August-The Month That Wasn’t

Well, I’m back! Blogging has been at a low end for the most part but this time I’m back with new vengeance. There’s enough space to clear my head, recount a story, exaggerate one and sometimes even make one up. (Sometimes it’s sooo worth not letting the truth come in the way of a good story!). Why would I not write?! The possibility of sharing a random rambling yet with no one in particular, not having to worry about sounding redundant or obsessing incessantly over trivialities...all of this is truly liberating. You could stop listening to me right here and I wouldn’t be hurt. Even better, I wouldn’t even know :D
So, write I will.
I was so caught up with August that I forgot to tell you that it was fantastic. September kept me drowning in grief and wallowing in self pity. Now that October is here, I’ve decided to make a fresh start at writing. Nevertheless, I cannot move ahead without telling you how special August really was! It kept me happy, busy and saw me getting a year older sprinkled with surprises and a lot of mollycoddling. I’m grateful for another year and all the amazing people in my life.
I dread birthday’s as much as I love them. Since I turned 20, it’s almost been like a deadly disease my parents have been living with for years now, having an unmarried daughter.
Somehow, it’s never really affected my parents as much as it has affected the world. Enough reason for me to believe I easily could be the daughter of the nation.
So when this national fever really builds up year after year my mother gets affected too, she is the biological mother after all. She habitually dresses me up like a temple elephant and parades me to every distant great grandfather’s maternal uncle’s son’s wedding.
I’ve obliged and been through this circus routine few times a year.
Trust me more than getting me married, my mother was hugely satisfied as long she got back home and got a few enquiry calls. It almost made her feel like a business magnet sitting on phone and investigating prospects.
I love digressing, anyways coming back to birthdays, like every birthday there was the whole surprise thingy. And somehow in the midst of all that banter I always forgot to get depressed about my age. Isn’t that simply the best part!
So this year I decided to give myself a gift too. I cleaned up my life, literally.
To me, there has been always been something therapeutic about cleaning. As outrageous as it may sound, cleaning out my closet sometimes makes for a favorite late night activity .This year; I did a lot more than my annual spring cleaning.
I got rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or sentimental. Trust me it takes a lot of determination when you’re emotionally attached to even safety pins.
Level one: So out went old clothes, shoes and memories not worth glorifying in a scrapbook.
Level Two: Heavier stuff. I decided to let go of people that didn’t matter anymore. It’s a controversial topic and sadly contemplative too.
So that’s that.
My friends took me on a surprise holiday to my favorite place in the whole wide world-Hampi! I claim to have been born there in all my previous lives. (Well, that’s another story to look out for!). I got back to Bangalore, all way worn and overwhelmed only to find myself in the middle of my surprise birthday party and all those birthday gifts. Well, wasn’t it Madonna who sang Material girl? :)
All in all- It was truly a happy birthday for me!

On a day like today

I’m feeling under the weather today. Uninspiring work days when I shamelessly crave human attention. Medication leaves me staid, oats leaves my tongue dead and I make sure everyone around me has an equally bad time. My family and friends have learnt that the trick is to lionize and empathize, but somehow everyone put together can’t make up for my mommy.
With the very first symptoms come an aborning sense of mommy longing-ness.
I’ve given mine hard enough times while growing up, now that I’m so far away her life doesn’t get any easier.
So on days like today, I call mommy and make small talk on the phone, many times, all day. Puling over trivialities, pining for her attention and she already knows something’s up…“Is it the boss or are you unwell”?
Sigh. My mother thinks these are my only two problems. I must lead a very uncomplicated life.
I call up mommy today, woebegone. The first time I call, she is elated about an old friend she met after ten years who tells her she hasn’t changed one bit. Oh yeah, we can sometimes be vain! I don’t have the heart to dampen her spirits so I fake joy through the conversation.
I get back to work and decide to listen to a song that never fails to uplift my spirits….“I’m a Believer” by The Monkees. It’s the song I’d always wanted, to be dedicated to me. So, now you know!
I listened to it repeatedly, it helped for a while.
I try mommy again in a few hours, this time she leaves me salivating with the lunch menu, halfway through which she launches into a tirade about my inability to peel a potato. This is soooo not the anodyne I was looking for! I excuse myself quickly with a “Boss is hovering around my cubicle” story. Phew!
I want to pour out my deadly disease symptoms to mommy. After a few minutes of wallowing in self pity, I reached for the phone grudgingly, all set to whimper and whine. Fingers crossed and hoping she’ll ask me the million dollar question, “Is it the boss or are you unwell”?
This time she asks me if I have started saving yet! Can you believe my luck?
Then she starts off this whole thing about how she never asks me what I do with paltry salary and it’s about time I stopped shopping. Oh no…now we open an angrier discussion about all the shoes I own.
Mommy sure can burst bubbles or maybe today was just not my day.
Apparently, dwelling on my ailments is not doing me any good either! I feel worse than I did before I started off.
I’m gonna sign off for now and down some chicken soup.
Chick flicks, more chicken soup and few more phone calls. This seems to be my POA for tonight.

And the rain came down...

Some wise man once said...Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.
I just love the rains.
Flirty monsoon gusts, car wipers that slide almost rhythmically, writing against the fine mist collected on the windshield, kids in gum boots going splitter splatter, bright umbrellas, rolled up jeans, paper boats in puddles, the sound of rain on rooftops, funky PVC bags, steaming momos and piping hot lemon tea.
All this, provided the heavens open out when I’m snug and safe within the four walls of my house. I can sit by the window with some hot chocolate and look out endlessly.
Have I told you how much I hate being trapped out in the rain?
Clouded skies, toxic drops of acid rain, flooding ditches and gutters, vehicles that spray water at your face, monsoon traffic jams, frizzy hair, dampness, wet clothes, seepage in buildings, umbrellas blown inside out, power cuts, thunder and lightning...God, I hate the rains!
But what I do love is the “after rain” effects...sunshine after the rain, the breeze that carries the smell of wet mud, desolate rain kissed streets, clear skies, beaming rainbows and hope.
I’m gonna bury myself in my cubby hole, book, quit et al. I hope it rains for a really long time.
For me,for the farmers,for everyone.

Dog Days(All puns intended!)

Have I told you about the time Andy thought he was dying of rabies?
Andy and I worked together in our first company and barely knew each other, coincidentally we quit around the same time. On our last day, once we got done with the swan songs with no office politics to be a part of anymore Andy graciously offered me a ride back home.
Enroute, to our astonishment we discovered that we were both joining the same company in a few days!
Our employer, then a start up in India was the perfect breeding ground for everything but work with an unfledged set up and no supervision… and that’s when I got to know Andy better.
He’d almost have you believe he was twice his age. He strolled into office every morning with crisp clothes, wearing a staid expression and a blue Tupperware bag which I slobbered over relentlessly.
Andy’s mom is one helluva cook. He would let me have morsels that I could count on the fingers of one hand with enormous difficulty. So, like all good things in the world even those few delightful bites also came at a price.
Andy cant spell.
Not even with spell check, he spells words in ways that don’t even come close to how they are meant to be spelt.
I become Andy’s typist. He rewards me handsomely, in his miserly own way with a few morsels of food and the entire lunch box on Thursdays, that’s the perk!
You see, Thursday is the day Annie cleanses his system.
Unbelievable but true, he actually lives on fruit and fruit juices on Thursdays and that by far was the highlight of my working week. Thank god for Thursdays!
Andy is quite a paradox, self-confidence his forte and paranoia his strength.
Apart from catalyzing my hunger pangs, Andy also loves playing with his roadside doggy “Itchy”.
One mundane evening Andy returns from office to finds out about Itchy’s sudden death.
Andy is brooding over his loss, and trying to collect every last memory of his beloved Itchy and to his horror he realizes that Itchy had given him a big warm lick on an open wound the previous day.
That was their very last “special” memory and that’s when the trouble began.
He spent the next few hours running around his neighborhood investigating Itchy’s death.
It didn’t take too much to convince Andy that Itchy died of rabies.
He looked up the symptoms online for rabies and he realized he possessed all the early symptoms such as nausea, fever and head ache.
Early the next morning the quest for the best rabies specialist begins.
Despite having taken his rabies vaccines as a child, he left his days were numbered.
Four different doctors and four prescriptions later nothing had changed.
To worsen matters, he found himself with the symptoms of the next stages of rabies being diarrhea, severe headaches, fever and extreme shivering.
Andy was born with a beauraucratic spoon is his mouth. With his corrupt contacts Andy got himself an appointment with the President of the Rabies Foundation (Which I now know exists!).
Andy by now was given anti-anxiety pills by his fifth doctor (without exaggeration, really!). The pills were recommended for 4-5 days but Andy was on the pills for two weeks. It gave him a lot of solace.
He slept at work,slept at home and when he was awake he prayed ferverently to the gods for the most peaceful death possible under the circumstances.
The next few days were spent avoiding puddles, dogs, baths and waiting for that moment when he would actually be taken over by hydrophobia and would not be able to even look at water!
“Why, oh god would you want to subject me to this kind of a death even if I have to die..!”.This was the only thought playing on his head all day long.
And before he knew it two months were up and well, rabies hadn’t arrived yet.
He had passed all the tests and was well past the rabies mark.
Andy didn’t have rabies, after all.
He however has gathered enough knowledge on the subject to consider a career in it.
He does not socialize with dogs anymore and has turned vegetarian.
Andy and I don’t work in the same office anymore and despite him napping and malingering in office for the two weeks on anxiety pills, he has been promoted to Manager.
Andy still can’t spell but he now manages to use spell check without too much difficulty.
And, this is the story of how lives change.

Break Away

I’m not too much of a caffeine consumer nor a big believer in the goodness of smoke/walk breaks.
I think anyone who has seen me at work realizes that I have enough walk breaks forced on me day in and out as I trot from one dreaded meeting to another.
When I’m on one of these work imposed walk breaks, I find myself admiring the people motley spread across various zones in the office, indulging in self righteous cloning to fit into the social mold.
Total strangers exchanging nods of rapprochement across their shared hot spots, Stimulants in the form of coffee and pretty girls sitting aplomb (talk about the absolute dearth of good looking men at work!), hysterical laughter in the corridors, ephemeral clouds of fancy perfumes, office couples who (sometimes!)make you wish you had your better half right by your side all day, the raconteur of every group animatedly reporting the latest gossip, pathetic souls hopeful for promotions looming in the background as they nod in agreement with every word the boss utters over their routine smoke breaks, high maintenance babes on the way back from the rest room freshly painted faces and the works, brotherhood of the stalkers, the mommy’s association engaged in agitated talks about the forthcoming school exams, strangers clutching onto resumes waiting anxiously in the lobby to be interviewed, the security staff looking at people suspiciously at the beep of every swipe card...the sheer diversity of the multitude of people...all the drama, the colors, the noises...makes for some unadulterated entertainment!
I couldn’t agree more…All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances.

It’s all about embracing the differences!

I dedicate this post to some of my best friends from the north of our country,who truly love and respect the south as much as they love their own land.
This one is for you Pinkster, Tara, Nimi, Kanika, Saku and Pragu!

So, dear old AT is indulging in his quotidian, free caffeine at the office cafeteria (All alone of course!) and a Chomu (Chapatti oriented masses) comes up to him, points at the chair next to AT and asks him in hindi...”Kya yaha pe koi aa raha hai”?(Anyone coming here?). Poor Chomu had no clue about ATs antisocial status.
Anyways what follows is even funnier, AT looks up and replies, ”Aarum verinilla, kasara editho”!(In eloquent Malayalam….No one is coming,(Like duh!)you can take the chair”!
Chomu is shocked by the strange language thrown at him and immediately switches over to English, and AT, having proved his point, obliges politely.
Anyways, that set me thinking….why Hindi?
I don’t know what speaking Hindi with a south Indian accent is, but I believe I do a good job at it.
After years of wrestling with the language through school..I feel put to test even now!
All credit to Bollywood! Far from mastering the language, I can just about manage haggling with the auto drivers and shopkeepers
A lot of people live under the misconception that Hindi is our national language, hello ignoramus…it is our official language and one of the 22 scheduled languages of the country.
When there is clearly an invisible division between the north and south of India isn’t it unfair to assume that everyone knows Hindi.
Thank god for globalization and the IT boom, South India is actually on the world map and to the rest of the country we are more than just “Madrasis” down south! To their disbelief they discovered that the very same lot of Madrasis comprise of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Konkani, Kannada, Coorgi, Tulu, Badga and Toda speaking masses with a multitude of dialects to boot!
Its 2008 and yet, we have to endear comments about our not so colored skin, not so oily hair and not so funny name!
Although ignorance is bliss, someday may all these misconceptions be dispelled….
May you appreciate the idli, appam, bisi belle bath and andhra meals as much as you relish your chaat and roti,
May you appreciate the safety of our territory and the hospitality of our people,
May you realize that we are more literate yet less arrogant,
All the world needs is more mutual respect!
Ironically, there never was a united India until Britain made it so. We were a nation of warring states held together by the British Raj and today they left behind a language that in some sense unites us as a nation
A funny thought occurred to me though….what if Hitler had conquered Britain in 1940?? :)

Rick Sick?

It’s a funny condition.
I don’t know if the world has discovered and termed it yet. I go through it painfully almost every day of my life and in my neologism it would be “rick-o-phobia”!
I cannot tell you how much I abhor that clan of licensed looters.
The auto rickshaw industry in Bangalore is a thriving one.
The auto rickshaw is like a monster on wheels with a monster at the wheel!
So every now, and then I find myself at the mercy of the much loved autowallah.
The most popular philosophy among auto drivers in Bangalore is that double meter is their birth right!
Double meter applies at the following times;
Early in the morning,
Late at night,
During the drizzles and rains,
You are more than three unfortunate souls,
Your house is too far,
Your house is too near,
Your house route has a one way,
There is too much traffic in your part of town,
And at other times it’s simply “double meter” because he doesn’t like your face!
(Sigh. How I wish we occasionally had double meters at our work place too!)
So you pretty much end up paying this much just about every time you have the misfortune of taking an auto and if he doesn’t demand double meter you can be well assured that this is the classic case of a faulty meter rick.
As if to make us feel any better, they have a consolation prize in the form of one-and-a-half meter.
I could buy myself a handbag every month with the money I over-pay the autowallah’s above the actual fare. Sigh.
God forbid you are one of those unfortunate souls who crawl to work with a laptop-you can actually go by the concept of a triple meter!
They love IT guys and the assumption is that all laptop clad people are fleece-able members of the IT fraternity.
Come to think of it an auto actually determines how your day goes.
A fight with the auto driver first thing in the morning is not the most ideal way to kick start your day!
Abuses flying your way in a language you barely understand right on the middle of the main road, bang opposite your office.
Aha-Not a pretty sight...ask me…
Through the elevator ride up the seventh floor, I’m thinking of one of those nightmarish forwards about the auto driver attacking some lady who threatened to complain about him!
Paranoia should have been my middle name!
On the contrary if you happen to have the good fortune of meeting a decent auto-wallah (an absolute rarity in our silicon valley) that would pretty much make ones day.
I remember the time an auto driver had come back all the way to return my friends phone that she had forgotten in an auto or even the times an auto driver returns the exact change back to you.
Exceptions do apply to every rule!
Here is some informative info for all you auto goers;
I happened to stumble across this article sometime back which gave numbers where one can lodge complaints against misbehaving auto drivers,
Bangalore Centre:080-25533525
Bangalore West:080-23324388
Bangalore East:080-25253726
Bangalore North:080-23376039
Bangalore South:080-26630989
So the next time you're stranded, cheated or ill treated just buzz one of these numbers and let me know if it actually works :)
And start saving up towards that car/bike that will steer you away from mercy of the ruthless auto drivers of Bangalore!
A few of us get the better of the autowallah’s like one of my friends, Anu. She never gets a rick to Domlur from Airport road as its just 2 kms away (Well! Walking is not her forte.), so this is what she does every single day…
She tells them she wants to go to a destination further away and while they are passing through Domlur she has an unexpected emergency and so she gets off at her real destination paying him the exact fare. So there we go, there are ways to beat the system!
As for me, I moved to a place close to work, I walk to work these days-that’s my short term plan.
And my long term plan-well, I’m getting married in a few months…that should solve the problem. (Wink! Wink!)

In our times!

Let me begin ab ovo…Adam and Eve cavorting about apple trees, all that fuss and semi clad drama.
It was all fun when it began….we sure have come a long steep winding way.
Someday I’ll look back and wonder what I’d tell my children of my times….That we had it all figured out wrong?
In our times…
Time they said was money, but money was never time…
We signed peace treaties and made bigger bombs,
We married for convenience and not for love,
We worked for money and not passion,
Religion united people from across seven seas but separated brothers of the same land,
We feared to dream yet shied away from reality,
We beautified our body and killed our soul,
We solved the most complex problems yet the real ones still remained,
We used our head and not our heart,
We existed but we didn’t quite live!
Yet hope floated…
For the very best part of my day was when I fell asleep every night….I was transported back to a time when I scampered around the Garden of Eden again….honey bees…apple trees and happy memories.