Singlish – the English spoken by Singaporeans. Extremely hard to understand when spoken to for the first time. Doesn’t have grammar rules. Just take off all your articles, prepositions and similar things out of your speech. For e.g., you don’t “go to the canteen”, you “go canteen”. Got the drift?

Now, let me introduce you to some of the Singlish words commonly used that I have picked up to some extent. Woman, help me out here if there are any mistakes, ok? :)
Lah – the mother of all Singlish words. It can be added almost anywhere and to anything. Used most commonly with can and no. Has other variants like lor, leh and meh. I do not know where these can be used. I use them whenever they ‘sound’ appropriate.
Can – Short for anything affirmative. Can substitute yes, we/I can do it, it’s possible, etc. e.g., ‘Wanna go can (canteen) 1 now?’
‘Can, lah…’
Can be very confusing, if not accompanied by you or I. I got confused when somebody messaged me asking ‘If the time is ok wid u, can msg ----?’ I didn’t know whether she or I had to message -----.
wif – that’s how with is pronounced and written in chat/SMS language. Many Singaporeans have trouble pronouncing the ‘th’ (personal observation) and hence the ‘f’ substitutes in many such places.
How – it’s not the normal how. It could mean ‘so how should we proceed’, or ‘how someone else managed something’, etc. Changes according to context. This especially has the capacity to throw me off guard, as I don’t know what how they mean.
Tomolo – tomorrow. I still don’t know why it’s molo.
e’ – this is the in SMS language.
Oredi – already. When spoken fast, already sounds like ‘oredi’, but that’s how they write it too.
Chope – reserving seats. Someone could ‘chope’ a canteen seat for me.
Makan – food. Or eat. We go canteen and makan.
Blur – not the one we usually know. If someone doesn’t know or is confused about something, she is ‘blur’.
Paiseh – getting embarrassed or ashamed about something. So every time I forget the name of a Singaporean friend I know very well, it’s paiseh.
Kiasu – used and studied in my course very often. Almost every communication course has something to add about the ‘kiasu-ness’ of Singapore. Basically means taking extra care not to lose out on something. So kiasu Singaporeans will go borrow a book out of the library as soon as the prof announces we need it. ;)
Shiok – something that’s really good. Food can be shiok.
**Updated, important word forgotten**
Die-die - extremely bad state, something that you must do even if you die in the process. :)
Now let’s try to put these into use.
‘She come so early so she get front seat, so kiasu lor’
‘Exam was terrible. Confirm fail oredi.’
‘Let’s go can A makan.
Will be crowded, lor…
Jasmine choped seats oredi lah.’
‘We gotta submit report tomolo. You do e' introduction can?
Can, lah.’
‘She doesn’t want e' report lik this. So how?’

Author updates: I got exam tomolo. Die-die muz finish today.

Check this for a proper Wiki definition. Will help!

After long hours of work, I went to sleep. Seven hours since I had had dinner, I was starting to get hungry. I went to bed nevertheless, convincing myself that I would not feel the hunger once I slept.
I lay on the bed, unable to sleep, my stomach growling. I tossed from side to side and pressed the pillow hard on my stomach, as if that would magically solve the problem. ‘Sleep, girl, sleep,’ I told myself.
There was nothing I had in my room that I could eat right away. I lay on bed, straining my thoughts on what were the foodstuff I had – noodles, Milo…… the list went down to salt and sugar. Momentarily, my starvation was overridden by anger. Anger that I was so ill-planned for such an event.
My body gave me another warning. ‘You are going to faint soon,’ it said. I nodded, as if I was replying to that invisible voice that was warning me. My stomach flipped and squirmed, growling and complaining.
And just that moment, there was a flash. Of people. Of starving people. The gypsies who used to live in the platform near my apartment. The pot-bellied kids who came running when they saw someone ‘rich’, bringing their left-over food for them.
And the next moment, I thanked God I had had dinner. That I could afford it. I got up, murmured a prayer to the little picture of God I had on my desk, drank water, and went back to sleep.

It’s a story. Inspired.

No, this is not about the recent reservation of admissions into IIT. I'm really wondering.
IIT has been a magic word for everyone around all the while I was in school. Everyone went for IIT classes, but I didn't bother, mostly because I wasn't interested. It held no fascination for me.
But now I want to know.
Most of the engineers in my university here who're from India came here only because they didn't get the course they wanted in IIT or in the IIT they wanted. I feel like the odd one out when I tell them I didn't even attempt the JEE being a Science student, that too from CBSE and from apparently one of the prestigious schools in Chennai. Wonder why!
Now I wish I could go there to see what it's all about. I've definitely lost what it needs to get into an IIT, out of touch with Science or Maths for almost two years now. My university has exchange programmes with IITs, but yeah, IIT has nothing to offer for students from my course :(
Why, is technology only connected to engineering? Engineers need communication, and we communication scholars need technology! And yeah, IIT will need an (about-to-be!) advertising or PR professional like me! :P

‘I hate shopping’, I tell someone, and he is clearly surprised. Well, I had expected him to be happy, too, but it seems to be more like a deflation of his ego. Oh yeah, after all, he has just lost one of his points he can rant against girls, to me: girls love and spend helluva lot of time shopping.
So what’s with all these generalisations, anyway? Women cry easily, want to be pampered, love shopping, blah blah. Come off it, men, there is an equally long list I can give about what you could do. And all you’ll say is at least you don’t spend so much time checking stuff in a shop out. What rubbish! I have seen cousin brothers and uncles getting lost in a shop filled with electronic gadgets. And talking for hours on the latest computer monitor, car or cell phone model. We all have things to talk about. So next time, if you happen to make such a comment, I just wish the woman around you knows enough to counter. We’re not thinking of starting a fight here, but just to teach you how different genders are made differently, and you better recognize it and respond better or just shut up.
And oh, about how women cry. Ugh. Like men don’t. Men just have a huge complex around them to express their emotions, it’s like ‘being a woman’ if he cries. And that every woman is extremely sensitive and is weak-hearted. I agree, there are many women who are like that, crying for every other thing every other day, for even I would get so irritated as to slap them, asking them to shut up and be strong. But what’s with the thing that all women cry and everyone who cries is a woman? Just chauvinistic attitude! I would say such men are just weak enough to admit they want to cry or cried.
For all the talk most of the Indian men make, I must say they are some of the most disrespectful of the limited lot I have seen. Guys in Singapore have so much chivalry, it leaves me surprised. They treat girls so well, you know, like opening doors before girls get to them, let you go in the queue before them, basically extremely well-behaved. And Indian guys? They run out even before you could get to the door. I’m sure I can expect talk from them saying they have respect within and so on. Gibberish. I don’t want to be pampered like a 17th century lady, but just expect some basic courtesy. Indian men could be totally disrespectful when they talk of women, they could even lack the basic courtesy they should extend to another person who lives on the same ground as them. This is what I mean, which is there to some extent in Singaporean men, and hard to find in Indian guys (not that I’ve done an entire case study of men around the world; it’s just a general observation). The basic respect to women.
So why am I saying all this? Not because I’m jobless; I’ve wanted to write this for long, but just found the time. Not because I’m a feminist, don’t get me started on that. I just wish I could see and hear lesser of such talk from men, more so on my blog. There was this one guy who read my story on a little boy who cried, and goes on to tell me in my comment box: ‘You were learning to be a woman’ and gave a whole list of how the ‘I’ in the story was learning to be a woman. That ‘she’ cried, that ‘she’ screamed, tried to fight someone off, and so on. If it weren’t for social courtesy I have to maintain, I would have torn the guy apart with words. Not only has he read the story without any care, not only hasn’t he realised it’s about a boy and not a girl, he has the cheek to tell me all that in the comment box. Of a girl. Fine, of course he has the right to tell me his interpretation, but it’s the way it has been presented that can be so irritating.
Please don’t give any male chauvinistic comments anywhere, not only my blog, but anyone’s. Show some basic courtesy to the women who do so much in life to keep you happy, to please you. And don’t expect me to be nice if I find any such comment in my blog.

Vidiyadha iravendru edhuvum illai....

Yeah, exams are over!!!! Whhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

(Ok, well, not over, got an open-book-don't-need-a-book exam on May 3rd, which hopefully I should crack well).

“La li laa li laa lo…” croons Rahman. That’s just what I need to listen to when I’m trying hard to keep awake and think of strategies to suggest to Bush telling him when to intervene to stop mass killings. And tell Osama bin Laden how wrongly he has interpreted the Koran.

“Dear Osama,”
I begin the letter, like how I think it’s going to be in the exam.
I’m trying to get my answers organised in Microsoft Word. And immediately the wizard assistant says ‘It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?’ Yeah, like he could write out the letter for me to Osama. I hide the wizened old Office Assistant.

Dark clouds loom over the once bright sky and threaten to bring in rain. God, the last thing I need right now, as I stretch myself wearily to complete the readings of Osama’s interviews to various media. God, that guy is one huge fanatic I’ve ever read about. His interpretations of the holy Koran, and how he has cleverly managed to find justifications for everything he has done and plans to do – how every other country in the world is infidel, and how US is ‘disgusting’. Wow, he gets me stunned.

And talking of Islamic laws, I really wonder if they are that strict as ObL portrays them to be. ‘Strike the disbeliever in the neck’, I read in shock, wondering if it is some metaphorical order, or literal, as ObL chooses to interpret it. No religion can promote or glorify violence, I believe, and it’s difficult for me to believe my eyes as I read of ObL reeling out phrases after phrases of Koran and telling the world how he is just protecting the world and upholding his religion. Apparently (according to ObL) the holy book says that the whole world should come under the Islamic law and he goes about asking the US to follow Islamic law. I don’t know if that is true, but I am just spellbound by ObL’s demands and how he can coolly ask a country to follow something just like that! And he hates the UN because it follows man-made laws instead of the already-present holy law from the holy book. Whoa!!

And I read about how China, Russia and Pakistan are deliberately slowing down UN intervention in Darfur, Sudan where hundreds of thousands are getting killed (with the aid of the Govt of Sudan) and more millions displaced. Apparently, China has good stakes in Sudan’s oil, and Russia is afraid to endorse a particular move just because it is afraid it’ll be setting a precedent because of the way it dealt with the Chechnya issue. And the US, God only knows why it takes so much time to take any action, it being the only country to have called the Sudanese killings genocide. I am surprised at how countries can be this selfish when thousands are getting killed. Of course, politics is no simple issue, I’m just frustrated.

Effects of exam time. : ) I should be fine by Friday. And I hope the UN decides to do something concrete in Darfur soon!

‘Appa.,….’, Rajini screamed.
‘Shhhh….’ he replied.
He was on the phone, making animated gestures as he spoke. He seemed to be really agitated, why, Rajini couldn’t understand.
She then ran to her grandmother and tugged at her sari.
‘Ei, madi!!’ Her grandmother winced. ‘How many times do I tell you not to touch me when you haven’t had a bath?’
Rajini glared back in anger and ran off to find her grandfather.
‘Thatha!!’
Her grandfather didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, and he was reciting something. He poured some water into his hand and flung it backwards. He was praying.
Rajini’s excitement lessened a little.
She ran off to find her mother, her last resort.
‘Amma…’
‘Rajini,’ her mother said. ‘This is not the time….can’t you see I’m cooking?’
‘Amma, just a minute’, the 3-year-old pleaded. ‘Come out to the balcony….something is happening…please, ma…tell me what it is….’
Her mother took a deep breath, as if to calm herself down. Rajini ran to the balcony. ‘Ma, quickly!!’
Her mother added the salt to the boiling sambar, knowing she would forget to do so otherwise. And counted the three whistles from the pressure cooker so she could turn it off. Finally she went to the balcony.
Rajini was standing, her neck craned to the road that they could see from their balcony. When she realised her mother was there, she turned.
‘It’s not here…..it’s gone, ma….’

I hate cooking. Given a chance, I'd never cook my entire life, but will hog on food someone else cooks. But this stupid place I'm in forces me to try my hand at cooking pretty often, as I resolutely stick to being vegetarian. It's also better I cook at times to leave some people free of my curses and swearing. This evening, for instance, the Chinese food stall guy in one of the canteens was the poor object of my cursing (when I returned, of course!) as I realised that the dumb idiot had added egg to my fried rice despite my strict instructions not to. 'No meat, no fish, no egg, understand?' and the stupid guy had nodded vigourously. It took me 50 minutes to eat the food after picking up the shreds of egg.
And so, it's better I save some people any effect of my killing them with words. Any experiments with cooking, though are better restricted to Singapore. Once, over-excited-me tried at home. And see what happened.

Scene: Home, Chennai. First year summer vacation.
Author: (excited after seeing friend in Singapore cook pasta easily. Has even bought a packet of pasta to make it at home)
‘Amma, I’ll make our tiffin today!’
Amma: (thinks, ‘danger’) And what’ll you make?
Author: Pasta!!!
Amma: (tries dissuading author, saying it’s not healthy, that author doesn’t know, etc., quits after a few attempts)
Author: (Excitement reaching peaks. Takes a wok and puts the necessary stuff in. Realises the only spice available right away is chilli powder)
Who cares, it’s spice!
(Cooks!!)
It’s ready!!
(Nobody interested, or listening. Gets irritated, and manages to drag people to the dining table)
Eat!
(Cousin and sister eat.
Cousin gives a weird look, but it’s expected from him, a guy who makes a face to eat anything new.
So does sister. Now something could be wrong.
Author eats. Wonders what is wrong.)
The spice isn’t mixed well.
(Tries to mix the remaining pasta well, to distribute the spice evenly. It still remains the same.)
The spice hasn’t really stuck on to the pasta, that’s the problem.
(Sees nobody really cares. Cousin shrieks when asked if he needs a second helping. Sister doesn’t help much, either.
Author terribly disappointed, upset and hurt. First cooking at home a real failure.)
How mean….you guys just can’t appreciate anything new I try!
(Knows that she herself wouldn’t eat it if asked to. With great frustration, empties the rest of the contents into the trash bin.
Keeps wondering what was wrong. Finally realises.)
Amma, I never fried the pasta in oil after boiling them in water.
Amma: (Shocked.) Then what did you do?
Author: I just boiled the pasta and added salt and spice.
Amma: (Speechless.)
Author: (Vows never to try cooking anything at home, and remains the good girl away from kitchen as she always was.)

Author’s amma makes pasta a few days later, and it’s just like upma – with coriander leaves, mustard seeds, et al. But yeah, upma with a difference. And at least better than the author’s version.

Author hasn’t made pasta ever since. Or cooked at home unless her mom almost threatened her with a knife at her neck.

“Amma, you have not given me an eraser,” said Poornima.
Her mother came sighing from the kitchen.
“Poorni, is this the time for you to remind me of that? What were you doing last night?” asked Divya.
“You have told me not to ask you anything on a Sunday night,” Poorni said, an apologetic expression slowly creeping into her face.
Divya screamed. In her head, of course. She wondered how Poorni had chosen to completely torment her with these little things. Especially on a Monday morning. On the first day to a new school, that too.
“It’s okay, appa will come to school with you, I’ll ask him to tell your teacher you don’t have an eraser. Is that alright?”
Tears already filling her eyes, Poorni suddenly decided not to cry. If her dad was coming along, things would hopefully not be that bad. She was to be a new student, anyway, and besides, girls studying in UKG shouldn’t cry, she told herself.

With Poorni and her husband packed off out of the house for the day, Divya had her lunch and got out to explore the new city they had moved in four days ago. A new place, a new language, new everything. She couldn’t believe she felt so lost in just another city in India, and managed with the little Hindi she knew.
She found a stationery shop after hunting around for half an hour, and bought three erasers for Poorni. This should keep them set for at least the next two weeks, thought she, considering the rate at which her kid lost her erasers.
The day seemed to drag on till it was time for her to go get Poorni back from school. As she neared the school gate and saw her grinning, Divya drew a big sigh of relief. Her worst fear had passed: Poorni wasn’t crying on her first day in school.
As the two walked back, Divya trying hard to register some nearby landmarks, Poorni spoke.
“Ma, do you know how much trouble I faced today without an eraser?”
“Oh dear, so sorry…. Let’s go home and see the erasers I bought for you. They’re pink, blue and purple.”
Poorni grinned.
Poorni picked the pink one first, it being her favourite.

When she returned from school that afternoon, Divya checked her pencil case. She groaned.
“Poorni, where is the new pink eraser? You lost it on the very first day?!”
“No ma,” Poorni replied. “I left in the desk. I need a new one.”
“How can you be so irresponsible? Losing one once a week, maybe I can understand, but this rate…” Divya stopped, knowing that none of this talk would make any sense to her four-year-old daughter.
Blue was the second eraser.

Divya had to check herself from throwing a tantrum when she discovered that this was lost too, on the second day.
“At this rate, Shyam,” she told her husband, “we might go bankrupt buying erasers for the girl!”
With severe admonishing and warning not to lose the last one, she gave Poorni the Purple eraser.
Needless to say, it was lost, too.

Well, it wasn’t so much the erasers that bothered Divya now. She was worried if someone was threatening Poorni to probably hand in her eraser everyday. (She couldn’t help smiling as she imagined her poor kid surrendering to some kid in the new school.) She decided to go talk to the class teacher and make sure everything was fine.
She went during the lunch break and talked to the class teacher. The class teacher burst into peals of laughter, while Divya stood staring at her, wondering what made her laugh this much.
“Ma’am, please come with me to their classroom,” said the teacher.

They stood near the classroom window.
The class was a riot. Kids running and screaming all over the room whose walls were ridden with charts, paintings and more than anything, crayon work by the kids.
Divya was relieved to see Poorni sitting with a group of girls and boys, grinning.
“See what your daughter is doing,” said the teacher.
Divya peered into the classroom. By now some kids inside had known the presence of a stranger, somebody’s mother. They hushed down, but Poorni and her ‘gang’ didn’t really notice her, and continued with whatever they had been doing.
Divya gasped.
Poorni and her friends were rubbing their eraser in the back of their pencil boxes, and collecting all the dust in strips of notebook paper, and elegantly packing them.
When Poorni was asleep that night, Divya checked her bag and found ten packets of eraser dust – three were pink, three were blue and four were purple.

Music, the love of life… the elixir which makes me survive!
It has the power to transport me to times long ago…something that I have discovered even photographs cannot do. Magical, absolutely.

My pretty much bored state has now moved to one of frenzied activity, and I find myself busily searching for music that can chill me off…Rahman, the brilliant, definitely…some others before Rahman came up in full swing that I can’t really find but just remember. Rahman’s stuff themselves – I don’t know if anyone actually knows about this – but some Tamil serial for which he composed music was absolutely splendid. If I’m right, it was called ‘En Iniya Iyandira’. I was barely 5 years old when that was on air, and all I can remember about that serial was that it had something to do with the writer Sujatha (guess it was his story or dialogues..) and had Rahman’s title or background music (can’t even remember that :P) and one sentence that a robot in the serial keeps repeating: ‘Naan Sibi, nee Nila’ that I used to dutifully repeat at times too. Even thinking of it transports me magically to some time when I picture myself as a kid watching dear old DD. The national integration concerts are some more memories.

Another thing I vividly remember is the Hindi movie ‘Kudaa Gawaa’ starring Amitabh and SriDevi which released when I was about four years old. I watched that movie in Bangalore at a cinema right next to my aunt’s apartment. We were sitting quite close to the screen, and it was a pretty freaky affair. My cousin had famously screamed during the opening scene when many horses ran towards us ‘Anda kudaraiyellam poga sollu, ma!!!’ I recently managed to listen to one of my favourite songs from that movie after a really long time, and I squealed with delight and told my sister about it. It felt really good!!!

Listening to songs from Alaipayuthey immediately takes me back to the time the movie released, when I realised how cute some people could get: Madhavan was absolutely delightful, and I clearly remember how my friend and I secretly looked at the cassette cover flap having his pictures when we were supposed to be listening to our science teacher. Likewise, songs from Boys transport me to my class XII. The movie’s craze was at its peak then and all the girls in our class would sing songs from the movie every free minute we could get. Girls’ school that I was from, there was more than one reason why we went crazy over the movie. ;) Sandhya and I were Munna-crazy girls, and every actor in the five lead guys had fans in the class. We even convinced our English ma’am to allow us to sing the songs in her hour once, with all the doors closed, and girlishly grinned when we sang ‘Dating’, thinking how we were behaving in a near-blasphemous in our school.

Any song from BSB reminds me of my Nick Carter crazy friend, and of all the fun we used to make of him, saying he looks like Ramba (the Tamil actress), etc.

‘Vaanam namakku veedhi’ from Anjali reminds me of a dingy theatre in Coimbatore. For some reason, I always thought Anjali was the first Tamil movie in colour (LOL!!!!) – guess that was the first movie I watched in a cinema and hence the idea!

Watching the song ‘Chinna china aasai’ reminds me of the day Roja released, as this song came in a trailer in DD. I remember my sister and I watching the trailer with music from some unknown guy, as the movie was releasing at the same time as Ilaiyaraja’s Devar Magan.

Music, ah!!