Hello again, world

I’ve been light and happy for way too long. It is beginning to get a little unnerving. It is almost like I’ve deserted my life’s script and got into somebody else’s. From being a grey bearded entity who takes off on long vacations and unplanned solo trips, I’ve transformed into someone who’d wear an ironed purple shirt with khakhis, and drive with his wife for a distant relative’s shashtiapthapoorthi. Thankfully, the ironed purple shirt is still from Khadi. And a reasonable chunk of what I used to be, I still am.

So, between the last post and this, I fell for someone, pursued her, and got married in July '11. And i am discovering that married life isn't as scary as I imagined it to be. It’s nice to have someone to hang wet clothes with. Someone to hold your bag when you fiddle with your keys to open your house’s door. Someone to share vodka, darkness, life and secrets with (if this sounds familiar, thanks for being around this blog for so many years ).

And life outside marriage continues to exist. I still get my weekend games of ultimate. I still get to drink at GP with friends of 12 years. And get lost in Nagalapuram and swim in the accidentally discovered waterfall/stream with friends I used to get lost in Tada with.

But amidst all this being light and happy, I miss the intensity of emptiness at times. I miss this urge to stand at a precipice and shout like Tarzan. I miss this thing that drove me to write innumerable weird drunken posts past 3 am, most of which never saw the light of the day. I know I ought to say ‘good riddance’ and be thankful for the place in life I am at. For most parts I do just that. But there is this masochistic part per million that refuses to fall in line…

The winged visitor...

Often times these days, i wake up to the sounds of conversations. Real ones. These aren't from the hidden recesses of memory, that deny you the peace of sleep, and the seeming calm of the todays and the yesterdays. These are benign conversations. "I just gave you a Dosa right? What are you still hanging around for?", my mom would say. I'd enter the kitchen, sleepy eyed, to find her in the middle of an earnest conversation with this particular crow. The responses vary. Sometimes we'd just get 'Caw Caws' in varying tones and decibel levels. At other times the crow would poke it's beak in, through the ample gaps in the kitchen's window grill, and take in the scene, before returning to it's pleas. A little louder. A little more demanding. I've come to recognize this crow. You need to pay attention to tell one crow from another, unless it has a broken beak or an absent foot.

In the belief system that i was born into, crows are considered 'pithrukkal', which in sanskrit, means fathers and forefathers. Despite my being an agnostic and my conscious attempts at being rational about things, i can't help making the connection. In an existence with so many unknowns, i find it increasingly difficult to be absolutely sure about anything. To be absolutely sure that crows are just crows. And so i indulge the crow. Whenever he flies in. Seeking food, attention, and an update on how things are at home. I feed him half an idli, a piece or roti or a full appalam. Anything that's around. Appalam being his favourite. Of late we've even started exchanging pleasantries. And he is beginning to find me familiar enough to pick pooris off my palm...

Loss of pay and gains of Leh...

Where real life meets fantasy...Pangong lake...


A stick, a wall, and the blue-white skies...Thiksey Gompa...

A little under a month of arbitrary travel. A bunch of random strangers. Many chais were had and many cakes bitten into with some...Some others were like yellow/black sign boards on a road trip...The interactions could pass for a glance, but the brevity doesn't imply insignificance...

'Lost' Israeli ex-soldiers trying to 'find themselves' in the by lanes of Ladakh. Over clouds of smoke from happy cigarrettes constantly being rolled and smoked away. They'd describe to you the beauty and the mysticism of Varanasi one moment, and negotiate hard to bring down the room rent at Pangong lake from Rs 2200 to Rs 300 the next...

A Norwegian vegetarian Budhist, who, i suspect, loves women at least 42 times as much as Budha. Eloquent and insightful talks on meditation and happiness juxtaposed with extreme reluctance to step on puddles of harmless rain water. Goofy, fun, a joke, a Tibetan tale or an absolutely inappropriate remark up his sleeve all the time, most of our laughter on most evenings at Leh could be attributed to him.

A wannabe writer from Delhi on a year's break, the one who brought our Leh hang out crowd together. She could befriend wooden furniture, given time. I gave her a ride from Shankar to Leh market and ended up moving to the guest house she was staying in. And ended up being surrounded by people every evening, talking more and reading less, something that doesn't usually happen in my solo trips.

A quiet mallu sound engineer from Delhi whose only claim to malludom would be his last name. Affable, sharp, and a clear non-chalance about travel, with as much interest in Nubra Valley as in the corner store selling Apricot jam made by Ladakhi women.

A chennaiite from Bangalore who quit tech 4 months ago and plans to set up a natural farm possibly at Mayiladuthurai. A vegan by choice cos he thinks it is unfair for humans to milk cows, but will drink a cup of namkeen butter chai if a family offers it with love, just to be nice. A champion of home-schooling, we managed to have opposing views on quite a few things over a single breakfast. Opposing in a healthy tolerant manner...

The lady who gave me a bowl of water and the old man who gave me a piece of cloth to wet and dab my eyes with. Their neighbor who made me lie down and put eye drops for me. On the day of blindness of the left eye at Rumtse. Temporary blindness resulting from some random insect toxin cos of the helmetless, goggleless motorcycle ride from Manali to Leh. There was something very comforting about their instinctive helpfulness that kept me from freaking out, despite the inability to distinguish between a yak and a plastic chair 4 feet away for a full 17 hours, and i was quite touched by their concern for a random stranger-traveler.

There were a host of other random folks. Folks i left with a 'seeya' and a 'have a good life' instead of a mail id and a 'let's stay in touch'. Like the 'dude' from Delhi who reacted like i lived in a hole some 4000 feet below the ground when i told him i was from Chennai. I did tell him we had roads, electricity and water supply back home. But then what's a journey without minor annoyances.

So there were people...And there were places too...

First ever glimpse of the Taj. Heavenly lassi off a mutka at Gokul in Mathura, a place that seemed totally caught in a time warp. Two days in Delhi without being conned (yay!). Amazement at the orderliness (and expensiveness) of Chandigarh. A proper dip in the super hot waters of Vasisht in Manali finally (after 2 failed attempts in 2002 and 2003). Motorcycle ride from Manali to Leh, the most stunning of rides. A ride that made me an Enfield convert. Prayer flags, ginger teas, gompas, random new friends, and plain lazing in Ladakh. Chai by the Indus followed by rafting down it, jumping in and floating around a bit, for my 32nd. Pangong lake with 3 israelis who gave me answers for why they smoke all the weed they smoke. Bumping into a blog friend at Khardungla followed by a bumpy roll down from Khardungla to Leh on a bicycle. Drive by Kargil and a 4 hour break at Drass cos the border police wouldn't let us pass. 4 tourists, 400 policemen and a whole lot of floating grass at Dal lake. History lessons at Balidan stambh in Jammu and then the long journey back home...

A year's worth of moments in a little under a month. And now i am actually ready to write some code and earn some bread...

Survival...

Ilamaran. Ila for those who had to call him frequently. He was the tallest of the four. He was wearing bright yellow trousers that came upto his knees, and a shiny black t-shirt, the kind atheletes wear. He seemed fresh off a bath, with smudges of talcum powder below his well-oiled side burns. Ila was clearly the leader of the pack. The other three followed him as he walked purposefully to the blue box at the corner of GP road. The blue box housed a lungi-clad man and his shop. A shop that sold, among other things, warm sweet tea in flimsy melting plastic cups. And no-frills omelettes that were free of contaminations from onions and tomatoes and at times even salt. Ila asked for three sachets of cocunut oil. The shop keeper nodded knowingly and picked a brand from the few options available. It was the least expensive, at a rupee a sachet. Ila kept one, and handed out two to two of his companions, leaving out the youngest, his kid brother Nedumaran. Nedu was disappointed but didn't complain. He knew he was not ready for that role yet, and was happy doing his bit in what to him was an exciting adventure day after day. The other three ripped open their sachets and smeared the oil from the forearms down to the tip of their fingers. They practiced grabbing each other by the arm, and freeing themselves from the grasp. They didn't want to lose too much oil, so they stopped after a couple of tries. Ila then bought a couple of blades, broke them into two halves each, the way barbers do before a shave, and distributed them around. They then waited at the GP Road - Anna salai intersection for the next crowded bus to stop at the signal. They were ready for the hunt. Nedu would get in from the front. The others from behind, but not together. It was peak hour and this wasn't difficult to achieve. When one of them spots a possible victim, he would give a missed call to Nedu. Nedu would then initiate a distraction to make the job easier. Once the job was done, they would get off at different stops. The one with the catch would of course be the first one to be off the bus.

The first bus wasn't crowded enough, they let it pass. They got on into the next one headed to central station. At Shanthi theatre, the first stop past the signal, Arumai got on. His arms were glistening with oil too. He spotted an anxious kid with a clear outline of a mobile phone in his shirt pocket. He momentarily felt sorry for the kid, but what had to be done had to be done. He reached out for his phone to give a missed call to his accomplice at the back...

Four unrelated paragraphs...

I can hear the drone of my refrigirator. Distinctly. At 3 am you usually can. Unless you're in Mandaveli, right behind a petrol pump that stays awake for the lorry drivers who never sleep. But I've heard they sleep some times while driving. Placing a brick on the accelerator to avoid the labor of stepping on it while dozing off. Where i live right now, i can choose to hear it's cries any time of the day. I think it cries a little more loudly than it's peers out of emptiness. One unfilled and unfulfilled fridge mine is, holding just beer and the occasional stale food that never get's consumed. I need to throw out a 3 week old red fluid i bought at a Thai place. I forgot it's name. It tasted terrible. I was in an adventurous mood. I am usually the kind who goes to the same place and orders the same things. I should stick to my tenets.

**************

When you see a skeleton, do you wonder about the person the skeleton used to be? I didn't hear much of what Mangala miss told us at the Bio lab that afternoon a million years ago. My head was filled with thoughts of the person's life and how he died and how he ended up at the Bio lab of our high school. I did hear the part where she said the person was a smoker. Can you get that from a skeleton? Or may be she made it up to sneak in a moral science lecture on why smoking is bad, without actually giving that lecture. You show a skeleton to a 7th grader, and tell him the skeleton used to smoke, that would keep him off cigarretes for a good many years. I wasn't much of a student for most parts. I don't remember when exactly the turnaround happened. Not the rags to riches turnaround, but more of a rags to middle class turnaround. Maybe after i started taking TT lessons. Or after i failed in Chemistry in 9th grade and Baby miss formed 2 groups of 'weak' students and put them under the tutelage of a couple of the elite. I remember taking it as a personal insult, and studying for the next Chemistry exam furiously. I didn't top it, but i got much more than what a pass needed. And i have no freaking clue why i have think about it now.

**************

What makes people pee on their past, or convince themselves that they don't belong there and those who still belong there come from another planet? If you had run through college drinking tea from that 2 rupees per cup tea shop, served specially with dipped fingers, and can't bring yourself to go back there and do the same, a part of you has died. And that's not such a good thing.

**************

I am heading home in a month. Again. Taking a two month vacation. Part of the time shall be spent finding out if yoga or ayurveda can do the magic to my neck and shoulders that Cortisone shots and chiropractors couldn't. Another part of it would be spent on a Delhi->Manali->Ladakh->Kashmir->Delhi bike trip. Assuming my neck and shoulder get good enough for that. Else i might do the same route on whatever moving thing i can get myself on to. At the end of it i guess i'll resume writing code.

...

Relationships are never symmetric. Even the seemingly rosy ones. If A can give up her career for B, B can possibly give up a bottle of unrefrigerated Coca Cola. But that is when you get there. In the run up to getting that equation going, or not going, you'd be, in no particular order, a buffoon, a hero, a wreck, a bore, a sweetheart, a schmuck, among so many other things you can't put a word to. You could do 323 times 47 without needing a calculator, but around the object of your affection your mind would be as functional as a plate full of mashed potatoes. You may not be particularly uninteresting. Even rarely funny in some circles. But suddenly you’d inspire as much interest as an Assamese movie would, at 1:30 pm on DD on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. The trick is in not trying. It is quite ironical actually.

But we can’t let an unnamed relationship be, can we? We want to pick it up and seal it in a bottle. We want to seal it in a bottle, stick a label on it, and give it a name. We can't just be happy with someone here and now. We want a promise of all the tomorrows. Of course this is all rhetorical. Do anthropologists study how and when humans started defining form and structure and rules to something that seems fairly amoebic?

Ok, I think I should stick to drinking vodka and writing gibberish...

In general life updates, i did a month and a half long trip to India at the end of which Buddha showed me the finger and asked me to think for myself. He probably got pissed because i went and met Bahubali at Shrawanabelahola and didn't go to Saranath. It was an awesome trip with a wee bit of travel and some moments that i'd cherish for a long time to come...

Anyways happy 2010 you folks...For me 2009 was fairly lousy, so this year better be good!...

When i am in a whole day of street cricket followed by lemon juice kind of mood...

I am feeling good about life. For the moment. Two hours of stand up comedy on youtube can do wonders to your outlook of life. A 32 year old comic tells you about the need to design cars specifically for the 'making out' segment, a segment that is comfortable making out, but can't handle the seriousness of a room or a relationship or sex. And i look forward to the tomorrows with a renewed and unreasonable lightness. No correlation whatsoever. The mind is so fucking fickle. It helps that the 32 year old happens to be Janeane Garofalo from 14 years ago. But the thing is, if you feel good about life, you don't sit around and cross examine it. You just revel in it, and wait for shit to happen. After coffee the next day. Also fucking and fickle seemed to rhyme in a weird way. Which is why i wanted to put them next to each other. Honestly. I am 31 years old and no longer find it fashionable to throw the f word around. I used to find it very fashionable and novel when i had just joined college in 1995. I saw peers using it to sound exasperated in a very cool way. I had tried to imitate, but my attempts felt artificial and affected. So i gave up and stuck to the native tongue. I see a lot of my kid cousins throw the word 'Whatever' around a lot. Is that a fashionable word among college kids of today?

My mom is in town. And i am getting frequent doses of Rice and Sambhar. I am not a foodie. I could live on rice and sambhar all my life, without ever knowing if Penne is tubular or if Fusilli looks like dead butterflies made of maida. Sambhar is a gooey thing made from dal and water and chilli powder and turmeric and tamarind and vegetables. And add salt to taste. Dal is a pulse. I've seen a japanese man cry and sweat and fret over some benign Sambhar a few years ago. I've seen the same Japanese man suck in an Octopus tentacle with a straight face. His name was Hanawa. We called him Hanawa-san. He told me that 'baakha' was fuck in japanese. He taught me wrong. I still don't know the right word. In Jap movies, people keep saying 'waatha shiva' or something like that. I don't know what it means. But we told Hanawa-san what 'waatha' means in Tamil. And he giggled over it. Serious japanese men don't giggle often. He wasn't a serious japanese man. He took us to Uno park where we saw families sitting under sakura blooms and drinking sake. I remember being extremely happy seeing all those blooms and all those half drunk and not so drunk families. Sakura is cherry blossom in Japan, and the bloom lasts for all of 15 days. But, for those 15 days, they are very pretty. Humans should've also been designed to be like sakura.

I am most probably visiting home in November. For a month or so. I think i'll decide on the immediate direction for the next few years then. Buddha has promised to come down and leave a sign at that point. He refuses to come down right now. Says he is not in the mood. I think he has visa issues. I think 2010 is going to be a very good year for me. If i keep repeating this some 2.5 million times, it will actually happen. I read this in an excerpt of a self help book titled Sweet corn soup for the fool or something.

Sometimes, strangers are better than fiction...

There'll be no angst in this post. No alcohol either. I came here to record an unexpectedly pleasant saturday evening. A time i usually spend with fictional characters. Or a high level programming language. This time, it was the company of a stranger. A stranger i've known, for 3 days in all. Who i'll meet again, in 3 years maybe, or a little later. A polite hello. A curt handshake. A cup of coffee each. One with sugar, one without. And then a drive, supposedly to Palo Alto. A signal jump, a wrong turn, and a pretty road that took us to a destination we weren't headed for. An unmarked space with two parked cars. A trail. A real heavy breeze, that made us need the sight of speech, as much as the sound of it, to make sense of the spoken word. A bird whose name we did not know, whose flight we still hung on and followed. The just risen moon, inside which, she saw a rabbit, i saw a squid, and she spoke of a friend, who always saw a mother and a child. I've never looked for forms inside the moon. I call them craters and leave them at it. Bata chappals, wind chill, the setting sun and the growing hunger, made us head back to the car. Eventually, Palo Alto was reached. Dishes whose names i can't remember, to save my life, were consumed. And good byes and good lucks exchanged. Strangely, the evening seemed whole in it's own right. Random. No context. No obligatory future or direction. Just it. Like watching, possibly, the only show of a feel good movie, seeing the credits roll, walking out, smiling and satisfied.

I think back of Kodachaadri. Another geography. Another whole set of events. But a very similar after taste. I'll keep it for another time.

The boiled egg that was never eaten...

It is 3 am. And i've been drinking vodka and watching 'Lost in translation'. I drank it out of a really tall glass meant for beer. I could've used an ever-silver tumbler. Does alcohol react with ever-silver? But if it is ever-silver it has to be ever silver no? I want to wear a silly yellow t-shirt. Inside out. And dance with Scarlette Johansson. I am thinking of Japan. The crowded Shinjuku station. The pretty girls in white skirts who hand out pamplets that say Massage but mean many other things. The Big Budha sitting at peace at Kamakkura. The people who are always running. The boss who is present when you reach office. And when you leave office. The slot machine attached to the hotel room's TV where you insert 100 yens to get 10 minutes of porn. The laptops in the platforms of Akihabara, and the cigarrette lighters shaped like fire extinguishers. The Buddhist temples, where you wash your feet before going in, and write your wishes in white pieces of paper and tie them up for Budha to read them and bestow upon you what you want. You could buy some corn, have them in your palm, and stretch your hand out for pigeons to peck on them. But remember to wear gloves. Pigeon beaks would be nicer to you then. I didn't. I saw glimpses of the country today, and want to go. I took a picture of half an egg, boiled a week ago and neglected since. The yellow is not yellow any more and the white is a very sad cream. I placed it in a shiny black bowl and placed the bowl on the wooden floor of my kitchen. So that the picture could have the yellow that is not yellow any more, the sad cream, the shiny black, and the ply wood brown. The picture came out very ordinary. I then threw the egg in my trash can. And emptied the contents of my trash can onto a bigger trash can outside my flat. Tomorrow the bigger trash can would be emptied into an even bigger trash can in a lorry that comes by. I don't know what happens after that. Have you seen 'The lady killers'? I will go sleep now. I need to get up and find out why, of 10 frames, 5 are going on port 1 and 5 on port 2, whereas 6 are supposed to go on port 1 and 4 on port 2. It is very important. No seriously.

Washerman's dog...

I meet friends. Over brunches, dinners, beers and butter scotches. B and S being the most available ones. For now. Until the former goes back to his research in Alabama, and the latter's wife comes back to him from India. We talk of important stuff. Like professors, arrears, and whether the dal in our mess food, that we ate 10 years ago, had enough salt. I meet my ex, who tries to convince me that i should shop for a current. Whenever the episode she is watching, of 'Raakhi saawant ki swayamvar', on youtube, gets boring. I try and offer comparable comic relief in my responses. I fail. Of course i fail. How can i possibly compete with 'Usne kahaa TV nahin kharidega, washing machine kharidega, thaaki mai kapde na dhouun. Mere mann ko sukoon mila'. There are apparently many such gems. I can't digest reality TV. Unless it comes with free home-cooked dinner, which is a premium these days..

I play out this scene in my head. Once in a while. My boss calls me to his office. And tells me he has decided to let me go. I am not saddened. A little surprised, yes. Though i am doing just about enough to keep my job. A little less, maybe. But I come out feeling kind of liberated. In the next frame, i am standing on a platform in Central station in chennai. My loyal orange-black rucksack on my shoulders. And no agenda in my head. Waiting for the train that would take me to Delhi. From where i'd be taking a bus to Manali or Nainital. Depending on which one i manage to find a seat on first. I'd be sitting by the window. Taking in everything that comes in through it, greedily. The breeze. The clatter. And the snatches of homes that disappear as rapidly as they appear. I am reminded of this bus ride from Manali to Delhi. A few years ago. P shakes me off my sleep and makes me look out of the window. Amidst absolute darkness, there are these rectangular boxes of light. Evenly lit homes on a hill's slope. It was a surreal sight. That's my most vivid memory of that entire trip. I snap back to the 'here and now'. I wouldn't walk away from what i have, but would be relieved to be pushed out. It doesn't make sense. Or does it?

Some days i wonder if I am holding on to shreds of life i don't care for, and letting go of things i do. But some days i get up with, besides bad breath and a back ache, something that could pass for clarity. And head to work with a sense of what could pass for purpose. Those days aren't all that rare, and compensate for the listlessness of the rest. A good technical discussion here, a good customer bug fix there, and i have bouts of enthusiasm for work. The work that has given me the luxury to fret over imagined angst. And so i hang on...

Bhaawra mann dekhne chalaa ek sapna...

I am not sure why i gave this title to this post. Except that this is my 'current' all time favourite song. And ever since i saw this video of the Sahyadris with this song playing in the background, i've been itching to be in the Western ghats in the monsoon.

I turned 31 this week. 31 sounds infinitely older than 30. G and i share birthdays. So, after a non-celebrating dinner with her, i spent my birthday midnight clapping hands and singing the customary song while she cut her b'day cake at the 'surprise' party her friends had put together for her. For the 31st, i would've thrown a birthday party, if i had a wife, and a mistress, and i wanted to appear happily married to all and sundry. Since i had no such motivations, i let it pass.

But such days do serve as points that make you sit back, and take stock of where you are and where you want to be. I had a bunch of contradictory wants at 30. I have a bunch of contradictory wants now. Age doesn't seem to give me wisdom, the way it is supposed to. From young and stupid, i am simply growing into old and clueless. I did move countries. One of the wants at 30. But I've been having more of the 'What the fuck am i doing here?' moments. Not that i didn't have those back home. But i'd find instant comfort in the urine bathed Karl Shmidt memorial, and the warm waters of the Besant Nagar beach, a 10 minute ride away. It doesn't help that my life's all-important happiness-giver, sport, has been missing in action. The injury from that simple fall has a fancy name now, Rotator-cuff tendonitis, and is showing signs of hanging around for a while. So, instead of waiting for it to heal, i decided i'll turn leftie. I am starting out by learning to shoot at least 2 pointers with my left hand, so that i can play Basketball with a bunch of college buddies. Also planning to resume playing Ultimate Frisbee tomorrow, throwing only forehands and catching with my left hand. It should be fun, and would be nearly like learning a new sport, the left hand aspect that is.

On the surface, i've been having an alright time. Hanging out with college junior Balaji and college roomie Swami at Castro every once in a while. Also, did this trip to Yellowstone with Swami, Sudhir and Heman, friends from undergrad days. It's hard to beleive that it's been a decade since college. It was an awesome trip, and all the more fun, thanks to Sudhir/Heman's kid, who was a total entertainer. Yellowstone was very pretty and all, but we probably would've had as much fun sitting under a random tree and catching up.

But i've kind of decided this is not the place i want to live and grow old in. There is something missing with life here, and i can't quite place my finger on that. When push comes to shove, i'll pack my bags again. And it'll come to shove latest by the early part of next year. Until then i shall find ways and means to amuse myself. I intend to take a year's break before 35. I am increasingly inclined to do that earlier rather than later, so that'll probably be my next step. I have a vague business idea. It is something i can work on on my own while i am on the move. I am not sure if it'll give me any returns. And i have this huge mind block against being an entrepreneur. But i want to try it out, any which ways. We have one life after all.

K wished me peace, and all the travel i want, for the year ahead. I think, travel, at least, can be arranged. Hoping to spend my 32nd, sitting by a glacial river, and sipping chaai, adhrak maar ke...

ps: Dear annoyed anonymous commenter. After alcohol and coffee, i've now moved on to ginger tea. Pliss to go easy on me this time around...

Keep-alive Post

In networking, when A and B are talking a protocol, typically, besides exchanging a bunch of information mandated by the protocol, they exchange frequent meaningless small sized hellos. This is a keep-alive mechanism. When A doesn't hear from B for a threshold time, it decides to forget all about B, and cleans up anything that it picked up from B. If and when B comes back up, it has to start from scratch and re-establish everything with A, which is expensive. This is a keep-alive post.

When i was leaving chennai, I imagined myself two months hence, standing in the balcony of a studio apartment, drinking coffee, and missing the flurry of activities that the view from my Mandaveli balcony had offered me, and the goodness of the coffee i would have been drinking back home. I was wrong on two counts. In my head, the view from my studio's balcony was a lot prettier. In reality i get a panaromic view of a grim black floored parking lot. And you do get decent coffee powder to make good filter coffee with ('Barefoot coffee', thank you).

A shoulder injury from a nasty fall i had, playing ultimate back in Jan, is keeping me out of any kind of action, which is a big time bummer. Met a chinese physio, who referred me to a chinese doctor who would refer me back to the chinese physio, so that the non-chinese insurers would pay for my treatment. Why are these things so complicated?! And the doctor's name is Ooyang. I never thought i'd have to see a doctor who called himself Ooyang. For me Ooyang would be a ping-pong player or a martial arts expert. A Dr. Ram Prasad or Dr. Sundar is more like it. I hope it all ends happily ever after with me throwing a disc or playing in the Milpitas table tennis circuit or both. For lack of anything else to do, and the relative scarcity of cubicle conferences about inane things, i actually managed to do more work in the past 2 months, than the preceding 4-5 months in Chennai. My boss in chennai is probably reading this, but i guess he knows this without my having to tell him!

Life has been as boring as this post, if not more. But i did attempt to 'do' a few things. Like watching a baseball game live in Oakland stadium (and getting terribly bored). And seeing a bunch of folks dressed in weird outfits, or none at all, and running or walking an 8 mile stretch, in what is called 'Bay to breakers'. There was so much weirdness that by the end of it normal looked very interesting. And i was wondering what drove people to do all this. Then i paid sizeable money to watch herbivores from africa like goats and cows (there was the occasional sleeping tiger or docile rhino thrown in), with a white lady working extra hard to make it all seem interesting. Since the animals weren't interesting enough, she spoke about the Jeep we were riding in, and about it's association with WWII. I could only think of the Bisons and Bears and Banded Kraits and the Elephants spotted in the wild during treks in Perambikulam and Himalayas.

In an attempt to make life better, i bought a shiny new old car in 2 hours' time(inclusive of search, 'analysis' and the actual purchase, i am pretty quick and stupid with such things actually). Thanks G for the ride and all the knowledgable questions and the negotiation.

I guess coming here as a curious excited impressionable 21 year old is a lot different from coming here as a more grounded 30 year old. When you see everything in order, working like clock work, you don't go "Wow! It's all so organized. When will India be like this?". Instead you go "Can these guys survive even a minor entropy?", and actually take pride in the presence of some coherence in all that clamour back home. And when you see the ever friendly smiles and the waving hands, you wonder if the smiles will become grimaces and the waving hands would become clenched fists when excesses turn into scarcity. I give it to them for building this kind of order and discipline, but i can't help wondering what would happen if that order is shaken up by an external event. An average driver is not equipped to handle an unexpected car that strays from it's lane. Extrapolating it to other aspects of life is scary.

I am hoping to make this a worthwhile stay, and try and live out some interesting experiences for the time i am here. Let's see how it goes...

Move, Actually

The first sip of the sour orange juice that the stewardess gave him, reminded him of the last visit to the land he was headed to. He had some compulsive taste-place associations. Jalebis reminded him of Hyderabad. Cup-O-Noodles reminded him of Japan, and sometimes, of the happy treks in the western ghats in Karnataka.And sour orange juice always transported him to the US. He couldn't help smiling at the title of the book he was reading. Rohinton Mistry's 'Such a long journey'.

He saw a middle aged couple from his land at the Heathrow airport, in transit. The man was wearing a Black T-shirt that said 'I heart New York' in White. And his wife was wearing a Grey T-shirt that said 'I heart New York' in Black. Very amusing it was, he thought, to see a couple wearing matching Tees at forty. At some point, he was looking forward to this move to the US. But when you look forward to something long enough, you cease to look forward to it. He had started making alternate plans that started to seem more appealing. Like moving to Bangalore. Bouldering and ultimate frisbee with K and crowd. Random treks, beer, and conversations with K. Hanging around friends/travel companions who'll have interesting tales to tell (of building a porn site, or the education system in Timbuktu, or how a kitchen cabinet is built with bare hands). And drinking with this friend who could break into a Lady Macbeth monologue in the middle of a drink, and make everyone in the bar look in their direction. But then a door to the US suddenly opened up. So he thought of surfing and community colleges and a shift to product engineering and hanging around sis and bil, and the money. Ofcourse the money he could make and the resultant time he could afford to be off work once back home, and do that year's travel around India atleast before 35. And so he boarded a plane to San Francisco. Still wondering if he should've tried moving to Bangalore instead. But he tells himself, that if things don't fall in place, he can always catch the next flight back home, and is already thinking of all the things he should be doing once he heads back home, Sikkim, to start with. He is probably just designed to live in transit.

So sharks, if any, in Santa cruz and Half moon bay, please be nice to him. And the happy harmless fishes of Thiruvanmayur, he wouldn't be gone for too long, so you'll get back the human feet to nibble at.

Pulicat a.k.a Pazhaverkadu

I went on a trip to Hampi for 2007's new year. I spent the new years' eve on a train from Hospet to Bangalore, talking to a middle aged Bengali woman, a young English cartoonist and a businessman from Hospet who found it weird that the three of us had come to Hampi on our own for no specific reason. It was a fun trip and i thought i should do something like that every year for new years', unless i had something better to do. I promptly did nothing in 2008. Ermm i think i watched putthaandu sirappu nigazhchigal ('new year special programmes' for the tamil challenged) on sun tv and saw people burst crackers on TV. I switched to DD Podhigai and saw a woman sadly doing the lots for a new year special game show. She seemed truly bored with the proceedings. Very exciting it was.

This year i decided to go to Pulicat lake. That's the second largest salt water lake in India (the largest being Chilka lake in Orissa), and is a Bird sanctuary. So i started driving down to Pulicat on 31st evening. Got lost. Asked a couple of parotta shop guys on NH5 where Pulicat was. They had no clue. Then i asked for Pazhaverkadu, and they gave me precise directions. Reached Pulicat at 10 pm. The only lodge there would be ready for occupation by March 2009! A tea shop guy asked me to sleep in my car. He said that that would ensure safety for the car and myself. That didn't sound too encouraging, so i backtracked to Ponneri (a village 17 km from Pulicat). Ponneri had a lodge but a murder had happened there a couple of days before and they wouldn't let me stay ('Police order sir'). Plus they kept asking me who was in the car (even after i had told them there was no one else). I wouldn't blame them. Guys stay with parents. Girls stay with parents. So guys and girls usually go all the way to Pulicat or Mahabalipuram to just make out, and some hotel owners are very uncomfortable with the idea. Anyways one saviour told me about this motel on NH5 near the check post. 'Chaitanya' it was called, and it was a welcome sight. They had rooms available, and they even had a bar. After checking in i headed to the bar. When i entered four drunk lawyers were arguing loudly about something. I had a beer sent to my room. I didn't want to welcome the new year from a 10ft x 7ft room. So i walked out to NH5 to welcome the year from a highway tea kadai there, a tea and the only cigarrette for the year in hand. Random guys were getting off cars and launching rockets from the median of NH5 at midnight to usher in the year. The highway suddenly wore a festive look and it was nice to be in the middle of all that as an onlooker. I messaged K wishing her more of Himalayas and other mountains and less of confusions for the year, and headed back to my room.

The drive to Pulicat early next day was beautiful. It was amazing to drive through vast expanses of fields dotted with birds early in the morning. I saw more birds en route to pulicat than in pulicat.





I hired a boat from the first guy who approached me. Boatman Khalsa has 3 daughters, and wants to make enough money to marry them off. For this part of the story i parted with 50 rupees more than the agreed amount. But he was a generally happy guy, and was thankful to the tourists because that's increased his income multifold. And he was thankful to mobile phones which, he says, is a big plus in his business. He gave a mouthful to the government and some environment protection agencies though, for stopping a bridge construction across the lake that would have helped kids attend school during the rains. And helped vehicular traffic scare birds off from that part of the sanctuary permanently probably. Now, the kids wade through knee deep water to get to school so that the birds can stay.

I wanted to see a lot of Flamingos in all their pinkness. I spotted 5 million fishermen and 1 Flamingo. I did see quite a few grey and white and black birds whose names i didn't know. But they weren't pink. There was this one trip i did with a bunch of random school kids, to Perambikulam wildlife sanctuary. We were at a place full of birds, where Salim Ali had apparently camped, and there was this sciene teacher who went 'Sir, inga evlo kuruvinga paarungalaen' ('Sir, look, there are so many sparrows here!'), unmindful of what birds they really were. I felt as ignorant as that science teacher.

Once we were done with standing in mostly birdless island patches, and were back in proper land, Khalsa asked me not to leave without eating Pulicat's Prawn biryani. He said, with sufficient notice, he could even prepare a grand sea-food meal if i came there with friends sometime. He was truly distressed when i told him i was a veggie. 'Verum soru kaay ela mattum saaptu eppdi sir irukkeenga? Naakku sethudaathu?' was his genuine concern :). ('How can you survive on just rice and vegetables and leaves? Won't your tongue die?'...ok, all this translation is very tiring)...



Then there was this Dutch cemetery, rather obscure in it's presence. The Dutch controlled Pulicat between the 1600s and 1800s. The cemetery, which is maintained by ASI, was locked, so i had to jump over it's gate to get in. I feel a sense of peace when i see cemeteries. Maybe it is the finality of the place. There was an old man in white, sleeping in the shade of the grandest tomb there. Most tombstones had metallic tops that shut the dead tight. I was reminded of Rachel from 'The unbearable lightness of being', who hates the idea of being pressed to the earth and being shut. Instead she wants to be burnt and wants her ashes thrown to the wind...

I'll have to go back to Pulicat sometime to get my eyes' fill of Flamingos. But despite the birdlessness, i thought the trip had enough moments to make it totally worthwhile...

God Goats Humans Kids

B takes his son to St.Thomas mount. That's a small hillock in chennai where St. Thomas was allegedly killed. There is a church built by the portuguese at the summit. And there is this tall, fiarly imposing statue of a Golden colored Jesus. So B's son sees people praying to the statue and asks B if he could too. B agrees. So the kid apparently brings his palms together, in standard Hindu prayer style, and tries to reach out to Jesus with a non-silent 'Gajaananam Bootha ganaathi saevitham'* shloka**! :). Funny and profound, no?

I don't know if Jesus or Ganesha had gotten confused, but adult humans are certainly a confused lot. In the context of the above incident, the basis of a lot of recent ill happenings seem ridiculous.In 'The unbearable lightness of being', Milan Kundera says that how someone treats those weaker to him/her determine's his/her niceness. He goes on to say that the human race is pretty much screwed up going by the way it treats animals. He talks about a more powerful species (hypothetical) coming in and treating us the way we treat, say, hens and goats and rats and guinea pigs, or something to that effect. 'Half a kilo boy meat, preferably thigh piece', someone from that species could say. Or use 20 year old women as 'guinea pigs' for untried drugs. Their biology classes could include dissection of 3 year olds to understand the human digestive system. Morbid, no? But we have Darwin, Survival of the fittest, Food cycle, Food web et al to explain the whole thing. OK, i could use some LSD now.

Anyways, all trash aside, the image of a kid saying 'Gajananam' to Jesus atop St.Thomas mount seems idyllic, and brings a smile. On that note, happy 2009 people.

*Shloka - A sanskrit hymn...
*Gajaananam - A shloka on Lord Ganesha...

Diwali...

Yesterday, i asked my mom, why she wasn't buying herself something for Diwali. She said it felt weird going Saree shopping on her own. She had a point. So we went to Kumaran Silks and picked up a couple of Sarees for her. We went to the Khadi next door and i picked up something for myself. The last time i had acknowledged Diwali (or any festive occasion for that matter) and did anything active centred around it was the last one we had in Trichy, in 1997.

When we reached home, mom busied herself making 'Diwali marundhu'. 'Marundhu' in Tamil means medicine, and 'Diwali marundhu' is usually had to aid in the digestion of the 15 kilos of random sweets an average family consumes on Diwali day (atleast in Tamilnadu). She makes very good 'marundhu', and Dad used to be a big fan of it (apparently mom learnt the recipe for it from Dad's mom). I knew she hadn't made it in a while. So i asked her when was the last time she made it. She said she hadn't made it after our last Diwali in Trichy. I can't think of an explicit reason, but i know that if the 'dress buying' act had not happened, the 'marundhu making' act wouldn't have happened either. I was glad we went through the exercise.

I had stopped doing a lot of things because they stopped appealing to me. But, you knock off a loud 'Happy New year' wish, a thoughtful 'Happy Birthday' phone call, new dresses, family dinners and 100-waalas for a Diwali, Baby-Krishna feet and 'Vella seedai' for Krishna Jayanthi, and hordes of other such stuff, there is very little magic left and life gets too drab. If your parents hadn't done anything about such occasions, you'd lose half your happy childhood memories. I am in the process of convincing myself that it is a great idea to wear new clothes and take a bite of home made Coconut burfi to celebrate Lord Krishna's killing of Naragasura...It'll take some effort but i guess i'll get there.

Anyways, if you're the celebrating kinds, wish you and your family a very Happy Diwali...Else, well, try and jump back into the bandwagon sometime...Sometimes it is nice to unlearn and do silly things, like bursting crackers with a 10 year old...

Finding love in 15 days...

Quick beautiful relationships happen only in the movies. The Holiday was depressing, in a really nice way.

Two women who are in a sad place in their respective lives swap places for a couple of weeks, and end up finding lurrve. I started watching the movie because it had Jude Law and Kate Winslet. If i were gay, Jude Law is someone i'd lust after. And you cannot not like Kate Winslet if you'd seen 'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'.

I liked the idea. Swapping homes with a random stranger from a random geography in an attempt to deal with misery. Loved the openness with which Cameron Diaz and Jude Law go about their relationship. Bizzarely enough, they start out by having sex. Diaz floats the idea with these lines to a drunk Jude - "You know Graham, I just broke up with someone and considering you just showed up and you're insanely good-looking and probably won't remember me anyway... I'm thinking we should have sex... If you want"...A friend once told me a theory she read somewhere. If two people start sleeping with each other, after a point an emotional connect is inevitable, though there might've been none to start with. Much like how things usually work the other way round, minus the anxiety and the awkward moments. Animals are probably much smarter than we think. When a Barking deer fancies another Barking deer, i guess it probably doesn't start with a 'Hey i know a beautiful slope there that has really good grass, do you want to come along and graze there?'. Humans have complicated things beyond repair.

Loved the sensitivity with which they dealt with the Kate Winslet - Jack Black segment. But my favourite was the 'Kate - 90 yr old screen writer' equation. Very nicely done. But i wish they didn't make Jude's daughters 5 spoonfulls of sugar sweet.

The movie ends on a happy note with everybody dancing to a happy song on New years' eve. All that is nice, but I can't seem to take happiness at face value. Don't we all manage to find unhappiness in our own unique way?. Now, that sounds terrible. I need to get out and shop for positive vibes. Mountains shall be climbed and seas shall be swum in. Literally, i mean, those were'nt corny metaphors. When you are a few hundred metres inside the sea, floating on your back, being tossed around by the waves, with a view of the evening sky and the Thiruvanmiyur skyline (which is a bunch of old yellow flats), the world does seem perfect. Until a plastic cover that has lost it's way brushes against you, and you think it is a great white shark, lose your balance, and take in a mouthful of sea water...

Also, i learnt a new word from the movie. Gumption - Fortitude and determination; Sound practical judgement. I like the sound the word makes. Gumption...

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...

Munnar

Wet wet wet...


Nutt and Minnal at top-station...


Lotsof beedis. A little vodka. Old friends. Many conversations. Laughter. An interesting driver with a clear head and a tragic past. Incessant rains. Breathtaking views. Minor treks. Mist. Chaaya. Pazha bajji. Colorful umbrellas. Wet winding roads. A road-side eatery with a taurpalin top to keep the showers away, where a drunk guy shook my hands and said "I like your flaasafee in life" (Why he said so?, the vodka in my blood wouldn't allow me to recall). A room with a view of a church. And a hostess who said "God bless you child" when we were vacating the hotel room. Faith/No-faith, that was a beautiful moment. A trip that was worth it's while, and much more. A weekend of drenching in munnar.

Good bye 20s, Hell! Oh' 30s?...

30. Officially old. Officially unattractive. Happy birthday to me :).

With some effort i can see my scalp. Though, from far, i'd seem to have a head full of hair. Everything looks prettier and more wholesome from far.

A recent celebrity dream. I've had them before. But, it's usually just the deed. No run ups, no frills. They're purely functional in nature. Aimed just at hormonal balance. This one was different. A U-Certificate celebrity dream. Late night conversations with Trisha in Thirvanmayur beach. Coffees. MTC bus rides (a definite impact of the 'Aayutha ezhuthu' sequence). We even stood at my favourite bridge in Muttukaad, watching the sun go down. I woke up with a kind of light-headed happy feeling. The kind you get up with when you're in a nice lazy relationship. Or an illusion of being in one, looking forward to the day, looking forward to seeing the face you want to see. I've been there before. But it's been a while and i'm out of touch. So this was a nice dream to dream.

Back to reality. Confounded by a bunch of criss-crosses. Like umpteen others...

Hang on, do better at the current job. Make up for possibly the worst work year in 9 years.

A viable business idea. Quit. Execute it. Be on the move, seeing new places while at it. See how it goes..

Move to the US. Do a part-time Geo course. Spend weekends surfing in Half-moon bay and Santacruz. Get real good at it.

Start a Table tennis school. Cater to cash-rich corporate men/women. And to kids to whose life sport will make a difference. With a proper operational plan, ensure it doesn't go into charity mode and ensure that the kids have their pride and self esteem intact.

Marry? Even have a daughter at some point maybe? Have a family to support and be supported by. The whole nine yards.

Take a year off. Travel around India by the most economical means. Document it. No wordy paragraphs. Just facts. To aid other travellers. And pictures, yes.

Many wants. One life.

Here's to hope, and the road ahead...