Mindfucked in Madras

I did not expect life to come to this. But i've timed out in chennai. The ocean and the heat(which i like) notwithstanding. I thought i would generally live on here without any complaints, until i grow old and senile. And when the time comes, step into the Bay of Bengal and drown peacefully. But the mind seeks change now. Working towards changing geographies in the foreseeable future.

Someone who reads my blog(who i do not know personally) had asked a friend if i was a depressed alcoholic with 'woman' problems!!..Was i dishing out such sad tales?:). Some 4 years or so back, when i was younger naiver stupider happier, a friend kept telling me that i lived in a bubble (what she did not tell me was that it would break in time). Break, it did. But then, i am nowhere in the vicinity of such description. Just a regular 28 year old. Not-too-happy. Not-too-sad. A bit lost. A bit cynical. The problem is, once food and shelter are taken care of, the mind has a knack for churning out random concerns to screw up your existence. Mine does that too. But you just learn to fight your fights, laugh your laughs, crib your cribs and snatch your moments...

Thadiyendamol

Peak-a-boo


Pooja (Mani's wife) minutes before she fell off the edge!..

The trip didn't get jinxed as i had feared in the previous post. But if you head up to the Thadiyendamol peak assuming that you'll find water in the forests close by you're fucked. Myself and Mani had to do go down half the way to fetch pails of water (for vodka, noodles/soup, plain consumption, in that order of priority). Should've listened to Aroon (http://www.arunwho.com/). He had asked us to fill water supplies on the way up...Anyways alls well that ends well (assuming that the nagging pain in my knee would go away in time!)..

Went with friends from college and some others they knew. The crowd had people that covered the entire gamut of the 'talking' spectrum...one extremely garrulous kind...one extremely silent kind...and others somewhere in between. Was good fun...Camped at the peak, ate, drank and made merry...Spoke late into the night...conversation strewn with 'profound' statements like "Hinduism is a way of life"(contributor - Gaurav, if you know him you'll also know that only alcohol can make him say things like this), "Evolution is bullshit. Someone should've created all these things" (contributor - Aroon, i know he'll say this even now)...

On the way back, Aroon helped the cause of future trekkers by making the huge boulder beside the trail to the stream, conspicously spell out (a little wrongly) the magic word "WATR". The meticulous Mani, in his blog (http://freevudu.blogspot.com/), as expected, has written a checklist for future Thadiyendamol visitors.

My camera ran out of batteries, so couldnt take too many pictures. Aroon has posted some pics he took here