Think..

Lately I have had to think umpteen number of times before blogging, which explains why my april month blog looks dry. The reason being the overwhelming response my last blog got me. Should say I hate to “look before I leap”, particularly when the leap is towards something I enjoy doing. And I consider this impulsiveness a bigger sin than procrastination. I would like to make both(procrastination and impulsiveness, to be precise) legally offensive crimes, to make me refrain from doing them. According to popular demand I am painfully taking off my last blog. Only if every person who rang up me/ my family after reading it cared enough to write a comment. Hmmm.. Before the “removal” let me tell you, that it will remain one of my personal favourites (Sob!). Reasons I didn’t blog for the past one month, in random order 1) Was on a long vacation to my hometown and within two hours of landing in Bangalore was whisked away by my friends for a two day trip. The water/land trekking, over strained body, and extreme excitement had put me in a trance. I am slowly getting out of it , but still cant take my eyes of the snaps which I have already been through a million times 2) Too many incidents, but none I can write about without getting murdered by friends or disowned by family. 3) I failed to notice the finer details of my life possibly because there were too many. 4) My work has increased a teeny weeny bit. Now that’s what I call a lame excuse. J Topics which did inspire me in this span of time, this time in order of priority 1) The trip. My friends had even suggested a name for it -“Dirty me”. Considering that I was covered with mud from head to toe when the conversation took place 2) My Bengali intellect friend`s extreme dislike towards the media hype around AbhiAsh* wedding. He even snatched away Bangalore Times from me while I was carefully observing the sindoor on Ash`s forehead. 3) About being very bad at bowling, swimming, trekking, or even walking. And how Prabhanjan* does all the above with lazy elegance. 4) How stupid I am to watch both Tara Rum Pum and Pathfinder the same week, just for the sake of hanging out with my friends. Also about how I frequented Forum* and am waiting for a boon from the Forum Gods for visiting their mansion daily for the past whole week. 5) About realizing that one of the scariest things that could happen is to perceive a person you have known for long in a different light. Tara Rum Pum: The movie aims at making young citizens (who should be enjoying their summer vacations now) realize the value of hard earned money. Which leads to the fact that no one should spend 150 Rs on an YashRaj movie, ever. Aditya Chopra prefers the kids learning this the hard way. *AbhiAsh- Abhishek Bachchan Married Aishwarya Rai .Both of them Indian movie super stars, with half a dozen past affairs to talk about * Forum- A mall in Bangalore * Prabhanjan- Read my Introduction.

Kidwai

I was waiting in front of Kidwai Cancer hospital, along with two other friends, all three of us dragged from our night shifts. There was a mentally challenged girl (read little crazy) doing the rounds. I never knew she could scare the be-Jesus out of me, in spite of it being broad day light and having two adult men fit enough to protect me around me. (By Fit I mean physically, cause I dont think they had any mental inclination towards my safety, as one of them was alluring the girl towards me). I was missing my roommate very badly, she had gone home to Chennai, hence was not with us. I knew she wouldn’t have had plans to leave me alone with the crazy lady, like these two devils were having. All in all I was not feeling very good. My friend playing a chess game in his N 70 just to keep his eyes open, and me with my provogue t shirt and short hair, carrying two to three gift wrapped boxes, and loads of chocolates looked like aliens in the hospital verandah. This should have attracted the crazy lady I mentioned earlier. So, What were we doing there?It`s my friend`s birthday and this is kind of the surprise we had organised for her, a visit to the children`s dept of Kidwai cancer hosptial. She had been here before and had loved it. And we thought it would be the best birthday gift we could give her. As of now, we are waiting for her to enter the scene along with another fellow who is bringing her to the place(her eyes tied with my beautiful scarf). After both of them joined us, we went into the children’s ward to distribute chocolates, biscuits and fruits which we had bought for them. They had shaven heads, with blue marks all over their face, all of them were below ten years of age, and almost all of them had one or the other form of fatal cancer. I donno how much of a social worker lives inside of me, neither was I ready to feel sympathy cause I strongly believe that’s a useless emotion. But I just remember feeling one thing for sure, Blessed. The kids were in chemotherapy, their families spending their entire source of income with the slightest hope of getting their child’s lifetime extended. They had no life outside of the hospital, no thought other than fighting cancer, the entire 24 hrs of their day.I couldn’t do anything much for them other than giving a handful of money to the parents who came running to us but I came out promising myself one thing. Never ever to feel sad for all the silly reasons I usually feel sad for. For not being the mysterious girl whom every guy falls for, for not being tall enough, or for not performing good enough in an interview. I am healthy (masha Allah) and I get the food that I want to survive without any difficulty (other than climbing six floors to my canteen), and I am blessed. I still wonder what the girl we saw in the verandah would have undergone in life to loose her mental stability at such a young age.

I also saw nishabd

Today after spending about 35 hrs continous without sleep, I went to watch nishabd. Nishabd is the latest Amitabh Bachchan release, making headlines for all the wrong reasons. 60 year old guy falling in love with 18yr old girl. A good discussion has been done on it by my friend thanku in his blog whose link you can find in the bottom of this page. So I don’t need to go into that side of the movie. I went for the movie with my roomie. I enjoy movies the most when I go with her alone. We have our own little jokes, and crazy fun which we can never have with a big gang or a boy friend . We went to watch it in PVR cinemas, one of my fav hangout spots. So it’s a multiplex , and I had to pay 130 Rs for the movie. What I am implying is it`s not a low end theatre I am watching the movie in. I think I have emphasized enough on that. So while I was watching Giah Khan`s long beautiful legs from fifteen different angles, my roomie kept on asking me if I was stamping her. I didn’t pay any attention to her rants, I had better things to do. (Don’t expect any guy putting his leg on our seat story now, that I assume only happens in Thodupuzha* theatre ) I told her I was not stamping anything, till after a few minutes I felt a big living object pass by my legs. I froze, threw away my sandals and pulled my feet up on my seat, and turned to lavan (her name) and asked”did u just stamp me?” Both of us realized it was a third living being taking turns stamping us and not each other. I don’t particularly remember how Amitabh fell in love with Giah, after that. My mind was preoccupied with trying to imagine the different forms of God`s creations which could have brushed my feet. I was sitting in a multiplex theatre like how my great-grand mom sits on our dining table. Lavan has a nokia 1100 which is blessed with a torch light which my mp3 playing 1.3 Mega pixel 6131 set doesn’t have. We started frantically searching for the object, beneath our chairs. I was also hunting for my sandals which I threw in panic. We couldn’t find anything, but my imagination ran wild. I thought it could be a snake. And what if it bites us. But what was scarier was the thought that it could be a puppy. I am a muslim, and we are not supposed to touch puppies ,if at all we do, we should take bath 7 times, once being in sand, if my memory serves me right. Amitabh is teary now, he`s lost the laughter he had when the long legs were around. I think his wife found out. Anyway who cares, lavan whispers in my ear if it’s a baby crawling. Now that cracked me up (see why i enjoy going out with her). I was dying for the movie to end to start our real search. But the crowd probably scared the living being off. This movie had created waves , with its concept and I came out of the theatre thinking if I should voluntarily take the 7-time bath. PVR is one of the best theatres , and I continue to be loyal to it. But a puppy(it is a puppy, i am sure now ) doing the rounds during a movie is totally unacceptable. A silly brush in my feet made me forget the big screen in front of me. Explains the captivating power of the movie . I blame it on Ram Gopal Verma cause I have watched enough and more movies in my Thodupuzha theatre poking a pin into the fellow`s feet which is trying to rest in my seat behind, and still enjoyed it thoroughly. thodupuzha--place in north kerala. My Grandparents stay there.

Helping mentality..

I always think, if I ever was a teacher, I would have been a very lenient one. As a student I have always let my benchmates copy from my examination paper .Yes, all my answers were right. I was a very studious girl. I donno what exactly made me help my school mates, maybe it made me feel great, or maybe I just liked them thinking I am great, more of the latter. So just like any other day , today I went out of the way to help someone . My colleague was writing an exam, one which I had taken long back. Don’t ask me why we are writing exams in the middle of work. As I had written the exam before and as I am a good friend of his (for more reference on good friends read last blog) he asked me the answer to one of the questions. I didn’t know the answer –y? because I FORGOT. I have a volatile memory, me and my best friend have spend years trying to figure out why. I don’t mug up, cause that’s the toughest thing to do. And when I enter the examination hall I enter all-knowing, only to forget everything a few months down the lane. Sankar says we should learn to understand not to remember , but what I have concluded is maybe I am not passionate about what I learn. Or maybe its cause there is something wrong with my genes. I get very good marks in my exam and I know every nook and corner if discussed immediately before or after, but then boom! I didn’t know the answer, but telling him “I donno “ was a bit embarrassing for the 83 marks I earned for the same test few months back. I had to keep up an image in front of this fellow, he was my SL*. I told him I had to think it over went over to the next bay and asked a collegue for the answer(STUPID ME), he didn’t know the answer but inadvertently asked me who is writing the exam. I replied “what exam? I was asking to increase my GK”. This Mr Nosey went around and found out that the supposed to know-it-all SL himself is writing the exam , and had asked for my help. I am still alive and kicking because my SL is a true Christian and doesn’t believe in bloodying his hands. That’s the only reason believe me. I had written the same exam for two to three total strangers in the past few months. I had my answer sheet with me then, which I forgot at home today. I should have told my SL that I didn’t know, or even better that he ought to know. But I had to go out of the way , to help him and ruin it. I help people just to make myself feel better. I feel better most of the time, but when I try to impress people by helping them I fail miserably. FYI. I never help people in doing any sort of physical activity, ever. So don`t come to me next time you want to lift a couch or a spoon. * SL-- shift lead. I work in shifts, so we have managers for each shift. Hence the name shift lead

I`ll be there for you

Why do we need friends? I am someone who is known to have a very huge circle of friends. And I am very proud of that too. Also I find it very hard to survive without them. A few days back, I had a fight with one of them, my F.R.I.E.N.D. It involved shouting and yelling. Mostly from his side than from mine. And then I took the decision (something I take every time this happens) not to talk to him again. This one time around I thought of figuring out as to why I never stick to this decision. Before that a brief glance into why and how the fight erupted, lest the rest of my friend`s circle who is reading this might mistake that its them I am talking about. We had planned to take a break from our mundane office canteen dinner and go out to a restaurant. This was not my plan in the first place, though the idea of eating some chicken made my hunger cells roar, and I was all for it. Then all of a sudden I see people serving themselves from the canteen food, it seems like there has been a change of plan, I was obviously disappointed and asked my friend why so (in a pretty disturbed and angry tone) He shouted at me in front of all my other friends and people in the canteen. The words were precisely "Shut up and eat, as if you never have bad food otherwise". I was humiliated, insulted and every other feeling which I could have felt listening to something like that. And I took the decision never to speak to him again. Thought I should take a walk and skip dinner, but was too hungry to do that. What happened is the obvious, I talked to him the next day morning, after a little bit of complaining. But why? I have discovered over the years that to be a good friend you need to be low on ego, it gets hurt now and then and if every time you let that ruin a friendship you won’t have any left. People say friends are treasures. I totally agree, and I cash in on them a lot. I have different friends for different purposes. I have categorized them. There is the consistent group better explained as the "no-matter what happens they will be with me" category .These people get onto my speed dial in my mobile (that’s an elite list). If of the opposite gender only strictly platonic people get included. The fella I talked about in the last Para is my speed dial no 8, so that explains. I am digressing-- my very point was why do we need friends? And this is the conclusion I have reached, we need friends to understand us. Understand how we feel, empathize with us, share our experiences, give us an ego boost, have dinner with us , lend us money, tell us the route to the nearest grocery shop, in short even in the worst of our mental states, understand our illogical mumblings. How many of us have true friends who fulfill all the above categories? Very few. And how did I find mine? I hunt for friends, it’s for me like buying a soap, I try them out, if I don’t like their reaction (to my illogical mumblings); they stay out of my speed dial. If I love their reactions, they get in. Once they are in i keep them there inspite of their shouting or the ego clashes they give me. And thus , in my hunt i end up making innumerable friends, being a good one to almost all of them (i am a very patient listener to illogical mumblings ) and I make the most out of it. If I need any kind of help, I can easily fish out a phone number of someone who will come to my rescue. None of them feel I am using them, as I am a close personal friend to all. Makes me a dependent person. But so what?