a strand of memory...

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i still haven't figured out a decent way of navigating my own blog... there's no damn place to sign in... i have discovered a roundabout way of course, or i would have spared you of the regular dose of nonsense.... but it's like akshay kumar's route to australia from india... through egypt... can't remember the movie...

so, it was a weekend... again... i read somewhere that people who ask about your weekend are usually dying to tell you of their own weekend... where was i going with that? hmm... forget it!! when i started, i'm sure i had the most brilliant idea for today's blog... but for the world of me, i can't remember it now...

so instead, i'll just pen down the mundane things i did with my life for as far back as i can remember... i should write about my childhood sometime... i really have the most gory tales... there was a time recently when i'd get a bad case of throat infection by drinking unbottled water... my water had to be ISI marked... and it had to be a brand i recognized... compare that with a re-discovered childhood memory... i recently remembered the ice-cream wala that frequented my village... you know, (or maybe you had a saner childhood, so you don't) the one who came in a cycle, with a wooden box on the carrier behind him... and there'd be red, green, orange(my favorite) ice-candies... they were probably just colored ice but nothing in my childhood held more charm, hope and promise than that rare delicacy... if my mother was in a good mood and had change to spare, my brother and i would run triumphantly and flash our 25paisas to him and he'd ransack inside his box until he found our colors... but most days, we'd simply run behind him excitedly as he toured the village... and on some occasions(i hope to god, rare!!!) i remember cupping our hands below the ice-box where the ice would melt and trickle down in drops... ok, let me put it slowly... all the different colored ice, along with little bits of the wood from the box, sawdust and many other things i dare not think about... would all melt in drops and leak out the corner into our eager hands... and we drank it!! i drank it!!! without any side-effects... or aftermath!!! well, i'm not sure about the latter... maybe it did kill a few of my neurons... hmmm???

humdrum....

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i wake up at some odd hour i'm too embarrassed to admit... the light's streaming in through the windows and the screeching birds pierce right into my dreams... whoever said bird calls were pleasant, needs a good dose of the loud, garrulous family of the gray, fat birds in my garden... my eyes open to the unblinking, eternally grinning eyes of my Garfield... he's a stuffed character ('toy' makes it sound so immature!)... anyway, that helps me get my bearings... i'm home... at my parents' place... have been visiting too many places in quick succession and i get migraines in my sleep from the excessive decision-making on which way i can roll in my sleep without ending up on the floor...

a quick check reveals that no one's home... i drag myself to the chair in the living room and curl up in the chair... i tune it to some random channel and pick up today's newspaper... with the submission of application to upsc prelims 2010, i have officially written off anything akin to 'life' for the next year too... i read on about the Sri Lankan presidential elections, financial crisis, possible coalition govt in Britain, etc, etc... in my personal heaven, there'll never be any newspapers... except for lighting bonfires, maybe...

i'm supposed to drive down my Activa to bangalore soon... not today, i decide... i call up a few people entrusted with setting me back on the corporate-job-track... no good news, but nothing tragic either, for today... i send in more SOS's... some are encouraging... some downright rude.... ranging from "anything for you, lady!" to "will see what i can do about your humble request"... i refrain from the million wise-cracks trying to shoot out my brain... "until i land that job", i placate myself... and we'll then see who'se humbling who!

all this nonsense has quite exhausted me... and i still have today's newspaper-editorial to finish reading... saving up the worst/best for the last... let me go and see what more inconsequential stuff i need to know...

4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days

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it is a hair-raising, mind-numbing movie, to say the least... i had it on my laptop like forever but it's in Romanian and without subtitles... so, i hadn't come around to watching it... but finally, today, when sleep evaded me because of all the caffeine/nicotine and other abusive substances in my bloodstream, i sat down to watch it... downloaded the subtitles, synchronised them and sat down with another cup of tea to watch it...

it isn't a happy movie... the opposite actually... and it's got just three main characters... two college girls, one trying to get an illegal abortion and the other, a friend helping her... and the third is the guy who they've been 'recommended' by a previous customer(ok, not exactly)... it all happens within a day, and the movie's less than two hours long... it's such naked, honest, truth about life in communist Romania(a little research on the side was unavoidable after i was done with the movie) that i had to consciously unclench the muscles in my jaws and neck when i was done with the movie... the ones in my head are still clamped uncomfortably...

anyway, the plot is, Gabita is pregnant(the movie title is exactly how long she has been pregnant) and on a friend's recommendation, hires Mr.Bebe to do the abortion for her... her room-mate, Otilia helps her in the ordeal... Mr. Bebe is a character you grow to hate more strongly than any real person who's crossed you bad... Gabita's foolishness gets on your nerves... and you can't but sympathize with Otilia for being caught between the two... and how!

i have quite a penchant for heart-wrenching movies and 'requiem for a dream', has been my favorite for a while, but this one is definitely going in the same line!!

Other movies to get you miserable may be - Pursuit of Happyness, Road to Perdition

single occupancy....

one of my wishes all my life has been to have a room to myself... and for some reason or another, it's right there in the 'Totally Impossible Fantasies' along with 'Brew the concoction to make myself invisible', 'Meet Mark Twain' and 'Learn to sing'...

i know it's not all that unreachable a wish for many out there... but a series of unfortunate happenings meant i never did get my wish... when a kid, i was stuck with my kid-brother for a room-mate... with his nose in everything i owned, i was almost glad to be packed off to boarding school... we had a huge dormitory and 45 girls in it... i doubt there was any place 'private' in the whole rambling campus... and then finally college... back to home and sharing rooms... post-grad, we were promised single-occupancy and we were thrown in with our anti-selves... i am pretty sure they came up with a mind-boggling algorithm to come up with room-mates who'd spontaneously combust at sight... i've never seen a bunch of more mis-matched people since...

let me take a few lines to explain... my room-mate was a soft, plump, pale, north indian who loved to study and even had a gold medal from the then president!! now, i am skinny, out of choice... coz i believe any extra flesh is rude to all the starving Somalians, never buy textbooks (in an attempt to save trees) and i doubt anybody ever has or will give me a gold medal for anything... i am not really good at anything much... academics, sports, music... every skill seems to evade me!... hmm... damn! that's depressing! there were other things too... she's a social person... with lots of friends... i am what i'd kindly(to myself) put it as 'antisocial'... i can't really get the point of small talk... and banter... and social graces evade me... i don't smile at the right times... and when i do, it looks like i'm smirking at them! it's hard being me....

the story didn't end there... i had to shack up with a lot of people along the way to here... well, for the record, everybody survived and is hale and healthy and far far away...

me, i am with a new room-mate... she's off to chennai... a wedding and some work... so, i have had all the time in the world(three full days) to rule the roost... and as i find out, there's not much to it... living by myself... the freedom's intoxicating for the first 2hr 36minutes... when the lights went out and i didn't know what to do... there's no TV... i cant stream movies from the internet coz i've already exceeded the download limits... it's no fun window shopping alone... i find myself turning to my absent partner in an attempt to co-ogle at the unbelievable pair of pants, handbags, guys, etc... eating alone is worse... i get to cook, eat and clean! and since the only thing i have mastered is lemon rice, i've had it for breakfast, lunch and dinner... for 3 straight days... maybe it'll join the list of 'allergic foods' i have... maybe i should stick to IV drips... if only they had a carry-away counter in the local hospital....

ok, now i've been rambling for so long, my leg has fallen asleep... there must be something under Geneva Convention about letting this happen... gotta take care of it...

ooooooooooooooooucccccccchhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

routine update...

it's been a while since i pecked away nonsense... i rather prefer to keep the blog breezy and light... like the breezy girl in the blog template... so, since i was in a dark mood which would've meant changing template to something that'd involve spiders, voldemort, darth vader, etc, etc, i stayed off the record...

i'm not in a particularly good mood yet but the past week's been interesting if nothing else... i was so sick of staying home and putting on tons of weight, i came to blore... i've kinda tented at J's place... she's sweet... for now... she's yet to find out that i've exceeded her broadband limits by a couple of GBs... finished most of her groceries... her wireless internet now won't work without wires now... her earphones are broken... the list is a little too long and i dont want it to hog entirely my good mood... so, that's about it...

i was bored enough what with absolutely no interviews coming my way... and my mothership(Infy) abandoned me too... so, i walked into a couple of walk-ins... i'm either over-qualified or underqualified... i found a lot of interesting facts en route though... did you know that it's easier to get into a call-center if you're a non-B.Tech graduate... or that even if you're unfortunate enough to be one, you can't have scored more than 59%???

and i'm in so much an interview mode, i  can't meet new people without starting off on the unasked questions... if you meet me, within the first five minutes, you'll have the answer to
1. tell me something about yourself..
2. what are your objectives in life?
3. where do you see yourself five years from now?
4. what are your hobbies?
5. who's your favorite cartoon character?
okay, nobody's asked me that last question... but seriously, i think that'll be more truthful an insight into my personality than any of the above questions... and for the record, it's currently, Backkom... i don't remember the right spelling... but it's on Nick everyday at 10pm...

guess that's enough hogwash to sustain my 'regular blog' resolution for the year...

back to normal...

i must feel like that guy who wrote 'paradise lost' and 'paradise found'(i haven't read either).... after my unpleasant rant yesterday, i am back to normal... things aren't alright... they never are... i'd be bored to death if they were...

i induce J to break her vow of silence... we call over ashwini for catching up... the usual oooh's and aaah's happen... it's been more than five years since i last met them... they remind me of my escapades in those days... apparently i wasn't good at much even then... i learn of the tests i nearly missed, the books i never read, my stumbling into CAT coz there was nothing much to do that vacation... no wonder i'd blacked out most of those memories...

more interestingly, there's everyone else to catch up about... most have progressed from marriages to children to fourth/fifth jobs... people have migrated to various countries... temporarily, permanently...pictures of month-old kids are compared...

"she looks just like her mother"... they chant
"huh??" that'd be me...
"look at the eye brows"
"huh??"
"oh, she's so pretty"
-blank look-

honestly, it looks like a lobster taken out of boiling water... red.. blotchy... unfocused eyes... droopy, drooling mouth... it's probably the worst it'll look all its life... i mean, it cant get worse, right??
my opinions shock the bejesus out of them... they look at me like i'm something straight out of a psycho movie... the bad guy, not the good victims who die...
so much for honesty!!

i fall asleep when i can no longer stay awake... i try watching 'the holiday'... before realising i've already watched it...

the sunny window beside my bed interrupts my sleep at the ungodly hour of 8am... J's friend, another classmate i hadnt imagined seeing in the next couple of lives... we have a lunch of sambar and rice J's managed to conjure up... it's surprisingly good... my cooking's like my drawings... i never end up with the pictures i'd intended to draw... so it surprises me that anybody can get it right at all...

i feel sunny all day... so i talk to a lot of people... i do that when i'm in a good mood... talk to a lot of people... "catch up"... i even manage a few wrong numbers... but i'm in so good a mood, i talk to him too... 

i learn of alok's quest to improve security in his Towers by impersonating david deadley or was it headley.... he has a whole list of other celebrities he's planning to impersonate for various equally good causes... Albert Einstein, Julius Caesar, Cameron Diaz... (the last one's not a typo)... a full blown halloween!!

my catch ups are predictable...  i gush to everybody about how much i really like them... thank them for being my friends... wish them all sorts of happy days... it scares quite a few of them and they want to confirm if it's really good old nasty, snappy me...

i watch 'forrest gump'.... again... coz J had never watched it... the other two of us keep up a constant commentary in the background... until J threatens she's going to ditch the movie and kick us out... we take our chances...

we go out for coffee at a Kalmane's Coffee... authentic south-indian stuff... i scrape my knee on the way back... long story...

that bloody registered letter that had gotten returned from the post office coz i was out of station the last time is back again... as soon as i was out of station.... my string of sour lemons!!! lucky my favorite drink's lemonade!

i hate my life!

keeping up pretences is just too hard on some days than other... today was one such day... the whole idea of what i'm up to seems mind-numbingly stupid... i hate the whole idea of studying, reading, learning... i turn around all the books in my room(a lot more than a mentally healthy person ought to have) so that i cannot see their titles... and thus i pretend to ignore them... when the newspaper thumps outside on the porch, i read only the comic-strip and don't even attempt the sudoku or the crossword... the opinion page is left unopened...

i treat myself to a heavy dose of more numbness by sitting through most of Channel V's Dare to Date... i get my glimpse of hell...

my job applications are not getting anywhere close to where they ought to be... and the idea of my not being able to snag the same thing i had two years ago when i was incredibly much less wiser is incomprehensible... recession, people slowly explain to me...

so, i run... to bangalore... to J's house... she's got laryngitis... so instead of talking, we have to chat online... i mean, if i were making it up, i couldn't have come up with a more Murphier person!

a trip to mandara giri

life's inching towards the black doom again... but before i get sucked into the swirling abyss that is my CS preparation, i strike out once again, hopefully not the last time...

there's a hill close by... so we set off to visit it... it's one of those nearby places you live next to all your life but never visit coz you can do so anytime you want... we had plans of scaling a bigger hill which didn't work out coz things have a way of falling apart around my plans... anyway, this hill, mandara giri, is a huge boulder... not much scaling... 436 steps carved into it, one way... the railings helped as we huffed and puffed our way up... there's a small compound in which there are 4-5 small temples... idols of different Jain saints... we then come out and walk around for a while... i decide to climb a few rocks and do so... get stuck on one of them and have to be rescued... it always surprises me... even while i'm stuck... on trees or boulders... that the climb is so easy and then, when all you have to do is turn around and climb down, you cant... hmm...

next we find a spot on a ledge... eat stuff... and while the others chatter around me, i find myself a cozy spot... the stone is warm with the sun and the wind blows in gusts... i lie down and trace a lone eagle's path for a while... it struggles against the wind before diving down suddenly... my perch on the hill is so high, i'm looking down on the eagle... i doze off sometime in between... wake up... click a few pictures... we decide unanimously that the phrases, 'the world at your feet' and 'on top of the world' must have been coined by someone similarly stuck on a ledge above some hill...

we torture a few frogs in the little water hole before a steady crackle behind us brings us to our feet....some degenerate has set ablaze a patch of dry grass... and coz it's so dry and there's a steady wind, the fire spreads everywhere... i only wished i had done it! :)

another new year...

it's the new years... i can not imagine why anyone would want to celebrate this particular day... it's not really special by any scientific explanation... not the perihelion or aphelion... nobody really important was born this day... and we Indians should especially not be celebrating it coz we've been stalking this planet for longer than this calendar!!!

ok, all the righteous ranting done, i'm just sore coz i didnt get to go to a decent new year's party... on the last day, things fell apart coz my usually crystal clear calendar was just too stuffed to permit my travelling to blore, where the the few people i still call friends are...

so, i sat down to watch 'the top 50 music videos' on zee-cafe... my brother, who'd been out all day(snooker addict) came back and laughed his guts out in my face that i'd not be going anywhere to party... i sulked in silence and watched all the k-serials for retort... 'she who has the remote, decides the show'...

it was 11pm, and the parents were fast asleep... we were still watching tv...
"CCD??", i asked...
"ok..." he agreed

we set about quietly like a pair of synchronized burglars... with absolutely no noise, we got our jackets, the bike keys, locked the door behind us, turned off the lights everywhere except in Vin's room(so they'd think we were still there) and crept out... the gate unlocked, the bike taken out and pushed a 100 yards so they wouldn't hear it start...  and then we rode all of 17km to the nearest CCD.... there's one on the NH-4, open 24X7... that usually uninhabited place was crawling with people...

we found a decent place to sit... it was a good night for new year's... there was a full moon, warm and cloudy and coz the newspapers had said there'd be a lunar eclipse, i imagined i saw one...

we sat and talked... it's hard to recollect what... a million little things non-stop that you can't recollect as late as the next morning... after about an hour, when the place got crowded enough for it to be unsafe to be seen without the food trays in front of us, i went in and got our traditional 'usual'... a mocha, a slice of chocolate fantasy  with chocolate ice-cream... i trapeze through the crowd with the tray balanced in one hand... the other pushing people off my way... well, trying to, anyway...

we take a break from talking nonsense for a while...and concentrate our energies on the chocolate abundance in our middle... but soon i have too much chocolate in my system and i sit back... i try to explain the lunar eclipse to Vin who can not be bothered... to make things clear, i draw on the plates... my lines go through the cake and the ice-cream... Vin drags the plate away...

"fine, your loss" i declare and sip the mocha... scald my tongue... again!... that luke-warm froth is so deceptive...

"do you want to hear about my accident??" Vin insists...
i've told him a gazillion times i don't want to hear of how he missed being killed... again... by a hair's breadth...
"oh, come on! you're in as good a mood as you're gonna be...and i didnt even get hurt this time" he grins...
"alright...alright"... i submit...

he goes on to tell the story of how on a bike trip, his friend who couldn't keep his eyes on the road missed a right turn, fell over, broke his crown(head, like in the jack n jill rhyme)... a passing truck came to a screeching halt to see/help them... the speeding bus behind rammed into the truck grazing the whole of left side...and setting off the truck down the slope... an ambulance was called, and while they waited, a crowd had materialized from nowhere... looking for some action too... lots of raised voices... everybody yelling, nobody listening... and when the guys tried to take off, they were chased by the onlookers who looked sore they hadn't gotten anybody to beat up... if that is hard to believe, my compatriots beat up people, burn bikes/cars and demolish buildings when seventy year old actors die of natural causes!!!

and then more nonsense... finally we decide it's been long enough and set out home wards... not much there... except when we chased down a lorry coz it's license plate said 'GB 7564' and i was adamant on learning which state was GB... when we did catch up, we realized it had an 'RJ 05' above it...

we switch off the bike at the end of our main road and the whole 'quiet thing' is repeated again... and we're back in the house, parents still as asleep as we'd left them...

so, that was new year's for me... not what i'd planned for... but not too bad, i suppose...

P.S :
1. "108" is the emergency number for calling an ambulance. arrives in two minutes.
2. the roadside 'emergency phones' on NHs do not work in emergencies.