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 :(