Whew! Finally back home after two days of hectic (!) life in Karaikudi for a marriage. Marriage of an aunt I’ve never kinda met before. Watched a marriage almost completely after years. Went by train after a year too. Was good fun and a pain at times, too.
First my kiddo cousins. SR, Ad and Aj, I know you guys wouldn’t be reading this, but I must let you know you guys were some helluva lot of trouble in between. These kids pestered me to play Dumb charades, quiz (guess the questions? “Which is the capital of India?” and the like), Name Place Animal Thing and Antakshari. Maybe I should be thankful they didn’t ask me to play running and catching with them. It was quite difficult to explain to them that college second years don’t generally play running and catching, that too with kids, and that too, ME….one person who never gave much a damn for sports.
Ooops….not in my dreams did I think that Karaikudi would be worse than Chennai! Boy, the heat roasted me live and I was thankful I had some tolerance towards heat because of my Chennai upbringing. I hate to think what would’ve happened otherwise.
The train journey to Karaikudi was, well, bad. The train jolted, shook, swivelled, jumped, rocked, jiggled, and well, I’m out of words in English to describe how the train moved. So much so that I felt I was in a train and felt that up and down movement till I boarded the train to come back home. The return journey was perfect except for somebody’s snores that were actually grunts and snorts. I did all I could to find the source but because of my laziness to climb out of the berth, I was unsuccessful. The grunts were periodical and shook my lil’ bits of patience out of me. Thank heavens; they stopped after about a couple of hours.
Metre gauge trains are pretty horrible. They are so extremely small. My head kept bumping against the ceiling and so I was not able to sleep in the upper berth. Worse still, my hair kept getting caught in the fan and I gave a tiny scream every time it did, getting my mom freaked and hence me, down.
The marriage was good. I met strange people who claimed to be close relatives of my mom and dad, and some who are related both ways and I felt like tearing my head apart and telling them “Sorry, en thalaila ithana vishyathukku idam illa.... what’ll I do knowing this?”. But decency and a sense of showing off to people that I was a well-behaved girl stopped me short.
So Karaikudi is famous for Chettinads, aachis and paniyarams. I had my first taste of paniyarams with my mom by my side patiently explaining how it was made…. “Namma appam pannuvom illa, instead of frying it in oil they just …” I stopped listening and had a bite…boy it didn’t taste that nice. Konjam uppu chappu illadha maari irundhadhu. But maybe that’s the way they do it.
And Karaikudi poi how can anyone miss temples? Pillayaarpatti, Kunrakudi, Ariyakudi and Koppudaiyamman temples. Boy, erkanave visiting temples is not my cup of tea. On top of all this was the heat around the place and this was enough to make me grumpy. Thankfully again, I was able to revive myself after seeing empty temples and the feeling that I didn’t have to wait to see God in long queues.
I finally met my “aunt”, a regular reader of my blog who is in Chennai but we still couldn’t just make it to meet each other. Hi D.!!! Try to start blogging too!!
Two eventful days. Filled with fun, too. They’re over now and I’m back to lovely home. Nothing is like Chennai, eh? :)

I just came back from riding the Scooty Pep on the street. Wow! Doesn’t driving a vehicle give you so much of confidence? As I wheezed past familiar buildings and my legs were stationery (as compared to the cycle which was quite often my last own means of transport, where I had to pedal), I was experiencing a wholesome amount of joy. The breeze rushing on my face gave me utmost satisfaction. All this as I was going straight. Then came the time for me to take a U turn. The vehicle was brought down to zero acceleration (by me, of course!) and I started pushing the vehicle with my legs. It was in the middle of this U turn that I realized how dumb I was (quite late, eh?) and started accelerating. I went straight ahead and stopped just in time to avoid hitting a gate. Whew! Then back to straight again.
The U turn was getting better all the while. After some time I was able to take perfect U turns without taking my legs off the vehicle. Awesome! I just couldn’t help gleaming at myself in congratulation. This was good fun to some road rascals who whistled. But I like to take things in some optimistic way :P I took it as those jobless guys were appreciating how my efforts paid off.
Going back to the last semester vacation I was here. My sis was here too. It was her vehicle and she insisted being around as I rode it. So she sat behind and to my utter horror, I couldn’t go beyond that 10 on the speedometer. All the while she was giving me instructions from behind. Sis, of course that’s nice, sweetie, but you must know you completely freaked me out! This time I was able to make nice 25s and 30s and the vehicle is fine too. :) Don’t worry.
I’ve got major plans to get my LLR and then the permanent license too, if possible, before I leave. Got to wait and see how many of these plans actually work out.
There’s a lot more to be done before I can even think of getting a licence. I first have to go past these horrible roads! I wonder how on earth I’m going to do that. I somehow feel the space between two vehicles (though huge) isn’t enough for my vehicle to pass through and I wait for those to gain some distance ahead of me. I act as a traffic cop and wait for all humans and vehicles to go, stop or do whatever they want before I go ahead. I feel stupid, but well, I’m getting better. I still am the traffic cop, but am getting wiser! :P
Yeah, for sure, I’m going to have at least an LLR before I leave! And I’ll “put the 8” also properly!!! :)

21 May 2005: This day, a year back, a came to know of my selection into the university where I’m currently studying. Thank God so much for it, for otherwise I would have been just another engineer, not someone I wanted to be.
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A whole year has almost passed since that really boring trip to Kolkata (actually the Belur Mutt) that we made, one of my most boring vacation trips. It was filled with confusion over whether I would join this university, and somehow, irritation over the issue;
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I wonder at my highly lowering levels of tolerance (they were better a year back!) as I sigh when I hear someone yawn out loud or slurp when they eat. They were never great, but now they’re worse and I shudder to think how they will be by the time I come back home next time. Gosh!
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I at times think if I made the right decision on doing this internship here. It’s taking most of my time on weekdays. Wow! Isn’t work life also going to be like this?? Maybe I should have simply lived through those three months of vacation happily instead of joining the internship like a crackpot? :) Well, no point thinking about it now, it’s done and I should get through it. It’s not that bad, after all; I am learning, though slowly and having fun, though quietly.
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I have watched about five English movies, good ones. And a very funny tamil movie, Chandramukhi. Waah, what acting, direction, screenplay and anything else! Good time pass, though. Eagerly waiting for some new Rahman movie to release. The 1857 martyr thing is coming up soon, right?
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Also got my grades. Not bad, quite unexpected, though! Got an A in a subject I just didn’t expect and a B in a subject I was sure I would crack an A. I’m breaking my head slightly thinking about the subjects I have to do next semester. They will be whopping seven! That really requires proper time management!
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Oh, forgot about the haircut. My hair no longer reaches my waist, now it’s a trendy half of that length….it felt strange for a couple of days after I got it cut, as it’s been so long since I had a proper haircut, but now I’m fine. And this has the modern, yet I-can-be-traditional-too length. Perfect!
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I also tried my hand at cooking for the people at home and ended up making a small-scale disaster; the pasta I made was just not right. Something missing, though I could never figure out what. Some deliberate thinking revealed that I had just boiled the macaroni and tried to flavour it, instead of frying it in little oil. So for my cooking skills! I’ll never learn in the near future. ;)

Acchooooooo!!!!!!!!!!! Sneeze, sniff, sniff….this is what I have been doing ever since I came to Chennai. God only knows why, I keep sneezing umpteen times everyday. My dad says it’s because I have become used to pure air and blah, but I just disagree – after all I was born and have spent most of my lifetime in Chennai, I can never find this new and hence start sneezing (or so I strongly tell myself!). Namma Chennai-ya vittu kudukka mudiyuma?
I read that all organs of the body (including the heart!) stop working when one sneezes and that we can never sneeze with our eyes open because they will pop out! Aren’t such facts pretty freaky? These are just what I think every time I sneeze. “God, my organs would’ve stopped working for that millisecond! How dangerous!”.
So what is it that is making me sneeze like crazy everyday? Some new found allergy? Huh! Weird is the human body and mind!

“Can’t you see?”, the lady said. She shivered.
I looked at her sympathetically.
“Poor thing”, I thought. “She needs some rest and counselling.”
“There are just two of us in this room,” she continued, “but three shadows. See the wall..”
I looked at the direction in which she pointed.
HORRORS!!!!
Yes, there were three shadows.
And as I watched, a figure appeared from thin air, a miracle. The newly appeared figure was causing the shadow. But she (yeah, the thing was a she) was transparent! The lady next to me screamed in fear. The figure even spoke (in a voice so distinctly familiar, I knew that, because I hated it) and said that she wanted to sit on my lap(!!) My throat went dry. I opened my mouth to scream. But my voice failed me at the moment. After what seemed to be hours of trying to scream, my mouth let out a faint, meek sound.
Well, as you might have guessed, it was all a dream….but I had really screamed! (yeah, that faint, meek noise was actually made) I have always wondered why my beautiful mind can never dream of something nice and pleasant. Its always either falling through gorges or from a helicopter (why not a aeroplane? I don’t know) or dashing floods or snakebites, or worse, dying!!!!I don’t stop with dying alone, I believe I’m still alive and wonder why people are not able to recognize me. I have read that dreams are a result of what the subconscious mind is engaged with. But I can’t understand when floods or snakes or for that matter, ghosts as in this dream of mine, were given the slightest importance even in my conscious memory for the subconscious to keep thinking about them. And on top of that, why do I scream aloud even though I very well know what I’m seeing is false, is a dream? Well, maybe these things go “whoosh!” over my head, but I’ve always tried to know why I get these dreams and not something nice, say the latest movie of my favourite hero or me getting into the Dean’s list and topping my coll. Sigmund Freud has given nice theories about these but it would be great if I could catch up with them too!

Ugh! This computer at home is so unbearably slow that I long for my black beauty (which is sadly sitting, all packed, in a cold, dark store room!). Ahem, by black beauty I mean my black n ‘khewl’ computer in Singapore. I miss you, dear! (yeah, these will be things I miss, and you may have to get used to me missing such things!) I miss that awesome optical mouse and that sleek Logitech keyboard. I miss those amazing controls on the keyboard- one button to open winamp and one to open IE. This comp at home is no match to mine! ;) This one takes 5 minutes for startup and I wonder how the computer itself can be so conked up. Giving me random messages every 2 minutes asking me to connect to the internet and so on….whew!
With my sis gone elsewhere for work, I am so irritated that none of the plans we had made (hmm…maybe what I had made!) worked. All we did was to go to temples and visit some relatives. Tsk tsk!
Hey, so the computer is entirely my own now! So all those who had come to Anu’s blog, maybe you have serious things to be concerned about now! Well, maybe you should know that we blogged just once individually in those 4 days we were here. ;)
Ohh, I forgot the returning home part…here goes!
So after that huge hungama the day before I had to leave, I slept at 1 a.m. and got up at a freaking 5:15 a.m. With just a bare four hours of sleep! I was so depressed that I had to get up this early. But hey, I am going home! In another 9 hours, I would be home, in my dear Chennai!!!!!
This thought was enough to spur me into action and I quickly got ready. I was having my roommate’s door key and she was not on campus so we had made an arrangement that I would leave her key in our room mailbox so she could take it when she comes back. After getting all ready, I went down to the area where all the block mailboxes were. It was pitch dark.
I groped around in the dark and found my room mailbox. Just as I was about to slip the key in, somebody switched on the tube light there. I was pleased. Somebody was so concerned!
Just as the tube light came on, I heard a huge bolt of thunder that shook me out of my wits (well, almost!). It was then that I realised that the tube light was actually lightening. Boy, that was a really powerful one!
This was bulb number one for the day.
I went out and waited another half an hour for the first bus to come to campus. Responsible me, I was taking the metro train there to the airport and saving money! :) Finally reached the point where I had to switch trains to go to the airport. I got down in the station and reached the other platform where the train to go to the airport would come. One came, but the announcer said that this train would not go to the airport. So that train came, stood in the station for a few seconds and left.
Another one came soon and enthusiastically I pulled my luggage and stood near its doors, waiting for them to swing open. I kept standing there with some other people. But the doors never opened. And this train left too, without picking any of us up!
Bulb number two.
All these were nothing compared to the one coming up.
Finally the train came and I was in the airport.
I was so tired with the two train journeys that I lazily was dragging along my luggage. I reached the skytrain to take me to the other terminal where I would have to board the flight. When I reached the other terminal, I looked at the departure electronic board. My flight number was seen, but it said Mumbai and the time was 1900. Whaaaaaaaaaatttt!!!!! Where was my flight???? Some thinking led me to the fact that my flight stopped in Kuala Lumpur, then Chennai, and the final stop was Mumbai. But 1900??? Well, maybe a mistake.
I went to collect my boarding pass. Horrors!! The flight was actually delayed! To 1900 evening, when it was supposed to leave at 0925 in the morning! The chapta in the boarding pass counter stuck a red sticker in my arm and asked me to wait with the other people having the sticker. He said that we would be taken to a hotel and would be picked up from there in time for the flight departure.
This was bulb number 3!!! A terrible one!!!!
So we went to this hotel Paramount. It was an awesome hotel. I got a single room. All for myself, because I was travelling alone. Wow! I would never have been able to live in such a room in the near five years at least! When we went to the hotel, we were informed that our flight was further delayed to 2115. I was fed up of getting disappointed so I chose to enjoy the stay! Yaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!The breakfast and lunch they gave in the hotel were so bad that I felt really bovine eating all those leaves (umm, read lettuce) as salad. Very few vegetarian options! Topping that was green bean soup and I felt I was sick.
I guess keys and I don’t have much of a good relationship. At least for about the last week or so, this is what I think is true.
This hotel did not give us keys, but a card with a magnetic strip, which had to be put in in the door knob every time I wanted to get in. Worse, my room would have electricity only if I left that card in another slit having the A/C controls. I slept most of the time figuring out how to use the card in various places. It had to be used in the elevator to go to different floors. And using it in the different places had different procedures. I was making a complete fool of myself in front of people of various nationalities (!). A white couple heartily laughed and helped me as I struggled with the card in the elevator. Another Briton couple also helped me out in the elevator (kill me, I still didn’t learn from the first white couple!) and I cursed the card in front of the Britons and they had a good laugh too. :( woe is me!!!
I did not learn from my previous day locker key disaster too. I left the key in the electricity control board and locked the room and went inside. So I had to go down all the way to the reception and sheepishly give a stupid smile, explain and get another card.
I slept through most of the time I spent in the hotel. And for the first time in my life, out of dire hunger and laziness to go out to eat and stupid vows not to eat the leaves they gave for dinner, I drank “tea bag” tea (that dip-dip one!).
Wow! Finally someone called my room phone to say that I had to report down at 7 p.m. There were taking us to the airport. I leapt up and down with joy.
Ooppps! This is long! Thanks for coming till here. J
Will be continued. ;)

Hmm…so looks like many of you who visited my sis’ blog have some comments about mine, eh? Ok, so keeping up with my comment there to watch out for the new entry….here goes.
27th was a damn busy day for me. Running around here and there, packing off and chucking some left over stuff into trash, a little bit of shopping, whew, it was tiring. And I had to return my keys to the hall of residence office before 5 P.M. So I quickly arranged everything and returned all the things I had taken from the hall office, the keys and the LAN cable.
My room was looking all the more empty now and I felt very depressed. Less than a day back, my amazing computer was adorning my desk and giving me wholesome entertainment in the form of songs, movies and episodes of Friends. Now, nothing.
Then by 4:30 P.M. I left out with my friend. Had some gala shopping. We bought a lot of vegetables and were starving by the time we came back to campus. We quickly set to work and made some delicious potato curry to eat with (ready-to-eat, of course) chappatis. We hungrily stuffed ourselves with the food. And this time, the food was even tastier because I had peeled and cut the potatoes. ;)
So by 10 in the night, I was cleaning my room because they would check it after I vacate. As I opened the cupboard and dusted it out, a horrible thing dawned on me. I had locked up my ticket in the cupboard locker and returned the keys to the office, and the damned office wouldn’t open till 8:30 the next morning, and my flight was at 9:30 A.M.!!!!
I was freaked beyond words. I was surprisingly calm, though, and called various campus security people because I had heard that the campus security always has another set of keys. Alas! All they had was the room key, and not the locker key.
I kept assuring myself things would go fine. I called my friend and she came up with the brilliant suggestion: supposedly I could call up the airline I had booked my ticket in, tell them I have lost my tickets and they would give me a new one if I verified my identity with my passport.
Whew, I was seriously relieved. Alas, again, not for long. Five minutes later I realised that my passport was also in the same little purse as the ticket. Now things seemed really frightening.
I started trying to break open the shelf with all my might. Then it struck me that I could meet the hall councillor and ask her to open the office for me. But this kind lady couldn’t do much as she didn’t have the office keys and tried contacting many people, who, of course, were already asleep (man, it was just 10 : 45 in the night!!!) and didn’t wake up to the calls.
Ok, so now no other way than to break open the shelf. The Vietnamese girl living next door kindly offered to help me and both of us started shaving open the plank that covered the locker. We knew that if we could get through at least through a quarter of the length of the plank, we might be able to open the locker. So we started doing this, and it took us about 15 minutes.
Then came my saviour for the day. Rj came along, looked about for a minute or two, and pulled the shelf out. Wow, isn’t she strong! I was crazy with joy when she opened the shelf. And the best part was, when we pushed the shelf back, it looked as if no one had damaged it in any way. Thanks, Rj!!
It was finally 1 A.M. when I could go to sleep. And I had to get up at 5:30 again! Ok lah, can sleep in the flight, I thought. I was wondering if god was testing me on all those things I said in my previous blog, that I had learnt in Singapore. Guess god wasn’t that mean as he could’ve been, I thought, and went to sleep.
Oh no, He was, to some extent. My bad luck followed me through! Well, maybe I shouldn’t call it bad luck, but it wasn’t good either.
I am now praying that my hall office does not charge me for any damages made to the shelf!!! :)