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 …