A troubled bridge over water

The other day, I was thinking of the other side. As in, wherever I was, what it would be to be on the other side. And then, I was listening to the Simon & Garfunkel song and wondered what it would be like to be on the other side. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Anyways, as I was thinking about it, I realised that I was already on the other side of many things.

Like, I always imagined what it would be like to have a really cool touch phone. Now I have it. And it hasn’t done jack shit to how I live my life.

Again, always imagined how it would be like to live away from home, in a place of my own, living alone and all that jazz. Nothing life altering has come out of this too. Except the realisation that there are a lot of conveniences and luxuries that you need to give up on. Say, internet that you don’t pay for; a house you don’t sweep; a bed that you don’t make; food that you don’t have to wait for; water that just comes automatically once the can is about to get over; electricity bills; letters and couriers you never bothered about; plumbing; electrical problems; toilets that are clean always; bathrooms tiles that never required your attention; buckets that were always clean, buckets that you never knew could get dirty – mugs too; and so on and so forth. Not very exciting now, is it?

Another thing that has been bothering me of late is guilt. Guilt of what and for what, I have no idea. But then, have you – yes, you, the one who is reading these exact lines now, I am talking to you – ever felt so guilty that you were not even able to talk to someone over the phone? Call them up and wish them on New Years? And since you didn’t, rather couldn’t get yourself to call them the guilt just keeps escalating to a point where you feel really small every time you think about it?

Yes, I have become bigger, physically, in the past 3-4 years. It all started with my ex who found my then just-in-the-beginning-stages-of-a-paunch – the exact words used by her and I am not exaggerating, mind you – “cute”. If only she had told me to get rid of it then, I might have done something about it. But then, no. She found it cute. So I decided to make it cuter. And after her, I just stopped bothering.

Now, since I don’t look at myself, I am just not bothered about it. In fact, I don’t even realise how huge I really am. Result: broken chairs in office.

I am however reminded of this fact very often these days. Here are some of the things that have made me realise I am FAT now. And I need to do something about it.

Actually, people really don’t mind if you are anaemic or really, really fat. They comment only when you are in the in-between stages of somewhere between a little overweight and a little less obese. This stage is particularly characterised by the occurrence of moobs (Male bOOBS), fat ass, double chin, triple chin, etc.

So the other day, G, G’s brother G and I went to a really nice Chinese place to have beer+lunch. Usually, the typical portions in these Chinese restaurants are more than sufficient for two average eaters. But then, we were 3 of us. So, while ordering the food, I asked the waiter (slipper me for doing that) if 2 portions would be sufficient for the three of us. The waiter stared long and hard at us and said, “You are all hefty. So, I think it would be a little less.” What. The. Fuck.

The next sign came when my boss asked me one day, “Are you, or are you not a fat bastard?”

The third sign comes every time I go out shopping. Strangely enough, I have enough and more of female DNA in me. I like shopping. And like I said, I don’t realise that I have become huge. And how huge I have actually become. So I just pick up t-shirts without trying them on counting on my brain to mentally approve the size – the brain that still believes that I am a fit stud whose body resembles a Greek God. But only after I go home and wear it the next day does it dawn up on me that the t-shirt actually fit me perfectly – perfectly if I were trying on a sports bra instead of a t-shirt.

So from the next time on, I decided to buy t-shirts of the same size that I was wearing while shopping. Magically enough, the size t-shirts that I own that fit me don’t fit me when I buy the same size off the shelf. I mean, how do I magically become 2 sizes bigger every other time I buy a new t-shirt?

So then I decided to ask the shop keeper to tell me if it would fit me or not before trying them out. And every shirt/t-shirt that I touch is invariably followed by this unwavering statement from the disinterested salesman, “Sir, that is slim fit. That and all is not for you. Won’t fit.” He says this so nonchalantly and disapprovingly that I am not even left with the confidence to touch another t-shirt.

Finally, this time when I went shopping with G, I spent 2 full hours in the shop, squirming like a girl in a crowd of frustu-desperate men who are mentally undressing her. And manage to find 2 t-shirts that fit me.

I have finally come to a realisation now – They have stopped making clothes for me. Period.

What do I say, grapes are sour after all. Sigh.

2009: A Round-up

Since the tradition of round-ups have been happening on my blog for about a year now, I think it is only fair that the trend be applicable to the ‘year’ also. Let’s see what I remember of the past year. Here goes in no particular order.

Bald. Depressed. New Years at K’s house with K’s roommates and G. G’s broken heart. My broken heart. K’s heart unperturbed by a girl so far. 10 Downing. V&A. Bike & Barrel. Airport Zara’s. G’s balcony. Chennai-Mysore-Bangalore road trip. Besent Nagar momos. Dominos. Girl. Girls. Blogging. Twitter. Gtalk. Online friends. Offline acquaintances. A&A pad. Lazy noons. Lazier evenings. Weed. Hash. DSP black. Lord Nelson. Royal Stag. Imperial Blue. Famous Grouse. Ballentine. Absolut 100. Smirnoff Black. Stolichnaya. Cigars. BP Gold. MC. Leisure Point. Royal Palace. Chromepet Chilli Chicken. Guindy black. First vote. Fights with ex. Fights with ex’s present. SMS. Photowalks. Tweetups. First award. Guitar. Midnight bike rides. Midnight drives. Drunken stupor. Weeded out hebetude. Unlimited downloads. 285 movies. Porn. FRIENDS. How I met your mother. Two and a half men. DSLR lust. Teen Patti. Texas Hold’em. Money gained. Money lost. Bankrupt. Near deaths. Accident. Frustration. Horror. 429 Facebook status messages. Parties. Beach house. Pool. Tea shop. Chat shop. Juice shop. P&A’s wedding. 16 crushes. Tears. Smiles. Job hunt. Job switch. Lessons learnt. Bangalore trip. Drunken interview. A’s pad at 12th floor. Job switch. City switch. Broken hearts. Bangalore. Camping. Pecos. Windsor. Le Rock. Opus. Purple Haze. Ujjwal. The New Diplomat. Living alone. Beer. Rum. Whisky. Navy Cut. Confusion. Happiness.

I think I have put down everything that was on the top of my head. Anything that I may have forgotten to put down may be isn’t worth remembering. And I don’t think much is going to happen in the remaining 29 hours in this year since I have a very bad cold and fever. One thing is for certain though: There is another Texas Hold’em event tomorrow evening and that I’d be spending my New Years in a KSRTC bus on my way to Chennai.

Happy 2010 to all. Take care. Have sex. Use protection.

Maga, Ondhu Shtrang Kaapi Kodi!

Maga and Guru are two of the most common words used here in Bangalore. You can call anyone who is younger than you, ‘Maga’ and anyone around your age, ‘Guru’. If someone is older than you, stick to ‘Sir’.

Food scene in Bangalore is pretty decent as far as breakfast is concerned. I remember how I used to frequent the ‘Kaiyendhi Bhavan’ push cart breakfast stalls in Chennai when I didn’t have enough cash on me to visit a ‘Vasantha Bhavan’ or a ‘Saravana Bhavan’. Here, in Bangalore, there are really cheap, really clean stand ‘n’ eat joints where my breakfast invariably is a Masala Dosa, Vada and a really strong filter coffee.

Ah, how I missed filter coffee after coming to Bangalore. As I always say, I can handle bad tea. But not bad coffee. I guess that problem is solved.

My house is in a street which on one end has a chicken/mutton/beef stall. And on the other end, a dirt cheap restaurant cum bar where you pay only cost price for alcohol. Food, is just Oooooookkkkay. Manageable. There is another side effect of these two. The street is infested with really healthy fat dogs that feed only on meat. Trust me, they are huge. And scary. That too when you come home at 1 in the night, only God can save you.

The other day, I saw a really bright light that lit up the sky. A bright white light that came from the earth and spread out in the sky. Immediately went to my ‘private’ terrace and climbed the overhead tank. Only to find that the unearthly phenomenon was caused by the flood lights in Chinnaswami Stadium. I could clearly see 3 of the four giant pillars. Ah, whattey beauty!

Talking about my terrace, my landlord is a creative genius. He was clearly born in the wrong century. He should have been born alongside Rabirius, Vitruvius, Apollodorus of Damascus, and the likes. Trust me. My over head tank is in the shape of an aeroplane. Now, who would have thought of that?

It’s snowing on WordPress. Big deal. Fuck you.

Kannada is a funny language. The other day, someone said something about one Bendhigey. Blow me for thinking it was a female’s name.

No. I will not get a haircut in Bangalore. I am not going to give my head and sit back as an old evil mad scientist works his tools on my hair. I will wait till I get back to Chennai to get one.

I read, rather, misread the word “Promo” as “Porno”. I now agree with you my dear friends: I. Need. Help.

I stopped spying on the North eastern family. They are not worth spying on. Of what I saw of them, they hardly open their days. They own a modified Lancer. And they take it out only on Saturday nights to hit one of the ‘hip’ places. Otherwise, they visit the bar cum restaurant called New Diplomat.

Talking about New Diplomat, the other day there was this uncle who was drinking wearing his helmet. He never removed his helmet. Just lifted it to let the glass touch his lips. Then wore the helmet back again.

There is also a TV that has a TATA Sky connection. Yet plays only Kannada Pulp Fiction movies. Pretty hilarious, I thought. Then one guy asked me not to laugh because it was one of the biggest blockbusters in recent times and that hero was a superstar.

That superstar also models for a store called ‘F Square’. His nose is bigger than his neck. What the fuck. My ass has more personality and character than his face.

Ok. I’m here, for over one month, away from you. Away from everyone I knew. And away from the city in which I had local calls to you. So what if I don’t call you? Why would it hurt your ego to give me a call? Why the fuck do you complain that I didn’t call? If you really cared enough, then you’d have called and not waited to complain, you know? Up yours. Because we both know our lives will go on whether we speak to each other or not.

If you know me personally and happened to read the previous paragraph and feel guilty/angered about what I have written, pick up your phone and call me. (Bet on my hairy sack that you won’t.)

No, it isn’t lack of inspiration that has led to a post like this. It’s desperation. So, fuck it.

November Round-up

Chennai. Quit yet again. Fresh start that I had been looking forward to. Confusion. Shifting. Tying up loose ends. Fucked up big time on that front. Packing. Last few sessions with G & G. Party in the balcony with aunt in the house. Broke the 1 grand phone. Cost me 150 bucks. Last minute catching up. Advices from mom. Advices from family. Advices from friends. P & A’s 8 year affair ends. In marriage. They move to the USofA. I move to Bangalore. New place. New people. Life in the guesthouse. Great beer. Chilled beer. Loads of beer. Windsor. Bottoms up. Hard Rock Cafe. Junkyard Groove. Bottoms up. Weekend. 8 litres, to be precise, in a little over 4 hours. V, L & me get sloshed. Don’t remember how I got home. Kurban. The movie should have been banned. Would have done humanity a world of good. Work. Work. S. Work. Work. Work. Weekend again. Found a place. Moved in. My first ‘own’ place. Bought essentials for the house. On my birthday. Opus. Mojitos. Purple Haze. Beer. Again clueless about how I got home. And before I knew, the longest month of my life got over. And it wasn’t all that bad.

First week. First post.

Yesterday saw the completion of one week of something very substantial in my life. Living alone. Away from home. Yes, admitting at 25 the fact that you’ve never lived alone ever isn’t a flattering fact. Nevertheless, when you move out of the place you grew up in, you start missing a few things. Here it is for you guys to read and me to rant.

I learnt that communication is a weird thing when you don’t know the language. I am no linguist. I don’t pick up languages that easily. My dad, a Malayalee of the first order, whose weekend job list includes making me sit though an old Malayalam movie on Asianet, would stand testimony to this fact. In the 25 years that I’ve lived under the same roof with him, I have managed to pick up exactly 16 Malayalam words. And I can’t even pronounce them right. So when I walk up to someone to ask something, I don’t know which language to start talking in. As such I know only 3 languages – English, Hindi and my mother tongue, Tamil. I realised that I actually miss talking in Tamil. Yes, that was the first thing I missed.

Evenings are for catching up. And when you just move in, there is a lot that happens in your life. New job. New people. New experiences. New places. And all that jazz. But then, you realise that you don’t have anyone around to catch up with. Which is fucking sad. And the second thing I missed was my friends. What would I do without them, I used to ask myself. And I have the answer with me now – nothing.

Surprisingly, the next and the last thing I missed wasn’t home. Or home cooked food. Or parents. It was porn.

Brother bother

Times have changed. Gone are the days when a couple had a cricket team they called children. By the time my mom and dad decided to have me, We two, ours two campaign was in full swing.

As luck would have it, my parents didn’t have enough money to raise two children. So they decided to stop with me. However, today if there was a time machine that they could get into, they’d have gone back and aborted me.

Now growing up without siblings has its own pros and cons. I wouldn’t know of them because I didn’t have any siblings. Hence, I do not find myself to be in a position capable enough to judge the parameters.

But then, to let me know what family is and to introduce me to my cousins – believe me, I have 22 of them – I was dragged along to every wedding, first birthday celebrations, engagements, birthdays, receptions, baby showers, cross-belt (Poonal) ceremonies, deaths, death anniversaries, 60th birthdays, 80th birthdays, combined holidays, group outings and what the fuck not.

Their relentless efforts resulted in me knowing I have 22 cousins in my immediate family and about thrice as many in my extended family.

There is another problem that the nuclear family syndrome brought along with it. Every family, like an independent pod, migrated to different parts of the country and set up roots of their family tree there. This resulted in meeting them and conversing with them only on any of the afore-mentioned social events. Me being what I always was, could get close to only a few of them who didn’t ask me questions like Which class are you now in?, What rank do you get?, Who is your best friend?, Are you an opening batsman?, Do you want more Kesari?, Do you like Raddish? and people who didn’t pass statements like, That’s a very nice shirt!, Oh, you’ve become so tall!, You should be wearing braces!, That’s a nice watch!, You have become so thin!, You have become so fat!, Ah, you’ve started growing thick leg hair! and so on and so forth. Basically, I am close to only 2 of my cousins.

Then technology happened out of nowhere. We all had cell phones and had all of our cousins’ numbers stored. Yet I’d never call them. Neither did they call me. And when I did call, my pleasant ‘Helllooo!’ would invariably be followed by, ‘Hmph, you forgot about us.’ Well, put that comment up your ass ‘cuz neither did you try calling me. So, fuck you.

So as I take this stand of being content with the limited friends I have in my life and defining family as my dad, mom and me, mom tries to alter that at every opportunity she gets.

Now women, being what I haven’t been able to and will never be able to understand, seem to have this uncanny ability to remember almost every birthday of everyone they ever meet. And not just that, they even wish each and every one of them. My mom, being a woman herself, possesses this peculiar trait by virtue of her gene structure.

And she reminds me of every cousin’s birthday and asks me to call them and wish them. This, my dear readers, non readers and stumblers, is the most daunting task I perform 20 times every year. I do call them. But I call them when the day is over. When they are too tired to answer a call. When they are too tired to talk. And when they just don’t want to talk.

And I do this for a reason. And like always, allow me to bullet them like I do very often on my blog these days.

Here’s the scenario. It’s my cousin’s birthday and I call him/her. Invariably, the following events would occur.

• I call them
• He/she picks up
• I shout all excited, “Happy Birthday!”
• He/she manages to whimper out a meek ‘Thank you.’
• Awkward silence (Understand that the last time I spoke to him/her was the last time he/she called me for my birthday or when I called him/her last year to with Happy Birthday. So there apparently is a possibility of 6 months to one year’s worth of information to be exchanged.)
• I ask, ‘So, when plans today?’
• Reply, “Urmmm, nothing special. The usual’
• Awkward silence
• I ask, ‘So, what have you been up to all these days?’
• Reply lasts for over 5 minutes. Information that won’t do me or humanity any good. But it is necessary to do this nonsense because when I do call the next year, I would have to listen to 2 years’ worth of crap. So might as well divide the torture to last you in bits for a lifetime than to die all at once.
• And there I am, holding on to my handset. Shaking my head. Bored out of my wits. Not knowing when to end the call. And worried about my STD bills.
• Finally manage to cut the call. And if I happen to be around my mom when the call gets cut, mom follows it all up with “See? I had to remind you of YOUR cousin’s birthday!… Blah… Blah… Blah….“

So what if I don’t remember birthdays? What’s the big fucking deal in celebrating an event where one was expelled from a vagina on this very day a few years back?

Ta ta, Chennai

I leave you with a million doubts in mind. You’ve been nothing but good to me. Will miss you. And will always love you. Welcome me when I come back. Bye, bye.

October Round-up

Month stated with a suicidal trip to Bangalore. The events of which have been covered here. Very lazy month as far as blogging and tweeting and facebooking is concerned. Started looking out for a job just after a month of joining the new place. Made a note to self that small places are made up of small men who are big in their own world. And also that I don’t give a fuck about them. Second trip to Bangalore in the  same month. This time for cousin’s baby shower. Attended an interview. Drunk, I should add. Got the job too. Thanked every God I knew the name of. For the first time, saw the light at the end of the tunnel in real life, metaphorically. Also experienced in life for the first time how it pours when it rains. Metaphorically again. Chennai still didn’t see even a drizzle. Wrote just 3 posts in October. September Round-up happened to be the last October post, ironically. Month ended. I quit. Realised grey too is a colour.

September Round-up: An apology

This apology of a post is actually an apology.

I for the first time in my life failed myself (what a fucking lie, first time in my life it seems!) and kept postponing the round-up till I could postpone no more. And now that I am forcing myself to write last month’s round-up, I am just not able to recollect what happened last month. Still I will try.

New job. Understood change is not always good. Money, sometimes is NOT the main criteria in life. Peace of mind always is. Learnt a few things. About people than about work. Understood the importance of association. Realised the value of people I had left behind. Water problem at home. Dependent on corporation tap water. Days started with bringing home 15 buckets of water. And cleaning the floor after spilling about 3 of those. New people in life. Same old loneliness. Frequency of alcohol consumption came down. So did that of smokes. Wished ex on her birthday. Surprisingly didn’t feel a single pang of hurt. Not even when I am typing about it. Lost phone to the shower. That, will make a good blog post.

P.S.: Here’s the real reason why there haven’t been many posts this month. And also why the round-up was delayed.