The wanderings of the mind

To read or not to read

2006-12-18T06:33:00.000+05:30

I have tried more than once to break what I think has possessed me over the past year, almost- the writer's block. I agree that my blogging was sporadic even beftried ore then, and every time I put up a post, I almost felt like I had successfully finished an essay for my English class. But over the last few months, things have been busy and as a reaction my body became more reluctant to work. My mind followed the body's course, it seems.

I dont know when it is that I started reading. I cant say that I was one of those children who was naturally inclined towards books and libraries. I remember that the day I bought books for the new academic year, the first one I would reach for would be the English textbook. I dont know if that was a budding love for reading or just an escape from reading the other more boring textbooks. But a few years later I realised that I would rather read than watch the TV or play even. Maybe it was that I had to play all that the kids in my neighbourhood did, and realised that the only way to not be humiliated for being bad at all of that was by pretending that I just wasnt interested in them to begin with. Anyway, what I do remember of my childhood, or some parts of it is that my friend and I would go to the Mobile library that would come near my house once a week, pick up three books and read some while sitting on top of the tree every day until the library rolled by a week later.

Why all this about reading? Because my father always said that to write well, one has to be well-read. And I wanted to write. My father studied literature and in an effort to prove to my mom that there were more of his genes in us than hers, he tortured my brother and me through school. So while my classmates got ample help from their parents for their assignments, I was pushed to write on my own with the ideas that I had. Poor me!My mother was a kinder soul and would plead on our behalf, sometimes even threaten him of consequences if he didnt do our homework for us. It was, I think, the only time that her threats didnt work on him. At school, the stark distinction between my classmates' fluently written pieces and my amatuer work didnt go unnoticed by my teachers. And just so I dont end up committing suicide, they'd compliment my writing. Only it had the exact opposite effect on me and I took that as an indication of immense talent to write, within.

So I began to read, starting where most kids start ; with Noddy and his friends. Only I was probably 10. At the age of 11 I had finished a book that my father had bought when I was a year and a half, in the hope that I would read it some day. That book was atleast a thousand pages and had in detail the rise and fall of all the empires on earth. Certainly not a kids' book if you ask me. As time progressed I read books that are popularly considered "better" and thereby was ostracized by all the groups in class but the nerdy one, which partly explains the stinted adult that I am. From that day on, when someone asked me what my hobby was ( yes, it was important to have a hobby to be socially accepted then), I proudly said that I read.

Well, coming back to my reason for not writing in the past year. It was mostly because I had stopped reading. I had found better things to do in my spare time, that required less physical and mental exertion. Watch movies. Bollywood is a big industry because Indians generally tend to like wasting time in large chunks. I am one of them. When I came to the US, I saw an opportunity to catch up on all those movies that I had missed out in the last 23 years and a couple of generations before then. Aided by Netflix, I watched them all, atleast one a day. Needless to say, my main objective for coming here, to obtain an MS, suffered. Once Netflix thought that they had lost enough with me as their customer they started degrading their service and sent fewer movies. It was around the same time that guilt, which I had managed to stiffle for about 5 years, re-reared its ugly head. I realised that wasting 2-3 hours was unreasonable and that I had should concentrate on studying and research. Also my attention span had started to go down and it was getting impossible for me to sit in one place, even if was only to watch a movie.

So I restarted my reading. Around that time I also wrote half a post. Before I could finish the book, one of my friends introduced me to the world of sitcoms. And the past half year have been spent in watching every episode of every season of almost every sitcom enjoyed by most of my friends. They seemed like a good idea to begin with. They served as a good distraction and didnt last more than 25 minutes. Only they are addictive like cocaine is and it would maybe take some sort of serious rehab to stop watching them once you have begun. So I would end up watching 8 or so episodes a day by the end of which my eyes would scream and my brain would go into temporary inactivity. A few days ago, though, my brain refused to sit through even one tiny episode of a series that I had almost finished. And suddenly, I remembered that there was something else fun called books.

So I decided that I would start reading again. Meanwhile, I had graduated from school and moved and so had lost my source of books. I drove 25 miles to get to the nearest University which I knew had a good library. I tried to use a friend's card to check out books, was embarrassed in front of a bunch of students for trying to cheat the system and was threatened confiscation of my id if I tried again. My friend, who is almost not one anymore for he refused to be a part of the mess, as one last gesture got me the books. And here I am, reading and writing. Only I just heard that there's a new show on air. Maybe I should just check it out?

What's in a name?

2006-02-26T22:34:00.000+05:30

If you ask me, almost everything! When Shakespeare penned that immortal line, he hadnt met any of my namesakes.

I have never been lucky with names, from the looks of it. Most of my life, all my family has, with love, called me by a sound that stands for 'doll' in some Neanderthal language. Even my youngest nephew calls me that. I have had nightmares where people would throw away my wedding invitation thinking it had reached them by mistake, since they didnt know the groom, and definitely not the bride! My parents would have to reprint the cards, putting an alias next to my real name. And a few years from then I would have my grandchildren calling me that, with a 'paati' added to it. I tried shaking it off, until I saw what happened to those who called me by my official name.

My father is a nice man. He used up all the sadism and cruel feelings towards the rest of mankind, in one act. He named me. I was born in Calcutta, but immediately after my naming ceremony we shifted to Bangalore. Dad had a transferable job, but he made sure that he moved not more than 30 miles from the previous location. The result, I have never known any but South Indians with long names. In my growing up years, I didnt think names were such a big deal. I responded to most of what people called me, including my kid brother's 'ga-ga'. A little later, it was in fashion to represent second name by the initial only. The initial came sometimes before and sometimes after the first name. When in tenth standard, I was asked to pick a name which would stay with me the rest of my life, I decided to append my already long name with my father's full name. And so here I am, a tongue twister!

When in Madras, my name made up for what Tamil I didnt know. The Tams I knew, defeated by the fact that I had a longer name than them, disregarded that I couldnt speak a word of that language and took me in as one of them. Also, at around the same time, I met four old men, aged 60 and something, who thought I had a beautiful name. All in all, I actually had started to believe that my name wasnt so bad after all and only begun to forgive my dad for the one thing I held against him. Then, I landed in the United States.

My name has been the single most embarrassing thing in my short existence here. The day I came here, I noticed my Uncle and Aunt who had come to the airport to pick me up, think twice before addressing me by my name. I thought it was the joy of seeing me that had gotten them tongue-tied. After two days, I attributed it to the fact that having been here long, there had crept up an American accent in their speech. Maybe the accent didnt quite agree with the complex syllables that exist in the Indian language. I came to the University, and found a lot of Indian friends. Most of them Tams again. I forgot about my name until the first day at school.

Day one, while I wandered the corridors, hopelessly lost, an American chap found me. He seemed friendly, and offered to escort me to my destination. We walked along, me thinking that I would have no problems making friends here and he thinking 'what a strange creature!'. Oh yes, I who while in India, made my mom beg me to wear a salwar, had decided to wear one for the first day of classes. With jhigale earrings, bracelets and all. Anyway, in course of our conversation, he suddenly put out his hand and said a name. His, I suppose. I said mine. Short chuckle, ' Can you say that again please'. I did. Flush, 'Once more?'. This time, realising that he was mentally demented, ( he couldnt even say my name, remember?), I gave him a sympathetic smile and did a school-for-differently-abled pronounciation of my name. He turned pale, offered me an incoherent excuse and left. I later saw him in my class. But he looked through me like I didnt exist. Maybe it was a twin I met? Or maybe he thought, I had been pulling his leg, real hard!

As days passed I said my name and added a 'I know its tough'. Two months and when people asked me to repeat, I said a very indifferent ' forget it'. Nowadays, when someone asks me for my name, I usually go, 'Why dont you tell me?!'. I called myself SS, someone asked me to elaborate on Nazi history. My department wanted to unofficial christen me Sarah. But with the profusion of Sarahs here, I, who had been used to uniqueness, could not settle for it. So I remained still, my full name.

Not all is bad though. My name has helped me pick out real friends. It has served as the acid test. For those foreign nationals who have remained, have learnt it. I wouldnt say it sounds like what it used to, but seriously, I would be cruel to not recognize sincere effort such as this. Also, all my professors know me, by default. In the rare case that a roll-call happens, my existence is acknowledged by looking up from the record-sheet and a raised eyebrow. Not once am I needed to go 'Present, saar'. Also, when papers are distributed in class, the teacher walks up to me to hand me my paper, while he just calls out the others, who have to themselves walk all the way and collect it. I'd like to believe, that in these 6 months, they have seen some hidden brilliance me, that makes them want to treat me with this kind of respect!

Meanwhile, I still have one small problem. I dont have a middle name. Maybe I should get one that starts with an 's' and definitely has a 'shree' in it. Yes?

Tagged and ragged!

2006-02-03T05:27:00.000+05:30

Well, not being a regular blogger( would you call 15 posts in a year and a half regular on some planet? I'd like to go there), I had no notion of what it was to be in the tag game. Until a few weeks ago, my room mate, a regular and popular blogger, explained me the works and tagged me. That was after a thousand hints. In any case, that was a movie tag. I, rather the child within me that still exists, lost all enthu for it once I had actually been tagged. But today, a genuine tagger tagged me. And what a tag, about what I'd want in a soulmate. Hmm..that requires a lot of thought, more self-introsection, and recalling movies with breath-taking, blush-inducing characters.

In any case, here they go. 8 of them, as asked for.

1. Should be a male human being.
2. Should be tall, over 6 feet, so I can wear high-heeled shoes and still look nicely small next to him.
3. Should not be in an advanced stage of balding.
4. Should be able to make conversation, when I run out of it. Those who know me also know that it rarely happens that my mouth shuts up.
5. Should know how to play the guitar so he can seranade me from under the window.
6. Should know how to cook.
7. Should know how and when to laugh.
8. Should not make a fool of himself in public often.

If you are a guy and pass the above criteria, congratulations! Post your applications. I am not looking yet, but when I do you know you stand a good chance!!

Now visit these three people and see what they have to see about their dream soulmates.

1. Nandini
2. Shankar
3. Maalika

The journey

2006-01-25T10:36:00.000+05:30

Today is going to be a big day, no matter how many times I tell myself to act like it is nothing out of normal. The flight in itself is not. I am used to all that comes with it. There’s the joy of flying among the clouds, and the horrible pain in my ears just before landing. It’s going to be a long journey, they say. Do I have a choice but to smile and get on with it? It’s going to be a little tough, to be away from everyone I have ever loved, everyone who loves me. I am going to miss the sights and sounds, the people, the smell in the air, of spices, of smoke from the cars. But I leave these behind, in the hope that there is indeed a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

The interiors of the aircraft look familiar. Plush cushions, cramped leg-space. But familiarity stops right here, for I see people who are not like any I have seen before. It’s only on the TV shows that you see such colours. Hair-curly, red, blonde. Skin-some black as coal and some white, as a canvas before paints. The only I have ever seen is a shade of brown topped with a mop of raven-black hair. The sight starts a small tingle at the pit of my stomach, a feeling that is a blend of a thousand subtle emotions. Apprehension, excitement, fear, loneliness, doubt. What do I look like to these people? Certainly not as one among them. Will they take me in and make me feel at home? Will they overlook my skin colour, the way I dress, my slightly different accent? Evaluate me as an individual and see that I am not too different from them. And that I need all the help and love just now, not cold stares and a curt greeting. I cuddle in my seat, wishing for the protection of a womb while sleep takes over me.

The 24 hours gone in a daze. Open skies again after having been locked up for so long. The sun is bright after a long night. I have made a few new friends, a lady from Thailand who is back from visiting her daughter, and who tells me that I speak like her. There is the man from Bangladesh who wants to know whether things are still the way they were when he had to leave the country. Then the American, who is impressed that I am traveling so far to study and who hopes that I’ll have a wonderful stay in his country. Maybe I just will. Yes, the sun shines, without blinding my eyes.

Red, Orange, Go!

2006-01-23T03:04:00.000+05:30

This is a post that I started off a long time ago, in those days when I was learning( or rather mastering, for the learning had been done a long time before then) how to drive a car. In the winding narrow streets of Bangalore, for the larger streets were forbidden to a student still, I polished my skills. Of apologizing, delivering the killer looks and mouthing words I hoped would be taken for the dirtiest swears.

People have always complained about Bangalore traffic. The myriad traffic jams just when you have to get to work and potholes the size of craters can drive even the most patient into a foul mood. For the craters, there is the government to blame. Or maybe its the official language. Would it be fair to blame the politicians who spend the funds assigned for the 'infrastructure maintainance of state' to add a new lawn, an extra floor or solar panels to their already palatial residences. For is that not infrastructure maintainance, and are they not the state? One way or the other the potholes remain. Once every five years, just before the elections, one kind-hearted and scheming candidate does do the roads. The road-rollers are a welcome sight. The freshly tarred roads become playgrounds, and little boys walk-race with leaden slippers. A week after the road repair, the world is a happy place. It's spring time. The Bangalore rains take a cue from that and come as a mighty downpour. The green returns and so do the holes in the roads.

The traffic jams are easier to understand if you hail from Bangalore. The increasing number of immigrants, who for one mistake the language spoken here for Kannad or Kannadam(the northies and the Tams respectively; its called Kannada), are stumped by the driving ways of the native man. Its not in the blood or the soil, trust me. Its in the way they teach us. The good thing though, is that these immigrants learn quickly and mingle in the general pell-mell smoothly.

My driving classes included not just the basic lesson on gears and brakes, but also a list of reactions when caught in difficult traffic situations. They taught me the subtle art of recognizing when a situation demanded me to go on the offensive and when to get out with a meek 'sorry saar, tappu aagi hoyitu(sorry saar, mistake happened)'. They also had practice sessions, in which I had to scrape a car just right, so the other driver would be left wondering if he had been wronged, or if he was lucky to have escaped an accident which would have been his fault entirely.

Changing lanes are a game of power. If you can squeeze in between two cars on a lane, you are good. If this means you have stopped the car behind you and a few behind that one, thats a bonus. Jumping a traffic light should become second nature to you. And if you see a traffic jam, you should not wait. You should find the smallest free spot, squeeze into it and create a deadlock. If you hear a thousand different voices shouting at you, you have graduated in the art of driving. Did I mention learning the Kannada swear words, the looks and speaking through clenched teeth?

All that remains now is obtaining a license. This exercise builds your patience and perseverence like none else, with the intention that you may be prepared to remain stuck in traffic endlessly without complaining. Usually the driving schools charge you extra money, so you can bypass the trips to the RTO and not have to visit it until the day of the exam. The Officer there though, has the weirdest notion of driving and you invariably fail when you try to demonstrate the tricks. But after a few attempts, he remembers his own days of learning to drive, sympathizes with you and lets you have the document that doesnt question your driving skills for the next 20 years.

I had it easy though. The officer was my neighbour. He advised me to not pay the driving school the extra money since it was for the officers. He claimed he was an honest one and wouldnt really like to cream the neighbours. Noble man. Since I had refused to pay the driving school the extra dough, they wouldnt let me drive their car for test. My father, for all the claims of his love for me, wouldnt let me touch his car either. So I stood in the RTO office, in front of the neighbour-officer(NO from now), without a car, ready to take the test. NO taking pity on me said I could drive his car, which was parked in the basement. Only I had to stick to the parking lot and demonstrate my skills there instead of on the road. Not that he didnt trust me, he added. When asked to drive in reverse, I did so not stopping until the car hit a pillar at the back. I smiled sheepishly. He grunted, asked me to hop to the passenger seat, took the steering and parked it back in the spot where it had been a couple of minutes before then. Without another word, he signed my sheet, asked me knew how to ride a two-wheeler and signed against that as well. Maybe he feared I'd ask to borrow his scooter( bought from people's license money, I suppose) to get a two-wheeler license.

So here I am with a license and the wish to drive. In Los Angeles though, they need me to get a permit before I can drive for which I need to take a written test. I dont need to take another driving test for they trust the Indian authority. I have a date booked sometime next month. After then I can zoom around in a car. For a while though, I'll drive safely, stop at stop signs and keep to the left at all times. Wait, did I just say left?

Sahi jawaab!!!...kahaan?

2005-12-04T00:23:00.000+05:30

Well, it all began a long time ago, in a fancy dress competition when I was three. I was dressed up as a cute little doctor. For a long time after that( I won a prize for my act), people started adding the doctor prefix to my name; my family in the hope that I'd become one when I grew up, the others just because they had been taught the social rules of being nice to friends' young ones. I grew up with Florence Nightingale as the role model, with the intention of alleviating the world's suffering.

Then one day I realised, doctors were not only supposed to give injections and scribble down prescriptions in gibberish, but treat diseases like piles and handle all that blood during pregnancy. My respect for doctors went up 5 rungs, but the desire to be one was obliterated. My career path changed. I decided mathematics was my forte and I was carved out to be a theoretician. All this because I topped my maths exam with 68 marks( says a lot about the rest of my class). But a couple of years down the line, and a few more math courses later, I realised the field of mathematics was not ready for me yet!

Then there was this short period of time, when things cleared up and I saw sense in pursuing engineering, as most sensible people of my age group seemed to be doing just then. So a couple of years struggle for one exam that would apparently make my life and a little luck, I climbed the first step towards being a promising engineer. In those four years, I must have thought of as many careers as a person could in that period of time. There was journalism, theatre, English literature, counseling, free-lance writing (oops!) and the sorts. Note that most of it steered clear of all that was science.

Life went on, I graduated as an engineer and not knowing what else to do, I landed half way across the globe to continue further studies. My parents are proud of the fact that their daughter is going to be a postgraduate (ugh! The word makes me sound so old and boring, which I assure you I am not). While life goes on in the fast lane, it's once again brought me to the crossroads where I need to know what I want to do next.

I could climb Mount Everest up and back ten times if only it would give me the answer to the question. 42 you may say, but that doesnt help. I toss and turn in my sleep, while I dream about all the wrong choices I make that leave me on the streets. I ask people around me if they know what they want of life, if only in the hope that most of them will reply in the negative, thereby not making me feel like a freak. But they disappoint me by rattling away about all they want to do till the minute they die.

There's all the talk of oppression against women. They say it was the mean man who wanted to feel good about himself and confined woman to 4 walls and pots and pans. Lately I wonder if it was some smart woman who set up that system of life. Do a little cooking and cleaning and have the rest of the day for yourself. Not a bother about wasting time, for that's what you were supposed to do. Who wants to go out into the world and earn bread and make oneself useful. So if any of you know a rich guy who wants a wife just to sit at home( I understand such a man would be in need of immediate medical attention for his state of mind), do recommend. Till then, I shall sit around and try and find what it is that I want to do with my life.

This....

2005-11-18T06:44:00.000+05:30

This, after a long time. This, when I have a thousand other things to do, that anyone would put higher on the priority list ( and would definitely expect me to do the same). This, while I look with my big sad eyes like a puppy, at other bloggers blogging away to their heart's content. This, because my roomies would kill me if I used my vocal chords to give vent to my thoughts anymore. This, as a modern-day ( no poetry, so)ode to my life.

Ah! My life is horrid. Or rather was, until one month ago, when I decided to change the course of things. My first month in the US of A didnt help much in reducing the not-too-good-a-feeling I had about it to begin with. I lived, akin to an African slave of the 17th Century who wandered off into the promised land only to find himself hand-cuffed and put to work. Only those hand-cuffs in my case, were invisible, though just as strong. It used to be a constant stream of classes, research( oh yes, I know not too many of you can believe I can pronounce that word even, let alone be actually doing it), labs and what-not. This after that 4-year holiday in IIT, where you studied only hours before an exam, but were confident because you knew you neighbour hadnt done any better!!

When at India and trying to get my admission documents to reach me, I was both amazed and irritated that this whole country just stopped working through the weekends, that starting friday afternoon. I came here and found out that those who were assisting me in my paper-handling had actually been working part-weekends. For the weekend and all the partying that it is synonymous with, starts thursday afternoon! In the first month, thursday evenings would see well-dressed men and well-undressed women going to have fun, while I trudged back home after a long day and smelly grocery shopping. I used to smirk the smirk, telling myself that it was not my age or maturity any longer to lead that frivolous life.

And then came the day when I had to present all the research I had accomplished in one month,in front of my professor ( who I could call a lot more names, but refrain, lest he googles for my name). That evening after the presentation, I felt like the Greek guy who carrying that big boulder on his shoulders would have felt had it been taken away from him. I relaxed, I went out , that day and the next( it deserved a longer than normal celebration). Before I knew, I was back to living the life I was used to. Freaking out with friends, making merry, eating out, watching movies; until I forgot all about those classes and research. The guilt that had started to resurface had been put to rest yet again.

There is this slightly sick feeling that starts to build up a couple of days before each Saturday, which is when my weekly report is due. But then that is taken care of quickly enough( the sickness). What with the other million things on your mind about what clothes to wear and what earrings to go with them.

So this, because my life is not so bad after all. This, because I cant decide if 'this' is a pronoun, an adjective or an adverb!

The land of Roshogullas and rishkaw

2005-07-24T20:56:00.000+05:30

This regards my recent trip to Kharagpur, that also included a jaunt to Calcutta. I have always had a soft spot for Calcutta actually, considering 22 years ago, in a tiny part of that place was born this piece of art that's me today!

Well, it all started when my brother, after what seemed like an eternity of fight made it into the 'elite' group of IItians. The word in quotes is something I borrow from all those people who have been given a chance to address us. While in the beginning it felt great to be called that, today I could crack the skull of the next guy who utters it. Tell me, the English language is so short on adjectives. In any case, so off we all were to Kharagpur to help my little brother to settle down.

The journey by train was all of 36 hours and felt like it. Having gotten used to the 6 hours between Bangalore and Chennai, this trip felt endless. The weather didnt help either, being hot and humid. We reached Kharagpur early in the morning. The sun rises at about 4:30 in the morning, what with the place being in the East and India being too lazy to adopt different time zones. By 6 o clock the sun reaches its peak and you are left sweating and tired.

The campus is beautiful, akin to our deal ol' IIT Madras. Only a lot greener, due to the abundance of water. Kharagpur is essentially made up of the Railway campus and IIT. So, needless to say IIT is sprawling, spread over a 1000 acres or so.

What is really tough about the place and actually the rest of West bengal is communication. It takes your last bit of energy and grey matter to carry on any conversation while you are still trying to figure what human language the person opposite you is talking in. The Orientation of the undergraduate students was a funny affair. The audience, about 50 percent of which was non-bengali had quite a time while the dignitaries on stage gave them a brief account of how their life was going to be. While they were going to join graduate 'pogoms' or graduate 'ishtudies', 'ecedemics' was not to be their only concern. They were encouraged to 'parcipate' in the activities that were happening 'continewously' through the year.

The next day saw us in the busy city of Calcutta. If people talk about population explosion and issues like that around here, they definitely need to go there once. That place is sprawling with people, on the streets, the trains, the pavements, the shops. God! Look around and the only sight that meets your eyes is a sea of heads, mostly human.

But then, as compensation were the rosogullas and the Howrah bridge, which is a marvel. So on the whole, it was a trip worthwhile and satisfying. So much, that I've had my fill of the place for the rest of this life.

Growing or not?

2005-07-05T19:55:00.000+05:30

Oh yes, this must be one of the most used titles and definitely one of the most battered topics. But I couldn’t think of a better fitting heading for what is to follow.

I live in Bangalore, one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Over the 12 years that I have lived here (I used to visit once a month the 4 years I studied in Chennai), I have seen it grow from a lovable small city to one with huge buildings and so many vehicles that at night, it looks like one of those photos of New York or someplace that amazed me all those years ago. I see people in swanky cars, go to really good-looking restaurants and wear the most stylish clothes. The cost of living is higher and young kids just out of school earn as much as their dads do after an eternity of slavery! Bangalore is truly cosmopolitan, growing the west way, even as its ‘Indian ness’ is nurtured in laidback pockets of city.

Some may argue that this kind of growth only widens the chasm separating the rich and the poor. While Narayana Murthy and Vijay Mallya make all the money, what happens to those who really suffer from the increasing population, those who live on the banks of the city gutter, share a room with four other people? Why is it that this section of the society remains there?

The maid who works at our place is definitely someone who belongs in this category. But it is amazing what she has transformed into ever since she came to work with us, that when we moved into Bangalore ourselves. She was a little girl then, 4-5 years older than I, completely ignorant of the ways of the world. She started working to support her family, whose only male member was invalid, not physically though. A drunk, her father forgot all his worries about his family when she took charge. She put her younger brothers in school, hoping they wouldn’t follow in the father’s path. But that wouldn’t happen. After about 2 years of irregular schooling and shelling of their sister’s hard earned money, the boys left school in favour of playing with the street urchins.

Years passed. All of her family drifted away, some in jail and some god-knows-where. This girl grew and in time learnt how to save money for the All her well meaning employers, that includes my mom, wanted her to get a life of her own and urged her to settle down with some man who would compensate, if only partly, for all the troubles she had borne all those years. Well, she did find one such person. His family seemed nice at least. The sisters were educated and worked as nurses. His brother earned enough to keep his wife and kids happy. All of us were finally glad that our maid had found a good home.

Things were okay the first year of their marriage. The husband earned, she resumed work. Then the troubles began. He turned out to be a drunk; one who spent all his money on gamble initially, and after a while stopped earning completely. She had two children in quick succession, which she claims was against her own wishes. She wants for them a life very different from her own. They go to school, where she hopes they’ll learn things that’ll make them great men. All this while the husband lives on her money, comes home drunk and beats her up. He is nothing but a huge burden, one that creates the exact picture that she is trying desperately to keep her children away from.

None of the women’ rights can get her to change the situation. For she still believes that man is the God of the house and it is the wife’s duty to adjust! Why would the husband do anything to change that ideology? He will rule royally, as long as there are people who want to be trampled under his feet.

This is not a typical case. We see people all around us holding fast to what was once prescribed by the older generations. We tend to forget that then was a complete different time from now. Society still plays a hugely important role, one that sometimes could stunt your growth. But we take it all in the name of fate. What we lack is the instinct to fight. Against that which hinders our progress, against superstitions, against blind beliefs, and most importantly against that society that tends to make a puppet out of each of us, given half a chance.

Southern Spice

2005-06-08T19:18:00.000+05:30

Down south, a person's life is planned almost the moment he or she is born. If you are a boy, you have to go through school for a specified number of years, which is usually quite a lot. You then find yourself a job that would require you not to move a muscle except to get to workplace and involve minimal brain activity. It's a wonder that there actually exist so many jobs of this kind. This job would then give you the licence to go up the path of matrimony. More often then not, you let your parents decide, either due to sheer laziness of having to find someone or low morale after a few rejects.

If you are a girl though, your life goes like this. You go through school for the same number of years(people are rather broad-minded here you know) and then you go through a second school, one that prepares you to make the life of the guy you marry comfortable. This school is run mainly by your mother, with guest lectures from the grandmother, the numerous women relatives and ofcourse, the friendly neighbourhood aunties. This school begins when you graduate and runs for the rest of your life. Here you learn interior decoration, people skills (how to keep your man under the impression that he runs the house) and ofcourse, cooking. It is this palatable branch that I took upon myself to master in the time between my graduation and the life after it.

It started about 2 weeks ago. An hour into the activity and my respect for the cooks in the hostel mess, on who I had showered my choicest blessings at every possible opportunity, increased exponentially. Cooking, as I saw it, was applied mathematics at its toughest. Making plain rice involved a million calculations; the number of times you clean it, the amount of water you cook it with so it doesnt become mush or feel like fishbones down your throat....whoa!!! Though my mind cried that I had had enough, I trudged on, hoping that practice would indeed make me perfect.

The days went by, me trying desperately to get a hang of things with all of destiny against me. The last straw came on a day not too long ago, when I thought I was good enough to make breakfast by myself. Not over-estimating my capacities I set myself the task of making rava idli and chutney. What followed could go down in the annals of history as a tragedy of slightly less magnitude than the Gas tragedy or the 9/11 attack. That only with regards to the number of people who were hurt. The pressure inside the cooker defied all laws I knew and the cooker decided to open up by itself. Things flew around, including the half-baked idlis that I had painstakingly made. I didnt even have a chance to get to the chutney part of it.

I suffered a few physical burns, but it was my morale that had been battered beyond repair. My mum put up a smiling face even as she tried hard to conceal the disappointment she felt. The classes continued. But did I get any better? What can I say. Ever since I entered the kitchen, my brother decided to go on a diet. And well, I've never before seen him stick to it this long.

Mumbai Express

2005-04-24T08:43:00.000+05:30

I am one of those Tams who understands very little of it. Not by choice mind you, but because my family decided to uproot itself from Tamilnadu and settle down in Karnataka. So barring a few relatives here and there( these usually father's cousin's daughter's husband's sister level thing), I have no Tam connections to speak of. Destiny had different designs though, and 4 yeas ago it brought me back to this place which my fore fathers had left in such haste.

These 4 years have been tough. Still with the tag of being Tam I was expected to speak the language as well. I do, at home. But that is one kind of Tamil-Kannada that the Tams think is Kannada and vice-versa. Safe, for you can say whatever you want in that tongue about the person standing next to you and get away without a single injury. Well, coming back to life that just was, I was subjected to infinite ridicule and each word that I thought was Tamil was made fun of. For the accent and sometimes for the context.

In any case, I did try and gulp in as much of that street urchin language that people here call Tamil. The main source was ofcourse, the movies. With Madhavan making that effort easier, I managed to watch about 10 tam movies. And then for a really long time there were none.

Until recently ofcourse. In the absense of good hindi movies and loads of time to waste, I had indulged in a series of movies from the West. So much that I suddenly got bored of them and yearned for all those song-and-dance sequences where both the hero and the heroine feel the need to make love wearing clothes of the same colour. And all those extras who materialize from thin air and seem to know how to synchronize those steps perfectly.

Hence the decision to watch Mumbai Express. For one, it has Kamal Haasan and I like him quite a lot. Another, it had something to do with Mumbai, a city that I totally adore. So I hoped that there would be a couple of clips showing how wonderful the city is. Turns out they decided to concentrate on the exact opposite and all through the movie you'll find places you wouldnt pick to torture your enimies. One of them being Dharavi kuppatotthi. I bet the residents of that slum would not have bothered about this large garbage dumping yard as have Kamal and his gang. Also, from the looks of it, the people there have already realised the need to separate degradable and non-degradable wastes, for the garbage dump consists entirely of pieces of cloth and cotton!

About Kamal, well, he's definitely growing old. Very little of the old charm that could hold the audience captive remains. Now it's just a lot of flab and signs of senility. Some of his stunts are those that would make children clap and jump up and down in their seats. Like the one in which he has to get out of a vertical chimney about 100 meters high. Easy, he just motorcycles all the way. Oh yes, 'Mumbai Express' is the name of this motorcycle and is also used to confuse a few senior under-cover police officials towards the end of the movie. The movie has no story line, but that could have been made up through humour. Only in this movie, he has resorted to humour of the lowest form. None of that wit. The first one hour of the movie did give me the laughs though. The rest of it just dragged on and the desire to drop of to sleep was too great. Manisha Koirala is not worth a mention, so I'll let that go. All in all, it's a movie that you could watch when you have absolutely nothing else to do and money worth the ticket to waste. But I am done with Tam movies for a while now.

Hostel nights!

2005-04-19T08:43:00.000+05:30

Come April and there is an air of festivity within the IIT campus. For it's time for hostel nights. IIT is a residential campus, with about 95 percent of the students making their home, for 4 long years, one of those tiny hostel rooms alloted to them. The hostel nights are the social equivalent of throwing a party to show off your new bungalow.

It has all the signs of a party. There is music and some dance, albiet not too graceful and performed by amateurs who see it as their only chance to shake a leg without having to face a torrent of eggs and rotten tomatoes. The are lights, in all colours. Funnily though, the guys who fix up these lights know how to do it just one way. And since the light-fixing business happens most often in marriages, the hostels from the outside bear an uncanny resemblance to a kalyana mandapam, with rock music blaring from the inside! Ofcourse, there are also a lot of those things that make you light headed and get you into the party groove.

The most distinct feature of these hostel nights are, or atleast were, what we call a theme. Each hostel decides a theme for itself and ideally entertains its guests by putting up programs that are in some way related to it. The guests in their turn dress up, again keeping the theme in mind which puts the onus on the hosting hostel to not come up with ideas like' space odessey' or 'the Neanderthal man'. The second part of the hostel night is the cleaning up of rooms. There is frantic sweeping and scrubbing and at the end of the day the outside of the hostel closely resembles a municipal garbage heap. All this for the guests who come to your room and vandalize it in a matter of 5 minutes.

The entry into these parties is by the way of invitations from the inmates of that hostel. So if you want to get into all of the hostels, all you have to do is to selective pick one person from each and make affectionate overtures. Simpler way, just invite one person from every hostel you want to go to for your own hostel night. They have to, in return, oblige you with an invitation to their own.

But all this wish to dress up and go to hostel nights dies with the first year. My first hostel night was to a hostel with a theme of 'Hawaian islands' or something along the line. We had been told to dress keeping in mind the theme by our seniors and we religiously held on to these golden words. Out came the wrap-arounds and flowery tops. Of course, for the accessories we just tore up a girl's almost-real sunflower bouquet. For what could be more suited to Hawai than a flower worn at an angle over the ear. And off we went, feeling chic and thinking the tar road our ramp. But that was then.

As the years progressed you saw the futility of going to more than one hostel. The architect who designed the hostels had just one plan and he put it to good use. Every hostel looks the same from inside. The same number of rooms, broken windows, paint peeling off the walls, even the colour of the dustbins. The dinner is another thing completely. The mess secreteries of the hostels choose a caterer who'll satisfy the hungry stomachs and wake up those tongues, dead,thanks to the mess food. What is mind boggling is the way the tastes of all these mess secs work. The result is the same caterer serving the same menu to the same set of people night after night.

In my 4th year, I have come to dread these hostel nights. At about 8 in the evening, I start to lose my sanity. The need to tear at my hair is overwhelming. Be what the theme, I end up in clothes not very different from what I wear to class. I do a half an hour of practiced smiling and then I crack up. I frown and glare at people around me, and that's not a very pretty sight. I start to spew angry and rude one-liners and on the whole make my host regret deeply for having invited me in the first place. The only sad part is the people dont learn from others' mistakes. At the end of the day I find myself with an invitation to the next hostel night and the desire to break the front teeth of the person who gave it to me!

Lazy Lazy!

2005-04-15T07:56:00.000+05:30

The end of each day finds us complaining about the lack of time, about all that we should have done in the course of the 24 hours that have whizzed by, without any warning. Well, it doesnt take the genius in us to finally come to the conclusion that more often than not, it is not the ways of nature to blame, but ourselves. We, gripped by the slimy fingers of laziness, a creeper so viscious that it tends to grow on you to the point of engulfing you, are reduced to a state of semi-sleep where the brain is indeed comfortably numb. Capable of feeling just a false sense of well being.

Ofcourse, there are a few of us who cultivate the habit of doing nothing by choice. I am one of them. But sometimes, something wakes up in the depths of my conciousness or subconciousness or whatever. On days like this, I transform from being one of those couched potatoes confined to the bed to today's Artemis, brimming with energy and a desire to put it to good use. It is thanks to these rare and far-spaced days that I even get by with what is expected of me as a student.

These eventful days usually come immediately after eye-opener days. I confess I am not one of those sleek women with not a single extra pound of muscle( I'd like to believe most of them are anorexic and so not healthy). But I also do not qualify as obese and all-in-all it's a very comfortable situation to be in, atleast most often. For being this way gives me the right to eat. People dont gape at the amount of carbs that I take in, in the form of delicious food that I rather have a weakness for. And well, if anyone does complain of me being fat, I could just look around and point a finger at someone who is fatter ( me being in India, where fat is genetic!) and so feel not-all-that-bad. But I am digressing....

The eye opener days begin rather well. It usually begins off as a day for shopping or a party. The cupboard is opened and long forgotten clothes are brought out for the occasion. And lo, you wonder if those clothes got bored sitting there and just decided to shrink. It's a little tight, you notice. Maybe the head gets in but the hand doesnt or vice versa. Lets suppose you do get in, well, the getting-out-of-the-dress part is an epic in itself. The epic ofcourse gets written all the same, for you see that the dress that went so well on you about 6 months back looks really bad now. Really really bad. And to think you'd been banking on it and imagined yourself in it, to the smallest accessory that would go with it. Happens when you go shopping too, for you by instinct you go to the rack that holds clothes the size you bought the last time. The rest of the story is better left unsaid.

The day after revelations such as these usually begins with the age old ' Early to rise'. Then an early morning jog, through which the only thing I think I look like is a tiny elephant trying to exercise its legs, lesser food, the chocolates removed from the post-meal plan, a game or two of some sport, loads of mental activity(it's supposed to remove the fat that's deposited in the brain), dealing with a lot of those pending things, end of day. An almost-dead me. The next day my body refuses to co-operate in continuing the plan and amidst groans from every single muscle I barely manage to get through the absolutely necessary things.

And with that ends a chapter of drive-away-laziness. But then, if I cant be completely idle now, while in college, when else will I be given such a chance?

A comeback

2005-04-14T10:05:00.000+05:30

After about 5 months of lazing around and whiling away life, I realised that it was indeed time that I find some purpose to life-ha! So back to blogging. It's funny how times flies exactly when you dont want it to. In this regard, I appreciate Milo Minderbinder's (of Catch-22 fame) philosophy of putting oneself through endless torture so that time indeed moves like a sluggish paste of god-knows-what.
Talking of which, the Indian Education system tops the list of creators of ingenious forms of torture. For one, the endless years of training to be a professional, in course of which, gain what you may, you definitely lose all the creativity and the joy that initially came in as a package deal with life. There was the school and the school bag and the homework and the zillion exams. Before you heaved a sigh of relief you were packed off to a college, the portals of which helped make a professional of you. A professional what? Thief, suicide, cynic?!
My parents were led to think like anyone else, and they wished for this offspring of theirs to follow the same path and travel up the road that looks a little dim, but ofcourse, will hold dazzling light at the end of it. Easy to say when you have to just look at it from a distance. In any case, I struggled to keep them happy, wasted my childhood and a good part of my youth trying to get into the IITs. Once here, I looked to see if all that people said about this place was true. "Once you get in na, nothing to worry. You'll be settled for life ma'. Yeah right.....but that's ofcourse in your hands.
I indeed had a lot of fun. Forgot what it was to study and be at the top of the class. Wondered why people gave you those smirks when they beat you to it. Little did they realise you didnt care where you stood. In any case, the promises didnt go the full distance, but then I lived life to its fullest in the 4 years that were given to me......wait...3 and a half years. So happened that when the last semester came on, I realised I had to finish a lot of things if I desired to leave this place with the people who I entered it with. And that's when the shadow of BTP- our B-Tech Project started to loom large.
It's a pity that something so monstrously scary is called such an unromantic and plain name. Btech project! It should have been christened- stairway to hell, ticket to ride(to the world of the dead) or something. While some of the immortal souls, few of our many hindu Gods in disguise to save the world from people like us, I presume, go through this with as much rigour and enthusiam as normal boys would to a porn movie, the majority dread it. Not only does it give you a constant throbbing headache while you are awake, it doesnt spare you even when asleep. For one, you dont really get to sleep peacefully. When you do, you dream, not of all the pleasant things, but of the end that doesnt seem too unreal. One extra semester, you project guide's puffed up and red face, those insults, what not! And to think, the seniors always said, the last sem was there to have fun.
I am in the final month of the last semester. I havent begun to do my project yet and as a natural consequence, I live my life like a fugitive hiding from a thousand Nazis on a bare desert. I have forgotten how to smile and am at my wits end trying to figure out what could help me get out of this situation. Needless to say, my few active brain cells have ditched me when I need them the most.
If I do get out of this place though, I intend to do something about all this. Maybe I could just go to a parallel universe which is still at that moment where the idea of BTP began and change the course of things. For now though, the safest path would be to get back to work. Till later.

Back in Action!

2004-09-21T21:26:00.000+05:30

Well well...when I started off blogging it was with the singular thought of continuing it till eternity. Seems, my eternity lasts no longer than 3 days. Or maybe, the fact that I had GRE then made those days unending, and once that was done, the 24-hour clock resumed. That indeed seemed like the end of one lifetime!
I am back now, only because I have bigger tasks to deal with, and this blogging gives me the perfect excuse to stay away from all of that for a while. Have not parents always encouraged children to keep diaries, and isnt this a diary, keeping with the times???Classic escapist technique, as I often call it.
Actually, I still havent come to terms with blogging. In the sense that, everytime I sit down to write, I think it's an exam I'm giving and so whatever I write, which I view as an essay, has to be my best(for anyone who just smirked, suggest you look at the possesive pronoun used!!).
Okay, so if this is indeed going to be about what I did and all that, I dont really see the point!!! I mean, why would anyone want to read what happened to me through the day, considering it takes a lot of effort on my part to go through it all over again. Unless ofcourse, the other person has just had a day worse than mine. If that's the case, I'm sorry for whoever you are.
One thing that really made my day is this one class I had. The course is called Science Fiction: An appreciation. I'm glad IIT, by which I mean the committee that decides the courses, had the good sense to include this. It's the course I have enjoyed most, in my 3 + year long stay here. The prof speaks impeccable English with a liberal helping of things that are certainly 'taboo' in the confines of the class room, in a way that could keep you laughing. Why cant all 'elders' realise that we are grown up enough and acknowledge the fact that we know just as much as they, about things-that-should-not-be-even-thought-about,if not more!!!! Someday maybe...
What a comeback, absolutely BORING!! I better stop now before I start to spew of things that start to border on the repulsive. Promise, that the next time I write, which I hope is in the near future, I shall blow your brains off.

Cerebrations!

2004-08-10T22:44:00.000+05:30

It is funny how a single letter can make so much difference to the meanings of words. And it is equally ironic that a small choice made in a fleeting moment can govern the rest of our stay on Earth.

It is quite tough to be even a trifle philosophical in thought or writing, so it surprises me how I even started to think thoughts that is otherwise credited to the old and the 'mature'! It could have been spurred off by a lecture on neuro sciences that introduced me my own mind, not through sermon but by lulling me into a sleep that explored the depths.

It could be as trivial as making a choice about how to spend the evening. You go to a park and you miss out on maybe a movie or going out with friends. You will never know the jokes they cracked or the things they discussed. You go to a movie and you would have missed the breeze that blew that particular evening! At every stage we close more doors than we open, and progressively shut out more of the world than we like to. The path you choose may not always be as rosy as you would have imagined and most often than not you wistfully think of the million other lives that you could have chosen from. You leave behind people you like and the Promised Land may have been an illusion.

I really wish we had a looking glass to see for ourselves what lay ahead. I bet even you would if you unwittingly ended up reading the whole article!!!!!

Gripping Rambling Excursion!

2004-08-08T16:47:00.000+05:30

The GRE...most of us at one point of time or the other have been in the vicinity of this vicious vortex. If you call that an alliteration, you have definitely been there and done that..

Personally, I think it's one of the most unreasonable exams that is administered on the face of this planet ( I really dont know what form tortures take on other heavenly bodies!). For it tests neither your vocabulary nor your capacity to memorize things. Ofcourse, there's no denying that the very process of going through the 3500 odd words in the most perfunctory manner is a superhuman fete and needs preternatural abilities.

If you are one of the sane and have a vocabulary good enough to not make people throw stones at you everytime you try to put it into use, suggest you do absolutely no extra preparation for the cause of GRE. For once you start, the words that you'd have encountered a million times through the course of your life, transform into unintelligible, scary forms! Your brain is at it's muddled best and goes through a harrowing time differentiating between words like rife and rift and thrift. And really, that's when you see the redundancy that the language of the British is riddled with! You add the prefix in- to some words, and lo! nothing happens. You get a word that sounds almost the same and means exactly the same. You wonder if the origin of this new word is the mispronunciation of the earlier word by some high handed official who made the lexicographer include it at gun-point.

On the other hand, if you are one of those sick souls who craves for attention, this is your ideal way out. People will look at you as if you are doomed and the sympathy they feel is as real as can get. Its also a good excuse to put things off for as long as you want (all you have to do is put your GRE date as far as you care to). You can safely avoid someone who's plaguing you for a date on its pretext. And well, if you come out alive of this whole ordeal you have learnt the essence of living!

For a start....

2004-08-07T23:20:00.000+05:30

After years, I have once again been transported to the age where finding out new things, however small they may be, fills you with unparalleled bliss. This time, the reason being my accidental discovery of this blogspot and even more importantly, the latent wish to write. Ofcourse, I have for ages been aware of being a sadist who derives pleasure by watching (or atleast imagining) those facial contortions of a person subjected to my literary creations!!! So while all of you out there gear up to face the onslaught....