How the Maddu guy ordered tea

Relativity has always fascinated me. A minute on a hot stove, as Einstein so wonderfully put it, always seems like an hour, while one next to a hot girl seems like a second. In a classic case of the former, the last two weeks have been excruciatingly long. Confined to G86 with my laptop as my sole link with the rest of the world, it was only now that I realized why solitary imprisonment is meted out only to the most notorious of criminals.

 

The last fortnight saw the end of my longstanding loyalty to Opera. More out of the need for a change than that for a better browser, I have switched to Safari. A fancy new browser notwithstanding, the internet has all but lost its charm. Stage6 is now defunct, and Youtube takes millennia to load. It’s been a while since I deleted my Facebook account, and the 4000 odd spammed mails in my Gmail account have made me refrain from checking my mail altogether.  My GTalk account overflows with the ids of relatives I barely know and friends long since forgotten. The once addictive Orkut has become a pain, thanks to the one million scraps I receive daily on how I could unlock any album in a jiffy and the two million more saying that some fictitious girl had mentioned me in her ‘about me’ column. Me, of all the people in the world. Snowfall in the Sahara might have sounded more credible.

 

With little coming from my fellow bloggers in terms of entertainment, there was nothing to be done apart from some deep soul-searching. Even as the twilight of my teenage approaches, there is so much about myself that I can barely understand. I turned, yet again, to the internet for answers. What I found, though, only made me feel worse.

 

According to www.mypersonality.info, I am ‘creative, smart, idealist, loner, attracted to sad things, disorganized, avoidant and can be overwhelmed by unpleasant feelings.’

 

There was something about the result (look to your top-right-corner for details) that it occupied all my thoughts for the next couple of days. It wasn’t the not-so-flattering title of a ‘dreamer’ that bothered me. It wasn’t the fact that I had fallen into what seemed to be the worst of the 16 types on the database.  It wasn’t the twenty pathetic career matches (massage therapist, librarian, church worker, to name a few) that I received. It wasn’t even the fact that the Bulk, B-Pot and the Super Nerd had all walked away with fancy descriptions and career matches. What irked me the most was the knowledge that every single word on that page was true. 20 years of my existence had come down to just 75 seemingly absurd questions.

 

The list of personalities I resembled, though, did well to cheer me up- JRR Tolkien, Shakespeare, Peter Jackson, Fox Mulder and most importantly, Calvin! Hmmm, the test wasn’t so bad after all.

 

Elsewhere, a fairytale weekend saw United hold off the resilient Gunners (albeit with some help from Lady Luck and Emmanuel Adebayor) and Chel$ki slip against the Latics. The Premiership seems destined for Old Trafford. Again. Next stop- Camp Nou.

Glory Glory Man. United!

 

P.S: Pay no heed to the title. It alludes to a very lame PJ I heard way back in high school. 

Comfortably Numb

The clocks in my room unanimously read 1 AM, save the one on my ‘study’-table that had acquired a stubborn liking for the 5 o’ clock mark ever since it’s batteries went dry a couple of months ago. Gripping my crutches, I set off on the excruciating journey to the canteen. On another day, I would have made it in under 15 seconds. Today, it took all of two minutes, thanks to the fact that I couldn’t take more than 5 steps at a stretch without stumbling. Nothing had hurt even half as much as this- not the huge bruise on my knee that has left me with a permanent scar, not the fractured bones in my forearm, not even the pin that I stapled into my finger as part of a game of ‘Dare or Confession’. With a torn ligament (and a two-foot long coating of Plaster of Paris) on my right ankle and a humongous blister on my left, if you were one of my hind-limbs, life just couldn’t get any worse.

I ordered myself a coffee and took the seat beside the lawns. The coffee was served and was halfway down my throat in the space of a few seconds. The warmth of the beverage spread to my entire body- for a few beautiful minutes, even my feet didn’t hurt much. A wonderful numbness engulfed me. This is probably what they call nirvana, I thought to myself. Though the pain was far from gone, intoxicated by the caffeine, my brain chose to ignore them, leaving me in a state of benumbed bliss.

Twelve hours later I was in an examination hall filled with an eerie silence uncharacteristic of the crowd of eighty hooligans that occupied it. The sheet I held in my hand made as much sense as a medieval Incan manuscript. As I looked at the questions on Laplace, Fourier, Poisson and a dozen other transforms with fancy names, I couldn’t agree more with Sushi and his views on the same. Exasperated, more out of habit than nervousness, I began chewing whatever little keratin was left on my finger-tips. Bored of that as well, I began counting the number of birds I could spot in the trees below, hoping to improve on my ten-minute-old tally of fourteen.

Two hours later, I turned up at another venue for another paper, though, sadly, the events that followed were the same as the ones before. The three tests today had a total of twenty two questions in all, and I managed to answer just one of them correctly. Yes, you read right. One. One in twenty two. Wes Brown probably has a better goals-to-games ratio than that. On the rickshaw ride back home, I couldn’t help but reflect on all that R-Land had done to me during my two year stay here. Two years ago, I would have died of shame had I performed half as badly as this in any examination. All of a sudden, I am this low-scoring backbencher who revels in being one. It’s hard to believe that until recently I was on par with the Ayush Goyals and Ashish Agarwals of the world, maybe even a shade ahead, if JEE rank is anything to go by. What is it that has gone wrong in the two years hence? Is it just another classic case of my indulging myself a tad too much, thanks to my new-found freedom? My fast-increasing age notwithstanding, am I still incapable of drawing a line between academics and indulgences? I entered my room determined to resurrect the Dela of old- the focused teenager who had inexplicably vanished in the twists and turns of time and fate. Ten minutes later though, another game of Warcraft commenced on our LAN, and I was the first to join in. For better or for worse, I have become impervious to the dispiriting effects of lousy grades and single-digit test scores. A CGPA like mine would have made an average person writhe, but I’m above all that. However dismal the score, I can face it bravely. Even without coffee.

‘I have become….. comfortably numb.’

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBB

Impossible, Adolf Dassler (and the innumerable celebrities endorsing his products) would have me believe, is nothing. Day in and day out, hitherto unconquered peaks are scaled, and new ones are discovered which, in time, will meet the same fate. At another level, everyone around us seems to be on a perennial mission to shatter every existing notion or opinion related to them, however remotely so. In the twelve hours that preceded (and inspired) this post, The Bulk had fewer naans than me, the Bihari Potter lost his temper, I stumbled upon a Nirvana song that actually made sense (it was 'Sliver', for those of you who care), and, in the biggest shock of them all, the iPot said something intelligent (just for the record, he said that I was a genius). Miracles, it seems, shall never cease. The ‘impossible’ seems to have a habit of failing to live up to its name.

‘Once bitten, twice sorry’ is one of the more popular of the dime-a-dozen fancy kibitzes you dish out to any freshie willing to endure your free advice out of fear or, on the odd occasion, genuine interest. Practising it, tough, is a different ball game altogether- one I'm particularly lousy at. Ten years ago, I watched Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and swore never to watch another Bollywood movie ever in my life again. Trust me, those were the twenty happiest days of my life. The oath was broken, and a couple of hours later, my hope that Bollywood might, at least by accident, come up with something decent met the same fate. Mast, Hello Brother, Karan Arjun, Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, K3G, Om Shanti Om and a dozen other movies have all been followed by fugacious vows to the same effect. In spite of the aforementioned bilge, somehow, time and again I muster the courage to attempt to endure more of the zilch that comes out of our tinsel-town. Yesterday, another entry was made to the long list above- Race.

I had to watch Pulp Fiction thrice to grasp what Quentin Tarantino was trying to tell me. It was the same with ‘The Butterfly Effect.’ But after understanding the underlying message, you are left with a feeling that it was worth all the effort. Race, presumably, is Bollywood’s answer to Pulp Fiction. Minus the satisfaction of course. Fpr one thing, the film has more twists than dialogues. Bipasha Basu, we’re initially told, is Akshay(e?) Khanna’s love interest. Five minutes later, she is shown coochie-cooing with Saif. Twenty minutes later, she sings a duet with Akshay. Couple this with the fact that there are six lead characters in the movie and you’ll understand why, at the end of the movie, I could barely spell my own name right.

Why did I start off with all that gibberish on the ‘impossible’, you ask? Race, too, achieved something incredible. It made me (and there’s no way I can understate the emphasis on the ‘me’) hate a movie that had both Katrina Kaif and Sameera Reddy in it. Before dismissing this post as another of my nonsensical, inebriated dawdles, look closer, dear reader. By narrating two seemingly irrelevant anecdotes and linking (or at least trying to) them with an absurd, virtually non-existent connection, (the genius that I am) I have made you realize exactly how you would feel after watching Race. Did someone say a picture was worth a thousand words?

P.S: Don’t pay much attention to the title. I’ve been working on TeChase a tad too long.
P.P.S: For the lesser-informed of my readers, TeChase was an online quiz that had questions ranging from the lame (Decipher, ‘River IIIIIOOOIIOOOOIOOOO’.) to the ultra-lame (Connect almonds and the phrase, ‘I love EVERY SONG you SING’).
P.P.P.S: Just for the record, I finished first.
P.P.P.P.S: Modesty is my middle name.

Wherever I may roam

“How can you not like idlies da?’, catechized the Super Nerd, his mouth still filled with the rock-hard rice cakes that the Azad mess specialized in. “It’s something like ending each sentence with a ‘da’- it’s the very basic definition of a South Indian. It's what sets us apart.” I still couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. At any rate, United had just trounced the Toons in their own backyard, and I wasn’t going to ruin my mood over a couple of idlies. “Oh, I forgot,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “you aren't a true Southie anyway.” He looked at me with a part-apologetic, part-‘you deserved it’, expression; perhaps expecting to find me miffed. Maybe I should have been. For some reason, I wasn't.

There was a time when overhearing Matkas gossiping in Tamil was all it took to make my heart skip a few dozen beats. The mention of Bangalore was followed by an over-enthusiastic, ‘where in Bangalore?’ The poster of Trisha in the Ganga canteen was all it took to set off a train of thought that inevitably revolved around some place downsouth. Lately, though, like almost everything else I ever believed in, the idea of 'home' seems to have fallen apart.

As I near the halfway mark of my stay in R-Land, I can't help but wonder how much of all this I would actually grow to miss. I will miss the people, certainly, but what else? The library that I visit for the sole purpose of checking my mail? Or the Electrical Department, that has been ever so kind in awarding me more C-pluses than I could ever keep count of? Home, I've come to believe, is no more than an illusion- a mirage, if you like, of a place that promised a better life. For some, the mirage stems from their own memories of their halcyon days of youth. For others, it stems from the self-erected barriers of 'us-and-them'.

Even as I type this out, elsewhere in the country, Biharis are being stoned for committing the 'crime' of settling in another part of their own country. To make matters worse, similar sentiments have been voiced in the two other major cities of the south, though, thankfully, they have, at least so far, remained just voices of dissent. Being a part-maddu, part-kaddu, part-nothing who has spent a good part of his life abroad, the only language in which I can claim a reasonable degree of fluency is the lingua pura. My Tamil starts and ends with the knowledge of the Chennai argot and a dozen Superstar punch-dialogues that four years in Chennai are bound to endow one with. Bargaining with the auto-rickshaw wallah for a ride to 4th block is all I can manage in Kannada. Come to think of it, should the 'maratha manoos' syndrome spread to the rest of the country, I would probably get lynched in just about every single part of the country.

When will we realize that a language is only a means of communication and nothing more? That, at the end of the day you are who you choose to be, and the accident of birth in a particular place has little to do with that? It is sad that, in 1956, the government of our country chose to divide our country on a linguistic basis. What is even sadder is that, 50 years hence, we still haven’t got over those divisions.

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Il Joga Bonito

There are two kinds of world: the one we dream about and the real one. In the former, I am a shade over 6-foot-4, have the brains of Einstein and the looks of George Clooney. I managed only a 9.8 in the previous semester, and hope to improve. I have the voice of Jim Morrison and the oratory of Mark Anthony (the historic character, mind you). My blog has a readership rivalled only by LOTR, with the Potter series at a far-behind five-hundred-and-second.

Regarding the latter, though, the lesser said the better. But there are times in our life when the two converge, everything seems to be going right and you have to pinch yourself to quell your fears that this was another of those sundry corny stories that ended with the cliched, 'and my mom woke me up and I realized that I had been dreaming all along.' It is days like these that remain etched in our memories- the mid sems, the grades and the innumerable other woes of daily life, somehow, fade into oblivion. It is days like these that we'll tell our grandchildren about some desolate afternoon in a summer decades from now.

Today was one such day. For one thing, we were served Gobi Manchurian in the mess. For another, Manchester United knocked Arsenal out of the FA Cup, and how! It was the kind of thing fairytales are made of. Twenty minutes into the game and I realized why Old Trafford was called the Theatre of Dreams. The Red Devils were at their best, though their cause was helped to a large extent by a series of bloopers from an out-of-sorts Gunners side.

'We won!' I exclaimed, much to the perplexity of Miss Muffet. 'Some team, representing a city you haven't even been to, won', she opined. 'What do you mean 'we'?' In more ways than one, football craze is like religion. In both, the sceptic and the believer are in a perennial state of mutual sympathy. The former pities the latter for his apparent immaturity, while the latter does so for all that the sceptic loses out on due to his apathy.

Watching Nani and Anderson make a mockery of the hapless Arsenal defence must have been heart- breaking for any gunner, especially for one as loyal as the Bulk. I couldn't help but notice, though, that in spite of his disappointment, he couldn't help but applaud Nani's artistry. United isn't just about eleven players representing Manchester, just as Arsenal isn't about London, or Liverpool about the Merseyside. Football isn't just about twenty-two players chasing a ball. It's about victory and defeat, ecstasy and heartbreaks, passion and hope, heroes and villains, glory and disgrace. Football is about life, and it takes a while for one to realize how similar the two are. Football shows you how there are days when nothing goes your way no matter how hard you try, and how there are others when you are off colour and yet, manage to walk away with the honours. How it is one thing to talk about fairplay and honesty but quite another to display it on a field with a million eyes on you. How it is easy to stand by a team in victory, but takes tonnes of faith and resolve to do so in defeat. How no matter which side you are on, the game always comes first.

As I watch my fellow United supporters go wild in celebration, I realize that no matter how hard I tried, there was no plausible explanation for our fervour (the passion?). We know our whistles and applause in the Cautley TV Room will never get anywhere near the ears of Sir Alex Ferguson, and yet, we cheer United on just about as fervently as anyone seated in Old Trafford itself. This is, as PeeTeeVee, aptly put it, a love beyond logic. 'Some day', Miss Muffet goes on, 'you'll grow up and look back and laugh at the lameness of it all.' Someday, maybe. But I sincerely hope and pray that such a day never comes.

Growing down?

If there is one thing that maddus (citation: short for madrasis, a hyper-intelligent race hailing from the southern half of India.) love more than food and the Superstar, it is rain. We look forward to the monsoons the way a kid anticipates Christmas, only more eagerly. In cold and frigid R-land though, any form of precipitation is far from welcome, though that only seems to encourage Mother Nature to bless us with all the rain in the world. The icy droplets pierce one's skin like needles, and make the already near-impossible ordeal of attending the 9 o' clock lecture all the more cumbersome.

For me, though, there is a silver lining in the clouds after all. The rains, and the puddles that they bring along, mean that I can exhibit my dexterity in the art of drawing shapes on the pavement with my wet shoe-heels. The other day I even managed to write 'Dela' in the aforementioned manner. As I looked at my work of genius, oddly, it was not pride that I felt. The fact that it had come out brilliantly notwithstanding, for the first time, I felt embarrassed and bewildered by my own puerility.

As I look around, I realize that everyone around me has a sense of direction. Some are trying to put on some flab, while others are trying to lose theirs. Some are trying hard to hold on to the coveted DR-1 (short for department rank), while others are trying to make up for the uncharacteristic 7 that they scored in the autumn semester. Some are growing locks, albeit with plans to go bald the following semester. Others are busy apping away to glory to all and sundry for an internship in the suburbs of Siberia. Some moving closer to their dreams, others entrenching themselves in the long-forgotten art of studying. Summing up, everyone is moving forward. I, on the other hand, seem to be living life in reverse..

When I was eight years old, I was gripped by the age-old existential question- Who am I? People would point to their bodies, their hearts, their heads and I would drive them up the wall by saying, but that’s your body, who are you?
Now, at the age of nineteen, I crave Snickers bars.

As a sixteen year-old, I religiously attended classes. As an undergrad student, I run out of class midway through a lecture, having already procured the all-important 'P' next to my name. Moving up in life? Two years ago, I was the ideal high school student- teacher's pet (well, in all subjects except for biology, at least) and armed with a Kevin Arnold-esque boyish charm. Today, half my professors don't even know my name, and even those who do, know me for all the wrong reasons.

Why am I becoming shallower with every passing minute? Is the Roorkee water to blame?

At times I wonder, are you allotted just a certain amount of maturity? What if I used it all up as an annoying over-smart kid? Do I resign myself to a lifetime of finding joy in X-Men, puddles and Snickers bars?

Springeez

On the left foot, first there is God, then there is Roberto Carlos, and then there is Dela. The Ravindra lawns shall forever be haunted by the magic that was weaved by my left foot on that sodden turf. It has sent shivers down the spines of goalkeepers and terrorized the best of defences. Of late though, my left foot is finding mention in a different context altogether. Several unworthy souls have been alluding to the fact that I have two of them. Metaphorically of course.

Why I never dance is a question I have been asked time and again, to which I have this standard reply- 'Why do you never punch yourself in the face?' This is usually followed by a perplexed gaze (like the one I sport during Solid Mech lectures), though ruminating on the statement further makes the listener realize the depth and veracity in it (Pulp Fiction?). It's not a question of my inability to dance or my lack of grace. It's more a question of not making a fool of myself. It's not that I don't appreciate music. I just don't believe that swinging your limbs around wildly like a dunce is the only way of doing so.

'Morons of a feather flock together', is a cooked up, but very true saying. Coincidentally or otherwise, there isn't a single soul in Morons Inc. that can dance. That, of course, suits me perfectly. The other day, hyde Park was converted into a makeshift discotheque, with a dimwit with a lousy accent for a DJ ('The next saang is the dedicate aaf the aadio secsun.') and a hundred more dimwits for 'dancers'. What were we doing at a discotheque, you ask? We had been informed by our sources that popcorn was being distributed at Hyde Park, and thanks to our legendary appetites, we set out on our quest for popcorn right after dinner. Well, there was no popcorn, but we weren't complaining. The entertainment outdid our expectations. It was like watching a 100 Bhojpuri heroes performing 'Thani sa Jeans' simultaneously. The DJ's accent only added to all the fun. We left an hour later- tired, but thoroughly entertained, having imitated the steps of almost every other dolt on the dance floor.

I recently made a list of things that I couldn't do but would love to. As you would expect, singing was right on top of the list, followed by drawing, bowling (as in the gentleman's game), why, even skiing! Curiously enougyh, dancing did not find a place. I'm a Maddu, for God's sake. Dancing isn't in my blood. I hail from a land where all the hero ever does is walk around flashing his bright red pants and electric blue tees. It's always the heroines who do the dancing around. Of course, every now and then, there are noteworthy (and hilarious) exceptions like 'Tic Tic Tic', but by and large, dancing is a strict no-no downsouth. Having said that, it's not like I'm a complete goner when it comes to dancing. the other day, while dusting my room (hear hear!) I found a souvenir from the days of yore- a certificate to the effect that Abhishek Sunder(Hmph) was the best dancer in 'Salsa/Western' category. It also said that I was a student of class Kindergarten B, but that's beside the point.

Two left feet, anyone?