Exams or Xmas??

In less than a week, i have EXAMS!!! Starting a day after Christmas, my exams drag upto a day after New year. This technically means, no Christmas or new year hols for me.. :(

When the whole world is free, the music season in chennai is tempting, the weather makes you want to curl up for five more minutes...I am mechanically reading line after line of printed text.

Miserable existence i should say... The only thing that keeps me going is coffee and christmas carols...Speaking of carols..here's a very funny one i heard...Merry Christmas folks!!!

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Why me?

Client visit on Friday...Office abuzz with insane excitement... The team that is meeting the firang, strutting around like they have been awarded the Oscars...

As a part of the privileged team who was meeting the guy, I had no choice but to be a part of the general cheer. As luck would have it, I was plopped right in front of the conference hall, about five inches away from him and his PowerPoint slides.

He began his monologue by killing my name. After becoming 'vaash' for him, Jabeen became "Alright, next", and Kalai, Senthil were reduced to mere nods. Then was the time for my biggest gaffe. He opened a huge plastic cover and said, "I've baght some thin for ya guys. Jus a bag of caramels. Pass it 'round", and passed the bag to me.
Beaming, I said, "Thank you so much" with so much of passion and vigor and Jabeen nodded encouragingly. Desperate for some chocolates, both of us ripped open the bag to find 'cameras'!!! Both of us had heard him wrong. We then passed the bag around with a face that made Droopy look cheerful.

After what seemed like ages, it was time for lunch. One of the biggies in the company that I worked for also joined us. As my lady luck had decided to go on a vacation that day, the bigwig motioned at an empty seat next to him. I had no choice but to oblige. The minute I sat down, another 'no-so-big-but-still-big" manager sat on the other. Before I could change my mind and get up from the table, the firang decided to sit right opposite me.

Trapped without an escape route, I decided to concentrate on the food. When I ordered a roti, the client made a wisecrack on my diet and the whole table guffawed like it was the joke of the millennium.

This is a serious lesson, all restaurants should learn - Indian food cannot be eaten with a fork dammit!!! The waiter, probably mistaking my 'is there any way to get out' look for the 'I could eat a blue whale' look, decided to plop an extra large piece of cauliflower on my plate. Without a choice, I took my spoon and started sawing the vegetable with fervor. What I did not realize was that the spoon had made noise equivalent of making marble cutters blush. Earning glares and ‘shhh’es from even the next table, I abandoned my effort.

After lunch, there was some live demonstration with cameras for about an hour, of which 55 minutes was spent on getting the wires fixed. The only thing that went alright was a surprise birthday party-complete with surprises and a chocolate cake for the team.

Moral: Faux pas and forks go hand-in-hand.

Rock on...

Yes. I crossed out yet another item on my ‘Things-to-do-before-i-die” list – Go to a rock concert.

Rock music thrives on the irrefutable and proven theory that anything that damages your eardrums will sound good eventually. After all with damaged eardrums , even CNN IBN reporters would sound like nightingales.

So what is the criteria for being considered a rock band?

• Should have a name that anybody remotely human cannot pronounce correctly for the first time, without sounding like a drunk. The band that I listened to was called splat or scrat or sprat, I can’t be sure even now.
• Should have a drummer who has long hair and a constant ‘I will kill you if you come nearer’ look. The more uncombed the hair is, the better.
• The lead guitarist should be a guy who should have the ability to disillusion the listeners into thinking that he can really sing. He can do so, by coming very close to the mike and shouting at full throttle. This will lead to interference and the mike starts singing by itself.

So, how can you get in?

• If you are a girl, empty two jars of perfume, three sticks of kajal, and one litre of hair gel on the concerned body parts. Also wear clothes that make war refugees look like Vijay Mallya.
• If you are a guy, wear trousers that might come off if you sneeze. Never even think of a comb for a month.
• General observation: Anything that will make the dogs on the street violent is acceptable.

How to be a Roman in Rome?

• Practice the forward and backward movement of the neck and head. It might make you look mentally unstable by the daylight, but here it is normal.
• Say ‘Wooo’ and clap in a frenzy after a song finishes. It makes you look very rock-knowledgeable.

Let me not even get into the lyrics part. One song just had, “Say it once again’ in several variations that almost made me get and ask them not to say it once again. The song format is this simple: Whisper into the mike...Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay (Decent enough)...Whisper...Sayyyyyyyy it vaaaaaaaance again.... (Insides churn)...Loud drums accompanied by whispers...Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay (creepy at several levels).

But, yes, the hypocrite in me says, 'I liked it after all' :)

Awesomeness...

A recent SCIAM article that my uncle sent me talked about how noise helped entanglement of electrons and related scientific jingbang. But only these lines stuck to my head:

"In the most distinctive such effect, called entanglement, two electrons establish a kind of telepathic link that transcends space and time. And not just electrons: you, too, retain a quantum bond with your loved ones that endures no matter how far apart you may be. If that sounds hopelessly romantic, the flip side is that particles are incurably promiscuous, hooking up with every other particle they meet. So you also retain a quantum bond with every loser who ever bumped into you on the street and every air molecule that ever brushed your skin."

Imagine your skin still retains one tiny electron of that long lost love, the mad guy at the rock concert, the last goodbye handshake... :) Awesomeness...

In sickness and health...

After a month of raging fever, headaches, and painful blood tests, I sat in the doc’s office, looking expectantly at the man scratching his head and chewing the tip of his pen.

Tapping the report with the side of the pen he just relished (Ewww!!!) he uttered the three words I did not want to hear, “You have typhoid”. My world crashed. After innumerable blood tests and x-rays and other tests that I have left out for the sole virtue of their being extremely complex to spell, this is what the doc had to say. I stupidly repeated, “I have typhoid?”

He nodded gravely and scribbled the names of all medicines that he could remember. “Complete bed rest, no physical or mental strain”, he droned. Dad sniggered at the mention of mental and pointed to his head and signed ‘empty’ with his hands. I rolled my eyes. It was his old joke about how I did not have any brains and therefore the question of mental strain did not arise.

The evil doc did not stop with this. He gave me a graphic description of how my intestines were being eaten by the typhi viruses every minute. I immediately started counting the number of wreaths that would arrive at my house if I died.

For three weeks after that I could only eat food that even the scruffy neighborhood cat rejected. Meanwhile mom devised this intricate diet routine that involved feeding me with fruit juice and tender coconut water at times that did not hinder her daily dose of afternoon soaps. Banished to my room for a month, with only the ceiling fan for company, I watched the blades in fascination as they fused into nothingness when the fan gathered speed. (And I had always thought babies were really stupid to gurgle at a thing as mundane as a ceiling fan.)

On some days I would sleep on for hours together, only waking up to take medicines every six hours. On better days, I would curl up on the living room sofa watching soaps with mom. Sometimes I would throw up dinner as soon as I finished washing the dinner plate. Lunch would follow in a matter of minutes. Dad would retort, “Don’t come out yet. Breakfast is on the way. By the way, don’t throw up the tablet. It is three bucks”, and chuckle at his own joke.

Honestly, though I felt miserable at times and loneliness depressed me to no end, the flurry of ‘get well soon’ messages and calls really made my day. Close friends came home and my boss gave me a month off without thinking twice. Also, the neighborhood cat curled up next to me everyday and we became so close that it started following me around the house. Of course, I also enjoyed all the attention and basked in glory when I finally returned to work.

I mean, how much more lucky can a person get :)

Red queens of the dark night

…by Theatre Nisha - a commendable effort I should say! The play is about 2 hours long and delicately weaves the story of about 10 prostitutes (or 9??) from different time frames. The play starts with Rishyasringa, an excluded hermit, who lives among the trees and has never seen women. A courtesan named Tarangini is then sent to him to woo him and break his vows, but is later beheaded. This part was a bit surprising, because according the Ramayana I have read, Shanta, the daughter of King Romapada is sent by him to break his vows and they get married too. Tarangini’s seduction and Rishyasringa’s emotions when his vows of abstinence are washed over by the waves of his new-found desire were sensuous and beautifully crafted.

The next episode is about an old couple who try to save a prostitute from her pimp. The old man gets killed in the process. The last scene where his wife cries over the dead body was extremely realistic and poignant. Then, there is an episode of an ordinary man who works at the barracks, and another one about a prostitute who kills her owner and convinces a bartender to lie for her in front of the policemen. These were pretty short and interesting nevertheless.

Another episode on Urvashi’s curse on Arjuna was misplaced. Urvashi desires Arjuna and when he refuses, saying that she is mother of his race, she curses him to live among the women in his 13th year of exile. Urvashi’s vilification to a mere prostitute was way off mark and uninspiring. This episode was very ‘sleep-inducing’ according to kiki, and only me, vamp and kiki clapped for this because it ended with GP’s aalaap (for the uninitiated, an aalaap is the ‘aaaaa’ part of classical music, in the simplest terms possible).

The last episode had Bala, the director himself, playing the part of a torturer (cleverly named Fuehrer) during the Nazi regime. He torments a woman until she accepts that she is a homosexual whore and then kills her. This episode was exceptionally intense with an unforgettable climax.

The play was haunting and enjoyable, but the episodes were unconnected and very long. The literal translation of Sanskrit texts into English became lackluster after a while. With uncomplicated costumes, very few lights, a flautist and guitarist for background music, the stage looked minimalist and sleek. A few episodes only had an inconspicuous bench serving as a prop and still looked stimulating.

All the same, it is refreshing to see that theatre (and conservative Chennai) has come of age. Hats off to Bala for this attempt at portraying prostitution so daringly and not succumbing to clichés.

For a beautiful soul...

Today is my paternal grandmother’s (a.k.a Patti’s) first death anniversary. Surprisingly I still miss her with the same intensity and force I had last year. So, today I dedicate this post as an ode to the beautiful soul who in her own way defined what I am today:

Her life:

• Eldest of the three daughters.
• Was apparently very smart and got a double-promotion from the third standard to the fifth standard decades ago. (According to her it was an achievement worth a Bharat ratna and unfailingly recited it at the drop of a hat.)
• Lived in Bombay for a while after her father passed away.
• Got married early and lost her hearing ability even before she was 20.
• Brought up five naughty kids of which my dad was arguably her favorite and the naughtiest too.
• Lost two of her daughters (equally charming souls) to health ailments.
• Was diagnosed with terminal illness and battled her disease until the very end with such grit and determination that shocked even the doctors.

Favorite and oft repeated dialogues:

"This is the only treasure I have. Nobody treasures it anymore" -Making kolams (colored patterns) are a big thing in our family and if I refused to learn them, she would dramatically gather all of her kolam books and say this with flourish.)

"Don’t put mug inside bucket. Don’t touch plate with your left hand. Don’t leave your hair open. Don’t wear shoes inside house" - Her rules were extremely complex and difficult to master. You were not allowed to touch your plate with your left hand, but you could lick fingers and slurp the rasam. Talking when eating was a big no-no, but she could read her 'tughlak' (which is a popular Tamil political magazine). According to her, leaving the hair open made girls look seductive. Hello! I live in a place which has more buffaloes than men, and the possibility of somebody getting seduced by Ms. Frizzed Up Always, seems extremely remote.

"Noodles is bad for health." - She was an authority on classifying food items into edible and fatal. Fatal things including everything she did not like and did not know how to make.

"I know English, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil. Everybody should learn at least five languages" - Honestly, she knew only Tamil. I have my own doubts about her other claims because I have heard her speak butler English and Malayalam in front of others and wished I could melt right there.

“Nobody saves electricity” – This comes from a person who never switched off bathroom lights. When confronted she would say, “I am old. Don’t mistreat me”

“You wear it today. Tomorrow it will become a fashion” – When I lost my hair band and she wanted me to wear an extremely ugly looking scarf on my head as a substitute.

“You are useless. Without doubt you will end up grazing cows” –When I stoutly refused to go out with that scarf on my head. This dialogue was also used very frequently on everyone including her sons, daughters, son-in-laws, and grandchildren.

I could go on, but to keep it short, she was a remarkable woman. She was a combination of warmth, love, kindness, good, and bad. The gaping void she left can never possibly be filled. I miss her.