Main aur meri Tanhayi

My two roomies with whom I shared a good rapport have taken transfer to Chennai. Some would believe it is ‘coz they were so troubled with me around that they escaped to Chennai. And many others (including me) know that what some believe is not true.

Well, with other roomies too busy in their own cozy worlds, me and my ‘tanhayi’ are left to each other, once again.

So many tales, anecdotes, trains of thoughts…left unsaid, none find their way out of me, and instead, all find their ways to their graves in the very cradle they were born in.

There’s nobody around to listen to my PJs, to see me literally ROTFL till tears come in my eyes at the ‘situational jokes’, which only I seem to sense and start laughing along with me. Believe it or not…once, everyone in my room was laughing for more than 2 hours, just by seeing me laugh, without even knowing why I was laughing.

Sigh! Those were the good times…

Now, who do I tell what I dreamt the previous night (I dream every night)?Who will listen to my gyan on body language and psychology? Gone are those long discussions on our future, our career, our ambitions, our dreams and our lives after some years.

One would now often find me smiling to myself, of course when I’m alone in my room, thinking of the things that happened that day, my first impressions on some person I saw on road, some funny incident that happened to me or some one else we know; wanting to tell someone about all these things and when I realize that nobody is around to hear all of that, I sigh and erase all those doodlings from the blackboard of my mind.

Come soon, 2007!!! Looks like only you can give me some company, at least for a year ;-).

Who am I?

I feel so detached from my life and from myself.

The image I see in the mirror seems like a stranger to me. Even my own name sounds kinda familiar but at the same time alien enough to ask myself whose name is it?

Sometimes, I even ask myself what my name is and come to a conclusion, after a lot of reasoning, that since people around me call me Deepa and my identity cards also show the same name, I must be this person called Deepa. I find myself walking along with my physical form and see myself do things as if I am watching someone else.

It seems like I, Deepa (the identity) and the walking, talking, living form are 3 different entities, each on a different plane of existence.

Who or what am I?

Am I merely a soul stuck in this mortal form which is trudging along in this life as one of the seven births in the form of a human being?

I find myself wandering in this materialistic world without an ambition of my own or any purpose which is convincing enough to bring myself to “live” and not simply exist.

I wake up in the morning only to spend a few moments thinking of what I am doing here and what I should be doing, once the hard reality bangs me right on my head.

I feel like a lost soul which is loitering around waiting to complete some unfinished business without any idea of what that ‘unfinished business’ is.

The days are just passing by with the hope of the times when I would be living a life full of things that I am passionate about (now, a research needs to be done on what I am passionate about) and thinking of the times in my past when I was blue and laughing at it with this thought, attached with a sense of accomplishment -“eppidi iruntha naan, ippidi aayittaen!”

Is this just a passing phase or some kind of seasonal depression or do I really need to find who I am and the purpose of my living to live a meaningful life?

I really have no idea.

Happy Birthday to me!!!

This time, again, I was in Chennai to celebrate my birthday, last weekend.

The day was just like any other day, with the only difference that I got more calls than the number of calls put together in a whole year. In fact, my birthday is the only day when people call me. And I am thankful for that. At least they remember that someone called Deepa does exist in this world.

The crowning glory was that I was on roaming and the conversations were getting longer than usual ‘coz there was a lot to talk and get updates on things happening with each other.

My landline was out of order, as usual. My mom went to the office and my dad had some work outside, so I couldn’t give their number to receive the calls.

And everyone promised that they would call later. I’m still waiting for their calls. Hope they will remember to fulfill their promise before my birthday next year.

I was toying with the idea of postponing my Chennai trip considering the fact that it was raining heavily last week and also the forecast had predicted rains till Monday. But then, I thought lets take the risk - getting drenched in rain, catching cold and things like that. Mother Nature was very kind to me and kept the day time comparatively sunny and rain free, though I didn’t go out anywhere fearing sudden showers n messy roads.

And right when I was getting ready to leave, the Rain Gods starting shedding their precious tears, bidding me adieu… at least that’s how I consoled myself.

On Monday, I reached Bangalore by 4.45 a.m. only to find that the prepaid auto counter was closed. The auto drivers were having their own way asking 3 times the actual fare.

A few people like me were waiting in the queue, hoping the counter would open anytime.

Some auto drivers were even enacting a small drama, their style:
Driver 1: Hey, don’t you know the prepaid counter won’t open today?
Driver 2: Oh no! I didn’t know that…

Somehow I managed to get an auto and reached my PG around 5.15 a.m. Since the gate was locked, I had to call up Aunty to open the gate. Surprisingly, the auto driver waited and left only after someone came at the gate to open it.

I was confused if it was indeed a kind gesture on his part or was he trying to check if I really stayed there. Ghor Kalyug! Even if people were really good, we tend to suspect their intentions. I guess it is because such things are too good to be true these days.

There was another surprise waiting for me in my room. My roomies gifted me with a beautiful watch and a cute little pen stand with a teddy hugging it tightly. I have placed the teddy stand on my desk at office. I found it as the perfect place to keep my good old mobile.

And the watch… hope my good times have started!!!

Weekends

Weekends have become more significant than being merely 2 days of a week.

Every Monday you get mails saying that there are 5 more days to go for the weekend to come again. And every Friday morning greets you with happy faces in your office beaming with rays of “Thank God it is Friday”.

When I think of it, Saturdays and Sundays were never so important before in my life. Now, they are the only days when I get to connect with my soul which was left far behind in the fast and hectic pace of work life and also some time for myself.

Questions like “So… what’s the plan for the weekend?” and “How was your weekend?” have become so common like “How are you?” “How’s life?”

My husband takes up most of my time during the week days and I get little or no time at all to be with my boyfriend .That’s the reason why the weekends are so special to me.

And now that my office is shifted to Whitefield, my day begins at 5 a.m. and ‘should ‘end by 10p.m else I would miss my only source of transportation to my place of work.

Everything in my life apart from my job gets crammed up in those 48 hrs.( 32 waking hrs. to be precise)-shopping, movies, meeting friends, music classes...phew!

And the sad part is that these two days are the only times in the entire week which pass by you faster than a lightning. Before you know it, you wake up on a Monday morning and are on your way to the office again, dreaming of the next weekend.


Note:
My husband-my job :(
My boyfriend-my blog :)

Thoughts and Tears

One of my pastimes when I’m at home in Chennai is to sit on my house terrace and bask under the usually moonlit, starry and breezy, late night… just close my eyes, be a mute spectator to the random thoughts in their Brownian motion of my fluid memory. The randomness lies in the flow of the thoughts, which bring a smile on my face one moment, making its way to a tear or two the next second and again giggles of uncontrollable laughter vanishing into the redness of anger.

It is really very relaxing to just let my emotions free and let them run around like wild horses with me enjoying and reliving the moments again. And one would find me crying at that time. Those tears are neither of pain nor of joy. I feel they are simply a means of cleansing the mind, taking all the pains and sorrows with them as they flow down my cheeks leaving their salty streaks behind. They leave a sense of calmness in me.

I miss those moments here. I want more of solitude. But most of the time I find loneliness (in crowd). I can’t afford to drown in my thoughts because that would make people really question my sanity if they were to see me smile, laugh and cry all alone.

My experiments with Sports.

Sports and I are poles apart. The only day in my school when my heart clangs like huge cymbals with fear is on the Sports Day.

I don’t remember what kind of events I used to participate when I was a kid. But the day when I played kho-kho when I was in fifth std. is still clear as a bright sunny day in my memory.

It is really funny when I think of it now.

People assume that I can run just because I’m tall. And the next moment I find myself amidst a group of girls and boys, full of team spirit, shouting and screaming and cheering their teams. Well, I didn’t know the rules of the game. And even when I enquired, I was told that if I run and give kho to a team member to catch the opponent team member, that would be good enough.
And I thought that, when I’m running, the sole responsibility of catching the opponent was on my shoulders and I had to do my best to catch her. I forgot the ‘kho-giving’ part. So, I ended up running between poles, as the girls from the other team kept hopping from one side to another and the girls from my team begging me to give them kho. And I would give in, giving kho to any girl who has been requesting for a long time.

Obviously, we didn’t win that match. But before you think I was a loser, let me tell you, we did win the junior level kho-kho match. Because, by then I understood that giving kho would help me prevent wasting my energy unnecessarily. The first prize certificate laminated with pride lies safely in my folder now.

In my later school years, I would escape somehow from participating in kho-kho. The screaming of girls and the sizzling heat of enthusiasm freaks me out and I just can’t stand there with my heart ticking like a time bomb, as if it is going to burst any moment if I don’t leave that place immediately.

Another sports day I remember is when I was in my 12th std. It was the 1500 mts. race.
I was in the Diamond house. When the race was about to begin, we found that there was no participant from our house. In order to save the grace of our house, my friend and I participated in it. We didn’t aim to win. Participation is all that matters. With that spirit, we entered the race. And the worst part is, I lost count of how many laps I had completed. I still wonder if I had run an extra lap and hence lost the race and my shoe( which tore at the end of the race).

The only thing that consoled me was that I ran 1500 mts. and did manage to complete the race. And that was the first time I was running in a race. Not bad, huh?

You’ve got mail-The End.

How would you react if you were reading your forward mails as usual and you get a warning message in bold letters saying,” You have been using your official mail for personal purpose. This has been noted by the company.” You click Ok. And it continues, “A copy of your inbox is being taken as a proof and will be reported to the HR.” You click OK again. The progress bar shows the status of copying the inbox. “The inbox has been copied.”

I first thought it was some kind of a prank. When I saw my machine name too in the message, I hit the panic button. Sirens were blowing in my head. I was scared that the HR would come in search of me or call me to ask why I was using my mailbox for sending personal mails. I could not think of any convincing answer to that question which was, by now, stabbing my “professional ethics” with a huge, sharp spear.

My brain was rattling with numerous questions …
What if my rating goes down because of it?
What if I was thrown out of the company for such a silly reason?
Are they really keeping a watch on everyone’s mail box?
Then would they be able to read my mails too?
Or is there some automatic setting in the mail client that this should be done when the no. of mails sent to n fro goes beyond some limit.
Am I the only one to receive this warning?
Why didn’t the others get the same warning?
Then am I the only one sending such huge no. of forwards?
No one ever told me about this rule before. .. was it mentioned in the company mail policy? Or I never read it properly?

I was even thinking of moving all my personal mails into some folder and keeping all the official mails in the inbox so that even if someone does come to check my inbox (something like what happens in my college.. the black n white “squads” check the students’, including girls’, bags to see if we have mobiles as we are not allowed to bring mobiles to the college.)

But then, the hard fact hit me that the proof was already taken and I couldn’t do anything about it now.

I was helplessly opening the forward mails I was getting and the very thought of forwarding them to others brought all those questions back in my already cluttered head.

I was wondering why I always fall in such trouble which nobody else has ever heard of or experienced and coming out of which seems very improbable.

I was so scared that I couldn’t even reply to one of my friend’s mail in which he had asked if I was on leave (considering the fact that he hadn’t received a single mail from me).I feared someone was monitoring my mailbox.

At last, only in the evening I gathered some left-over courage within my panic-stricken heart and asked about it to my team mate (we were in the same training batch when we joined work). I was relieved to hear that he too had got the same warning. At least I’m not alone in this weird problem. He felt that it was because of some mail we had received from a batch mate that morning. I got the warning when I was trying to open a mail (which I suspected of being the cause of it all) but still couldn’t believe that it was all a prank ‘coz that mail hadn’t opened by then.

On enquiring about it with my friends in office the next day, I found the culprit mail. The mail had an attachment, an exe file, which on running just showed up a message box which said “Hi”. The file was very small, around 8 or 10 kb. Usually, exe files are very large in size. I had wondered what kind of an attachment was that… it did nothing. Only later did I come to know that it had done everything to make someone stop forwarding mails altogether.

I thought of taking sweet revenge on all my other friends and forwarded it to all of them. One of them called me up to check if the warning was because of the mail. Another friend feared that the message was because of her overflowing inbox and deleted all the mails, including all her favourite forwards and mails, which she had saved over a long time.

This was just another light hearted prank. But I realized the graveness of the situation when a friend told me about a person who was fired because he had violated the client’s mail policy by subscribing to his college groups and receiving so many forwards to his official mail id.

The result of it all… I don’t send forward mails anymore.

You’ve got mail!

Sometimes, when work gets so boring that you feel strangulated within the comforts of your very own cozy seat in your cubicle a.ka your ‘home-away-from-home’, the one thing that comes to your rescue is your mail inbox.

I am sure all ‘software engineers’ especially the ones who have joined this industry recently know what I mean.

The alert that pops up and the ‘ding’ announcing the royal arrival of a new mail into my inbox makes my heart leap with joy and I can’t resist myself from opening my inbox to see one of the many forward mails my friends send me.

While some mails bring you some cool or funny video clip, others bring some puzzles which are supposedly solvable only by highly intelligent people. Some are forwards appealing for help (most of them doing the umpteenth round around the cyber world) and there are others giving you some thought for the day. If one forward is one of those clichéd friendship messages, another one is really very sweet and makes you think of all the good friends you have. Few mails bring you the PJs of the year and few others are one of the best jokes you have ever heard or read.

Whenever I’m stuck with a buggy code, I just stroll around in my garden of these colorful mails and it gives me a fresh perspective and helps me resolve the problem. Actually, anything you do to distract yourself from the grinding work for a moment helps you a lot to get back to it with rejuvenated energy. And checking mails is the easiest way to do so.

There are days when I don’t get any forwards for a very long time and I begin to panic, wondering if there is some problem with my mail client. I keep refreshing my inbox again and again, with my eyes glued to the progress bar showing 20%...50%...70%...100%... and me anxiously waiting for a new mail to show up in the inbox.

And there are some days when I have just read a mail and moved it to some folder, when suddenly another mail waits eagerly for me to open it, read and then either save or forward it depending on how busy I am with my work.

It is sometimes true that a software engineer + joblessness = forward mails.
My presence in the office is known to my friends only when they get forwards from me. I even get mails like “What happened?” if there are no forward mails. A friend once asked me whether I came late to the office because he got my mail only in the afternoon.

Ding!

Sigh! Life of a software engineer…

Teenage life!

It is always a time for laughter and cheerfulness when I am at my aunt’s home. My 11-year-old cousin is the source of amusement and I keep giggling at everything she says or does.

The other day when I had been there, my aunt and mom had gone for shopping and we both were alone at home. We were getting bored, so I asked her to tell about her class.

She thought for sometime and exclaimed,” Yea! I will tell you this incident.” and continued,” There is this girl in my class. One day she asked a boy, who was absent for some days, ‘Why were you absent for so many days. Are you feeling fine?’ to which the boy replied sadly,’ No, I’m not feeling fine.’
The girl innocently asked,’ Why da? What happened?’
The boy said,’ Every night you come in my dream and tell I love you. That’s why.’”

I burst out laughing and wanted to know what happened after that.

It seems the girl gave one tight slap on the poor boy’s cheeks and the entire class started laughing at him. And the young Romeo started crying.

My cousin went on to narrate another incident that happened in her class on the Valentine’s Day. A boy had brought a red rose that day. During the lunch break, he called a girl to tell her something. Curious, she and her gang of friends went near him to know why he was calling her. The boy gave her the rose and said, ’I love you’.

I wanted to know how this girl reacted to it. It seems this girl burst into tears.

My cousin’s opinion: What the first girl did was right. That boy deserved the slap!

Her neighbour who is just one year older to her, seems to be learning to see the world through rose tinted glasses at this young age. She has begun to realize that ‘ Love is great!’. I really don’t understand what makes her say that, but it seems she has told my cousins that she feels like falling in love with every other guy she meets.

Such things did happen in my class too when I was their age. It started around the time we were in the 7th std. Once, a girl confessed her love to a boy only to get blasted by him. A few months later, she asked for another boy’s heart on his birthday. It was really amusing to see people falling for their classmates and some senior boys falling for the girls in my class. Teenage!

Those are the most memorable times of one’s life. Every emotion and experience seems so new.

This is the time when you start talking back to the very parents who taught you to speak.

You discover a new person inside yourself.

You fall for someone who is one among the ordinary people you meet in your life and one fine day, he/she becomes the special person for whom your heart flutters.And the whole world seems to be a happy place to live in. Now, why so many people seem special to you at this age is just beyond human comprehension. But then, if it keeps you in that rosy mood, who cares for the explanation?

And yea, this is the time when whatever the elders say seems like a lecture and we realize it much later in life that it all made sense, after all. That too, when you are imparting the same piece of advice to a younger sibling or cousin or your child. Everything that seemed reasonable at that age seems so crazy now.

Being at the other end of teenage, it is really enlightening to see that every teenager thinks and feels the same way irrespective of the generation they belong to.

Hostel Days

We were watching ‘Minnalai pidithu’ song from the Tamil movie Shahjahan on the Sun Music channel… It brought me the memories of the times when I used to stay in hostel during my college days. Actually, any song from movies like ’12 B’, ‘Parthale Paravasam’, ‘Thulluvatho Ilamai’ and other popular songs of that period, take me back to those days.

We were eight girls, including me, who had joined the college that year. We were from different parts of TamilNadu and I had moved from Calicut to Chennai for pursuing my engineering course. We all became a close-knit group pretty soon.

Our hostel was outside the college campus (coz the college is in a remote area, far away from the human population). Since there wasn’t enough space for us eight in the main hostel, the college had taken an independent house in the next street for rent, where only we first years stayed (away from our seniors, apparently to keep us in the safe hands of innocence).

Now, staying separately did give us some freedom, which we couldn’t have enjoyed staying right under the warden’s nose. We were not supposed to listen to music loudly else our radios or tape recorders would be confiscated. Being in an independent house was a real boon we were blessed with.

The picture that comes to my mind whenever I listen to the songs I had mentioned above is this…

A bright, sunny Sunday afternoon… the room is filled with sunlight… me on my bed and under the fan, which is running at full speed… my long and wet hair dangling from the pillow where I was laying my head with my eyes closed, sounds of my friends chattering or washing buckets full of clothes … all this with the constant music from the audio cassettes which were already in a bad condition because of playing them umpteen number of times.

I remember, in our first year, once we had called a spirit to predict our future using a coin that moves on a board which has the English alphabet, numbers from 0-9 and a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ on it. I’m sure most of you must have tried it. An important thing that should be taken care of when invoking a spirit, it seems, is that we should never call the spirit of some person who had died in an accident or had an untimely death in their youth. Else, it seems, it would never leave you. Spooky!

Among the several silly questions we asked, we wanted to know in which year each of us would get married. And guess what, the girl who vowed that she would never marry was told that she would wed in 2006 and those who wanted to marry early were told that their wish would be fulfilled in 2009(sounded like an eternity for them). He he he… now when I think about it, I feel so embarrassed that we called a wandering spirit only to ask such silly questions. But surprisingly, its one prediction did come true… that girl who was against getting married did indeed get married in March 2006. Coincidence?

It is not like I miss staying in hostel or I wish I could relive those days in college again, but then I’m happy that it was a part of my life.

Graduation Day

Yesterday was our Graduation Day.

The Union Cabinet Minister ,Science & Technology and Department of Ocean Development, Shri.Kapil Sibal was the chief guest.

His speech was really encouraging. One of the things that he mentioned ,which I felt that it was for me, was to have clear objectives and stand by your principles even if there is no one to support you. That made me realize that the reason why I failed sometimes was because I didn’t have a clear goal as to what I exactly wanted to do.

His speech was given to us all in the form of a booklet. That was one thoughtful gesture by the college.

Apart from being an important day in our lives it was also April Fool’s day yesterday. And I did get fooled… by my camera. Due to some problem, it refused to freeze the precious moments. I was disappointed that I couldn’t even take a snap of myself in the graduation robe, proudly holding the degree certificate in my hands with my camera. I had to use my friend’s digicam.

It was fun to be back in college and not to worry about the longlist of rules that we used to follow as students. The rules were now told to us in the form of “requests”.

We had lunch at the college canteen. It was after a long time, almost a year, that we were eating there. Usually, during such functions, the lunch would look as well as taste good. This time it wasn’t so. Reminded us of those days when we used to lose our apetite at the sight of those rock hard pooris and the taste of bisi bela bhath or fried rice.

At the end of it all, I was glad that those college days are over and am now enjoying a completely different life at work.

Misusing your tongue.

This happened when we were coming to Chennai by train.

We were six girls and were chattering aloud. There was a young couple on the side seat beside ours.

I thought I heard them speak a familiar lingo and later realized that they were speaking Sourashtra.

The train left at 10.45 p.m and soon it was time to sleep.

The lights were still on when I was going to bed by around 11.20 (I was the last one to go to bed). I heard the lady on the side seat murmuring in Sourashtra, “Looks like they are not going to turn off the light for now”.

I heard what she said (the lady didn’t know that I could understand what she was saying) and was about to turn off the light when my friend said that she would turn the lights off when everyone is settled in their beds.

By then, the lady impatiently said “Turn off the light… turn off the light…” in a language that only I could understand among everyone else there. The tone and the words she used were so rude that I, at one moment, thought of telling that we would turn off the lights soon (in her mother tongue).

That would have been embarrassing for her and so I didn’t dare to do it. I was chagrined at the thought of how my friends would feel if they know what she had just said.

The best she could have done was to ask us politely to turn off the lights if she wanted it to be done so at the earliest.

People often tend to use their mother tongue to pass comments or say something that others wouldn’t find it soft on their ears if they do understand it, especially in places where that language is not spoken by the native people there or when the population speaking that tongue is very small.

Even the so called ‘educated people’ do it even though it is far from civilized behavior. As long as they get away with it without staining their garb of decent demeanor or hurting their ego, we can see this happen all the time.

This day, last year

I was here ...

Silent Valley
















Dolphin Nose

Some SMS forwards...

These are two of the sms forwards that my friend got… felt like sharing them with everyone…

Life's crazy-
What you want you don’t get - Love
What you get you don’t enjoy - Marriage
What you enjoy is not permanent - Boyfriend
What is permanent is boring – Husband .


My nights are becoming sleepless, my days are becoming restless. So I asked God... Is this love?
God said...idiot...Summer has started.

Encounters of the musical kind

My sixth semester exams were going on and I was to have an exam the next day.

I was getting bored of studying (well, I was actually worried about how I was going to complete studying all the units before 10 a.m. the next day, i.e. before the exam starts). So I was watching MTV for sometime.

It was Nikhil Chinnappa’s show going on where he was interviewing a pop singer. The singer sang and played the guitar so beautifully that I too wished I could learn to play it. I was still in the dreamy state when the show was over and I dozed off visualizing myself playing some beautiful music on the guitar on the stage during my college day and basking in the limelight and rejoicing the thunderous applause of the delighted audience.

Trrrrng …Trrrng….

That was my phone ringing … I woke up fearing some friend calling me up asking me how much portions I had completed or asking doubts from those parts of the syllabus which I hadn’t explored yet and me getting embarrassed to face the hard and bitter reality that I had a lot to study.

Me (still dreamy and sleepy): Hello…

Voice: Hello… Naan guitar master paesaren (I am guitar master speaking…)

He was speaking in Tamil. I have the translated version here.

Me (thinking that I’m still dreaming): Hello???

Voice: I am a guitar master. Do you want to learn to play guitar?

Me (pleasantly shocked and unable to believe my ears): Yes!!!

At this point I must mention that I was wide-awake and no… this wasn’t a dream … it was for real!!!

Voice: I am working in a music class here. I can come to your house and teach you to play guitar. The fee is 200 rupees per month and the classes are twice in a week.

Me: Ok…(Wow!!!)

Voice: Have you played a guitar before?

Me: No.

Voice: Then you can start by playing base guitar. Do you play the guitar when you are in a mood…?

Me: Blink! Blink! Uhhh…(Didn’t I say I don’t know to play … and what does that mood mean?) I don’t understand…

Voice: Do you want to take the guitar lessons?

Me: Yea… But I don’t have a guitar…should I buy one?

Voice: No need. I can bring a guitar for you to play during the classes.

Me: Ok. (That’s great!!!)

Voice: Is there anyone else who would be interested in taking these classes in your neighbourhood?

Me: No… no one around here. Maybe my brother would be interested.

Voice: Ok. So when can you start taking the classes?

Me: Actually, my exams are going on now. So can I decide and tell you later? Do you have any contact number?

Voice: I’m calling from outside. Shall I call you after a week?

Me: (Now beginning to think of the possibility of this whole episode being a prank) By the way, how did you get this telephone number?

Voice: We call numbers randomly from the telephone directory.

Me: Oh! (Didn’t quite understand how they could possibly imagine getting students by calling some random telephone numbers). Can you tell me where your music institute is located so that I can join sometime later?

Voice: I’ll call you after some days. Then you can decide and tell me if you are interested in learning to play guitar?

Me: Ok.

And he cut the line.

I was still dazed. I was recollecting the entire telephone conversation again and again in my head. One minute I imagine that this was one God-given chance of making my lifelong dream of learning some musical instrument come true. The other I realize that all this was too good to be true.

Why would someone call people randomly and ask them if they are interested in learning guitar and that too in the very comforts of their home and they need not even buy a guitar…

I couldn’t get back to thinking about my exam. I even had this wild imagination that someone (my ill-wisher) had discovered my secret wish and was trying to distract me from studying thus preventing me from getting the highest score (he need not even had to try such a thing coz I was not planning to get one, anyways).

I was so excited about this that I had to tell someone. I called up my friend. Later, when my mom came home, I told her about the phone conversation. And she was more than happy that she wouldn’t have to buy me a guitar and also not worry about me going some class faraway from my home to learn playing guitar.

Sadly, as expected, the caller never called me back. Either he had forgotten my phone number or got something better to do than calling up people at random.

Learning music has been one of the goals of my life and to think that I am on the right path to achieve want I want makes me feel so proud and confident of myself. I hope, then, that one can understand why I am so excited about my music classes that I keep mentioning about them in every post. Now, when I wish someone ‘May all your dreams come true’ or ‘May all your wishes come true’, I do that sincerely with all my heart.

But, unfortunately, the rosy days now seem so far… I am now suffering from throat infection since my Madurai trip last week (it happens all the time- either cold or fever and sometimes both). And now my throat is in such a horrible condition that only air comes out of my mouth when I try to speak. Looks like ‘nazar lag gayi hai’ or ‘ kannu pattuduchu’ (I don’t know how to put that in English…someone please help out with the English translation).

Queue up, please!

The other day, we were in the queue for booking the train tickets to Chennai. There was not much crowd at that time and the last two rows in the ticket-booking center were free. People were also confused which direction the queue was moving.

As we were moving slowly, a man (A) jumped the queue and sat between my friend and me.

We got very angry and thought he must have mistaken that end to be the start of the queue. So we asked him to move to the other end. But he had no idea of budging from that place and pointing to the person sitting in the row before ours (B), said, ”He too jumped the queue. Ask him to maintain the queue. Then I’ll move.”

This answer surprised us. And we told him that if someone does something wrong then it doesn’t mean that you too should follow it. And if he really wanted someone to question that man of his action, why doesn’t he do that for himself?

He was adamant and did not move and repeated what he had said before.

By then, another gentleman rose and demanded an answer from B.Amidst an heated exchange of words, B revealed that he was already in the queue and had been away for a few moments in order to get some reservation forms and that he had also informed about it to his neighbours in the queue.

Well, that settled the matter and an embarrassed A left the place.

I was shocked to see such behaviour from an educated (he looked like one) person like A. Looks like education and civilized behaviour are mutually exclusive.

Where is this country heading to with people like him in this present generation?

No wonder there is crime everywhere around us and all major channels have special series on crime.

If someone else had done something wrong (or illegal) and got away with it, instead of standing up against it, people feel it is their right to do the same. And if they really want to follow someone, why don't they follow someone's good and commendable actions or better still, why don't they set examples(doing something useful and worthy, ofcourse)?

After this incident, we could hear more people being reminded of “Please come in the queue” by the ones behind us.

There was another person there who belonged to another extreme. There came this lady, who looked like she’s from a rich family. She came directly to the counter to ask something … “How much money should I withdraw from the bank to buy a ticket from ABC to XYZ?”

Obviously, she did not get any reply from the lady at the counter except for … yea…“Please come in the queue”.

Let me get to the musical part of my weekend. I bought a keyboard (not the one you get with a computer) and started practicing my lessons on it at home. Though slow at creating music from it, am quite successful at playing something that can be at least recognized as music.

Valentine’s day

Come another Feb.14… another excuse to celebrate “love”.

Everyone who has a boyfriend/girlfriend seems to have their day full of plans except us singles.

But more than the celebration plans, what keeps most of the people more occupied is what colour dress to wear. The reason being, every colour has a meaning which signals the opposite sex in what stage of love they are in.

The colour code may sound similar to that of the colour code for resistors, but in this dress code, each colour has a meaning that varies from place to place.

Black- Love Failure/ Rejected a proposal/Against love
Red- Committed/In love
Yellow-Friendship forever
Green- Ready to accept a proposal/Still a Single-anyone can propose to me
Blue-Still Single
White-Making peace with bf/gf after a quarrel
Pink-Crush on someone

All the other colours, it seems, scream out loud,” All are my brothers and sisters”.

Well, this colour scheme was something everyone mandatorily followed when in college (we were so jobless), only to save themselves from the situations where others misunderstood them and proposed to them (or even other way round as in, the person not proposing someone thinking he/she is already committed to someone else).

Every year, on the eve of the Feb.14, people would be busy discussing which colour dress to wear and not to wear as the meaning of the colours keep changing every year (God knows who decides this code). Some friends even plan to wear the same colour that day.

One Valentine’s day, we friends at hostel wore yellow coloured dress to symbolize friendship. Someone even commented we all looked like a group of “Saamiyaars”(we 8 friends were moving around together) which means Sadhus or Saints.

I was happy to find that in office there’s not much hullabaloo over this “just another day”(as is expected in a world of grown ups).

But, I was surprised to find that most people in Bangalore turned out in pinks and greens. If all this theory about the colour code is assumed to be true, then this city has a real problem at hand, with every other person having a crush on someone and the others waiting for someone to propose to them. No wonder then, that Bangalore Times (which has more ads than real/useful news) always has a special focus on relationships with all those articles, which are nothing but crap.

The Human Psyche

In the past 3 days, I saw 2 movies that had something (or a lot) to do with the human mind, its power and its unbelievably dangerous side.

They were – Secret Window, based on the book ‘Secret Window, Secret Garden’ by Stephen King. Johnny Depp played the central character, Morton Rainey.

The other movie was, Psycho II. Here the main character’s name is Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins.

Both these movies revealed to me that the human mind is too complex to be understood and sometimes a person’s behaviour is just beyond human comprehension.

In most of such horror movies, the person doesn’t know that he is the one killing people mercilessly and the revelation at the end comes as a shock not only to him but also to the audience.

Well, at one point of time in the recent times, I felt that blocks of my memories went missing in a flash. That was really scary because I never knew what I saw, did or said in that episode and I would go blank when I think about it. Obviously, whatever I did was never as serious a crime as the ones they show in the horror movies. Nevertheless, that was something I had to be aware of about myself so that things don't go out of my control.

To cite some examples… before that I must tell you that most of the examples have to do with the names of people and places that, much to my relief this is a very common crime and something that would make people believe that I am normal.

Example 1: I am introducing my college senior to my colleague. “Senior, he is my colleague… His name is… Blink! Blink! Blink!” What could be more embarrassing than this?

Example 2: I had to ask my colleague if I could take the chair in her cubicle. She is in the cubicle next to mine and I have known her for several months now. But at that moment, I forgot her name. And to save my face, I had to pat on her shoulder to catch her attention.

Example 3: My friends were talking about a restaurant in our area. And I asked them where it was. They both gave me shocked expressions on their faces, which confused me. I said I haven’t heard of that eatery before. They gave me even more confused looks and revealed the fact that I had been to that place before- twice.

Also, many times, it so happens that I don’t remember where I kept some of my things. Not even a trace of it in my memory bank.

After all this, I was sure that I was growing old (everyone does…but at least in my case, the signs of old age are seen much earlier than that it does in most other people).

Or maybe it was due to work. As they say, "An empty mind is a devil’s workshop", such destructive results are not surprising.

Or was I developing some kind of Multiple Personality Disorder and this memory loss was the result of some other personality resetting my memory bank?

Whatever!

As long as I don’t forget my name … well and good.

A day to look forward to.

This New Year began well… showing me the path to achieve my dreams. I found a place where I can learn music-instrumental and vocal.

I finally got allotted into a project on Jan.12.

I went home for Pongal. I met all my cousins and had a nice time.

I learnt to play violin from my 12 year old cousin, Ash. It was a thrilling experience to hold the violin and play Sa-Re-Ga-Ma … My another cousin, Srini to had begun his Guitar classes that day. I said that I am planning to learn to play Keyboard. My other cousin, NJK, too said she wanted to learn to play Veena. We all could see ourselves playing as a band before our families.

We were even thinking of our new names … Kodambakkam Aishwarya, Karaikudi Shrinivasan, Bangalore Deepa, Kalpakkam Kalpana… looks like the day when we all play as a band would be a day the world would to look forward to …