Saturday, September 06, 2008

This and that...

Suddenly, i have a social life in chennai. It is not the 'meeting a girl and wooing her' kind of social life. It is more of a 'bunch of badly dressed 30 year olds meeting up' kind. Folks who had flown away to far away lands have come back. Guys who had gotten married have been married long enough now for their wives to not miss them on a Friday evening. We meet at bars* that don't care about the colour of our underwears or whether we're wearing shoes, and discuss life, Vadivel comedies and our respective pasts and shaky futures, and whether a couple of us (last men standing) should ideally be 'meeting a girl(each) and wooing her' instead.

Visa approval has come at a time when i had reconciled to the idea of not leaving the country, and was even toying with the idea of moving to Bangalore sometime. To give fate a fair chance, i have blocked my interview date for Sep-11. White men at the US Consulate are likely to hate 'bloody immigrants' more passionately on that day. But it is likely that i'd be leaving Chennai in less than a month.

In other news, Saturdays are being spent wearing whites and playing leather ball cricket at Sindhi College grounds in some corporate tournament. It is a lot of fun. Even made a 50 a couple of weeks ago. Was mighty thrilled. The last time i made a 50 in a leather ball game was in final year college in a Hostel day match.

Life's been good. All i need now is a genie who'd do all my work...

* Most bars/pubs in chennai require the drinkers to be 'properly' dressed. The ones that don't have a dress code will typically be all-men's bars. I don't know how this works. Women don't go to bars where men don't wear shoes :). Also, at Benz Park (a place in T-Nagar), i saw two restrooms next to each other, and both had a 'Men's' sign board. Very amusing it was...

ps: The interview being on 9/11, and me reading a book titled 'The two towers' (LOTR -2) while awaiting my turn at the consulate notwithstanding, the consular officer thought i was neither 'potential immigrant' material nor 'terrorist' material, and granted me the visa. I could still try to smuggle Marijuana and get deported at the port of entry. Let's see...