Life As I Know It

Watch the video at your own risk. Make sure your speaker volumes are low. Check the volume once before you press the play button. Incline your head to the left and now if you are really sure you want to waste one minute of your precious life watching two midgets screech please go ahead by all means :) This video was taken sometime in September 2008. It was on our journey to Delhi Duration :40 hours! Yup. These kids would sleep for 15 minutes and would start screeching continuously for 3 hours (Not exaggerating). It was as if they were programed to do that or may be it was just a routine. God knows. It was definitely not the nicest journey i have been on and yes, i did threaten to throw the kids out of the train. But again i did not carry out my "Master Plan". The whole situation was akin to me suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. It was a hostage situation of sorts given that there was NO escaping these kids. :)

Kids Kids Kids... Some places should ban kids. It is highly impossible to have a decent conversation if there are kids bawling or running around or putting their dirty hands in others plates -while the parents pretend to disown the miniature devils. I found a cure for that - Pick the kid. Plonk it on mommy's lap and tell the waiter that the happy couple with that chubby child will pay for your meal and RUN! P.S: I haven't actually practiced the cure. But i will. Oh how i wish i actually did that. P.P.S: If I have kids and they don't turn out the way i want them to, i will a. Give them up for adoption or b. Better still, I'll sell them :D

When I was a kid, I had to share my room with my brother. Till one day he decided that he wanted a room of his own. My parents also thought it was right for him to have his own room. The question was who was to move out? I didn’t care which room I got back then, but over the years I finally understood why my brother chose the room he did. He decided to move his things to the first floor. I was to retain our room on the ground floor. Here is what happened after he moved to the first floor: A. His room was big and was equipped with a stereo. B. He considered the whole of the first floor his “territory”. C. He said that he was the British of the Family and that I was the Indian. D. He said I scored well in History because of him. Apparently he taught me the concept of divide and rule, colonization and occupation and he introduced industrialization in the house. [I won’t get into the details about industrialization.] E. Granny could not walk up the steps. Three months into having ...

Zoozoos are the popular mascots for Vodafone. Initially I hadn’t paid much attention to them because every time there was a break during cricket I would flip the channel because I am not an ad person. People tend to watch more advertisements on TV, more than a soap, movie, sitcom or whatever else it is that comes on them. But off late they seem to have finally penetrated into my life, because every time I switch on the TV they are there. It’s very annoying to see them ALL the time. These ads have seriously taken tele-viewing to a whole new level and this is of course a good thing for the product. Kids watch TV to see Zoozoo, people have Zoozoo wall-papers on their phones, computer and I know someone who has Zoozoo clippings in their workplace pinned on the wall which once used to be the sacred place for “Friends”, I also know someone who gave someone a framed picture of Zoozoo and now they are dating. [FYI, the girl in question said, “That guy does not qualify as a romantic.” Post Zooz...

Sleeping early (read past midnight) + Loud infernal alarm clock(s) + Caffeine + Innumerable missed calls to a friend = Trip up the Chamundi Hills at 5 in the morning. After enjoying the first one hour of knowing that college is behind us my friend and I started suffering from a very serious case of boredom. Boredom actually has its up’s. We were accelerated into motion by the very idea of doing something we have done innumerable times. But the catch was to make this trip different from the rest. Yes! we actually managed to beat the routine and did something way off the track. There are 4 ways to get up to the hills – Climb the steps, Hike, Ride and climb the rocks and it was interesting to check our energy levels so we decided to Ride,hike,climb steps and climb the rocks as well. :) All this effort just to watch a sunrise, but it was definitely worth it. A still and sleepy Mysore. First traces of Dawn. Crimson light spreading over the skies. Here comes th...

As a rule man is a fool, when it is hot he wants it cold, when it is cold he wants it hot, always wanting what is not. We learnt this in Kindergarten, and yet these four lines ring so true. People are always seeking what they don’t have and later realize that they had something better all along. It’s too bad that some people never learn. But I guess those people just need more time than the rest. These four liners are not just sensible but have loads of trivia in them. A ring, a ring o' roses, A pocket full o’posies, Atch chew! atch chew! We all fall down. This little rhyme that we sang as kids has been linked to the Plague. The first symptom of the plague being a rosy red rash, posies were believed to be the cure, the sneezing was the final stage of plague and all fall down – needs no interpretation. Baa, baa black sheep Have you any wool Yes sir, yes sir Three bags full. One for my master And one for my dame And one for the little boy Who lives down the lane. This rhyme has be...

Obviously the two don’t go together. Sex forever has been a taboo, any law which even has the word in it is turned down. [God forbid one might be tempted into unscrupulous behavior which is a no no in India.] People won’t even allow schools to bring in sex education as a part of the syllabus because the parents/politicians/ jobless junta/politicians all feel that by bringing this Act into force is a free pass to introduce porn in schools. [Ha!!!] So it’s ok if teenagers have sex, experiment, not use protection, get pregnant, go to shady places for abortions – because that’s what is happening. The country is better off by not educating them, so allow them to figure things out for themselves. And the wise junta is still figuring out why? AIDS is rampant. [Go figure!] *Sex is against our culture*. So how did you get here? By a miracle? Gah!!!! Kamasutra? Remember the god of desire? Ok for all the faint hearted old politicians who stare at a woman's chest thinking it’s their birth rig...

I could never understand poetry. I always felt silly reading them. But i did enjoy The Rime of the Ancient Mariner -Coleridge and Lady of shallot- Tennyson the only two pieces of poetry i could read over and over again and enjoy every bit of it.I like Highwayman by Alfred Noyes as well but not much as the above mentioned. Why do so many people like Wordsworth's Daffodils? Everybody i know loves that poem. I don't.

I hadn’t slept on Sunday night because I wanted to stay up and watch the sunrise. I have seen the sunset often but to actually watch a beautiful sunrise is rare. Sometimes my friends and I go to the Chamundi hills at 5 in the morning climb the steps or hike all the way up and just when we reach the top the city is alight with the beautiful crimson light slowly spreading over the dark blue skies erasing the signs of the previous night. You have to be there to enjoy this. I like standing on the stone wall and look down at the city which looks very pretty. Yes, Mysore is a very pretty place, it’s quaint and cozy and extremely-sometimes overwhelmingly breathtaking. Since Monday I have been living life in cartoon motion. I have bumped into walls and pillars and got bruised and yet nothing can wipe the smile of my face. Everything is nice. Being born in to this world doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing after all. Life is nice in Technicolor. Living life in a psychedelic daze is far more ...

Finally the day has arrived. Chapter- College closed. I am just glad to be done with it. I have been wishing for this day for so long and here it is. Am I sad? No. Happy? No. Just glad that this is it. Actually I was thinking of the funny feeling I used to get when I used get ready on the first day of school. Each year I would eagerly wait for school to reopen. And during school I would eagerly wait for summer holidays. But the first day was always exciting. Day one of college was exciting too. New academic year in college didn’t bring any flutters just a groan wishing it would all end soon. But TODAY after 5 long years I had the flutters. The anticipation of a new chapter, new beginnings and everything brand new a more mature perspective towards life and people. We had our farewell today and things didn’t go well. I guess my batch-mates are the most despised no- Hated batch that ever walked the halls of the college. All my anger in college has been because of the students – especially...