21 May 2004
Roadie Rowdies
What is it with the traffic in this city??! You
Current Mood: Angry
Current Music: In the End
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What is it with the traffic in this city??! You
Current Mood: Angry
Current Music: In the End
15 May 2004
Of 'popsicles' n sleep
These days, everyone has them - ‘NRI’ cousins, I mean. Even more so if you hail from a typically Hyderabadi family (Telugu, to be precise). Those far, yet close members of your extended family who decide to ‘find their roots’ in the stinking gullies of Abids (or Himayatnagar, or Domalguda) every once in a while.
Those who come with their princely entourage of ‘bottled water’, ‘Vitamin Pills’ and enough cartons of macaroni and cheese to see them through in case of a sudden drought. Sudden droughts and floods, you see, are fairly common in a ‘developing’ country like India.
I had an amazing encounter with a six year old American kid who actually asked me if we still traveled on elephants in India, and if there were snake charmers on every street corner. Well, you kind of let that comment pass if it’s coming from a kid who has her impossibly blue eyes forming ‘O’s in wonder. And if I wasn’t the six year kid that I was at that point, I probably would have done more than just choke on my ‘popsicle’.
I am yet to come across a Hyderabadi who didn’t sit through ‘Hyderabad Blues’ saying ‘tell me about it’ every time there was a dialogue delivery.
Anyways, coming back to the NRI brigade. There are some images that tend to stick in your mind, enduring all tests of time. Like the distinct ‘American’ smell that seems to emanate from every pore of their beings. It’s the smell that announces ‘We’ve arrived’ all the way from the airport lounge. Or the endless cartons of ‘gum’ they seemed to have lugged all the way across the seven seas.
I’ve stopped questioning why the entire family (including grandmom, great grandmom and the family cook) insist on waking up at 4am to receive them. Or why the entire brigade of family cars (bursting at the doors, I might add) has to brave the early morning smog to stand outside the airport entrance in anticipation.
All this to welcome home the prodigal family, and what do you know, the jet lag starts to kick in only moments after. It doesn’t matter - the cook is still whipping up ‘vedi vedi’ (um..hot hot) dosa’s, grandma is bustling about and already making the next batch of mango pickle, and relatives are pouring in from window to catch a glimpse of their favorite people in the whole world.
Now, say you’re this seven year old kid eagerly awaiting her cousins’ return, and damn, you want them to hurry up and give out the presents. But jet lag is jet lag, you can’t play with nature. However, as you get slightly older and wiser, you learn to battle the jet-lag in clever ways.
For instance, you can follow them around all the way from the door, to their bedrooms keeping up an endless chatter about what you’re dog did that morning. The secret is to never pause for a breath. And then, when they unzip the first Jansport backpack, wham! - start jumping around like a mindless imp and they might get the hint and hand out your ‘present’. If this doesn’t work, I think it might be best to go give your dog company the rest of the jet-lagged summer.
A much more mature and balanced view of this ‘NRI phenomena can be found in a book called ‘The Namesake’ by Jhumpa Lahiri. However, not all of us find it in our hearts to treat it as just another event, and prefer to alleviate it to the status of ‘blog content of the day’! Time to go find another popsicle, what say?
Current Mood: Wicked
Current Music: Sade- King of Sorrow
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12 May 2004
Predisposed
Someone was mentioning early-morning GRE classes somewhere, and it brought on some particularly ‘fond’ memories.
I took up the above-mentioned sure shot to instant verbosity, with the long-term dream of traveling to distant shores and making a… well, making a damn good 2-year holiday of it! Needless to say, the word ‘career growth’ also came to mind while taking the plunge.
Anyways, so I signed up for this GRE class. (And that’s also because I had no intentioned of playing the role of ‘mathematics-dunce’ for much longer.) GRE comes with a certain opportunity to ‘build character’, as Calvin’s dad would put it.
It requires you to drag yourself out of bed at as early as 5.30 am, and you would think you would be well-rewarded for this ultimate sacrifice. Nopes, no such luck – the morning is as cruel as cruel can be.
The receptionist, who (to give him his due) is seated dutifully behind the impossible large desk at 6 am. You would think he would continue to play his part and cheerfully greet you a ‘good morning’ (whatever that means), and direct you to the pre- A/C-ed temple of education. Ha! The only word I ever managed to get out of him at that hour is a guttural threat, and a self-satisfied grin born out a dreamless-slumber.
Scene 2: You’re seated in a class which the sad innards of an A/C hang rusting on a wall, and the sad whirring of a table-fan that’s been forced to circulate air in a king-sized room.
After this particularly painful ordeal, you would think the faculty would provide some respite with their pearly-pearls of wisdom. Wisdom, you get, but with a forced lesson in the vernacular language (Read: Telugu). Nothing particularly wrong with that, except Maths does tend to sound a wee-bit weird when the intricacies of LCM and HCF are being explained with equally confusing concepts of Telugu grammar.
Scene 3: Lesson in Verbal skill: So, there was this teacher who came with all the meanings listed down in her exercise book, and any deviation from the ordinary was met with an ‘I’ll throw you out’ stare.
I was comfortably drifting in and out of a pleasant reverie, and had even managed to keep my eyes open for effect, when what she said bolted me out of the blue. Now, what would YOU do if you heard the lecturer say that ‘predisposed’ meant ‘disposing in advance’?
I’ve come to the conclusion that these are some of the ploys they use to wake students up at that hour, and trust me; they did a damn good job of it. And there ends the tale.
Current Mood: Bad Hair Day
Current Music: Kiss Me-Six Pence None the Richer
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9 May 2004
Cosmic Issues
What if, this is the only day that is yours, your only hour, your only second? What if tomorrow will be someone else’s and what if the moment you have right now will never occur tomorrow? And all those plans you faithfully listed down are but the ramblings of a non-existent person? What if tomorrow all traces of your existence are wiped off from the face of the earth? No one knows you anymore, and even though you’re a memory, you’re fading by a shade everyday? And finally a day would come when there is no proof that you ever were, that you ever smiled, you ever cried, you ever thought happy little thoughts, or you danced one day in the blinding rain? Time seems to be a convenient conceptualization that has spiraled into a vicious whirlpool for all humanity. If we had no real concept of time, would we ever think of yesterday, or tomorrow, or ever make a ‘time table’ to rule our lives? Observing your pet dog for a day would probably give you a glimpse of what it’s like not to have ‘time’ rule your existence. For example, do you think your pet dog (as a representation of the non-human species ) ever frets over where it’s next meal is coming from? Or do you think it ever wonders how to make up with you after its bad behavior yesterday? Or what it will do with its life in the future? We seem to be caught in a time wrap. It’s only obvious from the millions of ads you see in the papers these days – calling out to you to take up meditation, and ‘live in the present’. The first reality that meditation confronts you with is that 99% of our problems are created because of living in the past, or the future. Time seems to be a convenient intellectualization that was created so that we could find our bearings in the cosmos; so that the inconsistency of life did not overwhelm the average human. So that it made sense that there was rhythm, harmony and decisiveness- a goal to the phenomenon called life. Think about it, if you had no concept of time, your existence would be akin to that of an animal, perhaps. Your actions/motivations driven by pure instinct, and your ultimate goal to appease the tension arising thereof. Well, that’s a heavy load to digest, even for me! Like they say, time to go, I guess!
Current Mood: Thoughtful
Current Music: My way
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6 May 2004
The Pot of Gold
Did any of you happen to catch the rainbow that made an appearance in today’s evening sky? Or perhaps most Hyderabadi’s were too busy sitting in front of their computer screens thinking up a fitting feature for their blogs ;-) It was an evening that had the potential to go down in the annals of poetic history. The potential to inspire hundreds of writers to sing praises to pots of gold, dappled sunlight streaming through impossibly grey clouds… you get the drift. Who chases rainbows anymore, anyways? I, for one, definitely believe in the age-old ‘pot of gold’ theory. For those unfamiliar with the concept - the multi-hued-ribbon-of-actually-refracted-white-light comes in a packaged deal. Apparently, along with being a pure visual delight, it holds (would you believe?!) a pot of gold at its darling little tail end. As an impossibly gullible six-year old, I remember straining my eyes and fantasizing that one day I would possess a big enough cycle that would actually take me to the end of the rainbow. I would dream of cycling for hours and hours, panting and puffing and would finally reach the Promised Land. If I had any idea of how many calories that would rid me of, I think I might have actually attempted it. So, the pot of gold I thought up was of the kind you would most likely find in an Amar Chitra Katha comic strip - filled to the brim and tumbling out into some poor farmer’s field (ok so I read a lot when I was little, ok?) However, it never occurred to me that like all of nature’s inconstancies, this had the potential to disappear on me too when I least expected. Making the ultimate sacrifice today, I skipped the 'Soprano' re-run on T.V and raced up to the terrace to catch whatever was left of the band of…umm…color. Trust Hyderabadi weather to play damp squib… the tyrant that divines rain on Divali, parched days in the monsoons and yep, rain in summer! When I reached the Promised Land, there was Mr.Nose Picking sneaky neighbor, a deeply overcast sky, and the first signs of what appeared to be a potential thunderstorm. A little bit of huffing and puffing up and down the length of my terrace ensued. Then the clouds dreamily parted, the dappled sunlight did a soundless dance on the rooftop, and then came undone the most un-proverbial pot of gold you would ever spot in the evening sky.
Current Mood: Cheerful
Current Music: Iris-The Goo Goo Dolls?
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5 May 2004
Mobile Blues
I have finally joined the ranks of 'Mobile phone lost-ee'. In a muddled, hazy moment I found myself bereft of my singularly most important possession.And as all victims inevitably do, I'm suffering from 'post traumatic stress disorder'. Those agonizing moments of denial, acceptance..and oh, I forget the rest of the phases. I think this is one of those 'episodes' in your life that cause lasting damage to your psyche-leaves you 'scarred-for life' and surfaces in the confines of a therapists armchair at some point. Sigh!A moment of an all-too-brief insight tells me that the value of a mobile phone can be wholly felt ONLY once you've lost it.That too to some loser to whom the names in your address book mean nothing more than an extract out of an alphabetically arranged 'Name Book.' To someone who'll think nothing of ripping out the sweet little 'memory chip'(pun intended on the 'memory' bit) that has been faithfully pulsing life into your otherwise isolated life. It's amazing what a humbling experience it is to lose that pint-sized instrument. For example, you might as well be saying mental good-bye's to the poor souls who's identities you trusted to your phone book.A quick search in your age-old 'hand-written' diaries will reveal that you have no other living records of all those people.Makes you wish you kept one of those neat little floral diaries by the telephone and had neatly printed peoples name, addresses, phone numbers, and 'neighbours numbers in 'case of emergencies'. Well, this is an emergency and I have no hotline to call, no neighbours number for damage control. What worsens the heart-ache is the sight of the lonely charger, hanging on the wall in anticipation.You poor thing- sniff..never shall you experience the joys of...well, whatever the joy is you feel when you're plugged into the bottom of a cell phone! Well...he's gone now-my faithful 24/7 companion for life..whisked away by some shady, greasy haired, middle-man for underhand cell phone deals...may he lose his fingers for excessive sms-ing. Oh!Btw, I think the last phase of this predicament is 'venting out' and wishing the death of the perpetuator. I feel better now..but the faint strain of the 'Walk of Life' ring tone from the neghbour's window brings on the nostalgia...and my ear burns up with jealousy.
Current Mood: Angry
Current Music: Sweet Lullaby-Deep Forest
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