The night under the sky

I sat crouching on the bed in Shruthi’s room. I watched the blood supply being cut off and the pale whiteness spread onto the tightly clenched knuckles and fists. I could hear excited screams and hushed whispers outside. I closed my eyes shut as if it would block out the noise. My mind went too numb to even pray. What would I tell amma appa? Serves them right. Didn’t I plead and beg that I didn’t want to study this stupid course? Serves them right for being so adamant with my life, I thought bitterly again. Serves me right too. All those bunked sessions, marathon sleeping, unit test cutting, phew. It made me tired to even think of it. Even if it was some interesting paper, I wouldn’t mind doing it all over again. But Artificial Intelligence with all those mind numbing algorithms? Yuck! And if I failed Probability and Statistical Analysis too, that would be THE END. The probability of me clearing it ever in my life was a huge fat zero. I’ll have to flunk all other subjects next semester to clear these two alone. Shut up, I told myself. You don’t have to do badly to fail these University exams. In 2nd semester, I’d read so well for that Semiconductor Physics paper, taught the entire hostel till 3 in the morning and still ended up flunking the exams. So what if by some macabre twist of fate, I manage to clear these papers now? Shut up again. Very unlikely. I heard footsteps rushing towards me and stop uncertainly near the door. There was some whispering and a few shhhhh’s I could hear. I knew at that very instant that I had definitely flunked something. I felt like throwing up. The girls came in one by one sans the usual screaming and shouting. Moti hugged me and sat next to me. Aki stood at a safe distance ready to run away if I cried. Shruthi held my hand with one hand and kept pulling out strands of hair from her head with the other. Something she always does when she’s tensed. JP looked on wide eyed, ready to cry along if I did. I kept my eyes on the opposite wall.

“Guys I know I flunked. Just tell me, ok?”

Moti said in a small voice. “It’s only PST, Mi. We’ll apply for reval. I’m sure you’ll clear it. It was…”

Shit! I CANNOT WRITE THAT PAPER AGAIN!! My mind screamed but I put on a show of calmness and nonchalance outside. “ Oh, only one? I thought Artificial Intelligence would be a goner too. Free. I expected it. Though I was more hopeful about clearing this than AI”.

I looked up to see five anxious faces peering at me, waiting for me to burst into tears and run out of the room any moment. The nautanki I made when I failed for the first time in second semester must be haunting them even now, poor things. They tried comforting words and cracked mokka jokes taking turns looking at my face to see if I was really cheering up or just faking normalcy for their sake.

“I’m ok guys. Seriously. It’s not like I did well and ended up failing. I did badly. I deserve it”

I got up and walked out. The night was cool and dark outside the hostel doors. Inside it had been stuffy and hot. I could hear excited chatter and calculators being passed around for GPA calculations. I could see silent sobs and long faces as well. Ashwini was hysterically screaming into the phone that there was no way she could fail DSP. Degree Stopping Paper. Otherwise known as Digital Signal Processing. I sat on the entrance steps facing the gate. I could see the classroom buildings at a distance. They seemed too distant now. Slowly it all sank in. I was a failure. Yet again. Once could have been chance. Could have been luck. But again? I knew my failure had nothing to do with luck or chance. It had everything to do with laziness and lack of interest. All those algorithms about searching length first and breadth first in stacks and heaps interested me as much as religious sermons on television did. What was the point? What was I going to learn all that and end up as? Frankly, I was scared to think if ever I was going to end up as somebody in life. I hated the education I was getting, was trapped in it, was a failure at it but expected a future with it. Placements would come up in another year or so. All the corporate would arrive with their larger than life presentations and mechanical smiles. I hated the very idea of a corporate job. Hated computers. But I still wanted a corporate job that paid well. After all that is the only reason I was forced to take up this course right? A well paid IT job. Now even that seemed to be in jeopardy. The tears which had stubbornly refused to come out till now gathered on the brink of the eyes ready to spill out any minute. I looked up quickly and blinked. No, I was not going to cry. I walked out through the hostel gate towards the small lawn we fondly called ‘the Triangle’. Even watchman thaatha who hits the roof if we step out of the gate after 8 didn’t say a word after he took one long look at my face. Probably he didn’t want to be blamed if I started wailing. I sat on it staring at the starless sky. Suddenly Moti materialised out of nowhere and stood next to me with her hands on her hips.

“Mi, Come let’s go for a walk…”

“Hmmm.. Now?”

“But I haven’t even got slippers on. And am in these torn pajamas…”

“So?”

“Ok. Let’s go”

Once Moti decides on something, it was IMPOSSIBLE to stop her from doing it. She would bulldoze her way into anything and everything. And I was too weak to be bulldozed now. I could smell a lecture cum pep talk on how this wasn’t the end of everything, how I’ve been plain unlucky, how the University correction sucks, how unfair this was to me, etc and I wasn’t ready for it. Cuz all of it would be outright lies. I deserved all of this and much more. But poor Moti was doing all this to only cheer me up, I knew. I braced myself for the long walk and accompanying pep talk. The long walk happened. We walked and we talked. About food, movies, music. About who was seeing who and about how the same who was seen with a different who two weeks back. About dance practise for culturals. About how many days OD we can milk out of the management in the next few months. About what movie to see that weekend and where to eat to escape mess food. About how to rag those dumb juniors without it technically being called ‘ragging’. The one thing that never came into conversation was the pep talk I expected. I could hear the crunch-crunch of soft gravel beneath my bare feet. We had reached the Stores building, our official provisions place for food, stationary and mobile recharge cards.

Moti stopped suddenly. “Let’s go in for some cup noodles. I’m hungry”

“Mad moti? We don’t have money remember?”

“Juniors irpaanga stores la” She said with her heavily hindi accented tamil. The kind of Sowcarpet tamil that Mumbai import heroines speak in tamil movies. A wicked snort escaped her lips.

I laughed and we both walked in.

“Moti look who’s here. A better option than the poor juniors. Namma Songi” I couldn’t hide my glee as I saw the tall, lanky, gawky Songi buying chips and soft drinks inside the crowded shop. “Let’s wait till he finishes buying all the stuff and then pounce on it once he comes out”

Moti approved my shameless plan with a grin and a “Done”.

Songi’s real name wasn’t Songi but we called him that for as long as we could remember because, well.. because he was a songi. His perpetually slouching shoulders, stupid smile and clumsy Suppaandi-like nature made Songi the perfect nickname for him. He didn’t mind us calling him that way initially cuz we were only two, and we were his best friends right from first sem. But slowly the name spread and now almost everyone who knew him called him Songi. It infuriated him and delighted us, egging us on to taunt him more with the name.

We waited in strategic position and plucked the chips packets out of his hands once he came out of the Stores.

Moti began in the usual bullying tone she reserves especially for him. “Songi! Yenna? All clear ah?”

His wide smile on seeing us dimmed as if someone had just switched off the bulb. “Illa Moti. 4 gone ” He said with a sad face as if he remembered that he failed just 5 seconds ago.

Moti continued in her galeej Tamil. “Ariv illa onku? Fail ayitu jolly ya chips eat pannitu irka? Shameless. Vetti. “ She popped the spicy tapioca chips into her mouth, chewed well and spat out massacred tamil.

“Chi Pah.” Songi gave her his staple wisest reply and turned to me.

“Ni all clear ah loosu?” For some unknown reason, he chose to call me loosu from the second he knew me. It however, has no correlation to my mental capabilities or IQ, I swear.

“One gone” I became self conscious again and the chips I was going to put into my mouth stopped half way through.

“Cha, onnu dhaana?? Me only maximum this time too? Po loosu. Ni yaavadhu company kudupa nu nenachen” He kept his face like his biggest issue was not that he failed four papers but the fact that I failed only one. I burst out laughing.

“Ni thirundhave maata.”

We walked to the huge lawn behind stores. Couples sat at every dark corner and whispered sweet nothings. We sat on the lawn and passed the chips and drinks, cracking PJ’s and taunting each other. Songi polambified about how the system was totally messed up, how it should be made illegal to fail someone in a subject for more than 3 times, how all his profs gave him such measly internal marks and so on. He said he was going to apply for reval and clear all the bloody papers this time. We laughed as usual. He was sure he would. We were sure he wouldn’t. Stars popped up from behind the dark clouds and glittered in the night sky.

As we finished and got up to walk back to the hostel, Moti whispered in my ear, “Mi, reval apply pannu. Tomorrow”.

I smiled and nodded. All was well with the world again.

P.S: I did clear that PST paper on re-evaluation. Deep down I know I shouldn’t have cleared it though.

Phoney Tales

I could bang my head on a wall. Or hang myself from the ceiling. Better still, jump into a well. No wells in Chennai these days, only bore-wells that I can probably peep but not jump into? Thanks for the information. Why, oh why God, am I so communication retarded? Why can’t I just pick up the god damned phone and talk every time it rings? Before that, why I can’t I turn off the silent mode and let the phone ring so I can hear it when I have to? Dad had called the other day. I was reading, the phone was just a few inches away from my hand which was holding JK’s Gangai yenge pogiraal. One hitch, it was on silent mode as usual. I missed that call. I happened to look at the phone after a couple of hours and saw that he’d called me four times in two hours. I called back and he told me that one of my closest childhood friends Joanna with whom I had been out of touch for the past seven odd years had dropped in at home looking for me. He had desperately tried to reach me knowing how happy I’d be to see her again. And I’d managed to miss THAT call. Now, can I have that rope to hang myself with, please?

Joanna and I were friends for six years before we went out of touch. Our parents went to the same church and we were Sunday School pals. Every Sunday, I used to walk to her home, which was a couple of streets away from mine and stand in front of the gate, yelling out her name as best as I could. First, her brother would peep out, shoot a hostile look at me and pull back inside. Next her mother would peep out, smile benignly and go back inside. All along I would hear soft musical talk in Malayalam, her mother tongue, from inside the house. Then she would walk out, hurrying towards me with a broad disarming smile that would put the Sun to shame. A typical Mallu, Joanna was all shiny black hair and golden hued skin. And her smile was to die for. She had an innocence about her that made her look like an over grown child even as we did outgrow childhood together. I still remember all those walks together to choir practise in Church , in the hot afternoon sun. And the fund raising exhibitions where we held lighting-10-candles-in-a-single-matchstick and hordes of other such silly games and made our very first ‘business money’. Those stage shows and dance sessions during summer vacations where she would always play the angel in white shiny clothes and I would always play a rogue or drunkard wrapped in torn blankets and ends up in burning hell fire. After 12th standard, Joanna shifted back to kerala to settle down and I heard no more. It was as abrupt as that. And now like two streams which meander away from a river and cross paths to mingle miles away, Joanna had come into my life again. And like a fool, I missed THAT call.

This time I’m making a solemn serious promise on the three tier Club Sandwich from Gallopin’ Gooseberries (What else did you expect from me?) that

a) I WILL NOT put my phone on silent mode except when I’m sleeping, eating or at work. Err…ok, these are the only three things I do in my life right now. So I’ll restrict that to ‘phone in silent mode only when sleeping.’

b) I will answer ALL calls, even if they are from numbers that I haven’t stored on the mobile (I never pick calls from numbers I don’t know as a rule), even if they look suspiciously similar to that number HDFC uses to pester me to sign up for their home loans and be doomed for life, even if it shares the first five digits with the number which a guy regularly uses to know if I’m interested in ‘prime locality real estate’ in Sholinganallur , 50 kms away from the city. But whatever happens, I will never ever pick up calls from numbers that begin with 9176….. All Vodafone caller tune marketing numbers begin that way. Argggghhhhh!!!

c) I WILL NOT procrastinate calling back if I do happen to miss any call despite my best efforts. (Maximum procrastination time allowed = 2 hours. Too much? Ok, one hour but I’m not promising on this one.)
And talking of phones, all service providers are getting increasingly stupid day by day. Vodafone calls me five times a day to know if I’d like to keep Vadivel/Goundamani/Vivek comedy as my caller tune. Or would I like Vijay’s latest kuthu from Vettaikaaran? Or maybe some Himesh and his nasal twangs? Guys, all you really make me want to do is unsubscribe caller tune facility asap. Go slow on the marketing, please. You kill us with it. The other day I’d kept a new caller tune, a song I liked and the first call I got I asked, “Hey how’s my new caller tune?” She asked back horrified, “God! Was THAT a caller tune??” I hid the disappointment in my voice and asked carefully, “You didn’t like Fiqraana?” She was like, “What Fiqraana? All I heard was an automated voice saying, ‘To set this song as you caller tune press # and dial…’ and by the time she was done explaining the caller tune selection process, you picked the call.” What meanies! I spend 30 bucks a month to let people hear something nice when they call me and you don’t even let them hear that and give your robot-talking instead. How on Earth can we decide whether we want a song on the phone if you don’t even let us hear it, airheads? Have some pity, Vodafone, will you?

P.S: Joanna took my number from dad and called me again!!! This time I picked the call and we plan to meet this weekend. Yayyyy!!!

The Lord’s prayer

Dear children,

I have been meaning to write to you for long. But never got around to it. Now the time has come when I cannot put off the unpleasant talk any longer. I’ve been dreading every second of waiting for this moment to come. Who would have thought that one day the creator would end up praying to his creations? No I’m not on my knees, I’m not rolling around a temple in wet clothes, I’m not going to print this out and tie it with a piece of yellow thread on a banyan tree or brainwash you saying the end is near and you will burn in hell if you do not read this. I am simply sitting in front of my PC and keying in this mail. Yes, it is only a mail if you choose to look at it that way but to me it is more than that. To me, it is a cry from the heart, a plea for mercy and ages of unshed tears put together. Ironic, is it not? To be truthful, I find it a bit humiliating but what has to be done has to be done. Please do not take offence to anything in this mail and go around burning temples, churches, dargahs and other places of worship to showcase your anger at me. Remember children, that we will definitely meet some day. We can settle scores then. Once and for all.

First of all, I have to tell you how difficult my job is. For example let us just consider one day. Today. In Earth, I have approximately 346528364 prayers being sent to me in all possible means every second. Right from how Raju wants help to clear his entrance exam to join LKG to Yangste Ki who desperately needs the rare AB- blood to save her husband who’s in the hospital to Abdul-Muhaimin in the Guyanese river basin who wants to catch a Piranha for dinner tonight. You get the drift don’t you? Add to this the Martians, Venusians and all other life forms alien to you. And then I have to be present at 237252930346297383633 places of worship including churches, temples, mosques, Kabbalah centres, gurudwaras, etc during the prayer times. I have to be there for Mundakarumaariamman kovil கூழ் ஊத்துற function as well as the Ramadan season fasting prayers. I have to be at so many places at the same time that I’m finding it so difficult to be omnipresent. And I have to take up the million identities you have thrust on me, that I am getting a multiple personality disorder. I have to monitor tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, flood situations, droughts, famines and terrorist attacks since prayers at a huge scale are directed towards me from regions affected by these. And above all I have to save the ecosystem, flora, fauna and your fellow human beings, who you are so keen on destroying ruthlessly day after day. Tough job? You bet.

I know you have little time for lectures from God (you are too busy killing yourselves in my name). But I have to tell you some more about my job. My job has three faces to it – Creation, Sustenance and Destruction. I would like to believe that you all are being too kind these days. You seem to be hell bent too keen to share my work and make life easier for me by creating and destroying by yourselves at such an astonishing rate. You are, in fact, creating more than I can sustain and destroying much more than I ever want to destroy. For one, making holes in the ozone layer and destroying it never occurred to me ever since I made it. For every new species of fauna that I create you seem to destroy 10 other species and wipe them off the face of the Earth. Most of the rivers I created are nothing but poisonous toxic wastes and mass cemeteries today. And for each and every single baby that is born you destroy the lives of a million others. After all, it did not take ‘God’ to kill 11 million people. It took only one of you – one man known as Adolf Hitler. Now that leaves me with the most difficult job of all – protecting the precious lives that you want to destroy. And this mail is a plea from me to you, to let me do this job.

You know what pains me the most? The fact that most of this mass destruction and cruelty takes place in MY NAME. Children, I was only God. You created Shiva, Vishnu, Brahm, Allah, Christ and every one of those 321721519 identities I have today. Did I ever come down in a cloud and roar amidst thunder and lightning that I wanted to be called by any of these names? You gave me those names. You gave me those identities. You made your rules and religions and now, you use the very names you gave me to shed the blood of millions. You built me magnificent temples, majestic mosques and heaven high churches over the graveyards of hundreds of my children, burying them and burning them under the name of Ram and Allah. Children, remember? I made you. It was not the other way round for you to know or fight over my exact birthplace. You pray to me for peace and prosperity. Then you go out and train your children to become suicide bombers and religious terrorists and call that a holy war. What you forget is that a war is only a war. It can never be holy. You name political groups after me, calling yourselves my army. Then you go around humiliating women, raping them in public, robbing them of their rights and treating them like dirt. Do you not remember children, that one of the very forms you created for me, the Arthanareeswara is half woman? Or the deity you worship in hordes every morning is another woman, Kali? You murder and maim, burn and kill, rape and mutilate and then smugly say, We did it for God. I only have one question. What exactly did I, as God, have to do with all this?

The Aesthetics Atheists seem to be a more peaceful group. They do their work and let me do mine. They don’t pray to me and do not make me pray to them. They seem to be ‘cool’, so as to say in Earth lingo. I have only one request to make of you, my children. Do not think I am being impertinent or rude, but mind your own business please. Each one of you. I know to create, I know to destroy and I most certainly do not need your help. You have done enough damage. Let me undo a little of it now. If you cannot see your fellow men as friends and brothers, at least see them as strangers, but not as enemies. If you cannot serve to protect, you don’t have to, but please don’t destroy. If you cannot treat women with dignity and respect, well, there is only one option – please come to me. There is no place for you on Earth.

This is a prayer, children. To you. From the old chap who has the toughest job in the Universe.

With love (that is running out day by day),

God.

P.S. Can I please be addressed only as God hereafter. I don’t remember all those million other names. And frankly, I don’t care.

Work and Food :)

Weekends simply fly. Start it with a lazy morning, throw in some household chores, add a dash of afternoon nap and top it up with a visit to the Church/Relative’s wedding/reception and pooh!!! the weekend is gone. Earlier when I used to have a two-day weekend, it used to be heaven. But now having got used to having just the Sunday off, I usually don’t know what to do if I get an extra day away from work! I never knew that I, of all people would say this some day. That I’m bored to be away from work, that I wish we could work on Sundays too. I can see the horror on my own face as I write this, so I can as well imagine the horror of people who know me, while reading this. But now I realise that I’ve begun to enjoy my work so much that I can’t stay away from it. In IT I was just a speck amidst the millions of code writers. All I had to do was change a few lines here, attach XML tags here and there, comment out lines that make problems and create bugs and other insipid, unispiring things which were mechanical, dull and routine to say the very least. Or it could be that, I hated computers and coding and Java so much that I couldn’t enjoy what I was doing, however challenging it was. Now things are different. I know that the job I do would directly impact the functioning of my workplace. I know that people look up to me to bring about improvements and changes and that makes me want to work harder. I know I’m trusted and that makes me more responsible. And above all I’m not micro managed which makes me want to prove myself. Now I know what people mean when they say, ‘Find a job that you love and you’ll never have to work a single day of your life.’ Finally there’s come a day when I can proudly say, ‘I LOVE MY JOB’. What more as a professional, can I ask for!!

The other day we were at Mainland China for an early lunch. I was really excited since it was known to be THE place for chinese cuisine in Chennai. We had to make an advance reservation and was given a time slot and reached there only to find a long queue of hungry people already waiting outside the place. Probably Tirupathi Darshans are easier. We walked up to a Nepali girl dressed up in Chinese traditional wear at the reception to confirm our reservations.

P : Umm, excuse me, we have a reservation for a table for 4. One thirty.
She: Chi?
P : Ughh, pardon??
She: Chi res? (Points to a notebook and looks at P with a benign smile)

Thankfully P had the presence of mind to search out his name in the register and pointed it to her triumphantly. The rest of us look at this fascinating conversation wide eyed. I mean, it was one thing to dress up people in the traditional clothing to get a feel but making them speak in Chinese/Mandarin was too much for effect. She scribbled something in the register. I strained to see if that was in Chinese as well. She smiled again at P and said, “Gow un”. He looked uncertain for a second, then his face cleared up and he rushed us to an empty couch. “She’s asking us to wait!” We were about to sit when the girl rushed up to our side and pointed to the door shaking her head vigorously. “Unnnn!!! Goww Unnnn”
“P, she’s asking us to GO IN!!! It’s English only”, I whispered. We barely managed to keep straight faces as we walked in. It was much more howlarious inside. At the reception at least there was a nepali woman talking in chinese sounding english. Inside it was perfectly Indian men talking in the same chinese sounding english as if they were born and brought up in some obscure chinese province to the north of the Yellow River.
“Wod u lyks huv bozzul wotor ar rezulor wotor?” meant “Would you like to have bottled water or regular water?” szrim sop mil cler” meant “Shrimp soup is mild and clear” The menu cards weren’t much help either. ‘Tsang hi Chicken’ read an item and the description was ‘minced chicken in vegetables/meat of your choice in sauce of your choice’. To know the choices we’d have to ask the service personnel for which you would have to be fluent in Chinglish(Chinese + English) which was a new language they’d invented. After some intense deciphering which would put even Robert Langdon to shame, we managed to order the Chicken Vegetable Clear soup and Duckmeat soup along with Crackling spinach and Diced chicken in black pepper for starters (We basically chose the stuff we could read and pronounce on the menu). From the beginning I had a bad feeling about the Duckmeat soup and when it came my fears were all confirmed. Guess they took the duck out of some dirty smelly pond and cooked it in water from the same pond. The soup was stinking horribly and I had to hold my nose with one hand and spoon the soup into my mouth with the other, all the while giving murderous glances at P who had ordered the thing, wanting to be adventurous. Then I had a better idea and drowned the soup in white pepper. It was more edible after that. The Crackling Spinach lived upto its name. It was crisp and crackling but made me wonder if it was a starter or dessert. It was a bit too sweet to be a starter and tasted almost like Haldiram’s mixed sev. The Diced chicken was heavenly though. It was the right blend of all subtle spices but even that was dangerously bordering on the sweet side. For the main course we were desperate for something spicy and had no choice but to take the waiter into confidence. The menu was no help since there was a picture of a chilli near some names and at the bottom it was explained that one chilli = pungent and two chillies = very pungent. Now what exactly this pungent was, nobody knew and we din’t want to risk the Duckmeat disaster once again. So after ordering the mandatory schezuan fried rice and noodle dishes, we asked the waiter for some spicy gravy choice on the menu.

“Tsoi Hoi Chicken” was his response.

“Err… Is that spicy?”

“Tsoi Hoi Chicken. Chi”

I din’t want to order any dish which the waiter himself had certified as ‘chi’ but I had no choice. So we ended up ordering Tsoi Hoi chicken. After ordering we noticed that in the menu the dish had 2 red chillies drawn next to it, whcih meant it was going to be ‘very pungent’. I imagined something smelling like rotten eggs and ammonia put together and braced myself. But the dishes that came to the table was quite harmless. Tsoi Hoi chicken was a mildly spicy dish that was still sweet but not as much as the other dishes and it went very well with the delightful fried rice. Only then we realised in Chinese meal dictionary, the word pungent meant spicy. But I found even their so called ‘very pungent’ dishes only mildly spicy and the Chinese must also be using more than half of the sugar produced in the world. They practically use it in EVERY dish they make man! But the main course turned out to be delicious after all, and hence no complaints. I hogged like I hadn’t seen food for ages and polished off the meal with some sinful sizzling brownie in hot chocolate sauce. After some word wrestling again with the waiter asking for the bill, we left after paying a hefty 2000 bucks, tax inclusive. It was a bit on the expensive side but one can indulge once in a while, right? Next time have to try their buffet lunch, me and P have decided, so that we can escape the chinese vocab torture and dive straight into the food. Game anyone??

Honesty ‘tags’ along

*Starts typing rubbing hands with glee and with a stupid grin plastered across the face*

Tagged! Veti has presented me an award (ahem, ahem) which I have displayed proudly below:

As a bonus I have a tag to do as well. Thanks Veti, more for the tag than the award. The rules of this tag are:

“When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!”

I love tags. Primarily because it’s easier to answer questions in a readymade format than rack your brains to come up with something readable every other time. But this tag seems like the kind which might end up making me think since it asks me 10 honest things about myself. Which means I have to do quite a bit of introspection at the end of which I’m sure I’ll be just where I started. Clueless. Ok, let’s not get disheartened now. After all we love tags don’t we?? So here we go!

1. I am a classic example of an ambivert. I can be gregarious, playful, funny and sarcastic with a certain set of people as much as I can be disinterested, bored, excruciatingly polite with others. I cannot feign false interest in matters in which I have absolutely no interest in, and that includes mega serials, gold jewellery, long and tiresome shopping, etc. I can be as tongue tied as much I can’t stop talking sometimes. Simply put, I cannot socialise for the sake of socialising. And it’s more of a bane than a boon.

2. I am paralysed each morning until I get my hot piping dosage of theobromine and feel incomplete until I’ve read the newspaper from cover to cover. And talking of tea, I go into a trance every time a steaming cup of tea/coffee is thrust into my hands. That’s the time I think out solutions to work, decide what book to read next, make up elaborate weekend plans and work out experimental recipes. In short, that’s probably the only time of the day I THINK.

3. I am a hard core, true blue Foodie. I love food. Love experimenting with various cuisines and flavours. When making plans for a weekend, the first thing that I plan is where to eat and work out everything else around that. Yeah, I’m that bad! When I’m travelling, all it takes is the sight of a favourite restaurant for me to launch into long monologues about the restaurant’s history, their speciality dishes, and anecdotes about what happened when I was there last, etc unless someone reminds me to stop. Every time I binge out I take this irresolute resolution to cut down but I know it’s only a passing phase. After all, resolutions are never meant to be kept.

4. I love being alone. It does feel a bit weird to say it, but yeah I love the time I get to spend all by myself. I love the days when I used to impulsively call in sick at work in the mornings, pack off mom and dad to work and spend the entire day all by myself. Simply lazing around the house, making scrambled eggs and drinking cold coffee, reading passages from favourite books, sleeping like it’s nobody’s business… I love the silence and solace of it. I’ve been bored with dozens of people around but I’ve never been bored alone. I love the company of my loved ones but I love my own company as well Like they say, if you can’t stand your own company, who can??

5. I’m scared of technology. Actually I’m diffident of it. I have always had the thought that I’m technologically challenged and its so deeply ingrained into my system that even if it’s something that I know like the back of my hand my initial reaction is to panic when someone asks me anything slightly technical. I may know my laptop inside out but when anybody starts a question like ‘Does your CPU utilisation match…’, next second I’m ready to flee the room. But there is even a positive twist to my technology-phobia. It has made me realise that it’s not always about knowing things but its more about believing that you know them.

6. I’m communication challenged. I don’t call people for fear of disturbing them. I don’t attend calls since my phone is on silent mode most of the time. I see text messages hours after they had been sent and don’t reply because it would be very rude to reply late. Yeah it’s ruder not to reply at all but well, that’s me. Thankfully these days social networking is big. Orkut, Facebook and now the latest in-thing Twitter are god sent for me. Without these I’d be marooned and constantly missing people I love but never really in touch with them.

7. Confession time! I don’t know why but I really enjoy reading tabloids and all these film magazines with glossy covers and beautiful people on them. Half the time I’m only flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures but every time I see these overpriced glossies on the stands, my hands itch to buy one.

8. I hate my writing (I pretended not to hear that collective SO Do We). Sad, but true. When I hear all these writers and artists talk fondly about their work like they were their babies, I sigh like the Whistling Woods. I am hyper critical of each and every word I write and each time I write a new post, I think it’s so bad that it doesn’t deserve to be put up on the blog. Then I console myself that it’s all that I can do, that I can’t possibly get any better and end up putting it up on the blog, not wanting to read it again ever, pitying all the poor folks who might be unfortunate enough to read it. Pathetic?? I second it.

9. I’m a living example of Murphy’s Law. If I’m happy that something is going fine, it goes horribly the very next day. If I’m glad that my laptop isn’t giving me any problems, tomorrow it’ll crash without notice. I touchwood thinking I haven’t fought with anybody recently and there is a major world war in the cards the next day. If I happen to even think I haven’t fallen sick for long, I fall sick at once. So then, brilliant that I am, I tried to work it the other way round – having all horrible negative thoughts so that they end up happening positive. And then I found out that it doesn’t work the other way round. Murphy never had it easy, did he?

10. I’ve been thinking of some thing nice, but honest, to say about myself all along and I could come up only with this. I value love and respect above everything else. I believe that they are the foundation upon which any relationship can be built. And I don’t think they can be mutually exclusive. Where there is love, there should be respect above everything else. If not, then it is not love. As simple as that. I’m anti male chauvinism. And Anti feminism. I only stand for humanism and mutual respect of human beings.

Sabba!! Done. Not an easy tag at all. Next time I’d prefer easier tags like ’10 favourite restaurants’ or ‘last ten books you read’ or ’10 ideas of how to do nothing’ I really can’t afford to tag unwilling people and endure curses forever after. Been there, done that. So I’ll just let anyone who wants to, take this tag up and bare their souls out. Tchau!

He he… Adjust please…

I’m fed up with this Indian epidemic. I don’t know if it’s only our national syndrome or pandemic to the world but it sure gets on my nerves. This he-he-adjust-please syndrome. Why do we expect friends, relatives, strangers and everybody else to ‘adjust’ according to our own whims and fancies??

I get into a train, huffing and puffing, bag and baggage in hand, hunt for my seats waiting to crash and I find a couple already getting cozy out there. I check my ticket and confirm the seat numbers again which takes a full five minutes considering I still don’t have a place to keep my luggage (they deposited their 8 bags under MY seat), and all the while the couple is even oblivious to a poor struggling soul standing there and trying to get their attention. After enough polite coughing to stop them feeding Lays chips to each other, they look at me like I was the designated railways sweeper waiting with a broom to sweep under their feet. One even crinkles a nose at me. When I tell them that it’s my seat one of them has parked their bottoms on, they look at me the same way I looked at politicians who wanted Shashi Tharoor to resign over the cattle class remark. The is-this-even-a-problem look. The man looks at me condescendingly and says, “You see that we are together right? The entire family is here. Shift to B42.” And then adds as an unnecessary afterthought “he he.. Adjust Please.” Only then I realise everybody in that coupe was family, thaatha paati, two kids, and the couple et al and I was the lone outsider. If I stood my ground and asked for my seats, they would start Gandhigiri mutiny against me, shoot hostile glances until I felt like I was Kasab in an Indian courtroom, whisper conspiratorially but loud enough for me to hear all the nasty things they were saying and the kids would stamp my feet and throw well aimed darts at me. So I nod stupidly, mumble “no problem” and trudge to B42. All along the occupant of my seat doesn’t even budge and remains glued as if his name was calligraphed there. This happened to me 4 years back and hasn’t stopped happening ever since. I can understand when it’s about children and women thrown alone away from their families, some physical conditions which require help at hand etc etc but even then why do people make requests that sound more like orders? What I find most appalling is that these people even forget that THEY are the ones needing a favour and put on these superior and benevolent airs like they were doing the other party favors instead. After all, I only ask for what I paid for and what is lawfully mine. Is that even too much?

Over the years this phenomenon has been steadily on the rise and has under its clutches not only trains and buses, but also flights (My wife needs to look at the clouds. He he adjust please!) and now gasp!! Movie halls!  The other day I was at Satyam to catch a movie and I find two lovey-dovey people(again! Always?? Why me ??) already making themselves comfortable in A12 and A13, popcorn and cold coffee in hand. The only hitch – I had booked those very seats battling with a bad net connection and shelling out 20 bucks extra for having had the ‘priviledge’ of selecting those seats online. Me and P stand confused in front of the seats cross checking our tickets and seat numbers while inside my instinct screams nooooo…not here…. not again…. The checking only confirmed what I already knew. The seats were ours and whatever little self control I had, teetered on the blink of a rage when the couple tried to crane their necks to look at the Lalitha Jewellery ads on the screen to show us that WE were blocking THEIR view.

I took a deep breath and began politely. “Excuse me, A12 and 13 are ours. Could you check your tickets please?”

The guys gives me a so-you-are-the-stupid-moron-I-have-to-convince look.” Oh. Yeah our seats are D20, 21. Down somewhere there. Can you adjust and sit there?”

Grrrr. I was going to explode. Control. Control. Where was P? He has to handle this. I look around horrified to find that P had already walked away to look for D20 and 21! Now you know what P stands for. Peace loving Extremist.

Deep breath again. “D20,21 seem to be perfectly good couple seats as well. Could you shift to them and let us sit in ours please?”

The girl who was drooling over the jewellery on screen thinking it would be matter of seconds before the pests (us) would be scurrying away, opened her pop corn stuffed mouth now to whine, “But we already sat here!!”

“We already paid for it”

The look that they gave me was nothing short of PRICELESS. Like I was the French bourgeois oppressing the peasants. They scowled, mumbled, fussed and made a big show of collecting their things (must have been really difficult with all those three cartons of caramel/butter popcorn and armloads of sandwiches. Bah!!) and left with scathing looks. And I ended up counting up to ten and then backwards (calming down strategy)for the next 20 minutes, effectively missing out on most of the first half of the movie in the process. P was absolutely unperturbed and was completely engrossed in the movie within seconds. The entire movie watching experience was ruined (added to it is the fact that the movie sucked big time) and left me wondering if all the fuss was worth it and whether I should just have swapped seats quietly. This is one case where the victim always ends up looking like the hunter. Time we realised that our freedom does not include taking advantage of other people’s goodwill and robbing them of their rights. Sigh! At least I think so.

The Judgement

They rained kicks on his groin and stamped his face with boots. He did not make a sound. He did not move.

“Oi Maari! Stay here. Inside the jeep.  No coming out, ok? Veera you stay here with him. You can go for tea after we come back. Yena??”

He sat crouching inside the jeep. His arms were wound tight around his knees. The skin around his clenched fists was paler than the dark brown skin of his hands. His eyes were red as he watched the Inspector pull up his pants to rest on his paunch and walk away. He thought of Shanthi and Viji. Shanthi would have created a ruckus by now, sitting in the hut entrance, near the tin door and open sewer, surrounded by women folk. She would be wailing and heaping curses on him, his parents and forefathers.  Avan kai kaal velangaama poga. Andha padupaavi paya nallaave irukka maaten. Aiyooo yen pulla saava kedakudhe… No, he thought. All that would have been over by now. She would have pawned the one or two ever silver vessels that had mostly been on Marwadi shop shelves than the hut ever since being bought 5 years ago. You didn’t buy them for me, Shanthi always used to retort. Yengamma veetu seedhanam.

“Yenna pa Maari. It was a matter of 1000 rupees. Now see what happened. 2 weeks in jail. Who will look after you wife and family. That too in temple. Even if the court pardons, God won’t. Saamy kuththam aagidum pa… ”

He stayed silent. Who will look after your wife and family? Shanthi and Viji. His wife and his sick daughter, who would be lying on the cold General Hospital floors now. Free treatment, they said. But you need to bribe the nurses for a bed. You need to bribe ward boys for the free medicines. You need to bribe everyone from the watchman to the woman at the pharmacy counter. He couldn’t bear to think of Viji. Some mysterious sickness seemed to sponge out his little daughter’s spirit until she could do nothing but lie in a corner of the stone floor and lift her hand with a weak smile when he entered the house. It was more than a week since she fell sick. No money, take her to GH, the doctors said. 100 rupees for a bed, the nurse at GH said. He remembered the last words Viji spoke to him as laid her down on the hospital floor, the cold seeping into her body through the torn blanket. “Appa, yeppo pa varuva.. Na sethuda maaten la” The last words she spoke to him before he left to get money for her, for his little daughter. He tried asking all his friends. There were only bare hands and empty eyes. After all, where would they get the money from ? They were in the same state as he was since the strike hit them two weeks ago.

His mind wandered back to Viji. He couldn’t stop the sobs this time.

“Ada Maari, Yenna pa… Be a man. Stop crying now. Hmmm… What’s the use crying now.? You should have thought of all this before breaking into that temple..” The jeep driver took a long puff from his cigarette and looked at him. “Do you work anywhere or full time thief only?”

He sobbed louder. He had told all this to the judge in his room only ten minutes back. He had begged for mercy and had almost fallen at the man’s feet. He had told the judge that he worked as a cleaner for a private lorry company. That he had been out of work for two weeks since the lorry strike began.  His meagre savings had only lasted for one week. He had no work, no money and then his Viji fell sick. He had nowhere to go. No one to ask. Then he went to God. His last resort. He didn’t want one paisa for himself. Only for his daughter’s life. If God won’t help him save his daughter’s life, who will? He broke that hundi. He took the money. And he got caught. He was not a professional thief to do clean work. Ironically it was a group of beggars who slept in the temple entrance who rounded him up and beat him up till the police came. He had to tell everything to the judge in person. He had somehow thought that the judge would understand. He looked like a good man. He couldn’t be so insensitive to a poor man’s misery. When I tell him the reason, when I tell him about my Viji, he will understand and help me, he thought. He had begged and pleaded with the policemen to let him meet the judge once.

District magistrate Nagarajan V looked impatiently at his watch first and then at the stooping man before him. Had been hit quite badly. The damn policemen never listen. They blame the public. Especially in these damn theft cases, the public almost kill the man before handing him out to the police. He had a meeting at 2.30. A very important meeting. Another five minutes. He was usually assigned the important and tricky cases but sometimes petty thefts and minor issues came up and he couldn’t help it. Like this man in front of him. Maarimuthu. Lorry Cleaner. Broke into a temple and stole from the hundi. 1000 Rupees found on person. 2000 fine or 2 weeks RI. Rigorous Imprisonment. The man had been talking nonstop for the past ten minutes. Could hardly make out what he was saying. These damn slum people and their Chennai baashai. Something about a sick daughter and God. He looked at the watch once more and cleared his throat. Such people have to be handled carefully. They could get violent sometimes. He had seen angry convicts break his colleagues’ noses and throw acid on their faces. He didn’t want to risk a broken nose when the important meeting took place. It could, after all, change his life.

“Idho paaru pa, un per yena? Ahhh Maari, Nothing is in my hands now. I may be a kind and compassionate person. I understand your difficulty. I want to help you. But I cannot overrule the law, can I? The law says that taking another person’s money is wrong. Whatever be the reason, you have stolen what was rightfully somebody else’s. If I let you go this time, Next time when you pick somebody else’s pocket or break into a house, you will think that you can justify it and walk away. And that too you have stolen from the temple. Judgement has been passed. You make sure you don’t resort to such means again. Don’t lose your integrity and honesty. Death is better than that”

He looked at the watch again and then at the constable standing next to Maari. “Take him away. I have a meeting”

He could do nothing now. He had no money to pay fine. None to bail him out. He didn’t know if his daughter was alive or dead. He didn’t know if he would ever see her again. He had nothing more to live for. He lifted his head for the first time and ran his eyes through the court compound. Black coats and khaki shirts filled the campus. A lot of people with a lot of problems. It was then that he saw the man in the ill fitting safari suit standing near the jeep. He was holding a shoulder bag that screamed Nike in bright fluorescent orange colour. The student bag looked like a mismatch in his pudgy hand. He seemed uncomfortable with it and kept shifting it from one hand to the other. His eye wandered around the building restlessly. He looked unsure about where to go. Maari kept looking at the man. There was something wrong about him but it was difficult to point out what it was. The man took out a mobile phone from his suit pocket twice but put it back inside without making a call. Now Maari couldn’t take his eyes off him. Veera, having finished his smoke, went back to sit in the driver’s seat mumbling about how long it took for the Inspector to have a coffee. That too with a convict in the jeep.  The man took the phone from his pocket again and hesitated for a second. Then he nervously punched the numbers.

“Hullo Saar? Aiyaa’s PA.. Saari for calling saar. Aiyaa is in the car. He asked me to hand over the bag to you. I didn’t know where your room is. Aiyaa will scold if I ask. 3C hot cash. Saari saar saari saar.. Ok saar I’m coming. Saari saar.. ” He put the phone hurriedly in his pocket, wiped the sweat from his shiny forehead and started walking. Maari saw him knock lightly and enter the same room he had left five minutes ago.

He had almost reached the magistrate’s door when the policemen saw him running and started behind him, pulling out pistols from their holsters and yelling loudly. When they entered the room, they saw him spitting on the magistrate’s face and slapping him repeatedly. They saw a man in an ill fitting safari suit cowering in a corner , his mouth and eyes open wide in shock. They saw a black shoulder bag with Nike written on it, a bundle of currency notes peeping out through a slightly open zip. They quickly looked away.

They rained kicks on his groin and stamped his face with boots. He did not make a sound. He did not move.

Cobweb Clearing!

Ok I’m not dead. Dusting off the cobwebs once again like I’ve done many a times before. I wanted to be back with a bang, with some meaningful writing, a story perhaps, but no meaningful writing seems to be coming to me any time in the near future. So I’m back to the kind of writing that requires no meaning or thinking whatsoever. Rambling.

In the past few weeks,

Was admitted into a hospital after a long time. Actually, a very long time. So long that now I don’t even remember being admitted in a hospital before. Not even a vague memory. Amma tells me often that as a child I was admitted into a hospital once at a very critical stage and after 3 days there, I pointed to my tummy and made hand signs asking for food. She says she feels like crying every time she even thinks about that incident. But I have absolutely no memories of this supposedly ‘emotional’ moment and getting to stay in a hospital now was a very exciting and new experience. I actually liked being there for a lot of reasons. For starters, everyone was doting on me like never before. All that extreme paasam made me feel like the thangachi in thangachi paasam movies. People only didn’t stand around me in a circle and sing ‘Azhagaana chinna devadhai’ while patting my head and pinching my cheeks affectionately. Everything else was done. Relatives came visiting every evening in hordes and we had to get chairs from the reception to accommodate everyone. P who usually doesn’t lift a finger at home stayed with me during the nights and was running around with water basins and medicine prescriptions. Dad had become my competitor for the hospital bed by the end of the second day and had to take medicines as well. In fact I wasn’t even dying or had some six-months-to-die kind of sickness. Just the good ol’ routine typhoid which has already struck me some four times and something the entire family is very nonchalant about.  Now I may talk cheeky but I didn’t hate it one bit when it was all happening. I was basking as much as possible under all the hospital light glory. Go away typhoid and stay away, any other sickness! It isn’t time for me to play harps in heaven already. Too many people love me here.

Watched two movies, one of which should go into history as among the best made in the country and the other should never have been made. 40 crores, Mexico, superhero, kokarako dance, pichumani, shriya… there was no end in sight to the miseries that Kanthasamy unleashed on me. I walked into the cinema hall, a full 40 minutes after the movie started wondering if it was really worthwhile going to watch a movie after missing out so much of it. I usually get the kick of having watched a film only if I watch it from the opening credits to the vanakkam at the end. But after the Kanthasamy ordeal I thanked God Almighty and Chennai traffic for having made me miss out on most of the first half. At the end of it, I was left gaping at the screen with a lot of how-could-they questions and a WTH feeling. How I wish they had made a true Superhero film minus all that fake masala! Sigh! And then there was the other one.  Kaminey. What a fantabulous movie! A true blue gangster caper that is raw, edgy, intelligent, dramatic and funny all at once. Jaw dropping screenplay, on-the-streets cinematography, mind blowing music, brilliant is the word. Ok, I’ve run out of adjectives. Vishal Bhardwaj is a rarity in the world of Indian cinema that has come to become melodrama, mindless action and songs in foreign locations. A truly well made movie pulls you into its web. It makes you relate to its characters, laugh with them, cry with them and run with them. That’s what Kaminey made me do. I’m not against the slow paced arty kind of films but give me a completely commercial but rocking Kaminey over them any day. I hate feel good happy endings but this one time I was left praying that neither Guddu nor Charlie (for all his ultra grey shades) should die. And Kanthasamy, well it made me long for the superhero to die or atleast get caught as soon as possible. Mudiyala da samy!

Caught up with a lot of pending reading. The other day I was at Odyssey when I came across a book titled ‘The 50 most influential books in the world’ It seemed to span all genres from fiction to nonfiction to history to science. Bible was on it and so was The theory of Relativity by Einstein. What caught my eye was The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Having seen this book on almost all ‘best books list’, I decided to find out just what was so influential about it, only to realise after reading that I was now too old to be influenced by it. The book is a slice out of a teenager’s life, how he gets chucked out of a fancy prep school, what he does enroute to going home after being dismissed, his face offs with people whose kinds he isn’t accustomed to coming across in life so far, his love for his sister, and the inherent child inside every human being irrespective of age. Teenage is that period in life when you are so vulnerable but put up a brave front to hide and mask all the bewilderment. From that point of view, this book is a teenager’s bible and it’s written in an abstract disjointed way, much like Holden Caulfield, our teenager in question is actually sitting across the table from you and having a conversation. But at the end of it, I was left wondering, ‘Now how does this INFLUENCE people in any way’. Then the ever nagging inner voice said, ‘Girl, it doesn’t influence people your age. You are way too old for this. Should have read it 6 years back. Too bad you were busy being influenced by Ayn Rand back then’ So there, Catcher in the Rye was another reminder that I was getting too old – for even some serious teenage literature.

Now I’ve reached this stage where to even ramble any more I have to start thinking, which I’m not really inclined to do (unless forced, as always). So I’ll stop here and get back when I really have something to say. Might take real long, who knows!

Two Worlds

He sat on the rocking chair near the window in the living room. “There’s a lovely breeze this way in the evenings. And you can watch TV from here without being in the way” Sudha had said as she put the chair there and sat on it to see if it was the right angle to watch TV from. Without being in the way echoed in his ears hours later as he sat in the rocking chair waiting for the lovely breeze that never came. He looked out of the window only to see the curtained and shuttered window of another apartment. He squinted at the remote for the Play button. They all looked the same to him. The remote, the huge television set stuck on the wall like a giant beetle on a flower, the house, the city, his daughter, her family. They all looked the same – dusty, distant and alien.

It was almost six and a half months since Raji passed away. His wife of 37 years. She died a good death, he thought. No fuss, no fancy hospitals or painkillers, no suffering or unwanted pain. She died peacefully in her sleep, her trademark red bindi only slightly smeared, a small dribble of saliva on her chin and the stench of bladders loosened by death. She was out of everybody’s way with minimum discomfort. But until her death Krishnagopal and Rajeshwari had never known discomfort. They had lived in a small village Kurinichiyur on the outskirts of Thanjavur. He was the headmaster of the local school and she, the quintessential wife cum mother. Thanjavur itself was only a small town in their times. They raised Sudha in the village amidst lush green paddy and coconut fields, goat sheds and hen coops. They lived a simple life amidst simple people. When Sudha wanted to study computer science after high school, they sent her to Madras to stay in a hostel and study engineering. Krishnan had his own apprehensions but he did not want to tie down his daughter to the village life that he loved. And four years later when Sudha told him that she was in love with her colleague, he didn’t pick up the sickle or threaten to immolate himself in the name of caste or creed. He was an honest man who had nothing to fear for, no society to answer to. He booked a splendid wedding hall in Madras, the same way Sudha had wanted, got her married to the man she loved and left the very next day to his village. The only thing that worried him was city life which he felt was too inhumane, suffocating, noisy and money driven. It was Sudha’s choice, Raji reminded him gently when occasionally while shooing the hens into their coop in the evenings, he would remember the pollution in Madras and mutter under his breath, “If only they lived somewhere on the outskirts at least… the air is simply poisonous…too poisonous…” It was their daughter’s decision to make a life for herself in the city and they left it at that.

“Saar…”

The maid’s voice woke him up with a start. He had dozed off in the rocking chair. The left hand felt cramped and uncomfortable.

“Lunch is in the hot pack. Tea is in the flask. Washed the dishes and folded the clothes. Washing soap is over. Tell Sudhamma when she comes saar. Lock the door and sleep Saar. City is full of robbers these days. Even last week…”

He watched her wipe the sweat off her neck with the pallu of her saree as she closed the door behind her. The clock showed 1.45. Another 6 hours before Sudha would be back home. Another 6 hours of loneliness and claustrophobic suffocation. Not that Sudha spoke much when she came home from work. She usually poured herself some tea from the flask and went over the day’s papers. In between reading the headlines, she threw sporadic questions at him like seeds being sowed on a well ploughed piece of land. Did he take an afternoon nap? Did the maid sweep the balcony? She usually forgets. Did he put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket?  Then she microwaved some leftovers from the fridge and settled in front of the TV watching soaps till Raghav came home. They would have dinner together, but separately. Raghav in front of television with CNN for company, Sudha on the couch with a fashion magazine and he, on the dining table. He often wondered how two people who had been so crazy in love had  exhausted all of it so soon. He hardly found Raghav and Sudha talking about anything other than work or dinner or which-channel-to-watch-on-tv since he started living with them. There were no fond glances, no fugitive smiles or hushed whispers. None of those small but beautiful signs of love that he’d seen in abundance five years ago when they got married. Maybe it was the cut throat work pressure. Or the now-or-never urgency to have a child. Or maybe, he thought, they simply got bored of each other.

He wondered why he had never got bored of his Raji. Not once in the 37 years of their life together. Thinking of Raji gave him a heartache. He missed his wife in a way which he would never come to terms with. When she left him, she took most of him along with her. And what was left behind was lost when he left his village to live in this inhumane concrete jungle. He missed his village life as much as he missed his wife. He missed the coconut groves, the animals he raised like children, the pump sets and muddy roads. Above all, he missed the innate simplicity and friendliness of his own people. He felt alienated and alone in the city, in his own daughter’s house. Nobody smiled. Nobody greeted each other on the roads. People didn’t have time for pleasantries. Not the barber, the grocer, the neighbour or the maid. Everyone was suspicious of the other person. All doors were locked. He felt suffocated.

The doorbell rang. “Appa, don’t ever open the door without looking through the peephole” echoed in his ears. He fixedly avoided looking at the peephole and opened the door. It was the small boy from next door. He’d seen the boy rushing out to catch school bus in the mornings. He was a chubby little boy who looked about 8 years old.

“Thaatha, did Amma give you the house key? I usually take it with me but forgot today. First time I forgot, you know?”

Krishnan smiled. It had been so long since someone called him Thaatha.

“No, she didn’t”

“Oh! I can’t watch Popeye then” He looked sad for a moment. Then he removed his very large school bag, placed it carefully next to the lunch bag and sat on a staircase step.

“Why don’t you come in here and wait until your mother comes home? You can have something to eat. And watch Popeye too.”

He looked puzzled and thoughtful. “Mom’s told me that I’m not supposed to talk to strangers or eat anything they give” He said it like a rhyme and then added, “But you are not a stranger. You are only Thaatha who sits on that chair and drinks coffee everyday” He pointed to the rocking chair and said with a sly smile, “I sometimes peep in when you leave the door open”

He picked up his schoolbag in one hand, lunch bag in the other and walked in through the door. Krishnan followed the boy inside and looked at him with wonder. What a lovely little boy! He is too articulate for his age, but so are all kids these days. He went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of milk and biscuits. The boy was looking at the fish tank.

“Milk! I love milk. But mom only gives me Horlicks. I love to play in that park too. See, you can see it from this window! But she never lets me go. Says the bigger boys will beat me up. We lived in another house sometime back thaatha. It was very small. But I had so many friends. Here I have no friends. I hate this house.” He pursed his lips and scowled.

“Do you want to go to the park?”

“Will you take me? I won’t run around. Promise.” He looked pleadingly.

“After you finish up your milk and biscuits”

“Yayyyyyyyyy!!!”

“What is your name?”

“Ashwin. Ashwin Prakash. 4B. St. Peter’s Matriculation School.”

Hand in hand, they walked together towards the park. Krishnan couldn’t stop beaming. He felt a spring in his step that he hadn’t known since Raji died. He sat on the bench and munched peanuts watching Ashwin run around with gay abandon, jumping on to swings and see-saws and climbing the Alphabet Bars as if they were Mount Everest. He felt light at heart for the first time at months. Felt like he was in human contact after ages. He felt human. Felt alive. Felt like a grandfather. Ashwin came running towards him with his hands stretched like the wings of an albatross.

“Thaatha I want a balloon”

“Tomorrow. Let’s go home now. It’s getting dark. And your mother might have come”

“She usually comes only after 6. Thaatha balloon… Please…”

He had burst the balloon and made bubbles out of it by the time they reached the apartment building.

“Thaaaathaa raceeeeee”

He was sprinting up the stairs riding an imaginary bike. By the time Krishnan huffed puffed and reached the fifth floor, the ‘vrooooooommmmm’ had stopped. Ashwin stood in front of his mother tears streaming down his cheeks. She gave Krishnan a spiteful glance before proceeding to spank her son on the back repeatedly and pinch his ears.

“HOW MANY TIMES have I told you not to talk to strangers?? Where did you go ALL THIS WHILE? I would have gone to the police in ten minutes. ” She pulled him by the ear into the house. “Do you know how many children get kidnapped…” Krishnan stood staring at the door that shut with a loud bang.

Epilogue

“Appa, please… Why are you always looking for excuses to go back? The milkman is staring. Neighbours are not talking. Everybody minds their own business. Nobody has time to be nice. Life is so mechanical. Listen appa. This is not kurinichiyur for you to know each person in the locality by name and live as one big joint family. This is a CITY for God’s sake. Here people do get suspicious if you take their kids out all of a sudden. It’s natural. They might not even know that you live next door… ”

He locked his suitcase and looked calmly at her. “That is precisely why I want to leave. I can’t live here. Not in a place where people don’t know who lives next door. I am not blaming your world. I don’t want to change it. I only want to go back to my own.”

Raghav looked up from his Economic Times. “Sudha let him leave. He let you live your life. Now it’s time for you to let him live his.”

The skies were still dusky but dawn was about to break when Krishnan walked out of the house, back to where he belonged.

* Kurinichiyur is imaginary

H.O.M.E

(Planning to migrate a few posts here, from my older blog(which i had to close down due to ‘edhir katchigalin thittamitta sadhi ‘). These are the ones I think are worth migrating, atleast so that I can read them whenever I want to without logging in, giving passwords, etc. This post was written exactly a year back. Happy anniversary HOME!! )

A paint peeling, concrete arch proclaiming the name of the street. A narrow tar road dug up in a few dozen places. The tiny grocery shop at the corner. A primary school. Pullaiyar Kovil. Methodist Church. A few hundred houses. And another few hundred hearts. This is the constitution of the place that I’ve been calling ‘home’ for the past 10 years. Whenever I think home, it’s never a single building. It’s always a parcel of the street, friends, neighbours, roadside cricket, the huge neem tree next door and occasional squabbles. The picture is incomplete without all these.

When my parents decided to buy a plot and build a house where it is sitting pretty right now, they almost drowned in the discouragement that followed. The place is good for nothing. It is nothing but a breeding ground of pigs and stray dogs. It is thief infested. There are only two other houses in the entire locality. It is a low lying area and will not survive the first monsoon of the season. And the worst part was that each of this was true. Even my mom was half sceptical of the idea. She always wanted her dream house in a posh locality. Anna Nagar was top on her list, not some nameless hole in the by lanes, a region between the heart of the city and its suburbs. But dad was adamant. So in six months, the parents and 12 year old me shifted to our first own house, all eager and joyful. It was a modest one bedroom house. A very modest beginning. The house was ridiculously small when compared to the one ground of empty space that lay sprawling in front of it. But in less than a month again, the empty space had transformed into a lovely garden. Marigolds and Chrysanthemums framed either side of the pathway leading from the gate to the main door. Coconut trees were planted dotting the compound wall. The rest of the space was a mini farm growing ladies finger, brinjal, tomatoes, green peas, pumpkins, snake gourds and herbs. The garden became the pride of the neighbourhood (which consisted of five houses now), and they contributed seeds and saplings zealously. It was like living in a separate planet away from the pollution and noise of the city. The early morning Bharatnatyam practice surrounded by the scent of blooming jasmine flowers and roses, badminton sessions in our very own farm-cum-playground, hide and seek with the chameleons and frogs, all stamped in memory, fresh now as ever.

Slowly I graduated to high school and the street graduated to a few more houses and tar roads. Globalisation reached as far as our private planet and dad thought we needed a bigger home. The flowers vanished, vegetable patches were pulled out and we got a majestic gleaming new home in return. Now new houses mushroomed, one here and another there at a rapid rate and we suddenly had neighbours smiling at us through window sills and bringing home sweets for Diwali. There was Sundari aunty in the opposite flat who waited with piping hot coffee every evening when I came back from school. Now I didn’t have to stand waiting on the road till mom came home if I forgot to take the house key. I could take my pick from Teacher aunty’s rolls and buns or Shobha Akka’s idli vadas and keep munching to my heart’s content till mom was back. Street cricket with Sathish was a daily affair till his dad got transferred toBangalore. Even after moving to college and hostel subsequently, Friday evenings back home were never complete without snacks at Vaishu’s place. If animosity existed, it was fought out at Margazhi kolam competitions and diwali crackers. Pullaiyar and Jesus sat smug and contended, a stone’s throw away from each other. Even during the first few weeks in hostel, when I was home sick, I missed my neighbours as much as I missed my parents. Only then did I realise how the entire neighbourhood had become an integral part of what I called my ‘home’.

Things seem to have become a wee bit different these days though. All the kids have grown up. Some are doctors, some engineers and IT professionals, some settled abroad. The youngsters are too busy to notice neighbours and the grown ups are too old to socialise like before. Their occasional window sill conversations have shifted from sweet making and sarees to diabetes and arthritis. The warmth and love exists but it is more restrained and even a bit wary sometimes. The owners of a couple of high rising apartments that the street can boast of now, hardly ever open their doors or windows and sneak in and out of their own houses like burglars. I realise now that it has been more than six months since I dropped into any of my neighbour’s home for some hot coffee and hotter gossip. I make a mental note to do it this weekend. It takes a wedding, a birthday or an occasional power cut to bring everybody together and relive the old gold days again. People seem to be afraid that if they stop to talk to each other or care, life may whiz past by. I wish we could rewind back to the time when all that life meant was to stop, talk and care.