcourse has the magic touch, my brother used to make biscuits and improvise to make interesting condiments. i too have an interesting baking reportoire. apple pies, cinnamon rolls, cakes, souffle , i've done it all. actually the souffle triumph needs clarification. the souffle came out great but the sauce had a little too much cointreux in it. so we all got tipsy and i called a friend of mine aneesha coellho, fat, which ofcourse trigerred a huge altercation and the souffle was pronounced an "unmitigated disaster". but really, since aneesha was responsible for making the sauce, and construed 20 ml equivalent to half the cointreux bottle. i can hardly be blamed can i?. so it was with this illustrious lineage and rich past , that approached my tryst with brownies.
ill save the suspense. they came out great ( no surprise there, haw haw).nice and gooey. dad ate it and gave me a hug. aww thank you daddy.