I went for a walk, on the way I burped out real loud since I thought the dark street was deserted, figures it was not, it was embarrassing.

What a title, huh??

So anyway, there was a man on the other side of the street walking along with me, whom I had missed!! The moment I let out that monstrous little sonofagun, I heard a rustle. I turned and voi-fuckin-lala!! A silhouette of a man! We both stopped and I was too embarrassed to do anything. That man was too embarrassed to do anything too and probably thought I would kill him. so I said, "ahem" and started walking, hoping like a small boy in a church priest's closet, that he would walk away in the opposite direction. Life, since it's a bitch, decided to act like one and thus set the man walking in the same freakin' direction! So, we shared an awkward walk till the end of the street where the man took a left and me, a right.

A BURP. A freakin' burp. I admit that was the loudest burp I have ever taken. So what if I got a little humiliated, huh? Don't give me that look, you girls!! In a small island off Philippines, the men compete against themselves for the fairest maiden in a game of burps! The loudest burper wins her hand.

I could have been married now!!

Of all the places my forefathers could have settled in... *grumble*


Well, that taught me a lesson. You know what the Japanese say about burping in public, right? It goes something like, "The dolphin always drinks from the blue cup"

Wow...the Japs, I tell you. Wise people. The above is a literal translation of course. The actual meaning goes something like this, " The dolphin does not like any other colored cup. Its always blue."

Wow...

"We'll send him to a yoga camp"

"Your vacation starts next week, no?" My dad asked me. I knew that tone. . .oh I knew that tone.

[FLASHBACK-seventh grade]

"Your vacations start next week, alwa?" My dad asked me.
"Hu.." I said.
"Oh good..two more papers, do well. you want ice-cream?"
next week I was learning how to make paper ducks at a summer camp for kids.

[FLASHBACK-eighth grade]

"Last paper, huh?"
"Hu.."
Cricket camp. St. Joseph's ground, Richmond circle.

[FLASHBACK-ninth grade]

"You want to join the military?"
"Do I look like I want to?"
"Oh good...then you'll love this camp."
The Mahar Regiment's Pegasus camp![Thanks sonu and chandru uncle!!!] Full of obstacle courses ( rope bridges, brick walls, crawling through tunnels, sleeping in tents, dodging scorpions to go to the loo, socializing with rich spoilt kids hailing from "rich" schools, as I called them...bunch of jerks)
Leadership, personality building activities; more socializing with jerk-kids, ten km long treks through barren lands, raft building, rock climbing stuff...


[Tenth grade]

[Reconstruction]

[Scene: my parents' bedroom]

One fine day, my parents woke up.
"We'll send him to a yoga camp" They said in unison.

Sunshine points about the camp.

1)The female volunteers there were just out of this world.
2)I made a lot of friends, I still am in touch with.
3)I learnt how to serve food to people, also to wash my own plate after eating.
4)I got to know the "candle in the dark" technique to dissipate negative energy. i still, very much, do it. [straight face]
5)I learnt yoga is a pussy way to lose weight.
6)I got to lead a crew of retards for a play. People who can't do three different types of laughs are not actors. the crowd loved my performance.
7)I read the "thank you" speech at the end.
8)I actually felt bad leaving the place ten days later.
9)On the last day, we filled out each-others slam books. It was emotional. sniff.
[still have the book. I read it by the candle...lol]

Not-so-sunshine points about the camp.

1)We had to call the hot female volunteers "Didi's" (sister!)
2)The yoga itself was excruciatingly painful.
3)We had to gulp down liters of salt water and puke it out to cleanse out tummies.
4)We had to play team building games every evening. I hate chasing thin people during lock and key!!
5)We had to fill out "emotional quotient" forms. on an average they had 300 questions per questionnaire.
6)They segregated chubby kids on the first yoga session and they were told to follow a different diet...stupid fat kids...he he..er...I WAS NOT IN THE GROUP!!
7)We had to sleep on the floor, on a carpet.
8)Wash our own clothes.
9)No junk food
10)No TV.
11)Common bathrooms. Long lines for them. Sheesh.
12)A 12 km trek to a near by fort. WTF was that!!


No, my parents did not hate me. I actually willingly went to these summer camps. I am what I am today because of them. I learnt a lot about socializing, friendship, give and take, how to slap a guy when he is asleep and make it sound like he dreamt it, in the morning.
Thank you dad. Thank you mom.

The School Ajji!!

I was feeling awesome yesterday [23-02-2010]. I had woken up early and had taken my time with my cup of tea by staring out the window at my table and observing the dawn grow paler and paler. I was just happy that day. Everything was happening on time. I was fifteen minutes ahead of the schedule! i actually had time to keep my bag on the sofa and leisurely sip my coffee and watch TV, waiting for the 'missed-call' which my good friend Janani gives me every morning just when the bus leaves her stop so that i can leave my place and be at the stop on time.

7:45, as usual, she gave me the 'missed-call' and I switched off the TV and picked up my bag and shouted "hog-bittu barthini" to my parents and with a spring in my step went down and out my home to my stop.

Halfway i saw her. My old school ajji! She is this frail old thing who shepherds little kids to different schools around my area. she has, I think, been doing this for the past forty years!! She is an angel to working parents.

At around her twenty sixth year of service, she met me, a chubby little boy, not so eager to go to school.

Now, fourteen years later, I saw her again. Still as active, still as loving and still as smiling as she has always been. I went up to her and told her I was one of the kids she taxied to school some fourteen years ago. I will never forget the way her face lit up the moment I told her that! I felt warm inside, seeing her so visibly taken aback in a nice way.

She asked me what I was doing and touched my head and blessed me to study well and become "something big" in life. I told her I had better leave as my bus would be at my stop any minute. She smiled and carried on, helping her litter of kids cross the road.

It is so awesome to touch people's lives like that so unexpectedly. It is often the smallest things which surprise us the most. One smile of recognition, one hand shake, one nod of the head, one wink, one touch of love, one hug, one stomach-cramping laughter session with your best friend... is all that is required to convey the message, "Life is a shade better because you are here."

The cow alien...

Recently an alien was caught on the outskirts of Bangalore. The news was obviously hushed up. One of my dad's friend who works for the super secret alien department extracted a belly dance from me in return for the information.


" I'll tell you something alien-y and super cool if you belly dance" he said...how can any man resist...


Apparently the alien had dressed up as a cow. My dad's friend obviously knew it was an alien the moment he saw it. " moo moo mooo ...( translated: how the hell did you come to know, human?" the alien asked him, i believe. For which he replied, " the moo-ment i saw i knew, cow alien!" ( hahaha...get it?? moo-ment??!*sheesh*)

Anyway, they recovered a tape from the alien. An ancient tape. Obviously the alien had been around for a long long time. Cave-man time and all...

The tape has a recorded bit of a day's proceedings of a certain cave-man thousands of years ago...

It goes something like this...

[top secret: ET 12xx34df%XX transcript no. 47 ]


Cave man: who am I?

Echo: who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who...?

Cave man: that’s what I’m asking you!

Echo: oh, hell I can’t repeat that thrice and fade away!

Cave man: who asked you to do that?

Echo: (mocking) oh! Who asked you to do that? As though you don’t know!

Cave man: no I don’t...

Echo: you see...we are the echo species, ok? We tend to repeat what others say.

Cave man: but for what fun? You already know what the person has said. Why repeat it?

Echo: I just thought you looked dumb, you dino dung! Which line of evolution did you skip? When you discovered fire, the next thing you discovered was our species.

Cave man: really? Ah! Then you have to repeat everything I say...

Echo: technically...yes...but why do you ask?

Cave man: oh. Nothing! I’m a fool!

Echo: I’m a fool!

Cave man: aha! Hahahahhaah!!!

Echo: you! Wait till I get my hands on you!

Cave man: I’m a jackass!

Echo: I’m a jackass! No! No!

Cave man: you admit it! Hahahaa

[Not far away, a group of gorillas were watching the cave man]

Sally: Adam! Are you witnessing what I’m witnessing?

Adam: Affirmative, Sally dear. The neurotic boy seems to imagine his echo is a real person.

Sally: tch! Tch! What a shame!

Adam: indeed! When did we discover echoes, dear?

Sally: oh! Long, long time ago! It was right about the time when we had that barbecue lunch and we left the fire burning...

Adam: ah! Yes! Poor creatures. I fear to imagine what will happen of them in the coming years...

[End transcript no. 47 ]

[destroy after use ]


awesome, huh?

" Did it really happen? is it true, uncle?" i asked him...


he smiled...


guess i'll never know... *sigh*

"RACH 3"

I respect pianists [ I know only two people who can actually play on a grand piano]. They are all mysterious and brooding. You'll never know what they're thinking. I was having a chat with a pianist recently on my way to college. I did not really know the guy, so at first it was just "hey, man...good day, huh?" and I would put on my ear-phones and listen to music. Three times he waited till i had put my ear-phones on to make a comment. I got pissed and realized it was pointless to listen to music with him around. I knew he played the piano really well... so i thought "why not" and started socializing. I'm really glad i did that because i got to know a lot about him and the piano. After the basic talk about his past and my past and how he got into music and how i got into music, we got down to business. I told them how i personally thought pianists are mysterious and brooding to which he replied, " yes they are."

After asking him stupid questions like," who came first? Bach or Beethoven?", we drifted on to the "most beautiful symphonies" topic.

It was then that I heard about the "Rach 3" concerto!it is supposed to be the most beautiful and technically the most difficult concerto ever written! So, i went home and did a little research of my own.

Composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff, the piece basically has two melodies. During the course of the piece, the listener can make out the melodies are fighting each other for an upper hand. It has three parts to it Allegro ma non troppo, Intermezzo: Adagio and Finale: Alla breve

The fight of the melodies end with one of the melodies winning and it is said that the ending is the most beautiful!

The sad part is, rachmaninoff, himself, could not practice his piece due to time constraints and he practiced it on a silent keyboard on the way to the united states aboard a ship! how ironic...

Do listen!!

p.s. There was a movie released in the mid nineties called The Shine. It is a biography of a man named David Helfgott, one of the only few to have played the Rach 3 after Sergei. It describes how he enters a competition and decides to play the Rach 3 and how he suffers a mental breakdown. It took him 20 years to recover.

Catch that also!!

Eight year old Nitin and the Zee Horror Show!

I wake up whining at six in the morning. I wipe my eyes and make my way to the wash basin. Its chilly and i can already see my grandfather in the kitchen boiling water for the coffee concentrate. I wash my face, but do not brush my teeth, and go to the kitchen. "tata, haalu" I scream. As usual he already has it ready. After cooling it a bit further, he hands it over. I go to the balcony and await the paper uncle. By instinct i know that it has been a fortnight since the last Tinkle arrived, so that can only mean a brand new edition is due any minute now- "tring tring"- ah ha! the un-mistakable cycle bell. I run down and grab the paper and the Tinkle right off his hands. I know he is used to it. I slowly climb up the stairs absorbing the cover of the magazine. I reach the top stair and the ugliest voice in the world says, " kodo tinkle na".
:Enter my brother:
After we wake the whole family up over who gets to read the magazine first, there is a family court in session. Again I'm sure they are used to it, every fortnight. As usual my mom, my dad and my grandfather represent me and our case is that since I'm the younger one, I get to read it. My brother who liked to represent himself, usually, snatches the magazine and runs to the "Kali room"-empty room. I start to cry.
Last summer holidays I remember my brother,nikhil, vinayaka, our neighbor and me collected match boxes from "MORIS" around our area. They are not doing it this time, I do not know why. They must have found all the match boxes, i think.
Switching on the TV in the morning is not permitted, so i go to my room to my g.i. Joe action figures. I make a mental note to watch - actually watch, not sit there and shut my eyes - The Zee Horror Show.
The time is now one in the afternoon and lunch is ready. Since it is the holiday season, mom is also home and due to popular demand has fried "hapla and sandige" to go with the saru.
When dad leaves to work, the TV curfew also leaves with him. We happily watch a kannada funny movie during lunch.
The clock is ticking, i see. Right now, I'm thinking " its just a horror show". I smile and start re-reading Tinkle.
The clock says seven, i see. I'm back home from playing "sudden death" with Roopa and the gang next door. I wash my feet and drink the tumbler of milk kept for me on the table.
I dash down again to play "raja rani kalla police" with lakshmi, ganga, raju and yamuna. They stay in the outhouse, in the same compound.
*tick tock*
Oh my god, it is nine thirty. I run back up to see my dad already arrived. He gives me and my brother some "caramel" chocolates. I choose the blue wrapper ones and the red ones i give to Nikhil. One hour till the thing starts I notice.
THE ZEE HORROR SHOW.
Every kid in the nineties' nightmare!! The longest i have lasted till date is ten minutes past the starting song.
Three minutes till it begins, i notice. They are airing the sponsors. I make a mental note to pester dad for the cadbury's bar. It looks nice. The cadbury's ad ends.
The 'parental advise' slide appears. I smile at my friends who were forced to sleep at nine and their parents who took the 'parental advise' seriously...
I inch closer to my mom, on the sofa. It's dead silent. The song starts. My mom says, " go sleep, you're scared". I shake my head and somehow try to listen to the "aaah ah...aaaah ah..." which the creepy girl is singing, over my pounding heart.
"CHEHRE PE CHEHRA!!!" screamed the title of the episode. With the little hindi i know, i understand it's " a face on a face". That is not so bad, i think. Ten minutes later, i see the mad scientist drink his potion and become a beast! The music is chilling. The beast scrapes its foot across the streets at night, gorging on lonely people! Nikhil is watching it open mouthed, all awed. My dad is smiling for some weird reason! I close my eyes instinctively at the harsh notes and every time the beast clawed at a man...and i hate myself for it!
Half an hour later, I release my mom's arm, all sweaty. Nikhil comes up and says, " sakhath a githu!!". I mumble something inaudible. He says something about not being able to wait for the next episode...I nod.

the next day, i was smiling like a man who had just won a lottery! "THE ZEE HORROR SHOW!" i mocked, the whole day.
i loved the show, and i loved the nineties. i loved the summer holidays back then and the simplicity of a lot of things.

attached a couple of videos, please watch. the post is too long, alwa? hmm... screw it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOv63i3XMhM copy paste this url, and listen to the theme song.

here comes the mic...here comes the mic..

after almost two years of music playing we, the nevermind band people, got a mic stand, a huge, big-ass 80M stranger cube amplifier and a philips mic!! since i am the only non-working member of the band, i was asked not to pitch in financially till i get my first pay-check. at last we can hear our poor vocalist screaming away- of course he won't need to scream now.
we practice at my place, in my room. im just waiting for saturday when we get to experience all of the new equipment.
it was not always this rosy.
i remember the time we shared one amplifier among three guitars and the mere thought of a mic for the vocalist was hilarious.
and i did not have my very beautiful lady MAE *who happens to be my drum kit* then too.
it was a hired "chowdry" drum kit of a friend of a friend.
we have come a long way. we have had some crappy gigs, ass-holes cheating us off money after a show, some amazing gigs, the whole nine yards.
sigh.

a she and a he...

i will never forget the day, back in twelfth standard, when this pretty lady walked up to me in class and asked me, "are you a gujju?"
if the pretty lady is reading this, i know you probably assumed i would begin with this line.
anyway, i had stammered something like, "no, im a kannadiga" or something to that effect. and that was it. for two whole years, that was all we said to each other. she had really beautiful hazel eyes...(i wonder who she donated them to...)
oh god....you came back!!
(go on, boy)
anyway, the reason im writing this down is not clear in my head. i do not know what i want to convey, as is the case with this pretty lady always.
funnily enough, we got to be real good friends after our affair with the twelfth boards.
i have become a whirlpool of emotions, being associated with her.
this is not a "thank you for being my friend" post...
this is more serene. purer.
a great man once said,"its the friends you can call up at three a.m who matter the most.."
if i have to thank you for anything at all, it would be for helping make the silences more comfortable.
whats Indiana Jones doing now??
i want to watch Juno again!

p.s. (he is a gujju)

P.S!! NO!!

archive archeology....

i was just going through a play i had once written long ago, when i was a kid!! its about a boy who has to come up with a play for his school-day function...
so the different scenes in the play are the different ideas he gets...
scene one is this..

Lion man: oh, messenger! What news do you bring your king?

Deer man: oh, king! The water holes have dried up. The dead fish are starting to stink. The subjects are dying of thirst.

Lion man: very bad…

Deer man: what do you think we should do, sire?

Lion man: what to do... what to do?

Deer man: sire I think we have bigger issues than this.

Lion man: what might those be? People are dying out there! Now what is this big issue?

Deer man: why are we being called lion man and deer man? Are we half animals half humans?

Lion man: you know, I have never really thought about it.

Deer man: maybe you should, you pig-headed elephant puke!

Lion man: wait a minute! Do you intend to call me puke which is pig-headed...or puke of an elephant which is pig-headed?

Deer man: how the hell can an elephant be pig-headed?

Lion man: how the hell can puke be headed? Let alone pig headed!

Deer man: if you had listened to me carefully, I paused after I said pig-headed. I couldn’t continue so I said elephant puke to cover it up.

Lion man: but I’m not pig headed. I have a head of a lion.

Deer man: I know, you moron! People say bad things about people when people are pissed off!

Lion man: when you say people are pissed off, you mean the first people or the second people, in your last sentence?

Deer man: hmmm…I mean, when people-one are pissed off they say bad things about people-two.

Lion man: you are one or two?

Deer man: of course one you moron!

Lion man: but why are you pissed?

Deer man: I don’t know. Don’t you think this has gone for too long?

Lion man: I think this is senseless!

sweaty palms, the ten rupee ticket and the demon buses!!

it all started two months ago, my friends. had half a day of college, so happily went to the bust stop and patiently waited for a bus which would take me out of my college and drop me off at the junction called yelahanka, from where getting a direct bus home is not difficult. so i waited on the deforested lane, for the frequent 401 series bus. i turned around and saw this lime soda boy..(dear god, nitin!! get to the point!!)
*snip snap*
i got a call just before stepping on to the bus. i think it was my friend prajwal asking me if nokia five-two-i-don't-remember is better than samsung six-eight-i-don't care. when i told him i don't really know anything about...(there we go again...blah blah..its a disease, you know.)
FINE!!
the point is, we kept talking for a long time after i got into the bus. then all of a sudden i felt a tap on my shoulder and someone said, "ticket"
i replied, " first block rajajinagar, ondu" and handed him ten bucks.
he looks at me all confused and says, " ticket elli?? where is the ticket?"
then it hit me. he was the inspector!!
(giggle..its getting interesting...go on..)
stop interrupting!!
so anyway, i told him honestly that i forgot to buy it as i was on the phone. i later realized i had traveled five stops without buying a ticket!
so i ended up paying the guy seventy precious bucks, which was half the fine amount he demanded.
(so that's why you own a motorola phone! hahaha)
oh shut up!!

this is numero uno... the catalyst...the first small snowball...the lull before the storm...the stalk before the hunt...(zzzzzz...)

the next "happening" was a month later...
i had to be at the radio indigo studio, in koramangala, at eight in the evening. so i leave diligently at five- ample time to compensate for traffic delays-
SNAPSHOT(5:06 pm): im smiling, waving goodbye to my friends...im so happy im going to the studio!!
SNAPSHOT(7:59 pm): im stuck near chinnaswamy stadium in a bus full of people who are calling their respective spouses and friends and saying, " ha ha...inna two hours agotte...it'll take two more hours"
following the advise of my good friend moonlight, i got down and ran six paces till i found an auto (didn't moonlight tell you to run all the way???)
who's telling the story??
anyway...
i tell the auto guy, like in the movies, take me to st. john hospital road as quickly as possible!!
SNAPSHOT(8:13 pm): im smiling, wiping sweat off the brow. its ok. the appointment is put off till later...i reach for my earphones.
SNAPSHOT(8:16 pm): (reconstruction): a strange man finds a pair of earphones on the last seat of a bus stuck in traffic near chinnaswamy stadium, koramangala bound.

number two.

next one happened in jaipur. five of us, including me, were holidaying there just a few weeks back... we had real fun ( *slap*)
oww!!
ok ok ...
anyway, when in jaipur, we decided to go see the awesome AMER FORT. the ever-eager tourists that we were, we decided to take the local bus! we got the bus real soon, i mean real soon!! as soon as we got to the stop we got it! (pop the champagne!)
so, thanking our lucky stars, we got in. we told the conductor where we wanted to go and stood amongst the local people.
four stops later, the conductor yelled at us to get down since our stop had arrived.a big mix up happened and only three of us got down. two others were on the bus still, which zoomed away. ten minutes later, they, after getting down at the next stop walked back towards us, all grumbly. so we look around and guess what we saw...
AMEX MALL.

number three.

there are so many more instances...stuck in traffic, clock ticking, running like crazy to catch the last 10:30 bus from shivajinagar to my place, only to realize it stops at majestic, running like crazy again to catch the last bus home from majestic, only to realize it takes a detour six km away from my place...
many many more...
not to mention (again!!) my poor player which got run over by a bus...that was pure evil, folks...i could hear the giggles of gods above.

so, anyway...thanks for reading. ill try avoiding buses from now on...
ciao.

head scratching..

i really am..
its probably a terrible cliche, you know, people writing their first blog post about not knowing what to write about...
ok lets not dick around, shall we? cool..
im listening to the bohemian rhapsody right now..freddie mercury was a genius, guys. the harmonies...mind blowing.
my good friend akhil just texts me saying blogging is like an "open diary"...
let me start by telling you what happened today...
i woke up a bit late and straight away buried (read as threw away)my mp3 player which got run over by a bus last night. ironically, the last song i was listening on it, before i switched it off and pocketed it to jump over the barricade, was "fade to black"... little did the gadget know IT would fade into the darkness very shortly too.
last night was crazier than today...im bored of writing about today. nothing really happened. i drummed for a while, saw "four weddings and a funeral", loved it. stared at the wall and shook my head in appreciation of the subtle British humor.
god i suck at blogging.
i have half a mind to tell you "i want to eat a banana right now"...
i don't really like bananas...
right now im thinking of ways to damage control the mess i have written...
im looking at my bed right now...
no, the next sentence won't be " good night"...
i am completely blank...
cut me some slack ok??! first post!!
*note to self* buy all out...its literally 'all out' of liquid...mosquitoes at night...
sorry...ahem..
its getting awkward...
hmm...i visited a studio last night!!! it was nice...
er..
listen...let me just go brush my teeth.
no!! im not trying to wriggle away! how dare you accuse me of that!!
is this a conversation? am i conversing with someone? its creepy...
im not changing the topic!!!
"ok mother, ill go help the old woman cross the street!!"
ok...you heard my mom!! i really have to go!! or the old woman will get run over by a bus!!
bye folks.
await more.
thank you for visiting my blog and for your immense patience.