Yipppeee..it’s Valentines’ day!!! It’s the best day in the whole year…the most beautiful one, the one specially dedicated for those in love by a saint who actually laid his life for the sake of love…this precious is love!
Try as I might, I’m unable to go on with this gibberish. Yeah, it’s Valentines’ day. SO??? My college campus is studded with heart shaped things wherever I go; boy, oh boy, it’s irritating! A simple day being exaggerated beyond limits. Things are hyped as it is here, and now there are valentine stuff in every direction. Huge hearts, goodie bags for couples soaked in ‘love’, soft toys, key chains and random things talking about love, that wonderful feeling…
I’m not an unromantic creature – but it’s this essentiality of display of affection in every possible way that really freaks me out. I saw flower bouquets for $50 in the supermarket and got stumped – can someone be crazy enough to spend so much for flowers! Better ways than giving cuddly dolls, heart shaped random things or flower bouquets that cost crazy?!
Wonder where some simple, beautiful things of showing one’s affection have gone – nobody wants to take the pains of making a card for their valentine, for instance – a simple gesture that I think goes miles into showing affection!
This is also the time of the year when most of the single people get slightly depressed – can’t blame them with all this hype and hoopla around – but being single can also be awesome fun! One doesn’t have to meet your ‘other’ for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and spend every minute you can afford with him..one can be happy passing random comments about all those people together (you’re better qualified if you’re single ;) )
Well, for whatever it’s worth though, for all of you out there, Happy Valentines’ Day!
~ ~ A romantic ;) (Yeah, I am, in a different way!)

It is, when....
**A cool breeze swept over my face and blew my tresses backward
**A vanilla cone ice cream was in my hand when the slight drizzle was accompanied by a heavenly, pleasant breeze.
**The time for a much-awaited break is just a week away!!!
**I feel highly optimistic even when the workload looks just terrible, bogging me down
**I stayed awake for 24 ½ hours at a stretch – a feat I never thought I’d be capable of. I survived through some gruelling hours, and I’m delighted!
**As I returned from my day-long-awake feat, the sun was slowly coming up and painted the faint blue sky with streaks of bright orange…
**Music, Rahman’s at that, playing all day, never failing to cheer me up
**Technology had improved so much ;) that I was able to access my desktop in my room from elsewhere, and it kept me engaged with music, when I was having difficulty staying awake.
**Tiny, little things make me jump with joy or laugh to near-death!
**I could fall asleep almost as soon as I went to bed in my dear, ol’ room, with my greatly huggable pillow and pink dolly Pisa by my side. :) (Don’t smile, hey!)
**Life’s at its resplendent best!!!!

(Just realised that my last post was also on 11th Feb, not 10th : aww! Two posts on one day!)

(Piece of fiction written when I was almost dying in absolute boredom, sort of in stealth, when I was supposed to be doing something else. ;) Talk about defying rules of organizations!)

I touched the note. It was new, crisp, and unlike the older ones, soft. The $2 note was a work of art, really. A transparent portion in the corner, so soft and slippery, the crispness by virtue of it being new. I laughed at myself for getting lost in admiration for a $2 note.
The new Singaporean $2 note was good, though. Its softness was what I admired the most. And today was the first time I actually managed to get one in my hand.
It was only when I was staring at the note that I remembered I had to give my friend $2 for the food she bought for me. : ) I went, note in hand, briskly walking to her room. I trampled on wet grass, another of my favourites, for its softness.
“Ha!” I laughed today, for the note in my hand was softer. Equally fresh, and I can say, ‘green’. Slippery.
I stroked the note again, for the umpteenth time ever since it got into my hand. It would’ve made more sense for me to keep the note with myself, but I knew I’d spend it someday. Let it be today, I thought.
The note fell out of my hand as I was stroking it. I ran behind it, and the note sped ahead, determined not to get into my hand. Playing truant. Eluding me. I ran with more desperation as it neared the grilled cover of a small drain.
And it happened.
It got caught on the grill, and right when I was about to grab it, it went in. Rather, it slid into the drain.
I looked at it go inside and get lost.
Slippery, the word came back to me.

“You know, I said ‘to go’ and they just stared back at me…I was thinking what the f*** is wrong with these stupid Indian stall guys…then Rags said I should say ‘parcel’..God, things are way different in America, man!” said Sriram, or SR, as he now called himself, with his initials.

SR has just come down to India after three years in the USA for a two-week long vacation. He’s my cousin, close one at that. And like almost anyone else who’s been to the USA, he was normal before he left. And now I just can’t believe he’s the Sriram who used to take me out everywhere during my school days. Well, he still does, but now all he wants to know if Satyam as a multiplex is decent enough and if we have to trust those indecent auto ‘fellas’ and take ‘cabs’ instead. (What’s decent, I don’t know!)

I stared at him from across the table as he went on and on about NYC. My father and mother were nice enough to pay attention to him and nod their heads at frequent intervals. Appa was damn interested, I knew, and I could almost see Amma struggling hard to keep her fumes within herself.

“Oh Mams, eggplant! It’s your best, and my favourite!!” he said. I looked at the vegetable amma had just served.
Say kathirika, you fool!

“Vini,” he said, turning to me. “You’re coming to the US to do your masters, right? Do an MS there, woman, it’ll be freaking awesome! Much better than the Indian universities!”
“No, I’m fine here,” I said. “Besides I don’t want an MS..” I trailed along. When will he stop and go back to Bangalore to his parents’ place, I couldn’t help thinking. He hadn’t spoken in Tamil at all ever since he came here. Loser, I decided.

After what seemed to be an eternity, we finished dinner. I couldn’t wait to get back into my room. Rude though it seemed, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand his ‘Oh man’ kind of English.

“Hey Vini, wait…we have lots to catch up! C’mon, c’mon….”
I cursed my luck and went to sit with him.
“So dating and all, right?” he asked.

I raised my eyebrow and gave him a stare. Frosty nosed stare, as it comes in a class IX English story I’d read in school. He continued, not caring to pause for an answer from me. It was going too far.

“Dei, vaaya moodu da!” I said, mustering all the anger I could. I had never told him da; he used to be nice enough to be called Anna before.
He stared at me open-mouthed.
“Enna pa aachu?” he asked.
I smiled. So much to get a Tamil word from him. :)

P.S.Thank heavens, none of my cousins have gone this crazy yet. No wannabes around. :)

It’s been a highly eventful week. Starting last Saturday, till yesterday, was filled with fun, work, and some new surprises too.

The last weekend had been a long one – four days off from Saturday to Tuesday for Chinese New Year. Therefore, four of us set out on Saturday to China Town here to look at the Chinese New Year decorations there. Two of us were Indians, and the other two Singaporean Chinese. Thanks to these two, who were really patient to answer all my ‘What’s this? Why is it like this’ questions. There was one Chinese gong that was kept outside a restaurant that kept me amused all the time. I hit it enthusiastically every time I was near it. I’m sure the guys in the restaurant had been wishing hard they could just throw me out. The two friends really made the trip one of fun.

After returning, we left at once to watch Rang De Basanti. I was thrilled. A huge gang was going, and we were joining them. More than anything, what made me more thrilled was that this was the first ever movie whose night show I was watching. ;) The movie was awesome, and I realised with surprise, that I could, after all, understand conversational Hindi much better than I had thought. After some roaming about on campus, I finally came back at 4:30 in the morning.

Spent the next three days in absolute laziness, watching movies, reading books, and at rare times, finishing my assignments. With Wednesday came a frenzy of activities. I had to meet up with my university’s corporate communications department as I was a ‘press’ member covering an important event: Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam sir was coming to our university!!!

The d-day was Thursday and I was all excited, as I was apparently one of the few who was allowed to bring my camera to shoot pictures, (though many brought their cameras) and I had a red star on my badge to signify ‘Press’, while my friends only had an orange dot. :P (Childish pleasure, but it still made me feel important!)

And minutes before HE actually arrived, my camera had run out of batteries! Totally unfair, I thought, and went around asking people if they, ‘by any chance’, had extra batteries, until someone told me I could get them in a shop that was pretty close by. I ran, my heeled shoes and all (punishment for trying to look formal, I’m never gonna wear those again!), and managed to come on time.

God..when Kalam finally came, I was shaking with excitement. I snapped pictures away like crazy, clicking almost every move of his. He looked every bit like a wizened old man, reminding me of some old people, looking at all the honour done to him with a child-like amusement on his face, every muscle in his face expressing interest in the Lion dance and Dragon dance that was going on. A great man, truly.

His speech was quite different than I expected: it was a lot of technical stuff, which, well, sort of went over my head. I had been expecting one of the more, well, should I say, inspiring speeches of his that I’ve heard in India.

After the speech, we had awesome Indian food. Food we hadn’t really eaten in a long time. God, even thinking about it makes me wish I could eat it again. Sigh!!
Some of my friends somehow managed to get his autograph and take a picture with him while we were busy eating. We were disappointed, no doubt, but by the time we had started to go to the place where they’d taken pictures with him, he had already left. ;)
On the whole, the day was great.

And yesterday, my friend and I tried our hand at proper cooking; and surprisingly it turned out pretty well! I was thrilled as I chopped onions without breaking down into tears (it’s a big feat for me because I never enter the kitchen when my mother is chopping onions!). we were so proud of ourselves, that we took pictures of the food that we’d cooked :). Heights of joblessness, eh?

Life is now back to normal. I realised with utter horror, that I have a photo-montage assignment to turn in the coming week: pulliyar suzhi kooda podala. But ah, things will work out, I know.

Long post! :)

I doubt if I have transferred all the seriousness, irritation and desperation that I had when writing this post; maybe it’s good if it hasn’t.

For the past four weeks, almost ever since school started again, I’ve been reading only these in a particular subject: genocides, terrorism and war. Death, death and more death. It leaves me stunned, stumped for words.

We watched gory videos of The Holocaust that happened during WWII. I watched, in utter horror, as Hitler went about killing millions of people, and how thousands of human beings helped him kill others. I read about the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, about Stalin’s artificially created famine which killed millions again, and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocide. My mind is sick with the details, and I’m stuck wondering at the futility of the intelligence, the sixth sense that God (or Nature, if you wish) has specially endowed to the human kind.

I’m horrified as the details about how people were exterminated are laid down in detail for us to study. What is the point studying it if we never learn? If we never resolve not to repeat the terrible, unforgivable mistakes? Well, such large-scale extermination as The Holocaust or the Khmer Rouge hasn’t happened in the recent past as we know it, but I’m sure some silent killing is going on everywhere, probably right in our country too.

Who are we to decide certain people don't deserve the right to live? Who are we to take upon ourselves, the responsibility to apparently ‘cleanse’ the world of such ‘scum’? We haven’t learnt. I don’t know if we ever will.

And what disturbs me most is the fact that for all that I ramble, for all that understanding we have that this is wrong, we hardly choose to do anything about it. What, I wonder, have I done in my capacity to even try to rid the world of all this. Sadly, I draw a blank. Nothing. I wonder again, if I will ever be able to do anything to help matters. Can we ever do anything?

As a survivor of The Holocaust aptly put it (lifted straight from my lecture notes), “When I heard about Cambodia, I went into a depression, because the world had not learned. I felt guilty that I’m living in a beautiful home with all the comforts—and I am impotent. I do nothing. It pains me, terribly, that the world has not learned that you don’t kill your brother or sister, no matter what the reasons. I share the guilt today. I do.”

Sharing the guilt - is that all we can do?

I had met her often. She just lived in the street perpendicular to our slum road. Our slum was pretty huge, with over 150 huts lined in one street. It was parallel to the railway line of the city’s metro rail, and our huts shook with tension every time a train passed through. Trains had become so much a part of we kids’ lives, that we would feel odd when trains didn’t pass through at their designated times.

The little girl was just my age, and lived in a neat 3 floor apartment. Her house was in the second floor, I knew. She would often play in their balcony, and look out at us from time to time, curious to see what we played with, while she poured out tea to her dolls from a tiny teapot.

I was in awe of the doll house she had in her balcony. It was pink and purple, every little girl’s dream. The only dolls I had were a yellow car with black wheels, given by the boy 4 huts away, and another girl doll which had only one eye. But I still held these precious toys to myself, tending to them day and night. The girl doll would sit on the car which I would pull around the slum street with a coir rope. Not having enough money to afford school, I would be either pulling the car or running around with a cycle tyre and a stick.

And one day, that girl came down to our place. Our place. I knew it was forbidden for her to come here, but I didn’t know why she did. I was busy playing with my friends, until one noticed that the rich girl was staring at us. We then shyly retreated to our huts and hid behind the doors to see what she was up to.

She came to my hut and called out ‘Ei, velila va…unakku onnu kondu vanduruken’ (Hey, come out, I’ve brought something for you). I shook my head silently, and refused to come out.
She took out a shiny, metallic, blue car out of a plastic bag, and put it down near the door. The car already had a cord that could be pulled to drag it around.
‘You can have it,’ she said, and left.

I waited for more than five minutes to make sure that she wasn’t around, and then stealthily stepped out and picked up the car. It was beautiful. My yellow car was nothing compared to this one. I dragged it out at once and showed it to all my friends, and generously gave each of them one turn to pull it around. I was pleased. I felt special.
‘The rich girl gave it to me, and not any of you,’ I felt. I was her friend, not any of them.

I saw the rich girl again, two days later, when we were playing with my new car. She was coming down with her father. They started walking towards the slum. As she neared, I realised with shock, that she was crying.
I hurriedly grabbed my blue car and hid behind my door again, peering out anxiously. ‘Have any of us done anything wrong?’
She pointed to my hut and they both came toward the door. I was terrified, and hugged the blue car closer to my chest.

Her father spoke first. ‘Give the car,’ he told me, pointing to the blue car I was holding. I refused, and shook my head vigorously.
‘She gave it to me,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘You’re not supposed to take anything that people give you. Now give it back.’
I knew then why the girl was crying. Her father had scolded her for giving me the toy. I gave it back, realising that my refusal would only end up in her getting scolded more. My shiny, blue car, which already had a string, was gone.