Tagged

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog’s content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!”

SK thinks this blog is brilliant. Which is probably the only logical thought he's ever had in his brain.

This blog is read by my family and there's only so much you can tell without bringing the roof down. So kindly excuse the sanitization.

1. I react very physically every time I get pissed off. So when I'm dragged out for a wedding or painful family occasion, I get a terrible headache. I also turn red and appear distinctly diseased. My mum thinks these symptoms are well within my control. But the truth is that they are NOT.

2. I'm damn proud of my nose-ring and it's the only piece of jewelery I like wearing. It's also the only piece of jewelery I've ever actively purchased.

3. I judge people by their grammar, spelling, and syntax. I mentally correct people's sentences as they make them. I get highly irritated when people say 'revert back'.

4. I can cry very easily. I can take a situation and build it to such an extent in my head that I can easily cry about it. But I know I'm only fake-crying. I do this when I'm alone, so it's not an attention-grabbing activity. I think it's called pathos.

5. The only thing that truly makes me happy is writing. If I write something I like, I get high. I feel like an effervescent chemical reaction.

6. I like reading trivia about animals. Did you know that an oyster changes its sex several times in one lifetime?

7. I can re-read books repeatedly. As in, I can finish a book and then start reading it again that very moment. I don't know why I do that, but I do. At one point, I was ceaselessly reading Franny and Zooey.

8. I can't stand religious fanatics. Or casteist fanatics. I get extremely angry about it.

9. I write songs for people I like. The one that's been set to tune is called Under the sun of your smile and I hum it a lot. I wish I could have been best friends with the Beatles.

10. I'm the most impatient person I know. I'm so impatient, it amuses me.

11. I'm worried about tagging people. What if they don't want to do it?

I tag:

Anyone who wants to take this up voluntarily. I think all of you are brilliant!

With that political statement, I shall say my byes.

Blah

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It's a 4-day week, yay. Not for real Press people, of course. We're a Press with a bunny on our logo, so I guess it's okay to be a little joyous in life. I've been trying hard to sort my mail all day. My drawers are full of paper- old proof sheets, contest entries, reference material, stories, doodles, contracts, and postcards with jokes. I hate putting things into envelopes. Or shelves. Or tins. What a bore. All this segregation business. My mum has about ten steel tins inside the fridge and one can never find what one wants. What I want to do now is to squash all this paper into a cauliflower-like ball and bounce it on B's head. B's been reading a Telugu newspaper all day. He gives me this vague smile every time I go past his cubicle. All friendly-like, but he kind of hates me, I know that. Why do you always wear cream shirts, B? It'd be good to see you in something else for a change...not that you are going to become a sweet old man because of it, but jestu for jollies, you know.

This kid sent me a letter asking if this fantasy land I write about (where all the extinct animals go...brrrrr) is a real place. I spent some time trying to think of a spectacular answer (something on the lines of the famous Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus) but I couldn't do much apart from smiling like an egg. Yes kid, there is a dinosaur. And a dodo. And a mutant lady with four hands. They are all there inside my head. It's a blue-green land with pink smoke. They are as real as is the velveteen rabbit.

The AC is working finally. KS is the admin man and his hair is like several cobras bunched on the head. Fascinating. Every time I talk to him, I imagine him dressed like Sivaji in Thiruvilayaadal. He is graciously inept.

So this weekend, what can one possibly do? Hopefully, somebody will be home-alone and we can all barge in and behave like immature gits. For the last three weekends, I've been going to the beach. It's probably the only place in Madras where a person can sit without having to order food. I like the 29 C bus route also. The beach is a good place to sit and wash the insides of your head. There are also children in shimmies [chemises if you want to be uppity] running around- which sort of reaffirms my faith in the random and the beautiful.

I think I'll go and create quiz questions for the next issue now. I love googling and feeling ignorant.

Ugly

I don't watch too much TV, especially Reality TV. Kala Master gives me a headache. The anchors on her show give me a toothache. Sometimes, watching these people dance so energetically, I wonder if they are all creatures escaped from a lab experiment gone awry. And they are now taking over the earth in their shiny costumes. They'll crawl out of your TV sets and tell you that your potato gene has made you mortal. If you can't dance or sing, you have to die. And you'll have to die on a Reality TV show. They'll walk you down the stage in your shameful unshiny clothes, force you to dance when you can't, trip you and make you break your jaw, and then, they'll use cruel SMSes from those watching the gladiator show to crucify you. You'll be on YouTube before you know it and who knows, they might start a religion in your name in Botswana.

Jesus would have made excellent Reality TV. With all that tangly hair, he'd have been a sure sweetheart.

I was reading about Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old pudgy woman who appeared on Britain's Got Talent. Apparently, everyone made fun of her and didn't believe she had it in her because she's fat and has bad hair. And then when Susan sang, people were awestruck and gave her a standing ovation. You can YouTube for the video and watch. The reason why Reality TV is such a hit is obviously that we all love to be mean. There's nothing wrong with that, really. Maybe on a Judgment Day kind of scale, it would be wrong. But on an everyday basis, being mean is good for the heart. A few snide remarks made when you want to make them gets rid of arterial clogs. But this Susan thing bothers me because it's being turned into a fairy tale. I mean, she isn't hot or anything, but she looks like a pudding-type of auntyji. Not ugly and all. She's 47, which is the sort of age at which being a pudding is a very good thing to be. And yeah, she can sing...but so what?!

All this talk of underdogginess is a pain, really. And when I was watching that video, I thought Susan looked quite surprised when that Pierce idiot informed her that everyone was laughing at her earlier. She looked like she considered herself to be a pudding and perfectly likable. Since when was it illegal to look ugly anyway? Most people are ugly, if you think about it. Sometimes I see people who make me wonder how their faces got that way. I'm not too big a fan of inner beauty, if you want to know the truth. If someone told me it doesn't matter am not beautiful because I've got inner beauty, I'd sock him/her in the guts. Because of course there's something called ugly. It changes from person to person and all that, but hiding the fact that Ugly exists is a bloody insult to Ugly. Inner beauty can take a hike.

Hiding the ugliness or the plainness with talent and then making it into one hoopla joy ride is a pain. It's like a pimple under a concealer. You know it's there and you can't think of anything else. I used to wear high heels and all when I was in my angsty teenachy phase. Owing to the fact that I'm barely five feet. It was quite a bore because it was a bit like stepping off the stage every time I had to remove them. And then I'd be short again. So one day, I thought to myself, everyone knows am short, so what exactly am I trying to prove here? I'll still have to stand first in line in the school assembly because canvas shoes don't come with heels. Everyone will anyway look at me when the PT Master with his deranged love for order shouts HEIGHT ORDER! And even with a 3-inch heel, I still wouldn't be tall. So then, I decided I'd chuck them and be short and chappaly. Embrace the ugliness, so as to speak. And I've been pretty happy about it. I certainly don't correlate my ability to write with my ability to be short. It's true that writing is an offstage event while Susan's singing isn't. I don't have a million people watching me when I'm writing a story, but still, I wish people wouldn't do this inner beauty, inner talent jaal because they are missing the whole point. It doesn't compensate for being able to sing very well. It doesn't have to compensate, that's the point.


Anyway, Indian Reality TV appears to be way above materialism and superficiality and all that because they seem to pick the judges by how ugly they are. I do wish they'd keep children out of this though. The child anchors on Odi Vilayadu Paapa make me quite violent. What wouldn't I give to see some children in normal frill frocks??

Rakhee Sawant is apparently going to get married on a Reality TV show. I quite like her, actually. She's ugly.

Please to be blessing:

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http://fatcatbooks.blogspot.com

This is a new blog site that N and I will be writing in. Mainly about children's literature and our grand plans for the future that include us winning the Nobel. It will not be academic and coat-tie-suit. It shall also include N's doodles of children with fingers in their nose rather than on their lips.

Become a FatCat Books fan before it's even begun.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish

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On some days, it's obvious that God woke up and crafted your day with love. Communists be damned. Friday was one such day. First thing in the morning, I saw this and it cheered me up enormously- I grinned from ear to ear and offered my mandatory Amrutanjan generously to HR who sits in the next cubicle. Some would say that Amrutanjan on one's nose as a way of life is disgusting, but I think it's excellent for ideation. Especially when the bleddy AC is on your head like a monkey. That picture book series is something N and I worked on in college and we got into quite a storm over it. Anyway, it's all done and some kid read it and laughed and all, so I think I've earned some good karma in this life. I felt mighty good about it.

Then the day got better and better because this little kid sent us this long letter saying she was so happy because we'd published her SMS in the Junior edition of the magazine. She said we'd made it a 'glittering day' and then went on to end her letter on a very profound note: Who would have thought that a single SMS...
I like the dot-dot-dot poignant trail off...it blooms with possibility and the phrase 'glittering day' stuck to my head. I kept seeing star spangles everywhere. Like I was wearing a cloak of stardust and I could shake it off and the sparkley jiggina powder would settle down on my Amrutanjan nose.

And then I got a wonderful mail from this kid from Bhopal who wanted to know many things about this fantasy series I write in the magazine and I felt highly pumped up. She'd arrived at this interesting perspective of it and all and I wanted to make a poster of that email and stick it on my head like a crown. Only, I'm too humble to do all that, you see. If I were in Tinkle, I'd be an urchin eating gruel [oooh okay, all ye Tinkle fans, SHUDDDDUUUPPPP!!]. So I just forwarded it to the people in my life who excuse me when my head blows up a little and basked in my glory for a while.

I read Peanuts at work. Like N says, I think I've lost my capacity to read anything profound, too. In one of the strips, Snoopy tries to run away and jumps the gate...but then he realizes that he's still in the world. That just about sums up my complicated psychiatric problems, I think. Apparently, Charles Schulz who created Peanuts was quite nuts himself. He died the day he wrote his last strip.

HR offered me a ride to the railway station on her Scooty and we felt very clever because we could leave early while the rest of the office had to stew in the van. But then, we'd just made our fashionable exit and turned the corner when she realized that she'd left her mobile in office. So we had to turn back and make an entry again and I was collapsing with laughter behind her because the van people looked so mean and delighted. Bossman was getting into his car just then and he flashed me a very wide and bemused grin. I was happy as a freak.

I also kept cracking up every time I heard S shout, "HAAWWW YOU RECEIVEDDUUU THEEEE" over the phone. The poor woman is always asking someone if they've receiveddduu theee courier or bill or whatever it is she keeps sending into this world.

Even my parents stayed away from the subject of my biological clock on Friday. Told ya God made my day. A glittering day. With angels and harps. It was perfect.

Saturday-Sunday were godless days though. I went to the beach again on Saturday. I sat on a bus next to one of those highly-Jesus persons who was swearing the bejesus out of someone...and then she saw her priest on the road and she raised one arm and said 'Sothram sothram aandavarey'. She became all pious for exactly two seconds and went back to swearing again. And I thought I have mental problems.

I hope tomorrow is a glittering day. They are rare, I know. Like comets or something. But I could do with some stardust, God. HAAWWW YOU RECEIVEDDDUU THEEE prayer?

Gahh

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So there are 8 people in office right now. It being Ambedkar Jayanthi and Tamil New Year's Day and all. I came like a good little soldier because I had 10 minutes work at office that couldn't have been put off. Or people would have died. I have an important job.

Yesterday was J's birthday. So a bunch of us went for dinner and N ate a fish after decades (she's been alive for only two decades though) just so I could sell my soul *hyuk*. Anyway, it was a happy birthday. I wish these waiter boys didn't have to make a train and run around the hall before singing the birthday song though. There were many birthdays and there were many trains. They must hate people with birthdays so much. I'd really fall off a cliff if I'd to run like a train every day just because some fool was born that day. Sorry, J. There were some ex-Stella Marians we don't approve of at the place yesterday. Some of us acted like we hadn't seen them while some of us gave such wide fake smiles it could have fit TR's waist. But all in all, it was kewl men.

I finished my 10-minute high profile work and now I want to go sleep in the conference room. It's such a terrific room to fall asleep in...all dark and cosy. I curled up and slept off there once when I had a terrible headache. I adore meetings that take place there because everyone gets so happy in the conference room. When they are showing you all these graphs and you are trying hard to remember number names [how many zeroes make a lakh and etc], the conference room helps you look smart. You can scribble furiously on the scribble pad and look damn intelligent. I love sitting there and watching powerpoint presentations, especially made by people who try to impress you with animation. The slowly slowly appearing headline. The VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM sound effect. Wah wah. I always want to clap at the end of every presentation because the chappie who made it looks so damn proud of his ppt animation. Well done, you!

I'm dying to have coffee now. But am not going to get it because I can look forward to something happening at 4 pm then. I tried googling for the company, college friends, myself, digging for dirt on all the abovesaid on Orkut etc, but I've done all that so many times that nothing frigging new is there to be unearthed. Whadda colossal bore.

I can write something, of course. But my head feels woozy and it's New Year and all. I hope there's a thiraikku vandhu sila maadhangaley aana putham pudhiya thirai padam on TV today. I could do with a nice, stupid movie.

Happy New Year, then.

Regards

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Ayan was good. It was fast. I didn't have to think for a second even. Surya takes off his shirt a sufficient number of times. The villain is funny and Hindi. It's a great mid-week crisis movie. I watched Firaaq a while ago and felt nothing. We all watched it and were like duhh. It was very drama-like. Sanjay Suri would give off one pained expression and leave off one dialogue without-his back-to- the- audience. Then Tisca Chopra will say something profound that sounds nothing like conversation. I mean, it was all duhh. I didn't get what Nasureedin Shah was doing in the movie because he insisted on speaking in Hindi. N was sitting next to me with a very glazed expression on her face and I asked her what was going on. She said 'purila' and we both giggled for five minutes. What awful behaviour, given the circumstances. Anyway, I think I'm evolving into a masala-only-please type of person. Must be the effect of the number of moral stories I read at work. A nice sage with a mighty bun on his head has probably let off one fiery curse on my head somewhere.

Stupid Satyam was out of chicken puffs. To protest, I ate a veg puff and didn't visit their fancy loo.

It's so funny that when you ask someone to do some work and they do it and answer your mail, they say thanks. Dear Shalalampoo, PFA the file you asked for. Thanks. Regards, Lalalampoo. Why are you thanking me for asking you to send me the file? Makes no sense. Also, people always put off 'warm regards' when they've said something nasty to you. I'm very suspicious of warm regards. Dear Shalalampoo, Unfortunately, given the circumstances and the Gateway of India, we will not be able to accommodate your request. Thanks. Warm regards, Lalalampoo. It's so boring to write these mails. You can't just tell someone to do something, you have to fill up some crazyass Excel sheet and make a 'request' with thanks and regards. So everything is on record and we can all be professional and official and important. I wish I could write mails on slates with a bulpam. So there's no record ever but everyone gets the message and shuts up and there's no unnecessary thanking and regarding going on.

I always sign off official mails with 'Best'. But I don't know what of my 'best' I'm giving everyone. Not my regards, certainly. I have no regard for half the people I have to mail. No wishes either. So it's just my best am giving ya. The best of emails. The most glorious, most fantabulous email on the planet. Print it and kiss it.

I ate Gobi Manjoori from Krishna Bhavan today. So good, it was. The weekend is here! Yay. There's nothing to do. Joy.

Vaada Maapilla Vaazha Pazha Thopula

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Thanks to Basha Baai, our van driver, I listen to this song first thing in the morning every day and it's doing me an enormous amount of good. YYEEEEEIII vaada maapilla vaazha pazha thopula, vaalleeball aadalama. Fundaastic. I feel all energetic to take on the world and chuck a volleyball in the general direction of people who piss me off. It feels brilliant to start the day headbanging like a freak while eating tea-cake and making faces at school children in buses.

On the work front, I got all emotional in life when some two and a half children wrote to us and told us how our piece on Holi in the March issue (which was on Hindu-Muslim unity once upon a time) touched their hearts and made them resolute to believe in this improbable nation of so-many-peoples. On days like this, I feel like I have an important job. There was also a kid who wrote me a mail calling me 'just brilliant' and I keep opening the mail and looking at it just to feel like a million dollars. A child sent me a joke today titled 'Beggars of Today'.

I'm going for Ayan today after office. Yay. This quiet nutjob in our office who never talks and positively bristles in fear when I go near him is a major Surya fan. He's so happy that I'm going for the film. He's so happy if anybody goes for the film. He's seen it twice already and is going for it again this week. Good for you man, good for you. The movie is apparently a waste of time, which is just what I want to do today. Besides eating a bigfat chicken puff while looking at Surya.

I'm all a tizzy the second week of every month because I have to start work on the contents for the next issue. I met all the deadlines I set for myself. I'm just brilliant. A vaalleeball for me.

I wanted to eat chilli parotta so badly today but the man who fries things in Krishna Bhavan has gone on leave today. What an idiot. If I were his HR, I'd give him loss of pay.

Ok, so now I can go and write some bossy-sounding emails to some people. I'm going to list out my email in points.

a.

b.

c.

So everything looks super-important and dazzling.

Thanks and Regards,

Idlivadadosa.

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And for now, we can sit on the beach, the wind in our hair. Tell each other about fights at home. How similar the mothers, how similar the fathers. How similar this rage, this need to get-out. And we can talk about how similar it all is and pretend to be tragic figures, each hanging precariously between tears. How the years slide by, the lines of poetry we quote out of context. If I tell you this is my Othello moment, you will look me in the eye and smile, for you too know and you too remember. If I tell you I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed, you will laugh because we laughed so much when we first read Shelley and sniffed his box of sadness. There is relief in not having to explain, to talk without having to hyperlink.

So we are not what we once used to be. The people who came and went, charmed and disillusioned, the people we put up on pedestals and who fell crashing by the first storm, the people we trapped in our eyes so that their shadows never leave, the things that happened in the years, who said what, what happened where, in the whys and hows of the years, we changed little by little, all of us did. We learned to smile while wincing. To grow weary while marching to our little jobs. To sit on revolving chairs for 8 hours a day. To have no time. To lose our plans for the future and suddenly find ourselves without a point. So unlike old times when we had timetables and assignments. To make our little jobs our lives because we don't know what else to do. Oh yes, we all grew a shade grey. And though we're still young and twenty three is no age in the language of the universe, in the eyes of this measly world, we're already past the age for finding ourselves. So here we are, with blanks. I don't know what to put down for myself and I have twenty thousand people breathing down my neck. You don't know either. We are people with little jobs and we like our peace.

It's good we can still meet though. One wanting to study tigers in a monastery while making jewelery. Two wanting to write stories for children they never want to have. One wanting to quietly edit business articles she doesn't give a damn about. One wanting to dance. One wanting to live in transit. It's good we can still meet and be aimless. It's good we can watch movies and eat food without a manic desire to clean plates right after. It's good to sit in silence and let all your craziness wash over my head. It's good to listen to your stories and what's happening with your lives. The bitches you meet at work, the work you're beginning to hate, the parents who're driving you nuts, the clothes you bought and the mean things you said to people, the littleness of all the big earthquakes in our lives. The night stretching seamlessly to an Age. To give space for everyone. To talk and listen and not be judged. To know this can pass all too soon, that it can slide away so fast, this ease, this quiet in between the splits of our laughter, this happiness, to know it is to enjoy it a little more fiercely. For all the chicken we ate, for all the chilli flakes we put in our pizzas, for all the fine wining and dining, for all the ketchup bottles we finished...salutations.

I need to sleep, sisters.