The long sigh

"Oh thank you my darling" said the gentleman in his hoarse, yet strangely calming voice. 

I involuntarily let out a long sigh that lasted a few good seconds.

I looked up slowly and furtively and took in the scene. He must have been in his fifties. The lady who joined him at his table had brought him a cup of coffee along with her cup of tea. 

A simple gesture, I thought as I reluctantly dragged my eyes away from the couple. That is something I do everyday, more than once. In fact, something like this would be one of the least laborious things I do every day. I am expected to do a whole lot more than bring over a cup of coffee that someone else had made. 

Yet, I have never ever been thanked like this in my entire life. His words had a musical quality to them. It seemed to me that he had sung it to her, not simply said the words of thanks.

Thank you my darling, he had said. 

To be called darling by someone who matters to you. What a privilege. Or may it seemed like a privilege only to the common observer, and not so for this lady. She may have been given this lovely attention by her people everyday. It might even be something she takes for granted. 

Yet, the man does not seem like the kind of person who grants anyone anything so easily. Perhaps not even when he was a child. It is hard to imagine him as a child, but i try. 

In my imagination, he is five or six years old. he is seated at the breakfast table with his mother. If he graces her with his attention, his mother would have surely placed her coffee down at the table and turned to him, giving him all her attention. "What is it, my darling?" she would say. 

"Would you like a piece of toast?"

She would then proceed to pop in a slice of bread into the toaster. She would choose a good shaped slice and would not choose the crusty piece. She would wait for it to pop up as she sips her coffee calmly. She would not start eating her sausage in the middle of this, because she is still making the little man's toast. She would not want it to grow cold before she can apply butter on it. 

Or maybe she already had a piece of toast on her plate, which was untouched and it had butter applied on it evenly, all over it. She would have given that to him, so he can have his toast right-away instead of waiting.

But if there was no perfect toast on her plate, she would be doing exactly this - waiting for his toast to pop out of the toaster. As it does, she would pick it out nimbly and apply butter to it carefully. Bit by bit, smoothing it out, reaching all the corners, covering them evenly and then she would present him with the nice toast, which he would eat, after thanking her. 

That is the kind of child he must have been, this gentleman who thanked his lady so kindly and musically as she brought him a cup of coffee that someone else made.

Celebration of the suffering woman

I am part of yet another whatsapp group that adds 1% value and 99% noise to my life. we all have that, dont we?

I have been recently exiting from the ones that give me almost 100% noise - have to say, my life is marginally better.

Smirk all you want, marginally better is still better.

This particular group is that of the women in the nearby apartments. They share a lot of forward messages, and once in a while get together to celebrate stuff, which is good. Life should have some celebrations.

the most recent call for celebration has been for karva chauth, a north indian festival in which the women (ONLY women, not men) fast the whole fucking day, without even drinking a drop of water until the moon comes up in the sky. Reason for fasting - so that the husband can enjoy good health.

Ironic, i would have thought its a better idea to starve the husband so that his digestive system gets some rest and thus improve his health.

but then, what do i know? I am from the south, thats not even India right? thats just where all the anti-nationals live. Anyway, thats another day's discussion.

So a load of 'happy karva chauth' and wishes for this 'blessed' and 'precious' and 'joyous' day lands on my phone. The ladies would be dressing up, make up jewellery et all, and gather to celebrate and wait for the moon.

Fun fact. its a cloudy night in Singapore. it rained almost all day. and they arent supposed to break the fast till they see the fuckin moon.

Ever since I am part of this whatsapp group, i have been enlightened. The calls for 'vrath' (fast from food & drinks) for women and the glorification of the clueless male in the house happens every few months.

There is raksha bandhan - here the sister bows down to touch the feet of the brother no matter how young the boy is and the boy is supposed to vow to protect the girl.

Bhai dhooj - something similar to raksha bandhan.

I hear 'teej' every now and then, this happens more than once a year - again the women fast. its supposed to signify the victory of a wife's love and devotion to the husband. this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more.

All in all, you get the drift, it is entirely one sided. the women celebrates the man.

There is not a single vrat that the man observes to win the wife's love or praying for the woman's health. Clearly signifying that it doesnt matter.

Throughout the rituals and festivals, the same singular message gets reinforced. 'a man is important, a woman is insignificant'.

and then when the female baby gets killed at birth or there is female foeticide, we just cannot understand why!

The men and the boys eat first, served by the women and then whatever remains is eaten by the women - served by themselves. the boy gets education and the girl is married off early by giving loads of gold and cash to the man.

The high number of rapes can be no surprise to a culture that treats the woman as the submissive servant.

Out of all this, what angers me most is calling the suffering as celebration. Right now, there are couple of dozens of starving women down there in the common area 'celebrating' and feeling great about their sacrifice.

Congratulations, your husband is not any fitter than he was yesterday, you on the other hand after the 50 times you fasted last year, could have caused yourself irreversible damage.

but that doesnt matter to you, does it? You have been taught and now you fully believe that you dont matter.. if you needed to matter, even to yourself, you should have a penis.

Vaanga engineering pannalaam

There was a story that our language teacher in school used to relate, quite often. too often.
You can imagine..with the kind of memory power that I have, it has still hung on to my brain.

back in the times of yore, there was this learned guy, who used to speak a lot of languages. he was so skilled in all of them that no one really knew which language was his mother tongue. This guy used to go to several kings' courts and challenge the ministers there to find his mother tongue. The kings' men used to bring scholars and linguistic experts and make them analyse the wise guy's language to find out if his speech had an accent or inclination to certain state, area or country. but none of that worked and wise guy kept getting popular and making money out of his challenges.

One shrewd minister thought of a not-so-nice way to find out the truth. while wise guy was asleep, well into night, the minister slipped in through his bedroom window with a huge hammer. The minister then tip toed close to wise guy and banged hard with the hammer on wise guy's right toe and immeditely slipped behind the curtains.

Wise guy woke up into a fit and started cursing black and blue and not finding what had stung him, went back to bed still muttering and cursing and whining from the pain.

Next day in court, the minister related the previous nights accounts and announced with conviction the mother tongue of the wise guy. Finally the challenge was won.

Ya so, as it goes, This language- our mother tongue, the thing that we think in.. also the one by which we show our extreme emotions- We get angry in that, we love in that, we crack jokes in that. but facts can always be taught and understood in any language. E=mc^2. Mariana trench is 35,797 ft deep. The first world war was between 1914-1918. I learnt them in english, which is definitely not my mother tongue, but i still know them facts and in fact learning them in english has helped me not to confine myself within the state of tamilnadu.

So what I really dont understand is, why has the tamilnadu government decided to introduce new engineering courses in Tamil?! and how does the government expect the kids graduating from these colleges to find jobs???

Why cant they just leave us to do our cursing and joking in tamil.. who are they trying to please by making us learn engineering in tamil, what purpose do they think that education will serve? Enna koduma sir ithu..

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/TN-to-experiment-with-engineering-courses-in-Tamil/articleshow/5614006.cms

Talent in happiness

Where does happiness come from?

An especially ragged morning... these days it doesnt take much to put me in a ragged mood. just a cup of tea spilling and i can switch to a tragedy queen internally and mourn long enough to even miss the best that life has to offer me that day.

Elizabeth Gilbert said you have to have a 'talent in happiness'. I wrote that down some time ago. I wanted to develop that talent, that was the mission of my life. until the tea spilled or something similar happens.

it wasnt just any tea mind you. it was taj mahal, and had the right balance of ginger and sugar. and i did not get a single drop of it. my flask fell to the ground from a good height, the whole of the tea blasted out on to the white floor. i just looked on helplessly and a little mesmerised.

When you are frustrated, watching things get smashed or destroyed is like chicken soup to the soul. i have experienced this once before, few years ago.

I was wearing a hideous bracelet. i had never really liked it, but it came as a set with a necklace i loved and it also matched a number of my clothes. so i wore it anyway. that day was a very difficult day, i going through something at work for many days and it had reached a peak and this day, had been heart breaking, at the same time i wanted to break some people's bones.

Come to think of it, i dont remember what it was that set me off. its always like this, isnt it - things that matter soo much, over which we get so flustered about, 3 years down the line, you cant hecking remember them!

So anyway, i stepped out of the office, i could not take it any longer. I was out near a small garden, walking furiosuly and something got stuck in my shoe. i ripped it out and threw it away.

in the force of what i was doing, my hideous bracelet slipped out of my wrist and hit a nearby rock with such violence that it broke. it didnt just break, it BROKE. it blasted. in 50 directions. i think it had as many as 25 beads. but it seemed to blast in 50 directions.

i just stood there, time went still. i felt like i saw it in slow motion. every single hideous bead flying helplessly away from the violence of what just happened to them. even the band that held them together, something elasticcy, broke into a few pieces. it was glorious.

about 3 or 30 minutes had passed. passers by stared curiously at me. I could have said 'f**k off' but i didnt. In such times of intense vulnerability, life has taught us to always care about what perfect strangers who matter nothing to us and will not even remember us the next moment thought of us. but in that moment, i could have told all of life's teachings to go fly a kite. but i didnt care enough to do even that.

what i just saw was therapeutic and those people had no idea. and i needed therapy. strangely, the frustration had vanished. in its space, there was... nothing.

so i took in a deep breath with my eyes closed and time slowed again. I wanted to fill this emptiness with something. something useful, something helpful. fast, i told my brain. My brain sprung into action, looking at its archives for memories. finding all sorts. it kept tossing out the angry ones, the sad ones, the bitter ones, until it got to the happy ones.

My son looking into my eyes,
my mother and i on a trip,

I am eating a steaming hot plate of perfect fried rice,
and my lungs had reached its full capacity, my breath was done, now it was time to exhale..

I slowly opened my eyes and let out a long, calming breath of air.
Talent in happiness, here i come.

and to all those people whose bones were spared, my hideous bracelet said 'you are welcome' from the 50 different places its pieces lay.

Preg talk 1

Me: That guy looks like Christian Bale
He: No way
Me: Yes he does
He: Of course he does not
Me: (slow head turn towards him, one eyebrow raised with a killer evil look) I am pregnant and I will be for a while, this is the time you have to agree with everything I say. so?
He: Hmm, yes he does look like him
Me: like who?
He: Christian Bale
Me: (sitting back relaxed) Good.
and the day goes on peacefully

Husband did a kind gesture. 

Me: you are so sweet. please stay this way. One of us has to be sweet, because I am going to be a bitch for a while

Him: (after an eye roll) a while?

Me: what?!

Him: erm...nothing my dear

Me: dude..that was such a poor joke
He: well..my jokes were alwyas like this, you don't like them nowadays because of ur hormonal imbalance
Me: hm, u r learning..

"I dont like masala.. I dont like rice.. I dont like chicken curry..
I dont like a lot of things nowadays.."
(slow head turn towards him with what is now a routine of one raised eyebrow with the evil look)
"You! You count yourselves lucky you are not one of them"

This last one came out so good I am thinking of making a video, and adding the dr.evil finger move at the end.. 

Sleep...eluding sleep

Its frigging four in the morning and i still cant go to sleep. All my brain can do at this time is look at the coincident rhyming of "frigging four" and laugh!

So Generally, why can't people sleep?

Snowden can't sleep because he does not have a home. This guy surely had to be sleepless. At least I hope so. 20 something countries are said to have turned down his asylum request. The Indian govt tweeted that they don't have a positive response. Imagine that, They tweeted! U won't find this funny unless u had Indian government office experience in ur life. If not, well I'm not in a mood to explain, remember? Its frigging four and I cannot sleep, last thing I'm gonna do is explain my joke.

I just googled sleepless and I learn that 20% of Americans aren't asleep, I sure hope so, it's broad daylight over there now, if there is only 20% that are not asleep and rest sleeping, then God save America.

Oh and there is another search result, 2% ppl have super powers, so that's why they dont sleep. Hmm, I wonder what my super power is. I see open windows, Maybe I should test, jump out and try to fly. Bur no cape! im sure super power does not work without thr right accessories.. What is batman without his bat wings, what is super man without his red undies and cape? Just plain normal sleepless people!

Actually I don't give a shitake mushroom why other people cant sleep! Why the hell can't I sleep???

An ode...

I am not new to this game, consider me a novice by no means.

I have done my share, mind you. I have used the likes of you! some much better than you. Deserted them all and never looked back when I had to move on. I never felt any regret, nor did I sense any guilt or remorse. Not even once did I feel compelled to linger, to come back, to surrender, to feel addicted. But with you..

The smile I have when I think of you.. is not exactly new, I admit. but I am surprised that it has not changed even after the novelty has worn off. On the contrary, I feel your need more and more and I do not want to think of those days when I cannot kiss you anymore. In simple words, I need you.

You have changed my habits, my whole day.. in a way, my life.

Addiction is not a good thing, I know. but thats what I have for you - All beans, no chicory, freshly ground.. oh my cup of coffee now that I know you, have you, I dont ever wanna let you go.