Oh, it's that boy from my class!

My visit to Madurai has begun with a startling discovery that they have opened a mall near Gokhale road. I discovered it after reading this article. It is very elegantly written not discounting the fact that mall or not, it is still situated in Madurai. I also noticed that one Mr. A.Shrikumar has written the article. I remembered vaguely that a classmate of mine with the same name, ignoring the rest of school's mad sprint for engineering/medicine, took up liberal arts. I have not seen him since I joined college and recalled my mother telling me that he is now working as a journalist at The Hindu. I know and remember him because of this funny thing that happened when I was in fourth grade. Apart from the zillion other competitions that TVS had, there was one that was an intra co-curricular affair that happened every year with about 30 different competitions including English handwriting, Tamil handwriting, etc. 

Taking a slight deviation from the main story, I feel that I have to tell you about the handwriting bit. I remember the handwriting competitions very well because it was the age where a person's success in life was measured by the slant of the copper plate. My mother blamed her handwriting for all the opportunities that she missed in her life. Egged on by my grandfather and the fun gang that our family is, there has always been a medium to heavy paranoia around handwriting. I copied pages and pages of Macmillan's handwriting books, perfecting the loop of my J’s, the curve of my e's and the slant of my t's. I wrote in pen while at home even when I was in first grade when the rest of the kids were just scribbling with crayons and pencils. I used gel pens; the ones whose blue was slightly more vivid adding flavour to my perfect copper plate. There was one gel pen whose blue was more like purple and when they stopped making it, I wrote to the manufacturer and got him to ship me 50 pens. My handwriting was thus renowned in my parents' circles and was proudly displayed when someone came home (Exhibit A).

Exhibit A (Writing in 5th Std)

After a year at college, the copperplate lost its "pointiness" and started having wide spaces in between the joints, overall reflecting the amount of time I spent writing records, which varied between 30-35 minutes. In the second year, the time reduced to 20 minutes and the tittles over my i's and the crosses over t's missed their marks by inches. By the end of third year, my records became very well known for the extremely illegible scrawl and many a lab prof have shuddered at my written work (Exhibit B). I once told this gleefully to my mother, who literally clutched her heart and left the room.

Exhibit B (Writing in the third year of college)

Coming back to the main story, it was my fourth grade and I had just joined TVS. Of the 13 or so cultural competitions I had entered  (even fancy dress as the little known Bhikhaji Cama), there was a poetry recitation competition for which Shrikumar and I were chosen from Fourth "A" to represent our class. I practiced the following for days together

To My Sister

O my sister remember the stars the tears the trains
The woods in spring the leaves the scented lanes
Recall the gradual dark the snow’s unmeasured fall
The naked fields the cloud’s immaculate folds
Recount each childhood pleasure: the skies of azure
The pageantry of wings the eye’s bright treasure.

Keep faith with present joys refuse to choose
Defer the vice of flesh the irrevocable choice
Cherish the eyes the proud incredible poise
Walk boldly my sister but do not deign to give
Remain secure from pain preserve thy hate thy heart.

~ Theodore Roethke

Phrases with fancy words like "Immaculate folds" & "Pageantry of wings" stuck to me so much that I was able to retrieve this poem in Google just by searching for those phrases. I practiced this darn poem for days together. All was well, until the day before the competition, the class teacher called Shrikumar & I to tell us that she had made a mistake and only one person was to be selected from one class. She reasoned that since I was already in 13 or so contests, it made sense for Shrikumar to go for this one. 

I was heart-broken. I cried and cried at the abject breach of fairness that my mother had to ring the bell of justice; er, call the principal's office demanding a selection process by a neutral judge. It was the time of monsoons and the next day, it rained so much that my school was flooded. We were wading through the rainwater as if we were crossing rivers. I remember flying into the class and dragging the generally very nice, soft-spoken Shrikumar by his arms, through the heavy rain and water to the next building for the impending hearing by our impartial judge. 

Imagine yourself as a principal of a school and having to put up with such situations- a completely barmy kid at one hand and a nice kid almost driven to tears by the aforementioned psycho kid, at another. It almost reminds me of this passage.

"How this situation arose, we do not know," said Dumbledore, speaking to everyone gathered in the room. "It seems to me, however, that we have no choice but to accept it. Both Cedric and Harry have been chosen to compete in the Tournament. This, therefore, they will do. ."

However, it was not the case. I waved and gesticulated and thundered the well-practiced poem until the teacher was forced into choosing me. I remember seeing Shrikumar's parents, the next day, coming to our school to talk about the emotional trauma their son had to go through.

He & I buried all the misgivings of the past in middle school. It is nice to know that he is doing great what with his selection to IRS. Whenever I think of him I always remember that rainy day of the poem and my more than maniacal competitiveness. Though this madness sprouted time and again through college, I give it to CIT for totally sapping this spirit from me by the time I finished college and converting me from 

to

Everyone knows everything these days!

Should have been born at a time when things were less competitive, life was simpler and when people had to actually work hard to know things. :-)

                                                      RIP Britannica.

I chose not to attend classes while at TVS and spent long and lovely hours poring over these hardbound editions. I owe these books so much for letting me discover so many things so painstakingly that it all meant something.

We the People

What we've seen our life is such a minuscule portion of what is out there. Most of us are good people. Sitting in our cushy cubicles and raising tickets to decrease the air-conditioning we spend the day meeting our targets. Days get made when a code works, when promotions happen or in some cases, by eating good food. Outside our big offices, we curse our governments for power cuts, for posting budgets that might not favour us. We occasionally get bothered about others who are not our Facebook friends. We have all been brought up well, and in our nice schools and our middle class parents we have learnt all the values we need. We were the darling of our families and though we didn't get everything we wanted, we were always told about the less fortunate ones out there. 

 When we grow up, we tweak our morals to suit company, to make ourselves likeable and fit in. We learn to lie effortlessly, but we are still good people. We have been taught about how good people get rewarded in moral stories over and over until it internalized.  When we find a group and when we find others who are lesser comfortable than we are, we bully. We taunt and joke about things that we don't feel comfortable about.

 We do feel sad when there is an accident, when we hear about such shocking and sordid stories of murders. We say how foolish it was for a person to have killed herself/himself, over simple things. We sometimes shed tears when we see gruesome images of wars elsewhere and when we hear about shocking rapes. We click our tongues at others' misfortune and sometimes, genuinely feel sorry for them. We pray for the dead. Not everyone, but at least the ones who trend on twitter. We talk of their greatness so much that the next generation might talk of us talking about the dead soul's greatness. We give away money when we feel charitable enough and feel better. 

We all play it safe. We take all this freedom, this lack of landmines and shelling and going through the day without getting killed as granted. The only wars we have gone to is with Pakistan which gets lost in a fuzzy haze of fim actors guild's fund raisers and frantic news coverage. When we get acrimonious we create our own wars. On Facebook. And on blogs.We argue with people and try belittling each other to the extent that is allowed by HR policies.

Somehow we protect ourselves and pretend everything else that is wrong with the world as a chronic disease that can be managed with a dose of indifference. We convince ourselves that what we do will be a  drop in the ocean anyway and won't matter. We know for a fact that the system is screwed up and there are way too many things beyond our control to attempt setting things right. We have learnt enough math to calculate the path of least resistance and maximum comfort. All of us are arm chair critics. We are still good people. So naive, cushioned and protected that we willingly protect ourselves from all that shit out there and set to control at least our own world where we have power to do so. 

We all know that it takes brutal power to step out of our comfort zone and actually solve others' problems. We hail the men and women who do, as heroes. We know these people from our school, our colony and as our playmates. We amaze at their tenacity in overcoming the same middle class paranoia our parents induced in us.  Not just because of how they change people's lives but because they have the guts to quit and step out of the air-conditioning regardless of the paycheck's conspicuous absence at the end of the month. 

We just live. And happily at that. Fifty years down the lane, whether "just living" will suffice is a question that remains to be answered. Presently, our sense of achievement does not have enough data points to draw a conclusion from. When it does, we hope that along the way we did stop somewhere and went beyond our means, at least at one instance and helped someone in need.

P.S- I watched Anbe Sivam for the tenth time yesterday. The more I saw of Madhavan, the more I could replace myself and most of the people I know in his place. I remembered a friend's friend who quit his well paying job to actually teach for under-privileged kids. When I will get the guts to lose my minuscule problems in the enormities of the others,  I do not know. But when I do, it shall be the real life changing moment that all my "Statement of Purpose"s tried to manufacture.

Hedonism

At the beginning of this year, I had told myself that I'd do something small/big everyday that would make me extremely happy for the entire day. Though I was not able to keep this up on all days, I have managed to stick on to it whenever possible. When I look back, not surprisingly, it all seems to be connected with food. Most of my Facebook statuses are about food, which conclusively proves that food comes very high on my priority list.

It usually starts at the fruit counters where I would try out a different fruit everyday or I would make a  different salad with different dressing for lunch . Since the beginning of the year, I have waited for a good amount of time for the fruit counter person to start cutting a fresh papaya or a fresh water melon so that I get to eat it as soon as it is cut. Somehow eating it this fresh makes me feel so victorious. If it happens during breakfast, it is always a sure sign that my day would go very well.

As fresh as it can get

Salad counter

This has also expanded my explorations in the kitchen during weekends where I have pigged over Pricha Kozhabu, Puliyitta keerai, Parapusili and the other Tirunelvelish food. I have been updating my cooking blog quite often these days.

We have a coffee shop in the first floor of our office. It is set up like Starbucks and it belongs to one the most popular coffee shops in Hyderabad. I have started working from this coffee shop for hours together mainly because the aroma of the freshly ground coffee and the general bustle gives me the focus I usually aspire to achieve. My team-mates get quite curious why I keep hanging around in the coffee shop when I have an equally good couch near my place to work from. This couch is legendary as it  is a result of an experiment I did in 15 minutes  to try and see if they would give me a couch if I ask for it. Since then, like Sheldon Cooper would say, the couch is  "a single point of consistency in an ever changing world and if my life is expressed as a function in a four-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, this spot, would be "0,0,0,0"

The famous couch (0,0,0,0)

Also these people celebrate most of the festivals with aplomb. Brilliant decorations ensue with even more brilliant food. Take a look

Some other festival

They do this every month

Valentine's day

Today has been especially good for simple pleasures. Having woken up way early, I made my own breakfast, something that I had not done ever since I joined Google. I made white soft dosas and smeared them generously with my grandmother's molaga podi. Somehow this put me in a good mood despite it being a Monday.

After coming to office, I realized that we had Bisi Bele Bath for lunch. I kind of like to break surfaces when they serve such food. It gives me immense happiness to ladle the surface covered with Boondi on to my plate, add a dollop of ghee to the sizzling hot mixture. Today, they had hand made Vazhakka (green plantain) chips, a delicacy that only my maternal grandmother makes. Egged on by this, I decided to throw my calorie count to the wind and downed a couple of Rasagollas.

Inspired by the food, I spent post-lunch lounging on the La-Z boy, finishing all the work I had been postponing in a couple of hours. Having just turned 23, I can confidently say that I have never been hedonistic as I am these days.

P.S. Post was written after a mind-blowingly  good cup of cappuccino and one can attribute the general gaiety in the post to caffeine induced optimism :-). Also, I might not post it if I have to edit it sometime later so please excuse any grammatical errors.

Why Calvin and Salinger sound so alike

That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact.

I can totally imagine Calvin saying this, sans the profanity, of course. If Watterson had let Calvin to grow up he'd be so much like Holden and catching kids in the rye field. The anger in Holden's is the empathy and Calvin's wit make them the best medicines for bad anger bouts.

Sick :-(

One of those times where you feel excruciating pain in both the ears and through the face, lose your voice, lose a couple of kilograms over the weekend and spin every time you stand.  Damn genes.

Saturday mornings and a dog-eat-dog world!

I have never really liked Hyderabad. It is not only the weather or the traffic but the very fact that it is in the middle of nowhere with almost no Tamil food unlike Bangalore where you have a Udupi restaurant at every street corner. There are no parks nearby, no places to really bike around without getting mowed down by a moron. The sun always beats on one's neck and you would end up fearing for life every time you get onto the main road mainly because of these gangs of dogs.

Back home in Madurai, in my childhood, my neighbours' dogs Saaliny, Subramani and Poornima clanged against gates and bared their teeth at the sight of me at any given opportunity. Once, the lithe and skillful Subramani weaseled his way out of a closed gate and chased me up the neem tree before my house. I had to rouse the entire street before the dog's owner came and told me that Subramani, who was being restrained from the pouncing, really had a thing going on for me. Even the stray dogs on road smelled my presence and Carpe Diem'd by barking their wits out. My wall climbing skills were put to general display, when a motherly stray dog whom I called Mrs.Norris, chased me through a series of ten houses. Pomeranians near my house, were generally snobbish, pampered and they looked down upon most people. If they were not seated on their cushy chairs eating cake, they were yapping at me while swiveling round and round with their little bodies. They did this so much that my neighbours asked me not to come to their houses as "Saaly" and "Jackie" became disturbed after my visit.

It won't be true if I can justify my cynophobia by telling folks I was a cat at some point of time in my eight births. This is because cats creep me out too, what with all the soul searching stare. I don't mind animals like elephants, hippopotamus or the friendly cow (Lakshmi) across the street. I recently read that human brain prepares the adrenaline even if it vaguely sees the presence of threat. It doesn't really put together the pixels before deciding to flee. Maybe this is why I get all prepped up to flee even at the sight of sheep, white gunny bags or anything that remotely resembles a dog at a distance.

When I was in Mountain View, I was shocked to see a flock of dogs as small as chickens lolling about in the Google campus. People brought their dogs to office and they usually had dog fences at their doors. All these dogs looked very well groomed and pretty like their Californian owners. Someone told me that dogs in the US never really bark and are very well trained. Somehow, the fact that the owners can be sued if their dogs bite a person greatly soothed me. I was having a mostly carefree summer with the only worry of mounting credit card bills. One particular day, I was carrying home a horde of things which were to become a part of the 110 kgs of I brought back from the US. On this day, among other things, I had gotten a jar of salsa, to modify it into Tomato thokku. I was waiting for my bus from Sunnyvale, when I suddenly felt something wet and soft on my ankles. I look back to find a monster of a dog, black and satanic, almost like the apocryphal buffalo of Yama, sniffing at my ankles. While a , "Here boy, come on boy" would have been an adequate response to deal with the situation, I yelled bloody murder and gripped a passerby's arm. This was a middle aged lady, who had come out for a run. The passerby now shrieked while the dog which got  more scared than I did, jumped on its hind legs and held on to me. It was so close that I could see the white's of his eye above me. The dog's owner who had sent him to fetch a stick, came to us and pulled the dog off me. It took sometime to calm the dog and the passerby and I ended up apologizing to everyone. The dog, clearly traumatized, picked up the stick, licked a bit of the Salsa and set off mournfully onto the park with his owner.

To get over the fear, I once stroked a St.Bernard puppy named Simba, making sure the owner, a 5 year old girl, held his mouth close. It gave me waves of thrill like playing with fire. The next time I went home, it had grown up to look like a fatcow and that is the last time I enquired about Simba.

After self-destructing my health for the past half a year with oodles of food, late night TV series and no exercising, I have finally woken up. For the last two months, I have started walking/jogging along the hi-tech city road early in the morning. It is a pleasant place lined by Dell, Oracle and Deloitte offices while lie deserted during the wee hours of twilight.  I have become incapacitated to enjoy this beauty without a bodyguard to protect me from dogs. My roommate, with whom I walk this stretch often finds me zigzagging to her either sides depending on the position of the stray. These strays follow us back home and get into a fight with the resident stray of our street for trespassing. Rest assured that I always finish my last mile with a sprint.

 I have been jogging around the huge KBR park which is at quite a distance from my home, on Saturdays since last week. I find the stretch calming and soothing, not only because it feels so faraway from the maddening traffic but also because of the absence of dogs.

For once, I can walk free and feel the sun rays on my face. I can walk without the fear of inciting a dog fight or without worrying about my now reduced agility in climbing trees. Saturday mornings have been reinstated to their former glory! Woof!

Today's Google Doodle

There was a mail at office some months before to suggest India specific doodles.

This was my idea :)

I am so so happy! :)

One year at Google

One year at Google and I have already relapsed into the corporate mode. Looking back, I have realized how much I have changed in a year. There are three of such noticeable changes that I thought was worthy to blog about.

• I am so much lesser contentious than I was. I don't voluntarily participate in debates, arguments unless and until the argument directly affects my happiness or has the potential to change the way I see my day.

• If there is an incredible personal achievement, it is getting over my aversion for data/maths. Remember the days of CATs when I would skip questions with tables and graphs? In the past 6 months, I have discovered what had gone wrong. Since all those scary math questions always dealt with calculations and seldom with logic, I have been looking at them in a very wrong way.

• My Google moment of the day comes when I am sitting in a meeting with a huge graph and I make interpretations on the fly. It feels incredible to sweep lakhs of data points, find logical inconsistencies and also decide which data would support my arguments. I am hugely indebted to this place for making me realize a knack that I have always had. As I do more and more of data analyses, I feel that it is a pity in all these years, math was always about how "fast" I find a product rather than how smartly I do it.

• My idea about what to respect in people has changed oh-so-much. I just learned to distance myself from anyone who make me grimace at the start of the day. It is so much more easier to pretend some people do not exist than pick up fights with the said people to prove a point.

• Most of all, these days, I feel genuinely happy for others when good things happen to them. I think this is because I am very happy with how things have worked out for me. Trust me, this is my biggest personal achievement coming from a family who thrives on maddening amount of competition, putting freakish amount of pressure on everyone they know!

On a happy note, this year, I got

1) 1 "Gold Award"

2) 2 peer bonuses

3) an opportunity to work from Mountain View campus for a month (People who will be in CA during August, please let me know)

Also, this happened today :)

Some nice things that happened last year!

The work-station

The food

The football!

FB post -2 Saturday Mornings

Put the clothes in the Washing Machine
Remove last week's clothes from the line and dump in iron bag
Cut potatoes and put in cooker for lunch
Put three spoons of coffee powder in the percolator for the filter coffee
Stretch on couch and read one week worth of Phd,XKCD,SMBC, Oatmeal and Abstruse Goose
Read the FB walls of all those I have missed seeing
Fix up a massage appointment

Bask in the fact that it is only 9 am and there is an entire weekend along the way

=)

Something I posted up in FB long time ago.

The Word Cynicism is derived from kunikos, a Greek word meaning “dog-like"


If only I get a penny every time I cringe at the following.


1) Howard Roarks wannabes-



I do not think you are cool because you think you are Howard Roark, personified . On the contrary, I think you are a jerk because you justify your jerkiness by quoting Rand. I hate the fact that you do not think about other people because Roark set the trend and the thousand others whom you don't want to care about think that is cool.

2) People who put Hrithik Roshan/ Salmaan Khan photos as profile pictures

Is it because you want the girls to know that you look like Salman Khan or do you actually want to meet girls who would think the smart guy in the picture is you?


3) The Niceones

I know you are not interested in any aspect of my life, so why bother asking about my job, my house, my kitten and my parents, before zeroing on the topic you wanted to talk me about.

4) Serial Taggers
People will read the post if it is visible on their feed. If they have time to attend quizzes about their names/dogs/vaastu shaastra/lovology, they have time to stumble onto your note/post . It is not really necessary to tag everyone on your friend list in order that the post catches their eye.

5) Mixed Cappers
WrItING LiKe this is NOT funky. It does not make you any cooler than the fake Adidas/Puma/Reebok shirt you are wearing.

5) EmotiConned.

:) - > ^-^ ? !

6) Men in Poetry

Please do not start blogs and write poems for picking up girls. I have known instances of blogs morphing in to cupid.coms where the hero wept to several heroines in poetry.

7) Re-Re-Viewed
Okay, you saw the Inception and the Black Swan. You don't have to review it on FB before your popcorn becomes cold. Yes, Yes we know you have a very expensive Android phone by which you can access the internet.


There are some more, but it being a very tiring day, I cease here


Feel free to un-friend.

Of Shruthi Boxes and Sunk Cost fallacies

It looks like my mother has donated my "Shruthi box" to the Hanumar Koil Bajanai. This just brought back so many memories. For those who don't know what a Shruti Box is, don't fear - I didn't either for a long time. According to Wikipedia, this "box" provides a "drone" when someone is singing, so that the singer doesn't accidentally lose her pitch. This box is very close to my heart because it symbolizes eleven years of  trying to rebel and the incidental yelling and slamming of doors.  

In the ripe age of four, I was inducted in to the world of music by this old man near our rice-mill, which made us refer to him with a sobriquet of "Rice-mill guy". Three days after the first class, he sent for my mother and told her with that it was impossible to invoke a sense of tone and pitch in my. My mother was deeply offended. She should have known better, as our genetic predisposition makes us sleep in the first rows of musical recitals.

She decided that small issues like being musically numb could be solved by someone who was a better teacher. She found a woman who was very rich and taught music in the evenings because she was bored at home. My mother bribed me with a colouring book version of Thumbelina and dragged me to the said teacher's house. We hit off from the first day and my mother was convinced that she has gotten the best teacher around, impressed by the rows of trophies displayed at the teacher's house. What is life without trophies, eh? From then on, I had to finish school at three everyday, cross the road and go to this music teacher's huge house. Her family had been one of the richest in Madurai, in the days of yore and the sprawling house was replete with hidden corners and crannies like the one in "Five go to Finniston farm".

However, the most important aspect of appeal was that my teacher was an excellent cook. She would prepare the evening snack just by the time I reached her house for my music lessons. She would craft mouth watering delicacies like Malai Koftha and other fancy North Indian stuff that no hotel in Madurai served in that time. I immediately started raving about her brilliant voice and musical pedagogy and told my mother that I might even win that prestigious music competition thingy if only we hung on to this new teacher's amazing methods . I spent the next three-four years in her kitchen during the evenings coaxing her to cook and teach me while she cooked. I sang "Ra Ra Venugopala" inhaling the cloves and spices and rhapsodizing about good food. I still can't hear Ra Ra Venugopala without invoking a Pavlovian response.

Four years later, my musical talents were still "latent" according to my mother and "non-existent" according to the hordes of relatives who were forced to hear song after song when they visited us. It was a good idea because the number of visitors drastically dwindled after I started classes with the great chef. My mother also found me complaining more and more about the food she made at home and she could never figure out the reason.

She decided that I would fare better if I were to change schools as and start representing school in music competitions. This is how I ended up in TVS. This is how I stumbled into quizzing, where there were lesser girls who sang Aarahonam of Shankabaranam without batting an eyelid. My mother gave up on the school music and started entering me in her intradepartmental, under 12 music competitions.

My mother was a very optimistic person. Every time I was asked to study, I would offer to practice my singing and the mere fact that I was offering to sing would just please my mother so much.She would sit before me with rapt attention after serving hot water first, to clear my throat and would keep a flask nearby incase I wanted it in the due course of my recital.

 In 1997-98, days Shruthi Boxes were like like the Louis Vittons of modern day women and all the cool kids (namely the ones that my mother looked at with unabashed envy) seemed to carry one. It was a minimum qualification for someone to be taken seriously in the musical arena and my very optimistic mother invested a significant amount of money and bought me one. She thought that it would do some good to my "image" as a singer than having a discoverable function of its own. However, no one in our household knew what to do with it when we got the box. It was such a mysterious device and it whined like a Moaning Myrtle when the dial was turned from one end to another.

Much to my mother's disappointment, the music box had no effect on me whatsoever. I always carried a well fed look  and a nostalgic smile whenever I was asked to sing.This continued for a year and then, my mother decided I needed a shift of teachers who would "shape" me up better. I was then put into the able hands of one Mrs. Jayalakshmi whose husband was a violinist and a musical history like that filled my mother with hopes.

To my disappointment, I wasn't offered succulent treats anymore and the teacher was rather too intent on teaching me the finer aspects of Kalyani and Mohanam. I saw that she meant business and that there were no more inputs from her for my very bright culinary career. I started protesting to my mother about music classes and how she was wasting my time and the teacher's. This triggered off a huge war in my house which continued for the next five years.

My Shruthi box and I were then shifted to another famous teacher in my part of Madurai. She was a strict disciplinarian and was known to deal cases like mine with an iron hand. Needless to say, I loathed those three hours every week and spent all my time concentrating on the clock before me willing it to move faster. We choked and stuttered thorough Paapanasam Shivan, Thaigaraja and Muthuswamy Deekshithar's Keerthanas. She would make me sing the demned Aarohanam/Avarohanam thing for an entire hour (I had been referring to the later as 'Arakkonam' earlier). She was the lady about whom you read only in novels; The ones who would never succumb under obstacles such as the girl who sat before her like a rock. In retrospect, she would have made it great in corporate what with that indomitable will, but in those times, I would fume like a short circuited Shruthi box.

After we ploughed through a single Ada Thaala Varnam for 6 months, my mother had given up on the vision of me going to a classy musical recitals . She came to this teacher and asked her to quit teaching me arcane Varnams and basics and get me started on songs that I would be able to sing in Navratri/Golu places and marriages. It was then we started more on the lines of Nalungu/Oonjal songs to be sung in the weddings.

Thankfully, when I reached my tenth standard, I told my mother that I would want to "Put total concentration in studies". We stopped the madness that had started 11 years before, wasting enormous time, money and energy and it stood like an unfinished government fertilizer factory. I spent my days at home blissfully reading Gone with the wind and P.G Wodehouse henceforth.

Till date, my (dis)ability to sing is a closely guarded secret, and one can find me in the dining halls during the times of Nalungu/Oonjal. Younger women with mellifluous voices have taken my place as the official Oonjal singer. The only time I sang after that was in this competition in one of the nearby colleges. It had a series of rounds, one of which was "talent" round, where I couldn't find anything worthwhile to put on the table. I sang (for 15 thousand rupees, I would have done a somersault if required). My friend, who is rarely shaken by anything and whose mother is one of the famous music teachers in Chennai was scandalized at my notions of Carnatic music.

Yesterday, my mother did an elaborate calculation to find how much profitable it would have been had she invested the 1000 Rs she spent on my Shruthi box, on Infosys shares. She was surprisingly flabbergasted that I have no notions of raga and is as numb as her to music. I explained her about sunk cost fallacy.

The hot news is that the next generation of my maternal family (my cousins) have started on music classes and the kid goes around yelling "Baarukkulle Nalla Naadu" over and over. I sincerely hope this musical pursuit, that has started with the bar, would raise up a bar and does not end in one.

Bicycle diaries

Cyclists are the least respected species on the roads finishing right behind the stray dogs.

Functional cycling in Hyderabad is a myth unless one possesses a geared cycle.

If one is not mowed down by the ratty buses (which stop within whispering distance behind you), one might be, by the share autos.

The famous "Cycle gapla auto ootradhu" seems to transcend all linguistic and cultural barriers in the autowallah world.

After a fall, one loses trust over the cycle and always expect it to Murphy at the most critical time.

It is always better to get down from the cycle and roll it across the road in case of traffic jams.Waiting with ill-mannered, bellicose drivers who give a hoot for the traffic rules may make the one on the cycle very nervous.

The infinite undulations in Hyderabad speak thus: "What goes down, shall come up and shall break your backbone, while pedaling up ".

Never let the cycle zoom on the downward slope for the fear of cracking already cracked craniums . Hyderabad is NOT Madurai.

Exploring by-lanes is a bad idea without Google maps installed phones.

Cycle bells are useless. Portable loudspeakers MIGHT work.

If you can't procure one, yell at the pig who drives his fancy car like he owns the universe.

Also, don't hesitate to use the choicest words in your vocabulary when the said car owners reverse without knowing the existence of rear-view mirrors or the fact that they could actually turn their heads once in a while.

When in doubt, park.

Sigh, and take the share auto.

Not the best of times

Bad luck comes in bouts I suppose. Here I was leading a reasonably peaceful life with my company , glorious food, the shiny new Macbook Pro and then everything started becoming skewed. It all started one fine Saturday morning after a month I joined. My room-mates being honest software engineers are generally over worked and don't manage to pull themselves out of bed until noon on weekends. I, having planned a nice "More Kozhambu and paruppusili" for that day's lunch sauntered merrily to the stove and lifted the benign looking vessel from the burner. 15 seconds later my finger had become swollen, thanks to the now not so benign vessel. It had turned out that one of my late rising room-mates had actually pulled herself out of bed that day and had made some kind of fry. The vessel despite being empty was virtually boiling hot and when clamped to my poor finger, had scorched it.

I have this paranoia about doctors. I have never been to a proper hospital in 8 years (not counting my internship at Apollo last year). This is partly due to the fact that I was raised up in a predominantly homoepathic household where belladona, rhustax, aconite and phytolacca rolled about freely. Having a genetic disposition for throat infection we clutched to our Bio 6 with fervor and scoffed at proper medicine. I was not even vaccinated for Hep C until I freaked out reading a Michael Crichton novel and hastily got the required shots. The second reason happened to be the fact that my father, having worked in the medical college branch of his bank, virtually knew every other specialist and I was in "Uncle" terms with most of them. We popped into their houses on Sunday afternoons for the rare cases of allergy or sprains and got ourselves redeemed for free.

Given the background, I naturally soaked my hand in water and nursed it with coconut oil for the weekend. After a couple of days, I opened the rather elaborate first aid box at office and found that Soframycin was listed under burns medication.

I was going around with Soframycined hand until I started noticing that my hand was not recovering and I was finding scales around the finger which looked like fungus. Then I did the unthinkable. I googled my symptoms. The only results I found for "Fungal infection after burns" were of autopsied cases which froze my blood. The next day I rushed into this Dermatologist near my house. He asked me to make a fist and pooh poohed at my fears. He even offered to show me photos of real second degree burns. Then he charged me Rs 400 for a 5 minute consult.

Having had free consults all my life, I gaped like a gold fish and returned home feeling like someone who had just been robbed out of the wits. I started using this egregiously expensive tube of medicine and went home for Diwali. Soon this burn started morphing into a full blown fungal infection which disappeared twice every seven days and re-morphed on other days.

I came back to Hyderabad armed with to-dos and not tos from this skin doctor friend of my father's and antifungal creams. The glitch is that he had seen my hand at its pink of health, literally, when it was raw and cherubic. This means he had to wait a week until our friend, the fungus, wiped away the rouge. I ended up spending sleepless nights with a hand itching like crazy and without being able to actually touch it. It started looking very ugly and the prescription behind the tube said that it was for "weeping eczema". I don't really know who the "weeping" referred to.

After all this happened, one day, I decided to cycle to office on a Sunday because I felt like drinking Pepsi and really not feeling like buying some. I raced gleefully in the beautiful bends and curves until I felt my cycle jilting. Shortly, I was on the other side of this small road completely dazed. My cycle was lying abandoned on the other side and I realized that I had practically been thrown up in air, not unlike the things that generally happen to "other people". I had sprained my elbow and not to mention the tennis ball sized bruises on all soft tissues. I went around wearing my bruises gallantly for a while recounting my adventure to the entire amused office who had come to know about the incident.

If this was not enough, that very night I casually took an ear-bud and stuck it inside my ear for the buds' intended purpose. Two seconds later, I became absolutely deaf. My working ear had blocked itself completely. It was complete silence and yes, a bit scary.

The next day I was yelling at my room-mates unable to hear my own voice. I convinced that things were not quite the way I want them to be and went to this multi speciality clinic. I told the receptionist that I wanted to see a general doctor, a dermatologist and an ENT specialist in no particular order. The guy looked behind me expecting to see two more people and when there was none, said that the ENT specialist was the only one on call that day. After poking with a gigantic needle inside the ear, she found a big wad of wax that I had pushed inside the ear unknowingly. More poking ensued with a bigger needle and when the last bit was unplugged, even the otherwise annoying traffic of Kothaguda junction sounded like Lata Mangeshkar's voice.

With new hope in my life, I resumed my day. Today, I found that the fungal infection had spread to my right hand. Now, I am just using all my self restraint to prevent myself from Googling. The plan is to go to the best dermatologist in place and scream for help. The first pictures I have taken on my Mac are of my mutilated hand to be sent home for additional consultation.

Not the best of times.

The way words swirl around the tongue!

In a sudden spurt of enthusiasm- Here goes,

ஆங்கிலத்துக்கு இணையான தமிழ்சொற்களை கண்டுபிடிப்பது மிக இனிமையான பொழுதுபோக்கு. "rather" என்ற சொல்லுக்கு சொல்லப்போனால் என்று தமிழாக்கம் தரலாம். " I would rather drink a coffee now instead of tea later" என்பதற்கான தமிழாக்கம் "பேசாமல்,பின்பு டீ குடிப்பதற்கு பதிலாக ,இப்பொழுதே காபி குடித்து விடலாம்." இங்கே rather "பேசாமல்" என்று உபயோகிக்க படுகிறது.

நேற்று போக்குவரத்து நெரிசலில் சிக்கிகொண்டபோழுது பக்கத்தில் நின்ற மினி பஸ்சின் மீது "சிற்றுந்து" என்று எழுதபற்றிந்திருந்ததை கண்டேன் . அப்பொழுதுதான் ஏன் பஸ்ஸை பேருந்து என்று அழைக்கிறார்கள் என்பது புரிந்தது. இதில் "உந்து" என்பது வேர்சொல் (root word?). ஆனால் உந்துதல் என்பது "stimuli" or "acceleration" or "encouragement". ஒரு வாகனம் முன்னால் உந்திசெல்வதால் உந்து என்று சொல்கிறோம். பெரிதாக இருப்பதால் பேருந்து என்றும், சிறிதாக இருந்தால் சிற்றுந்து என்று கூறுகிறோம். இது "noun from a verb"க்கு நல்ல எடுத்துக்காட்டு. எனக்கு இன்னும் லேப்டாப் என்பதின் சுத்த தமிழ் வார்த்தை தெரியாது. மேலே சொல்லப்பட்ட வகையில் யோசித்தால்" மடிமூடி" என்று தமிழாக்கம் தரலாம்.

இன்னும் பல தமிழ்வார்தைகளுக்கு மிகச்சரியான ஆங்கில வார்த்தைகள் இருந்தாலும் அவை என்னவோ தமிழில் ஒலிப்பதுபோல் ,தோன்றுவதுபோல் ஒலிப்பதும் தோன்றுவதுமில்லை. ஒரு சிலநாள் முன்னால் தியானம் மோனம் என்பதற்கு நிகரான ஆங்கில வார்த்தையை என்னால் பல நேரம் முயற்ச்சி செய்தும் யோசிக்க முடியவில்லை. எழிதாக "A state of deep concentration", or "profound passion" என்று சொல்லலாம். ஆனால் "it does not ring the same bell". இந்த உபயோகத்திற்கும் இணையான தமிழ்ப்ப்ரயோகம் என்ன என்பதும் தெரியவில்லை . "தலையில் மணி ஒலிக்கிறது" என்று சொல்லலாமா அல்லது "காதில் மணி அடிக்கிறது " என்று சொல்ல வேண்டுமா என்பது தெரியலவில்லை.

ஒரு சில வார்த்தைகளை "onomatopoeic words" என்று கூறுவார்கள். அந்த

வார்த்தைகளை கூறும் பொழுது அவை எந்த செயலை குறிக்கின்றன என்பது

தெரியவரும். "buzz of a bee", "Whirr of the washing machine", "babble/gurgle of the flowing

stream" - இவை அனைத்தும் அந்தந்த ஒலிகளை நினைவுக்கு கொண்டு

வருங்கின்றன . தமிழிலும் இதை காணலாம் "தேனீக்களின் ரீங்காரம்" "சலசல

என ஓடும் நதி" "சல சல என என்ன பேச்சு ? ". இங்கே சல சல என்பது "babble"

என்பதின் மிகச்சரியான தமிழாக்கம். It feels quite the same, doesn't it?

While one can potter around, botch up, splatter and flatter in English, தமிழில்

தில்லாலங்கடியாகவும் , குறுக்கெழுத்து புதிர் போடும் திறமைசாலியாகவும் இருக்கலாம்.

ஒவ்வரு வார்த்தையும் ஒவ்வரு மொழியின் அழகை கண் முன்னால் நிருதிக்காட்டும். கம்ப ராமாயணம் தெரியாவிட்டாலும் ,

அந்த அழகை ரசிக்கும் அளவுக்கு ஒரு மொழியை தெரிந்து கொண்டால் நம் மொழிப்பற்றை நினைத்து நாம் பெருமை கொள்ளலாம்,என்பது என் தாழ்மையான கருத்து.

Duck's back and a deaf ear.

The latest hot news in my family seems to be the fact that my little cousin failed to make it to the top three in the "jumbled words" competition.My visibly distressed grandfather prattled off snide remarks whenever possible and my cousin shook them all off like a duck shaking water off its back. When my mother, who happens to be his doting aunt, pointed out his lack of interest in knowing pretty much anything, my cousin stuck his lollipopped tongue at her, and immersed himself in Pogo channel.

My grandfather is the most amazing/amusing man I have ever known. He is almost like Peter Pan, stuck at 16. He talks about Macro-economics for full 2 hours, impromptu at that; Repeatedly tells me I owe him everything for making me read "Robert Louis Stevensen" when I was 8; Reads "Phantoms in the brain" with as much enthusiasm as my room-mate; Understands Wodehouse; gets gored by a bull after wearing a black T-shirt (which happened to be the bull's non-favourite colour); walks 8 kms a day; makes a zillion in stocks; talks how my company (everyone's company to think of it) will go bankrupt in two years. He is too good to be true. If there be a Mannaarkoil mafia, he would be The Don.

My grandfather's non-subtle remarks amused me now more than it amused me as a kid. It included facts like how I missed the Nobel in medicine by refusing to take it up as a profession. This is a man, who thought I had a shot at Olympics (in gymnatics, mind you), when I hung upside down on a tree at my back-yard. He even got me an ice-cream that day.

Contrary to the expectations that kids these days are more sensitive, my cousins seem to have taken it for a fact that to survive in my family filled with accomplished relatives, one needs a lot of selective deafness. One has to wade through a sea of criticism, not give into the genetically inherent intolerance of criticism and restrain from hitting the roof. I remember being the same age as my cousin is now and being asked what "half times half" was. I thought it was one and when I did, the crowd erupted with joyous throes of how they knew I will not clear JEE. I remember being weepy and heavily upset when my mother took it as a personal failure in her mathematical training of me.

My cousin after being asked what 10/2 was, replied that it might as well be four, but he liked to deal with "big numbers" not trifling things like tens and twos. Having said so, he munched on the Murukku my grandmother had made and listened to my Grandfather's horrified banter with not as much as a quirk in the eyebrow, and ran away to play guns.

When I listened to my cousin's very convincing argument of how his C grade was oodles better than "Samyuktha's A grade", I knew, Nobel or no Nobel, the kid will make it big in the corporate and will sit on his billions one day to laugh at people who had known trivial things like what 10/2 was- also at people who had cried for not knowing what half times half was.

Quirks!

This was a tag I saw somewhere sometime before. Now that I really want to write something, I am taking it up.

1. I obsess over things that I might lose; Even a lost hair clip worth two rupees can cost me a couple of days' sleep. I used to have an emotional attachment towards my pencil box at school. I remember bursting into tears over my lost Camlin Flora pencil in ninth standard, with an amused class looking on.

2. I like routines. The fact that I seldom keep them does make me plan and replan and re-re plan the next day’s work. I like to spend time in planning, though I know it won’t be of any use. Many a day has been spent drawing colourful time-tables for exam preparation while not actually preparing for one.

3. I always lock the door. It comes with years and years of spending my time alone at home. My parents would call up every afternoon after school, asking me at least three times to lock all the three doors of my house. When I grew up, they would get extremely irritated by my perennially locked room.” Well, so you reap” would quip the wise men at this point. It still happens and my irritated room-mates would have to knock every time they come back into the room.

4. I like pictures of colour splashes and photos of crayons more than anything else. I had the biggest Crayon collection ever, when I was a kid.I stock up markers/ highlighters of all colours at my desk. I also like the colours in Google, the bouncing ball logo, as well as the bubble patterned room in my floor.

5. I hate when people crunch/munch/glug near me when I am irritated. I had a mad urge to grab the popcorn off this random person sitting next to me in “Inception”. While others were gasping at Nolan’s masterpiece, I was paranoid by the incessant munching.

6. My coffee has to be perfect. It has to be scalding hot. I’d rather not drink coffee than to drink ones that are less perfect. I loathe CCD/Barrista coffees.

7. I always press the “a” in my keyboard a nano-second before the first letter and hence chats with me will have a lot of typos like “amdurai”,”asid”.

8. I pick up useless details to an astonishing level of precision. As long as the detail is absolutely unimportant, it is bound to stick on to my mind for the next 20-30 years. The moment people say that something is important, that part of the brain automatically switches off and I let the important details float over my head like a hazy cloud.

9. I am always at a loss to know how conversations should be ended, while chatting/mailing/smsing. I try to ‘smiley’ my way out but always feel bad when they don’t “smiley” me back. Weirdness.

10. I am practically phobic of social gatherings. I always end up freaked or depressed after the gazillion weddings/conferences I have been to in my life. I don’t mind talking to a huge crowd, but standing amidst one would push me down in dumps at least for a day.

We are done. Anyone who still blogs, can take it up. :-)