Hols!

Exams almost over save for a stupid Constitution of India paper and I can already smell the food at home and the silent,tree-lined avenues of Jam enticing me into taking a long, solitary, peaceful walk to places I am yet to explore...maybe an early morning walk upto The River's Meet and down the Marine drive.....I look forward to catching up on reading,TV(Austrailan Open here I come!) and probably tennis and swimming....lazing around in the afternoon sun in the garden...and meeting up with old friends........after a month long ordeal ....I hope to make the most if the 19 day respite that I have been given... happy hols to all!

2007

2007...already!! the last six months of college life stares at me and I feel so old!I will graduate in six months...the thought gives me a strange kind of chill down the back....I just got outta school and now I am almost...expected to be responsible and behave as an adult .... 2007 was always somewhere out in the distance...somewhere in grown-up time...the millennium just seems a short while ago...its not as if time flew by or something...but its just that as a kid 10 years back seems all hazy and you hardly remember anything ....but now 10 years back or 7 years back is so clear in the memory....4 years in Bangalore...its not a long time...its an era! and I have an eerie feeling I have not done anything worthwhile all these years...allow me to go out there and get a life..........

meanwhile why is it that Aerosmith have this uncanny ability to mirror just what you are thinking?...... leaving you a sample(lyrics) of one my favorite Aerosmith tracks,Hole in my soul:


I'm down a one way street
With a one night stand
With a one track mind
Out in no mans land
(the punishment sometimes don't seem to fit the crime)

Yeah there's a hole in my soul
But one thing Ive learned
For every love letter written
There is another one burned
(so tell me how its gonna be this time)

Is it over
Is it over
Is it over
cause I'm blowing out the flame

Take a walk outside your mind
Tell me how it feels to be
The one who turns the knife inside of me
Take a look and you will find there is nothing there girl
Yeah I swear, I'm telling you girl yeah cause
There is a hole in my soul that's been killing me forever
Its a place where a garden never grows
There's a hole in my soul, yeah I should have known better
cause your loves like a thorn without a rose

I'm as dry as a seven year drought
I got dust for tears
Yeah I'm all tapped out
(sometimes I feel broken and cant get fixed)

I know there's been all kinds of shoes underneath your bed
Now I sleep with my boots on but you are still in my head
(and something tells me this time I'm down to my last licks)
cause if its over
Then its over
And its driving me insane

Is it over
Yeah its over
And I'm blowing out the flame

Take a walk outside your mind
Tell me how it feels to be
The one who turns the knife inside of me
Take a look and you will find
There is nothing there girl, yeah, I swear
I'm telling you girl yeah cause there is a hole in my soul
That's been killing me forever
Its a place where a garden never grows there is a hole in my soul,
Yeah I should have known better
cause your loves like a thorn
Without a rose

December blues.

*This is basically a nostalgic kind of post....so it will be of interest to a few.Feel free to skip*

Another December and another boring end to the year,from the past 3 years December has been spent slogging hard for odd sem final exams which usually are held in the last week of December and 1st week of January in our god-damned university..this timing is beyond my comprehension,when I go back home, I just stare at my bedroom ceiling lying in bed all day 'coz all my friends are back in college having had their hols in Dec. 3 Decembers spent doing last minute lab experiments,then doing the lab exams and then finally theory exams....the whole 3 months of the sem squeezed into a matter of hours and last-minute-mugging orgies...........

But it was not always like this.Back in school December was the month of chilling out.We use to have our annual day in the end of December(like every other school I know) and the whole month would be spent doing various kinds of drills and exercises in the brilliant winter sun for a grand show on that day.That meant no classes for an entire month,trips to the school stadium and cardboard cricket in the corridors and inside classes..on reaching home,there never used to be too much stress on studying as all tests and exams were far away,so many evenings were spent reading all kinds of books from Glimpses of world history to numerous Enid Blyton's,even Nat-Geo mags!The best part of the month used to be the last week when the school used to close for about 10 days after the annual day.Mornings would be lazily spent watching TV and then around 11, all of us friends would gather for a round of tennis...I tell you.... nothing beats tennis in the winter or tennis under lights in summers or tennis......basically.This would be followed by reading just the most unimaginable stuff (now that i come to think of it) like hardy boys or illustrative books on Egyptian mythology......at various points of my life I wanted to be an engine driver,an Egyptologist,an astronomer,a writer,a mathematician,a drummer!!(more on that someday).In the evenings..cricket in the black field and mindless meaningless gupshup walking around the colony or sitting on the ledges around the tennis court .In the nights...I don't actually remember what I used to do...except just before sleeping I would be laying down inside my mosquito net...again reading under my table lamp.Oh and later when I was in 9th or 10th grade...most of the afternoons would be spent listening to Guns N' Roses and Def Leppard...everyday...the same songs and the same albums over and over again.I must have heard that GN'R Live Era cassette at least a 1000 times if not more.....an yeah how can I forget watching those Australian tours of various visiting teams on ESPN...even test matches...especially the Boxing Day test....It used to start around 5 in the morning and carry on till about noon.........
Looking back these winter holidays and December in schools are the things I miss most about my childhood.Summers would be spent at grandparent s's houses and Durga Puja hols was fun too but there used to be more stuff to do during those times...and less of simple lazing away those beautiful winter mornings and in general goofing around.......Ah! I shall stop here.Enough you navel-gazing depressive nostalgic ,mathematical function!thy shall not bore!(*grimaces at the misguided attempt to liven things up*)

A very very happy New year to one and all.May all your wishes and dreams come true!!!.

P.S:gave my Computer Networks paper today...so this has to be done:I bury you-you stupid acronyms you ATM,TCP/IP,UDP...you freakish IEEE standards with all your crazy numbering and most importantly you Data link layer protocols...I hate you!! Tannenbaum R.I.P muhahahahaha :-)

Dystopian themes.....

I somehow have a great liking for Dystopian themes......I like it better than any mystery/detective stuff as this whole chaos in the future thing is strangely spine-chilling.The dark 'what-can-be' side of the future gives the author a canvass which he can enliven with any shade of gray and gives us a perspective of what can be wrong with the present world...My favorites being V for vendetta
,Ayn Rand's Anthem and Issac Asimov's The Foundation series though the last one cannot be called strictly dystopian.I am not a great fan of Ayn Rand's Objectivism shit but I like Anthem for its non-pretentious, threadbare story-line.I read The Foundation Series when i was a kid and was spell-bound by the wondrous theme of a galactic empire and its collapse...I also remember reading a story back in school in my CBSE English textbook about a time-travel back into the past for a strange kind of Dinosaur Safari and how these bunch of hunters end up trampling a innocuous butterfly which causes a Domino's effect through time causing a very drastic change in the present...... and oh.. I so want to read George Orwell's 1984 but somehow have never managed to lay my hands on it.


P.S :Its 2 in the night and i have no idea why I am doing this...I have got exams 5 days from now and really should be getting back to my books...the rest of the day being spent in watching Southpark on you-tube and Will &Grace on DVD.....god bless all of us toiling away under the tyranny of VTU exams.Best of luck to everyone.

Actually speaking I am much more freer now....the conscience is liberated and I can be as aloof/critical/sarcastic as I want to be.Happy Birthday sis!.....a nice return gift of a day I received

Somebody give me a shovel...I have got memories to bury......

hand in glove

the silent war of words
caught between lines never spoken
the gaping holes,left after three years
of avoiding the inevitable.
they work hand in glove.


the eclecticism of the superficial conversation
and the purity of the baser undercurrent
intertwine and confuse.
they work hand in glove

years of small talk and running in circles
frustration- depression- rage
turn me into a recluse
they work hand in glove

scarred memories of a smile and the fragrance
of the wind blowing through the hair
of memorable bus rides and loopy earrings
sadden and bemuse
they work hand in glove

the finality of the unspoken verdict
for the frivolities entertained in the mind
of the unfaltering optimism and the desire
to give it your all -one last time
already my muse
with destiny;
she works hand in glove.

The Travails of Single South Indian men of conservative upbringing" or "Why we don't get any..."

I have gathered many insights into the endless monotony that is the love life of south Indian men. What I have unearthed is most disheartening. Disheartening because comprehension of these truths will not change our status anytime soon. However there is also cause for joy. We never stood a chance anyway. What loads the dice against virile, gallant, well educated, good looking, sincere mallus and tams? (Kandus were once among us, but Bangalore has changed all that.)




Our futures are shot to hell as soon as our parents bestow upon us names that are anything but alluring. I cannot imagine a more foolproof way of making sure the child remains single till classified advertisements or that maternal uncle in San Francisco thinks otherwise. Name him "Parthasarathy Venkatachalapthy" and his inherent capability to combat celibacy is obliterated before he could even talk. He will grow to be known as Partha. Before he knows, his smart, seductively named northy classmates start calling him Paratha. No woman in their right minds will go anyway near poor Parthasarathy. His investment banking job doesn't help either. His employer loves him though. He has no personal life you see. By this time the Sanjay Singhs and Bobby Khans from his class have small businesses of their own and spend 60% of their lives in discos and pubs. The remaining 40% is spent coochicooing with leather and denim clad muses in their penthouse flats on Nepean Sea Road. Business is safely in the hands of the Mallu manager. After all with a name like Blossom Babykutty he cant use his 30000 salary anywhere. Blossom gave up on society when in school they automatically enrolled him for Cookery Classes. Along with all the girls.



Yes my dear reader, nomenclature is the first nail in a coffin of neglect and hormonal pandemonium. In a kinder world they would just name the poor Southern male child and throw him off the balcony. "Yes appa we have named him Goundamani..." THUD. Life would have been less kinder to him anyway. If all the women the Upadhyays, Kumars, Pintos and, god forbid, the Sens and Roys in the world have met were distributed amongst the Arunkumars, Vadukuts and Chandramogans we would all be merry casanovas with 3 to 4 pretty things at each arm. But alas it is not to be. Of course the south Indian women have no such issues. They have names which are like sweet poetry to the ravenous northie hormone tanks. Picture this: "Welcome, and this is my family. This is my daughter Poorni (what a sweet name!!) and my son Ponnalagusamy (er.. hello..).." Cyanide would not be fast enough for poor Samy. Nothing Samy does will help him. He can pump iron, drive fast cars and wear snazzy clothes, but against a braindead dude called Arjun Singhania he has as much chance of getting any as a Benedictine Monk in a Saharan Seminary. '




Couple this with the other failures that have plagued our existence. Any attempt at spiking hair with gel fails miserably. In an hour I have a crown of greasy, smelly fibrous mush. My night ends there. However the northy just has to scream "Wakaw!!!" and you have to peel the women off him to let him breathe. In a disco while we can manage the medium hip shake with neck curls, once the Bhangra starts pumping we are as fluid as cement and gravel in a mixer. Karan Kapoor or Jatin Thapar in the low cut jeans with chhaddi strap showing and see through shirt throws his elbows perfectly, the cynosure of all attention. The women love a man who digs pasta and fondue. But why do they not see the simple pleasures of curd rice and coconut chutney? When poor Senthilnathan opens his tiffin box in the office lunch room his female coworkers just dissappear when they see the tamarind rice and poppadums. The have all rematerialised around Bobby Singh who has ordered in Pizza and Garlic bread. (And they have the gall to talk of foreign origin). How can a man like me brought up in roomy lungis and oversized polyester shirts ever walk the walk in painted on jeans (that makes a big impression) and neon yellow rib hugging t shirts?




Sociologically too the tam or mallu man is severely sidelined. An average tam stud stays in a house with, on average, three grandparents, three sets of uncles and aunts, and over 10 children. Not the ideal atmosphere for some intimacy and some full throated "WHOSE YOUR DADDY!!!" at the 3 in the morning. The mallu guy of course is almost always in the gulf working alone on some onshore oil rig in the desert. Rheumatic elbows me thinks. Alas dear friends we are not just meant to set the nights on fire. We are just not built to be "The Ladies Man". The black man has hip hop, the white man has rock, the southie guy only has idlis and tomato rasam or an NRI account in South Indian Bank Ernakulam Branch. Alas as our destiny was determined in one fell swoop by our nomenclature, so will our future be. A nice arranged little love story. But the agony of course does not end there. On the first night, as the stud sits on his bed finally within touching distance and whispers his sweet desires into her delectable ear, she blushes, turns around and whispers back "But amma has said only on second saturdays..."



-------sourced from Siddin Vadukut

Self tagging.....and the joys of asymmetric posts..

These long breaks from blogging have almost become a habit now...somehow I find it extremely hard to come up with sane topics to post on...what do I talk about?the most exciting that happens to me is a mass bunk in college(some might think it IS excting....for effective mass bunk latch the classroom door so that the cowardly student crowd hesitates to open it and the teachers are stuck by the finality of the act ;)) and life just rolls on from day to day.......

As i am shameful and desperately short of topics...I shall do the unthinkable and tag myself(claps and the WWF eh?).... it is a tag on books....here goes...
1. One book that changed your life?
Midnight's Children by Rushdie it shook me up and turned me around..read it during the hols after my first year..what incredible word play! what convoluted twists and turns! and the endearing part is the humaness of the characters and the one of the most brilliant endings I have ever read....seriously. go grab a copy and read it right now.even the Gold edition from your local Crosswords will do...
2. One book you have read more than once?
The House of Mr. Biswas by V.S Naipaul
brilliant.funny.moving.
3.One book you would want on a desert island?
How to kill and eat rodents the Maori way? naah...
4.One book that made you cry?
Microwave Engineering by Das&Das it not only made me cry but also grovel in the dust thrashing my fists to the ground.They should have a huge bonfire to burn unpalatable engineering textbooks and also kidnap the authors and push them down a cliff.

5.One book that made you laugh?
All of P.G wodehouse's work and also The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams
6.One book you wish had been written?
How to deal with corrupt Indian govt. offcials with your ethical framework intact :-)
7.One book you wish had never been written?
none actually....maybe all those Dan Brown books which cause unecessary ruckus and turn out to be untruthful in the end....
8. One book you are currently reading?
Godel,Escher,Bach:An eternal golden braid...actually been reading/trying to read this for the past 3 or so months....
9.One book you have been meaning to read?
Ulysses--- James Joyce ;-)
10.Tag five people.
anyone reading this can consider themselves tagged.....

the real me(coy?)

ok.1 year on blogger and still no clue to the general public about what kinda fellow i am.well....here goes..

quizzer--filter coffee lover--extremely curious--role play gaming enthusiast--orkut addict--accident prone--unreal optimist--lover of books--fetish hater--teetolar--outwardly humble--inwardly arrogant--early morning riser--wannabe CS theorist and algorithmist--rain hater--admirer of bono,turing and ab lincoln--travel loving tramp-creative--illogical--ex-vedantist--sri-lankan tea freak--sitcom fanatic--pseudo bihari--pseudo kannadiga--bangalore jaded--jolie/keira knightly/rani fan--humorous--hater of metrosexual men--big big literature-phile--anxiety prone--admirer of women with long hair--rushdie/naipaul/asimov fan--loser of keys--never angry--minor claustrophobic--dreamer--setter of unachiveable daily goals--hindu mythology steeped--metalhead--PJ king--ear pain sensitive--humongously flat nosed--loner--horribly attention deficient--expert puddle jumper--very sensitive to smells--nature ignorant--decent tennis player--restless--hydrophile--impervious to weather changes--dilbert/tintin/asterix freak---dust allergic--lover of 2nd class train travelling--people watcher---sarcastic..........and the list will go on.

The picking up of old threads

Blogging after a really long time feels great...feel like a free bird after the dreaded exam 'season'...no more anxious gut wrenching agony of 1.5 day gap between monstrous and obscure papers....had a dream this afternoon....I see vast unexplored expanses of a fat engg. textbook.. everything looks unfamiliar and the exam is just next day and suddenly i wake up....relief floods in...no more exams for atleast 4months....its over.... its over...

the reason why Mr. Psmith features on this post is coz i am smitten (if that is the appropiate word) by this guy's mannerisms/speech/wit...i had not sampled this character of Wodehouse ever before until yesterday when casually browsing through in a book store I decided to indulge in my 'dessert' of a literary meal...Wodehouse.. but didnt want to read Jeeves coz i have already have had too much of him...Psmith was a nice surprise in the sense that this story(Psmith in the city) is not your usual jump-into-mahyem-instantaneously Wodehouse novel but takes the more luxurious winding hill road to the point.its such a great feeling reading P.G.Wodehouse after nearly a gap of 3 years...3 years in which i was exposed to more variety than ever before but came across only a few novels which could make me feel gidily happy inside............ leaving you with a sample of a Psmithism.....

Psmith describing a fight which broke out in a certain meeting:
"By this time the meeting had begun to take sides to some extent .What I might call my party,the earnest investigators,were whistling between thier fingers ,stamping on the floor and shouting 'chestnuts!!' while the opposing party,the bravoes,seemed to be trying,as i say,to do jui-jitsu tricks with me.It was a painful situation.I know the cultivated man of affairs should have passed the thing off with a short careless laugh;but, owning to the above mentioned alcohol expert having got both hands under my collar,short ,careless laughs were off.I was compelled,very reluctantly,to conclude the interview by tapping the bright boy on the jaw.he took the hint,and sat down on the floor.I thought no more of the matter and was making my way thoughtfully to the exit,when a second man of wrath put the above on my forehead.You can't ignore a thing like that.I collected some of his waistcoat and one of his legs ,and hove him with some vim into the middle distance.By this time a good many of the earnest investigators were beginning to join in;and it is just there that the affair began to have certain points of resembelance to a pantomime rally.Everybody seemed to be shouting a good deal and hitting everybody else.Itwas no place for a man of delicate nature, so I edged towards the door,and drifted out.There was a cab in the offing.I boarded it.And having kicked a vigorous politician in the stomach,as he was endeavouring to climb it too,I drove off home" :) :)

mistaken identity??

this happened to me in the ART OF LIVING silver jubilee celebrations in bangalore....

me: look at that guy doesnt he look like..prakash padukone(the ace badminton
player)
ak: no...cant be..what would could he be doing in such a crowd...you must be
mistaken.
me: i am sure its him...
ak: ok lets see

and then ak follows the guy in question....goes a little to his left and then looks at him from the side...the guy gets flustered...looks at ak then turns back and stares at me.....by this time ak walks back to me.....

ak: no he aint padukone....lived in bangalore all my life...i can tell.
me: i recognize a face when i see one....
ak: there is only one way to find out...
me: whats that??
cups his mouth and shouts-"prakash!!"

the guy turns back....... annoyed this time....

me thinks-"where is deepika then??" :P :P