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!!