Freedom at Noon

After having spent almost a year in this project, they finally decided they are better off without me...I am getting released this weekend. Yippppeeee!

No more slogging on weekends.
No more late night cabs.
No more documentation.
No more communication with pea-brained ~P's of the world.

Sigh...Life can just not get any better than this.
On second thoughts, maybe it can.

Anyone of you game for sending me a bouquet of sharpened pencils?
Or freshly baked baguettes?
I told you romance was not all about puckered lips and fluttering eyelashes...it is also about rubbing those big fat noses aginst each other :p

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it by not dying!"
--Woody Allen

Life is Beautiful!

My Lucky Thirteen

The young mother walked fast towards the gate...the lone gate which separated her from her loved one...the gate which a group of young boitserous 4 year old boys were trying to scale to reach the parapet wall. Her eager eyes scanned the groups of girls playing with their dolls on the ground. "Is that her?...No!". Panic slowly set in.

She frantically glanced around. The boys were now standing on the wall and talking gibberish and giggling among themselves... Giggling?
She looked more closely at the group and then amongst all those shorts-clad cats she found her little girl happily swinging her legs and in animated conversation with 'her men'. A sigh escaped her...was it a sigh of relief or exasperation? Only time will tell.

20 years later nothing much has changed.
The only difference being I don't sit on parapet walls any more lest Amma barges in and breaks my legs but spend my time in Coffee Day talking the 'man stuff' :)

Well so much for that 'interesting' flashback. Just the other day as i travelled home from work, i wondered what happened to those Y-chromosomed Lilliputians i spent the most wonderful 5 years of my life with...How i wish i could travel back to those days... The days spent with my 13 men!

*During one prayer meeting in the Quadrangle, a caterpillar fell on Augustine and he started developing rashes. He had to rushed home.
*Deepak hated me when he walked into 4A coz i was the first rank holder n he had to settle for the second rank. We became great friends later.
*Timmy is my bestest buddy...where are you now? (Another post on him later)
*David had a lisp and went to Germany sometime during the hIgh School days. Wonder what he and his brother are upto now :p
*Bhontu was a darling...dunno how he is now but i guess he still should be a dahling! He was so gullible. Every lunch, the guys would ask Bhontu to race and while he is gone we would gobble up his mom's tasty rotis n biryani :) Sorry da Bonda. I can cook better now. So meet me when you find me!
*On Daniel's b'day in 4A, Deepak gave him a kick, and broke his little finger on the way to Computer Class.
*Naveen dances well...well he did during our farewell in 5th std.
*Ranganath was this huge, fair, chubby North Indian who made fun of my name and then called me a pretty girl coz i had 'Burkina Faso' stamps. (Stamp collection was the IN thing then!)
*Prabhu was this thin, dark chap with whom i had a cordial relationship.
*T.K. Karthikeyan or T.K, as we used to call him then was the assitant class monitor. Yours truly was the Class Monitor of course. T.K is now the very famous playback singer 'Karthik'. Good Going Dude! But do you remember me???
*Noel was this reallly bubbly cute Muslim chap. He gave me foreign chocolates.
*Singaravelu was the quintessential smart ass. We were always at logger heads but we were good friends too...damn how did that logic work then?
* Venky was this brilliant kid who joined school in 3rd std. When asked the question, "What we breathe" he so smartky answered "Oxygen" and we all went "ooohhh...he is a show off" :p When Venky concentrates and does something, his tongue slowly peeks out between his lips...Do you still do that da?

Well since our classes were shuffled quite often i still havent talked about bunny-teeth Murali, and Isaac and Edwin...maybe another day...in another moment when the setting sun spreads a lovely hue inside your mind and you decide to walk down roads...roads you forgot existed...under wood apple trees, by a huge compound wall...when you try to catch tadpoles from the muddy pond and play GOD by letting them live in your water bottle...when you sing 'Piggy on the railway line' loudly for all to hear...when you were just Kumari...not a girl, not a woman, not an engineer...just you.

Thank you guys for making me what i am today :)

Ablution

If words could mean the world,
I would give you the ocean
To swim and to frolic,
To walk on water like He did,
To drink, to float and to wash away your sins –
All that is me!

And the Red & White Bravery Award goes to...

You saunter home late after a night out with the boys, completely drunk; wife waiting with a broomstick & you ask : “Honey are you still cleaning?”

Gandalf is hurt

To know that i am a wizard :)

I can snort, I can pout
And I raise hell when I shout
I can cry and I can fry
But on a broom I can't fly
So am I a wizard with any clout?

Tell me first and tell me fast
Is it wrong to grow up last?
With eyes exuding magic
And a brain that defies logic
I'd say, time I had a blast!

Have a fantabulous evening!
My code doesn't work :)

Why me?

Well, i am sure some wisecrack would say "Why not you?".

In the most romantic play i have ever read/seen, 'Love Letters',there is a point when Melissa says this about a certain young man to Andy :
"He should be hung upside down by his balls."

That in a nutshell sums up my hatred for this pea-brained ~P sitting across the oceans and hopping mad shouting, "Hey this isn't working! Hey this isn't working".

Aaaargh....to conclude something doesn't work, one should also have the brains to understand how it works to start with. Imagine me picking up the saxophone and simply pushing those buttons, without actually playing it and screaming, "What a silly instrument and you say this is music?"

And I work with him...on second thoughts, i report to that :(

"Forgive O Lord, my li'l jokes on thee

And I'll forgive thy great big one on me"

A Walk down the Aisle

I am not talking of my approaching wedding.
Naah, this is not even about our plan to get married in a church either.

Have you ever overtook a flying Baba Yaga on your way to Cloud NO:9? Or worse, did you flash your zillion dollar smile at her while doing it?
I dont know if I did that but I am sure I must have done something equally bad.
How else does one explain this absolute attraction people have in whispering "Excuse me" in my ears just when I want to savour my mom's curd rice a second longer than I should?
I have already described the 'Lunch' scene at my office in this post.

Picture this:
I am sitting at the corner most chair so as to not destroy the sanctity of the arrangement.
Mr.InQuestion's goal is the counter. Good choice. But what was bad is when he decided to move his lean frame between chairs. And no,I am not wearing any perfume, much less the one that attracts Men by the dozen. So why? If that is bad what really makes my blood boil is when they look at you as if you have committed a crime for seated in that chair which obstructs their path? Dude, that is NOT a pathway!
Grrrrrrrrr

Why can't people ever walk the aisle?
Do they think it would make them look lame?
Is it not in fad this season?
If you ask me, the few extra steps would actually help reduce some calories so that the piled up plate wouldn't exactly change the pH balance in one's body but then does any body LISTEN?

Aaargh...forget it. I am sure tomorrow morning as I sip my buttermilk, there would be an irritating voice at my ear saying, "Excuse me".
So I am just going to smile and tell myself, "Baby, you are one irresistibly attractive chick. So keep movin' that chair" :-D

Ode to Us

He has the funniest "hehehe"
On this side of the Arabian Sea
With brains none can match
He is every company’s prize catch
Please welcome the (adorable?) dudezie

Well of her, there's lots to say
She does infect every day
With her incessant chatter
And noisy banter
But then we adore her anyway!

As for me, I have no cleft
Of all sanity I am bereft
My speech is far from terse
And I write flowery verse
Guess I am right at the centre of left!

Don’t judge us in haste
We are kids with great taste
So what if we are a bunch of lad and lasses
Dreaming of greener grasses
Just join us when we play “Waste”

In the land of the free
We are the troublesome three
All boredom we do drub
By joining the fight club!
Not loving us would be Hara-Kiri!


*Dudezie is Shiva, my net-savvy cuz
**She is Kanthi, a.k.a Ammukuttz, my critic :)
***And well, as for me i need no introductions :D

Evening Snakes

I may look chinkie but i ain't turned into one yet to eat those darn reptiles.
But one evening that's what the board in the cafetaria said.

Wokay this post is not about the linguistically righteous but about the gastronomically inclined souls, like yours truly.

Ammukuttz was busy preparing (slight exaggeration considering the fact she spent more time in front of the tube catching Mayaavi clips or in front of the monitor checking the 'blog' scene) for her very last Board exam - Tamizh II; The one paper where no amount fibbing was enough to move the teacher to grade you with an A+. I still remember the time when i wrote 2 sheets about Mr.Casterbridge's emotional turmoil when he realised his daughter wasn't his and then Bang! the question was not on his emotional turmoil...Sheesh! how dumb can one be? Had to redo the whole essay :(

Oops, digression again! Ahem...'exhausted' that she was after studying so much with Thatha, she asked me to prepare evening snacks. And the darling cuz that I am, I obliged! After many debates and discussions on whether I should cook 'Egg Kebabs' (yup, such things do exist) or bake a Pineapple Upside down cake(Whaaat???) we finally decided to make good use of the left over macaroni from my last 'cooking' visit here -- last year :)

As she tried to tackle the intricacies of the Cheran kingdom & Tagore's life, i battled with making a white sauce. How many spoons of pepper does one ever add? Is salt to be added when that concoction is simmering or before that? When the hell will it thicken into a paste? And after some excruciating 10 minutes, Ta Da! Macaroni in white sauce was ready.

Chithapa tasted and said it was excellent with tears in his eyes. I never knew my cooking could move people to tears. Elated, I gave another bowl to Dude, who went through the entire motion of eating it without a single word and then, "Huh, a trifle toooo spicy!"
I flashed my million dollar smile - after all i am not Spicy Girl for nothing! :-D
Ammukuttz waltzd in and said, "Btw, a little too much peppah for ma taste". Hey what happened to gratitude, latitude ,longitude dammit?

Bored already? Wait till i tell you of the time i made coffee...with SALT :)

Louder Sigh

I -
broken
blind
faceless
lost
thirsty
hungry
crawling
craving
groping
seeking
- You.

**Disclaimer: I do not claim this is a poem...not even by stretching any existing definition

*sigh*

Technically the weekend has begun but then i am facing some technical difficulties :(

Calling Houston...Calling Houston

We goda siduashun.

The day just refuses to end, dammit!

Over and out.

An Engaging Proposition

The Nightingale did sing
And glad tidings bring;
Time to walk down the aisle
And go on a honeymoon down the Nile!

Since the grey cells are resting after their hot salsa number for the previous post, i think i shall resort to simple literature for this one :)

I am engaged! (It can't get simpler than this)

Yeah yeah, one nice gentleman in (a) sane moment when confronted with that proverbial life-or-death situation, decided to kick the bucket and get married to yours truly.

There is a heated discussion in the Amnesty International HQ on how to help one Mr. Somasundaram. The young bachelors of Tsilatsiku state in Timbkhutoo island are on a hunger strike to save Somu from this knotty affair.
Blair is beating around the Bush before he voices his plan while Bush is Blaring his lungs out condemning the whole proposal...

While in one sleepy cold town Nashua in New Hampshire, a content little man is sleeping, dreaming of a wonderful life with me.
Thanks Chomu, for making me your Chellam!

A Knotty Tale

Feb 13 2005 Sunday 5 A.M
A sleepy little town called Tirunelveli was lazily waking up to the chirping of birds and mooing of cows...the sun's morning blush told a million tales of a night well spent. But in a small house in Maharaja Nagar Cacofonix was performing his best recital ever.

"Move that sofa there. Not to my right, mandu (fool), but yours!"
"Athai, enakku Kadung-kaapi thaanga (Aunt, give me black coffee)"
"Where are the flowers?"
"Hey i am taking bath next" "No it's me"
"Aaaargh, Amma look she ran in. Podi loosu. Throw my clothes out at least"

Feb 13 2005 Sunday 9 A.M
After an encore by Cacofonix, things returned to a more or less peaceful state.
Some eyes were glued to the gate, others to the clock while one pair looked deep into nothingness and waited patiently.
Finally the moment arrived. So did His family.

Feb 13 2005 Sunday 10.45 A.M
"Call the girl", said a voice.
She walked in...softly but not demurely...light on toes but sharp on senses.
No flashes of lightning yet his concentration wavered.
They exchanged smiles and glances.

"If you have anything in particular, you may ask" said He.
"Why? Don't you want to know anything about me?" asked She.

Is this one of those Cavin-Susie romances?

"I do cook some times" said He.
"Is it tasty for all or can only you stand whatever you cook?" asked She.

More questions.
More smiles.
The interview was over and the interviewer left the scene...his energy spent.
She stood alone in the living room surveying the scene - is this it?
All eyes now on the interviewee.

Seconds passed. Or was it aeons?
Two words to break the silence.
"I do"

Cacofonix returned with a never-before found exuberance and enthusiasm.

"What colour saree should I wear chithi?"
"Will it be here or in Chennai?"
"Oh my God! I have my exams on that date...change it please, please"

In one unobtrusive corner her moist eyes met another pair...they were moist too.
"It will all be fine, ammai. Trust me."
"I hope so, Amma, I just hope so."

Sparisam

How I long to touch -
Touch those letters
Which spell out your name…
Would the letters stick to my fingers
And chant your name after you are gone?

How I long to touch –
Touch that snap
Which we took in that dinghy shop…
Will your stubble poke my cheek
And make me giggle?

How I long to touch –
Touch that memory
Which is deep inside my mind…
Will I disappear in that darkness
And find you?

How I long to touch …
Your touch.

**Sparisam -- 'Touch' in Tamizh

Bring me to Life

That's the song playing on my comp now. By Evanescence.
How i long to increase the volume and let it blare in my wing.

Wake me up.

Wake me up inside.

I can't wake up.

Wake me up inside.

Save me.

Call my name and save me from the dark.

Wake me up.

Bid my blood to run.

I can't wake up.

Before I come undone.

Save me.

Save me from the nothing I've become.

Until i hear my name being called out...let me sleep.

I have zzz to catch before i wake up...

Feminist Farce

Found on a T-Shirt I wouldn't be caught dead wearing :

Have you ever wondered how all our problems begin with Men?

• 'MEN'tal Anxiety
• 'MEN'strual Cycle
• 'MEN'opause

Another day...

another tag..."Happy Women's Day"!

Does it really change the way we think about this species?
Are we being fair in our treatment of the fairer sex?

Why do some women talk of women's liberation?
What kind of freedom do we want?

Will we sprout wings?
Will the sky be ours to fly around?

At the end of the day, all that I long for is a lap to rest my head, a hand to caress my hair and tell me a bed-time story...as I slowly drift away to wonderland with Peter Pan.

Before I end my monologue, a perspective from Calvin - the quintessential man:
"Trust a woman to take all the fun out of sex discrimination"

Period.

Ramblings

Up in the sky,
I fly not;
Down in the dumps,
I lie not;
Then where am I?
I know not, yet.
I was in a happy garden
Of love and joy and sunshine,
Singing as the days went by…
I woke up with a start,
Closeted in a room
With commitments and duties,
With failure and success.
It is hard to sleep
With truths and half-truths
Clamouring for place.
Where is my garden?
Where are the flowers?
Where am I heading?
I was walking down a path,
But I can’t find my footsteps;
I am lost…
In trying to find me,
In trying to be someone
…Just anyone.

**My only verse that got published in my college magazine 'Cactus Flower' :)

Musings on a full tummy...

Does talking about bitter gourd leave a Bad taste in your mouth?

The Hero

If i dish out really interesting posts then there is a high probability of this 'Commentator' reaching a wonderful milestone...wonderful at least with respect to this blog...

So should i bowl a full toss and write this thought-provoking or heart-wrenching or simply number-crunching piece? Or should i forget about that and serve an insipid platter of inedible literature, a yorker that would baffle him and clean bowl him?

Well since this is my blog and i love Fame, i shall tweak my cells, play along and...
Voila!
"Sagnik would reach his half-century in comments" :-D

Another interesting annotation to this whole episode is the guy whose blog people rush to, comes to mine and comments...Yipeee! i am famous and i am blessed too!

Dude! You are the second best commentator with 48 comments on my blog.

*Sheepish Grin*
The first one is yours truly, with a whopping 70+ ;)
Aah well, mom always felt i run off the mouth a teeny weeny bit. So there!

Love actually...

Love is not when you're given a bouquet of roses and you sniff them, but when somebody spends the whole day talking about the qualities of this or that petrol, and you listen to them.

---Komsomolskaya Pravda

The 7 Year Itch

Have you ever been stuck with a particular tune so deeply embedded in the back recesses of your mind that you hum it involuntarily? A tune you want to sing but can’t coz you don’t know the lyrics? A tune you want to forget coz it irks you by its anonymity?
Just when you think you have succeeded in flushing it out of your system by singing “Sweet Child of Mine” loud and off-key, solitude walks in ever so quietly and leaves it on your lap.

That in a nut shell is Geni-Ass to me…A precocious teenager who pissed me big time by ignoring my presence in class for one WHOLE year. Ask a girl how blasphemous it is for a guy to ignore her ;) Yet I still have no clue why I remember the way his eyes lit up when Dr.M said “Brilliant”, the way he tried to underplay it and the way he was unsuccessful in that, the way he rattled non-stop when he got excited, the way he pedalled his cycle fast so as to avoid eye-contact with me and the way he acted so indifferent to a young & cute moi!

If someone had ever told me that one day Prasanna Vignesh or PV as he was called then, would like me and my work, my only intellectual response would have been “Bah”! So deep was my dislike for this man. But then here we are, writing about each other in our blogs, wondering aloud on how quirky and yet beautiful life is, trying to catch up on the smiles we forgot to share, the arguments we shouldn’t have missed, a relationship that we never, ever dreamt possible.

Geni-Ass, you might be brilliant in solving Irodov problems but when it comes to kindergarten math, I rock! It is 7 years since we last met and not 6 as you claim *Wink*

Sleepless in Sholings

I hit the office dorm at around 2.30 A.M, got up at 4.45 A.M, sleep-walked my way to the cab, reached home at 6 A.M this morning and now back in my seat after a fitful 3 hour tryst with Goddess NithraDevi... *Sigh*

Amma's rejuvenating hot cuppa Kaapi did tweak my soporific grey cells and transported them to a world of Illusion, however the hot water bath that followed kinda numbed my senses so much that now i have no clue what they are upto...

In one such delirious moment as I tried to pour another mug of hot water on me to wake me up, this thought struck me...

When I meet friends from previous office, nobody minds if I say
"These are guys I worked with".
So why is it a problem if I say, "These are guys I played with" when I meet mates from my play-troupe?????

What a 'pun'ny thought...am sure that Mr.Grey cell is busy making out with one Ms.Idea in that dark convolution on the right side of my brain...As long as 'love' hovers, i shall not be sober :)

Have a nice Day!

Today

--The day that should have incidentally dawned brighter and better...hmm when you are in office at an unearthly , unGodly hour, blogging your gripe while waiting for the upload of EAR file to show Status as '100%', it really doesn't say much for that Dawn :)

Anyways realised sth in those moments spent haggling with Big Shot yday :

Some cogs have grown so big in the ego department they seriously believe that They are the Wheel...reminds me of this famous Calvin Quote ---

"I am significant...screamed the dust speck"

Point made.

musings of a different kind...

I was about to lose myself in bits n bytes when the phone rang...

"Hi, nice song" , said the voice.

And I spent the most wonderful 28 minutes of this day...more on this later :)
Till then, all I have to say is :

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

-- From Robert Frost's 'Dust of Snow'

Good Night!

If I don't meet you tomorrow, call the Police :)

The Midnight Saga...

With just few minutes digitally separating today and tomorrow, i sincerely hope the dawn is much better n brighter than how today turned out to be.

• Went against routine and decided to eat dosas instead of packing them. Missed the office bus, chased it in an auto, made purse lighter by some odd bucks (it does make a difference to me!) and finally entered office resembling something that the cat dragged in :(
• Opened inbox to find a mail from present SPM(ex-PM) to submit resume for a project in a field i have no clue about, in an US city i don't want to travel to...Not that they were planning to send me onsite anyway but still...
• Went and met SPM to say i don't wanna take up project and got a truckload of shit on how small fish like me don't have right to choose which pool we'll swim in.
• Got back to seat to see The Haen breathing fire like a wounded Hungarian Horntail on my productivity curve which was fast approaching Australia.
• Called up home only to be informed about the delicacies i would be missing by staying late in office.
• The Haen disappeared around 8pm with kind words, "Integrate else dis-integrate yourself".
• Tested, exported app, started server only to find WSAD display "Exceptional" behaviour.
• Now looking at my RED monitor trying to find that infernal bug!

*Sigh* Waiting for this night to end...

A galaxy of emotions...

Have you ever been caught in a whirlwind romance where you know whatever you say, it would still not be enough to convey what you are going through?
The absolute ecstasy and the pain therafter?
Those momentary pauses that can be filled with a million unplayed melodies?

Venu's The Milky Way
Daddykins' He read me to sleep

The simple narrative, an unique style which is so much a trait of these two men, turns and twists that shapeless mass called heart and opens doors i never knew existed.

Sometimes, somethings are better felt, than talked about...
Read on...