Thursday, January 28, 2010

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.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

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.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

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.

Monday, January 25, 2010

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.