Yes,I didn’t go for the industrial visit. Now, its not because I do not enjoy the company of my classmates (which I certainly do, once in a while), and its definitely not because I cant bear to live away from home for a matter of 10 days. No. It’s not that. You might not believe it, but it’s simply because, I’m bloody lazy. Yes, you’ve got NO freaking idea how lazy I’m.
I have never made myself a good cup of tea in my entire life. See, it’s not that I ‘vent tried or anything, I did try, and it was a disaster. The aftermath of which, washing up the pan and the cup, putting back the sugar and tea back in their places after a failed attempt, is simply back breaking. I’m not accustomed to such strenuous work, so pardon me.
Next comes cleaning my room. Okay, I never clean my room, but my mom does and I believe she’s got this strange ailment called, dust-o-phobia. I never encourage her in keeping it spick and span mainly because after each cleaning, a hell lot of my stuff goes missing, more like misplaced. She’s got this book of rules where each thing in a room is supposed to be kept, and she strictly abides by it. Like for example I’d scatter my books on the bed when I get back home and after a while they are neatly stacked on my table. In my book of rules, the table is just for the laptop, and books, especially engineering ones, I simply don’t care where they are kept. She calls it laziness, but I beg to differ, seriously. I can’t stand the sight of neat, well kept beds. I simply don’t feel like sleeping on them, as they are so uninviting, and I’ve got to undo the bed before I can catch any sleep on it. Again I get scandalized by Mom, and everyone else. I do keep my bathroom clean, in fact very well, but that goes unnoticed and unappreciated.
Let alone the tea, in general I can’t cook. I’m not a big fan of cooking and cleaning or anything that requires patience and forbearance. I do like driving cars, and was overjoyed when I got my drivers license. Only that it was a bane in disguise, as I was appointed the family’s official chauffeur. From picking up and dropping my sister from dance classes at unholy hours to buying vegetables became my duty and Trust me, its not exciting. Once I took my rage on the road and a distant cousin of mine caught me rash driving, and ever since I’ve not been encouraged to carry out errands.

My family, we are a bunch of misers, and we are proud of it. This attribute goes back to several generations, each competing hard to beat the pervious one. One could say that, not going for the Industrial Visit was again an act of penny pinching. Don’t see this as bragging, but I’ve been to most of those places n number of times, except for maybe Hyderabad. I don’t think I miss Ramoji Film city and Snow World as I’ve been to one of the best film cities in the world and also experienced snowing( or whatever it is called). So what my master plan was, since I am being such a cost effective kid, my mom would buy me something, like books for instance. That did not happen, and furthermore I was subject to lectures from Dad on how he constructively spent his IV at home during his college days doing his final year project. I always give a deaf ear to such stuff, but listen to my plight-It’s a time I don’t even have Facebook for pointless talk and changing profile pictures. I submerged myself to watching the tube and googling silly stuff. Once I was so bored that I even read an article on cultivating asparagus and another one on some clown called SRK, who rose to stardom by manipulating the emotions of weak hearted people. Yes, real pathetic.
So in short, my game plan didn’t work, nor do I miss going for the industrial visit. But what the hell, I get to sleep for hours; there is nothing better than romancing with the bed on a Monday morning, without fear of getting caught.

Live Flesh

We are an impossible dream seeking the night,
To forget in its shadows, the world and all else.
We in our daydream, painful and beloved,
Two leaves that the wind brought together in the autumn.
We are two beings in one, who loving each other die,
To keep the secret of our love.
But what will life matter, when we are separated.
We are two tear drops in a song, 
Nothing more we are...nothing more...  


Pedro Almodovar's Spanish movie, Carne Tremula (Live Flesh)

Speaking To You (From Rock Bottom)

I couldn't but share this one poem here

Speaking to you
this hour
these days when
I have lost the feather of poetry
and the rains
of separation
surround us tock
tock like Go tablets

Everyone has learned
to move carefully

'Dancing' 'laughing' 'bad taste'
is a memory
a tableau behind trees of law

In the midst of love for you
my wife's suffering
anger in every direction
and the children wise
as tough shrubs
but they are not tough
--so I fear
how anything can grow from this

all the wise blood
poured from little cuts
down into the sink

this hour it is not
your body I want
but your quiet company 


Michael Ondaatje. 

Those days of your life...

There are certain days when nothing goes right; starting from your hair that doesn’t stay in place to mood swings that stop you from doing truck loads of assignments for college. Those days you’d be sleep deprived and wouldn’t have a book to spend the night with. Even if you are lucky enough to get one you wake up next day with a dreadful headache and sore eyes, and plans made for the day go down the drain. When that daily cup of hot steaming tea you sip on while reading the newspaper doesn’t have that felicitous amount of sugar in it and you are too lazy to march to the kitchen to make it taste better. You realize that you’ve been engulfed by the appalling news in the papers and is definitely going to miss the college bus if you stop to have breakfast. With a near empty stomach you rush to the bus stop only to realize that you’ve forgotten the assignment which was due that day and rush back home to find you mom with a I-told-you-so expression. She takes pity on you and offers a ride to the next bus stop provided you listen to a lecture on time management and punctuality. You reluctantly accept the offer as you cant afford to miss class not because you want to attend class, but due to lack of sufficient attendance. You catch a heavily congested bus to college, clearly aware of the fact that the clock is ticking and if you beat the traffic you can make it to the class in time. You rush to class and find that the attendance has already been taken and begging for it would mean another lecture on what you mum preached over. So you are in a sorry state of affairs, bound to sit through a boring lecture on 8085 processor, without even getting attendance for the hour. You pull through it somehow and is hastily copying out pages of greek and latin from your friends’ assignment as you had procrastinated it to the 11th hour. Recess time comes by and you find that your luncheon comprises of roti and dal which you detest, but you best friend hops in and snatches your food and finishes it off to the last morsel in a jiffy. Your stomach is in rumbling, and can eat a horse now, and all you are left is a bottle of water you’ve brought from home. Your other friend understands your plight and offers you a slice of bread in which you sought refuge for the time being. The thought of sitting through three hours of lab brings forth sleep in you but you drag your ass out there and look blankly at the monitor pretending to solve a code but you are actually thinking of how many minutes have passed since you got in. Counting time you again make it through lab with an empty stomach and burning eyes and is waiting to get back home at the earliest. You manage to reach home suffice your gluttony and hits the sack after popping in a aspirin. You escape into a dream where you are atop a flying pig who takes you around Pigland where pigs rule and clouds are made of pink cotton candy. You get high on cotton candy and promise your aviator that you’ll include his part in your blog post and kisses him farewell after your small escapade. 

A memory with a watermark.

Many a times in life I wanted to leave the past behind me and start afresh, I’d want to leave everything that reminds me of a certain period of my life and move on seeking greener pastures. To an extent  I have been successful is phasing out all erstwhile memories each time they flash before me, but the naked truth is that, the more I try to cut loose of something, the more I attach strings to it, the more entangled it would get.
This is an tribute to someone who inspired me to write, to read more, told me that pitfalls now are Gods way of saying there is something better in store, who  taught me life isn’t all that easy and there were seldom any half volleys, with whom I’ve cut myself adrift these days. He is Istanbul.
I had met Istanbul on a cold February night in a virtual world when I got largely enamored by something he had written about a particular childhood hero of mine. A conversation was stuck and voila! Sparks flew and within minutes of conversing I realized that whatever I was going through in life at the moment, Istanbul had been though long back and for him, he could see and lot of himself in me. We spoke of The English Patient, his tryst with Istanbul as a Scouser, his travelogues, The Che, he being born on The Che’s birthday, my escapades, our love for Kerala food, beef, porotta, chicken, Tarantino, Woody Allen.
He would write for me, read out poems in his accented English, and sing hopelessly. He loved me reading out to him, lying in his arm chair eyes half closed perceiving every word I utter. I took him to his erstwhile life where in the midst of desperate Machine Drawing he sought relief in Keats, Shelly and Neruda. I sought refuge in him, from my monotonous world of writing codes to a whimsy world where in a magic carpet I’d fly around and see the world I long to be in. Life in general was cat whiskers, all bright, shiny, and full of life, not a tinge of gray to be spotted.
I sit and reminisce those times; I’d wait in the dusty balcony of my room waiting for him to call, and gaze at the stars, finding the brightest among them. Threads were woven between us and they animated patterns of love only that they were blurry and out of shape. I knew Istanbul was the forbidden. Anything that is forbidden has a special charm that it releases way too much pheromone for mortals to show any disdain. To me Istanbul was the forbidden apple and I being Adam wanted the apple for not for the apples sake, like Mark Twain said, but because it was forbidden.
Rational and ethical thinking eclipsed my impulsive naive self invariably and I knew I had to go. I went. Far away from his existence for his good and mine. He knew this was coming; he had anticipated that I’d press the panic button and flee. He felt heaviness within himself for dragging me through his marshy life and soiling my vesture. We parted ways. I made myself believe this wasn’t going to change the normal course of life, a minor turbulence in the roguery called life and I wasn’t going to succumb. I do not miss him yet, his memories still linger – the days we’d finish the cross word puzzle in Mint together, the day I sketched his portrait listening to his voice miles away from where I was, the Champions League final where Barca won…all that…

Bucket List Part-1

It was very recently that my childhood mate and cousin Tulika got married to her sweet heart Aravind after holding their horses for over a year. Since she and I are of the same age, and she being a few months younger to me, I’ve been subjected to high matrimonial pressure over the past few weeks or so. The wedding festivities begin a week before the D day, and I, being a bridesmaid was in and around her place enjoying good food and ushering the guests who had come to meet her. Well, with Tulika already scaling a milestone of her adulthood, eyes were turned to me as I was growing older by the day and not making much significance to the world around me. So to most of my kith and kin, I, to put in terms of computer jargon ,was a process in the Ready Queue, waiting to be executed. A lot of them telepathically told me “You are next in line *giggle*” to which I telepathically replied “Dream on *maniac laughter*”. 

So the wedding was big hit with good food, handsome people walking around, and also the relief that I shall not be stalked into the topic of getting married anymore. That was when an aunt of mine came over and told that she’s got an excellent news for me and my first thoughts being, Tulika generously gave half of her gifts to her dear cousin-Me. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, and in fact it was horrendous news. Apparently she had found me a match, something she claimed to be made in heaven( yeah right!) and went on to give me elaborate explanations on how the guy in question was a distant relative of mine. Unable to convey the message that I wasn’t getting head or tail of whatever she was trying to tell me I stood there thinking what Prithviraj would be doing then, and I figured he’d be with his wife then. Damn it. So when she paused in to take a few breaths while fighting a losing battle trying to convince me that the guy is as hot as Prithviraj, I took advantage of the situation to tell her that marriage wasn’t in the cards, at least for a few years in a deep stern voice (I was getting irritated a hell lot). Her face fell. I could see her pupils constricting. 

“I’ve got a long way to go,and as of now I’ve reached nowhere” I said, thinking it was convincing enough.

It wasn’t. “Where do you want to go? You can always travel after marriage” she cut in.

A mammoth club came and hit the back of my head. Well, that was my imagination, but that’s exactly how I felt. I then went on to give her a boring speech on the journey called life where one must experience all that’s sweet and bitter preferably before getting settled down. 

“You girls are influenced by internet and books these days. I’ve met a lot of girls like you. They have all brought North Indian lads, and some even Americans, when there are many eligible Nair boys around. Don’t be one of them.”

I wanted to sit and explain to her that my parents are okay as long as it’s a guy I get married to, but to her luck she got a phone call and scurried to find another victim. If she had the time and mind, I could have given her lectures on what I wanted to do in the years to come and why I was procrastinating the whole holy matrimony thing. 

However since she wasn’t all ears to what I had to say, let me put this down here.

1. I do a course in engineering where I get to study of outdated 8085/8086 processors and various ancient computer languages. I cant imagine myself sitting in front of a computer typing stuff that appear Greek and Latin to me for the rest of my life. So I desperately need a career shit, and I’m still in the soul searching mode.

2. I want to travel and explore places, write about them, take pictures, and dream about my escapades later on in life. Top priority as of now is given to a trip to Vaishnodevi temple/Amarnath ,JK ; which is supposed to happen as soon as I’m done with the  engineering.

3. My significant other, better half, whatever you may call for a best friend ever, who is in Ahmedabad, thinks that I need to improve on my humanitarian side, so she insists that she and I should do something for the impoverished kids in Africa. Apparently she’s got a thing for SA, which is why she chose the African continent.

4. Since I agreed on a boring SA trip, I got her to agree on a Euro Trip, covering Netherlands, Barcelona ( Thank You Woody Allen), and UK. It will be an all fun and frolic trip and No helping kids there. 

5. I’m enamored by football these days thanks to an old friend who introduced me to the beautiful game. I’d want to watch a match at Old Trafford, preferably one played between United and Liverpool. GGMU!!

6. I want to meet two people in person, one being Sourav Ganguly and the other (no points for guessing) Prithviraj ;). I have huge crushes for them from the time I’ve reached puberty, and meeting them is a dream come 

Phew! The list of things I'd like to do before kicking the bucket( here getting married) is never ending, but these are the first few that popped in. Maybe another post with lot more of my idiosyncrasies...

Watermark.

She couldn’t sleep that night, as it was terribly cold for a tropical countryside. High hopes by Floyd was floating through the speakers of her Noachian laptop as the chilling winds blew though the window giving the white curtains a phantom like appearance. She anxiously kept checking her mail every 5 minutes and kept logging out in anguish. She sat on her four poster bed stared blankly at the wall, though the mosquito nets. She kept thinking to herself, more like, she made herself believe, that he had just sent her some portion of the book he was working on. She kept re reading his mail, trying to make out the cryptic message he sent half way round the world.

“you cant put your arms around a memory. When wounds actually bled instead of clotting immediately under cynicisms gauze. As Neruda once wrote, we of that time are no longer the same”

 She went over to the cupboard and opened her locker to pull out a cookie box that housed Danish cookies once upon a time. It contained a thousand irregular bits of colored paper she could never bring herself to get rid of. It was her box of memories, snaps of their better times she shredded when they parted ways. Painstakingly she put together the pieces to make an elaborate jigsaw puzzle of the man who enticed her. Who gave her sleepless nights like this one. 

After minutes of brain teasing jigsawing she went on to check her mail and her pensive face broke into a sigh of relief. He had replied. The content of the mail was less cryptic; he came up with a request to hear her voice in his ever charming poetic style. She replied, picking and choosing her words, and asked him to call the following morning by 9. 

She popped in a sedative as she knew she’d be awake the long night anticipating his call. The dawn broke to a pleasant and sunny Saturday morning  when the rest of the world planned on the weekend nonchalant to her mind boggling thoughts. It has been quite some time, and still she thinks of him sometimes. Not thoughts tinged with nostalgia, as she consciously blacks them out. She remembers the weirdest of things, his bad taste of food, his mad love for football, the smoke rings he made while exhaling Davioff. She had moved on, put the pieces of life back together, only that they don’t fit neatly as they did once. 

Phone calls from former lovers result in a long walk down the nostalgia avenue. After a couple of hours she heard his voice on the other end of the line, his accomplished British accent and broken Malayalam. They exchanged the usual pleasantries. His upcoming book. Her writing. His girl friends. Her sister. Manchester United. Liverpool. The phone hacking scandal in the UK. Rafael Nadal. 

“its really good to hear you voice say my name, it sounds so sweet” he broke in after there was enough polite conversation for one day.

There was a long lull before she replied. “ummm, same here. The british air has altered your vocal chord though” she brought in.” so what was it in that cryptic mail”

 “ do you still think about us?” an uneasy silence followed this question.

“yeah, I do. Mostly during the EPL matches ”

“I listen to lips of an angel, and I think of you”. He cut in. “ I see an Indian girl, and I wish  its you. when  I read Neruda i hear your voice reading it out to me.  I see a Liverpool fan I think of how much you would hate him,  I think of you when I make love, I think of you when I drink bad coffee” he paused, panting.” You make it hard to be faithful”

 She listened to him dumbfounded, unable to pick out the most appropriate words to respond. Her breathing had increased; she held the phone with trembling hands. All that was audible were their synchronous breathing. 

“look, you are with rita. She loves you. Then why are these concussive thoughts coming by. It’s not right” she replied gasping.

“life took me to UK, and I cheated on you for the 1st time. But I tried to rationalize it by thinking that you’d leave me eventually. It didn’t work, so I had to tell you the truth. “

He heard slight sobs from the other end of the line. “I know I’ve given you terrible times, I was deteriorating in all aspects”

“how do you expect me to respond. To say that I forgive you for all what you have done, to forget everything? My parents have found me a guy, a Stanford grad, and I believe you’ve come to know of it, and hence why the call”

“yes, I heard that, I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want to see you mother a bunch of kids and be a wife to some tech saavy guy. You aren’t meant for all that, at least for now. You are still a kid, how can you agree to some random guy who was auctioned from the marriage market.”

“it’s the most practical thing in front of me. I’ve been very insecure all my life, and I’ve jumped into a few mistakes, but not anymore. I’ve decided to leave my past behind and start something afresh” she said 

“you are killing yourself. You are not meant to be caged. And you’re killing that part of me who still yearns for you. I can still sense your skin touching mine, your husky voice. It keeps me going. I never had the courage to let you know all that after I cheated on you”

“I hate you D, I really do” she remarked slowly

She knew he could make her dance to his tunes. She knew that he has done it before. She knew that she’d rather be with him than Mr Stanford. She knew it would create havoc at home. She knew she wanted to run away, but only to reach to him. She knew the life ahead would be uncertain as before. She just couldn’t put up a cynical voice for long, for that’s something she’s not good at. She cut the call saying she’s got to think about it. But she knew the answer already. She didn’t have to think. Later that day she got this mail from him.

You were different and same, I was different and same, I knew that is how things happen. And yet, I’d met you because I wanted something more. We are all different threads, I told myself, and once we had woven others threads into something like a bow. Once. As I remember you, I define you, I choose bits of you and like a child with a coloring book, I fill you out. Once it was desire i filled you out with, not memory. You were a blown up photograph to me. But I chose, I was arbitrary, I took what I wanted..i took some and left the rest.  Didn’t know what the rest meant. I plead guilty but ignorant; I didn’t know what women meant. 

He had written, this was his favorite extract from the book she had given him on his birthday, A Night in Tunisia by Neil Jordan. It made a lot of sense to him, and to her.