Thatha would talk about his cup often. He would hold it up for us, his little grandchildren, to see, sitting in his reclining chair with all of us crowding around it.
“50 naya paisa,” he would say. “Can you anything this valuable today for that amount?”
We would shake a no, in awe that 50 paisa had so much value decades before we were born.
“Madras central….I wanted tea. They were giving it in dirty glasses, so I bought this cup so that he could pour the tea in this…it has been with me ever since,” he would go on.

We would giggle. Thatha would drink anything only from the cup – water to coffee to medicine to juice. He would even take it with him if went away from home for more than a day, much to Patti’s annoyance.
“Why, can’t you stay without it for some days?” she would ask.
“No,” he would reply, then turning to us: “You must throw this cup along in my funeral pyre.”
We would nod vigorously.

And one fine summer day, when we were all together at our grandparents’ for the vacations, the cup disappeared. Thatha, as we would describe now in our ‘grown-up’ language, freaked out. He was close to bursting into tears every time he had to drink from the normal tumbler instead of the cup.

Finally, we, the kids, decided to launch a massive search for the cup. We searched high and low all around the house. Servant maids at home were questioned as to when they last saw the cup, where, etc. After searching for three entire days, (it was good entertainment for us; we found many other things we had misplaced long ago) we concluded that it was not in the house, and was lost for sure.
Patti was worried when we conveyed the news. With a lot of apprehension, we told Thatha that we were unable to find the cup. Thatha broke down, all the while talking about the importance of ‘lost memories’ in old age.

Things soon grew worse. Thatha fell very sick and was bedridden. We all, young kids he used to play with often, missed him. Our parents regularly kept checking on him to see how he was doing. Doctors said he had a lot of mental worry which they could not treat with medicines. His sons and daughters talked to him day and night in the hope of relieving any mental tension. Nothing worked much.

Among all this hulla balloo, Bablu one day found the cup. He had found it in the fridge freezer when we asked him to scrape some ice for us to use in play.
Patti started shedding tears of joy when she saw the cup. With all energy she could summon, she ran to the kitchen, filled the cup with hot water, and ran back to where Thatha was lying, sick, talking vague matters in delirium. We all ran behind Patti.
“Your cup….”she said as she gave it to him.
Thatha broke down again as he drank the water from the cup. Then he looked up at all of us and smiled. We all smiled back.
Thatha was back playing with us two days later.

(Inspired by real life ;) )

My first ever trip in a non-Indian carrier was amazing. I came to Chennai this time through Colombo, in Sri Lankan airlines. Some nice things I can’t help forgetting:

The ‘ayubuvan’: Sinhalese greeting. Every air host greeted all of us this way.
Excellent service: I was really pleased by all the attention they gave us; we felt pampered.
The TV screen (or whatever it’s called) in front of every seat: Watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the second time, but this time with a very special difference: 40, 000 feet above land. It was amazing to see Johnny Depp and his weird ways at that heigh (yeah, don’t say as though it makes a difference, it did!).
The cameras on the flight: one at the bottom of the aircraft and another at front. If anything got boring, it was spell binding to sit and watch the clouds above or through which we were flying.
The regular maps that came on the TVs telling us how far from Colombo we were, and at what altitude and speed we were flying at.
The beautiful beaches of Colombo that we could see from the aircraft: they were really heavenly.

Once at Colombo, everything looked beautiful to me: the pleasant and always smiling airport officials (especially the men ;)) and the rhythmic Sri Lankan Tamil. The airport officials (men again!) were very cutely asking the passengers who had just landed from Singapore whether they were going to Bangalore, Mumbai or Karachi, as these flights were leaving very soon. And every time one approached me, I would smile a “No, Chennai” (trying hard not to grin, and controlling hard the flirt inside me), only to get back another cute smile from the authorities (ayyo, romba vazhiyareno, ok, I’ll stop!
:D ).

The Colombo-Chennai flight wasn’t all that eventful, except for a cute little boy in the opposite side of the aisle who started crying as the flight started to land as his ears were getting blocked due to the changes in pressure.
Things started picking up again as I craned my neck and peeped over the startled guy sitting in the window seat to see dear ol’ Chennai slowly looming into view.

I had to fight very hard to check the wide grin spreading on my face as the flight landed with a thud and went rushing forward, and finally came to a halt near the “Theeainaipu Nilayam” in the Anna international airport.
Immigration stuff surprisingly got over really quickly and I was soon waiting outside the airport for someone to come and pick me up. My flight supposed to land at 7 50 had somehow arrived at 7 30!!!!
The feeling of coming home was complete as I heard Ajay blabber away in Radio Mirchi. Hoping to have an amazing time here.

The old lady who cleans my floor bathrooms really made many of my mornings bad. I wished I could go on with my day without seeing her, but it seemed to be impossible. Most of my classes start before 9 30, and hence I always find myself running into her whenever I want to bathe.

It is quite a silly thing, I could’ve just gone on, ignoring it, but increasingly it was getting impossible to ignore.
The old lady mumbled something to herself every time she saw me.
Me, an Indian.
And it is not just me; it was the same thing with another Indian friend of mine who lived on the same floor. We noticed that every time she saw us, anywhere, she would start yelling in Chinese.
After some other case studies of Indian girls, we decided that she was doing this only with us, Indians. We concluded that she was being racist.
And now that we knew she was mumbling (I know she was swearing in Chinese!) only with us, it made us more irritated, and me with a higher degree of temper, fuming. I had to get it out of my system, somehow.

There was one fine day when I had my semester’s most-important presentation. I had to make sure I was in a fine mood all day, and not get myself excited or anxious over anything. I convinced myself to be calm, as I knew any slight tension in me would ruin my presentation.
I went to have a bath. As soon as I entered the bathroom, I unfortunately met the old lady. As expected, she started cursing. I decided to be nice; I smiled and said “Good morning!” This made her enraged. She began yelling even more.

I decided enough was enough.
I had a bath quickly and came out and stood face-to-face with her.
Again, she raised her pitch and started shouting even more.
I took a deep breath.

“Ei patti, ozhunga un velaiya pathundu po! Naan onna enna pannen….kezhavi! edhukku nee ipdi panra unakku kozhuppu romba jasthi! Oru naal na poi office la sonnadaan nee adanguve!”

It was a long sentence and I had spoken without even pausing for breath. I was panting. But strangely, I felt extremely happy. I would have never dreamed of saying this to some poor old lady, but this one did deserve it. Now I had cursed her back and she would be wondering what I said, just like I do when she yells at me. I was happy that I was not upset for doing so (keeping in mind my presentation).

The lady glared at me. I glared back, my eyes full of spite.
She began talking.
“Office-la poi solliduva? Vamba velaikku vangadha..”
My heart stopped beating for one micro second.
I opened my mouth to speak and it went dry.
I finally managed to get some syllables out of my mouth.
“Tha-tha…thamizh!” was all I could say.
The old lady gave a wicked grin and nodded. I ran out of the bathroom right away.

“Oh My God!! What have I done”, was running in my mind all the time. I quickly pulled myself together, prayed to God and apologised to Him, and made off to school.
There one of my Singaporean friends told me that many of the oldest generation in Singapore could speak all the three languages here: Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. Gosh, I was stunned and ashamed.
The next time I saw the old lady, I apologised. This time she smiled back. Soon, she even stopped cursing.
And what had I intended by yelling back at her in Tamil!!

P.S.: Again, fiction only. The ladies who have cleaned around my rooms are very nice and we even have little chit-chats often!! ;) But one old Chinese woman did give me the creeps one day in a bus stop when she commented about my black hair.. in Tamil!!!

Do you believe in wars?
I don't.
Or maybe I do?
Well, whether I believe in them or not, when it comes to fighting one, I give my fullest. I wish I could give very bit of energy needed to win the war.
Yes, I wish I could do away with losing. But sometimes losing is nice, too. Makes you feel humble in the presence of whoever won. Sometimes it's the huge, invisible power which I believe controls every one of us. There are also times, though, when whoever defeats you is totally unworthy of the victory she/he has won. It's totally unfair.
Now I've had to accept defeat.
In a war which is really stupid. A war which no one should lose, yet many do.
I grit my teeth with anger every time I look at one of the things that made me lose.
Guys, I lost the war against spam.
I've turned on word verification.
I do not like it, but guess there's no other alternative unless I start using haloscan comments, maybe.
Thanks for being patient and continue dropping by! :)

Yes, a number of things!
First, wish you all a happy Diwali!! A tad late, yeah, but never mind, hope you all had a nice day!!
Second, sound three cheers: this is my 75th post! :)

I watched Ghajini sometime back...and the background score for the movie sent me into peals of laughter. Random noises getting characteristic of Harris Jeyaraj: Bozo Zulo...oh my god! =)
I really can't understand what's with all these guys who make wierd noises in the name of background music!

When A.R.Rahman started out, there were a number of people who were criticising and making fun of him for introducing such 'noises': but dammit, his sure make much more sense than these zulos and habibiyas!! (Yeah, like I'll ever give up on Rahman! :) )
The thing with Rahman's 'noises' are that nobody can make out that what they are supposed to be: have any of you been successful in deciphering what the background in Mudalvan that comes whenever Arjun does something revolutionary means?! I haven't!
HJ tried something of this sort in Anniyan. And the result, needless, was extremely funny. Praveen had done an awesome job in finding it out and posting it in his blog! :) Do check out his blog if you want to know what it is... ;)

Another such example is from Vaseegara from Minnale. The female humming was awfully funny. When I had to learn that humming bit for a performance, I had great difficulty controlling my laughter as my friend patiently told me what the 'words' are: Iska ilaa ilaa othaailaa... Gosh, cannot make it!

Other examples include Habibiya Ilgae yathanehan (whatever!).
Kudos to all the music directors for managing to fit in such crap into their songs and movies. Another thing to be appreciated is the tunes are nice: maybe they should try to get some words which should make sense: like Shakalaka or Boom Boom by Rahman.

And guys who go about saying Rahman's rap sucks, puhleeez..... check out 'Unakku salsa, enakku jalsa' in the Remo song in Anniyan. It kept me in splits. Rahman (or rather Blaze's) rap is just too good compared to these!

Finally, no, I'm not trying to pull down efforts of these guys. They do give us some awesome pieces of music, and though it's difficult for them to match Rahman's standards, they do a great job! (ahem, listen to the music expert talking!)