“Am I really alive?”
I touched the desk. What was I feeling? Wood. What’s wood? How did I know what I was touching was wood?
I sighed and tried to listen to the Marketing lecture. Marketing, what’s that, my mind prompted.
I was really irritated now. Vague questions were popping in and out of my head. You’re in a lecture, listen, said my mind. But the very mind was questioning my existence and reality.
What if everything’s a dream?

“Value creation for our customers,” continued the professor “is the most important thing in marketing.”
Customers!?
What are we buying? And value? Customers? Who’re they? Just another set of humans. We’re just unnoticeable specks in the universe, and we’re talking about creating value for them? My mind laughed at the very idea.
Do I exist? Or am I a dream? Whose dream? The world itself exists because we, the humans, created it.. we make everything that’s the world…otherwise would anyone know that there’s a world, a universe, of which we were a part?
Existence, life, world, universe, sun………

“Archana, you’re dozing off!”
I looked up. I looked around, stunned. I was in an Object Oriented Programming class. Marketing? I was studying nothing as of now that was even remotely connected to it. The lectures? The words “Value creation….most important….customers…” kept ringing in my mind.
Had I been dreaming? I was shocked.
Which was the dream, and which, reality?
Do I even exist??

MY BLOG TURNS ONE TODAY!!!! Yippppeeeee!!!

A wish I had since class X finally got fulfilled a year back when I posted for the first time. I had started the same day a whole year back…a day when my lovable computer would come to me only ten days later; I was patiently typing out something I had written some months ago in my hostel computer room.

My first comment was from Twin-Gemini, and I was surprised and shocked at how someone totally unknown to me had found my blog; and I had no clue what to do with the comment until one day he commented asking why I haven’t replied for his comment. And that’s when the whole business actually became clear. ;) Thanks, Twin-Gemini!!

There are many things I wish I had never written on my blog; but I want to keep them….probably they show how I’ve grown through that one year, and how what I choose to blog about has changed!

The few on my blog who’ve been around ever since I began, whom I wish to thank a lot: my sister, Anu, Sandhya and Harish. Thanks, people! :)

Thanks ALL of you who have visited my blog and continue to do so. :) Your comments have seriously inspired me to actually think if I can someday publish my work. And it’s become a sort of dream now, and I know I’ll make it someday, sometime.

And P.S.: About my previous post: it’s nothing highly philosophical – I just felt that life would change…again, since I came back to university!! :)

And life changes....again....

**My 4 year old nephew almost cried himself hoarse one day screaming ‘V-A-N-I Vani Vani’
**Sitting on a huge see-saw made me feel like I was in the sky
**I laughed so much sitting high up on the see-saw I was sure I would die laughing
**I went on the giant wheel for the first time in my life – and enjoyed it too!
**Nearly died laughing looking at the videos of all the antics 4 grown-ups had done in a children’s park (umm, yeah, grown-up includes me too! :) )
**Visited four temples in two days ;)

**We went to a quaint, unknown village after receiving directions from very eager-to-help people.
**I met some of the most beautiful children in the village – where one girl refused to stop staring shyly at me and my sister
**We smiled heartily at three kids who were proud that they took a ride in the car we’d come in and rolled out of it joyously, grinning away to glory
**I caught a sad cold which surprisingly, got cured soon! :)
**After the trip, finally got something I had wanted for long, but was slightly scared of: getting a second hole pierced in my ear! ;) It pains now, but who cares?

Couldn’t have asked for a better ending for a wonderful year….Happy New Year, everybody! May we all have a beautiful year ahead, filled with happiness, health and laughter!

Yayyy! A check up for my eyes after almost 18 months of glasses revealed that my power hasn’t gone up. I’m delighted! I’ve been such a good girl, considered the complaints I made for wearing glasses.

Blessed with the comfort of having an ophthalmologist way too near, it took almost the end of my vacation to get my eyes checked. Busy gal, you see.
Boy, this doctor is all sophisticated (well, she is the only person who’s checked my eyes, but nevertheless). Random machines doing things I don’t know (of course!) and some tests which nearly made me cry out in pain for all the light that was glaring at one eye, the testing took 45 minutes. Good girl that I was, I read all the letters on the board correctly with my glasses :)

The doctor recommended to my mother that I can get a laser surgery done the next time I come home so that I wouldn’t have to wear glasses (lazy me, I don’t have the patience to wear contact lenses!)

One small disappointment, though. I was secretly hoping that I could change my glasses’ frame if the power changed, though I had told my mom that I would wear the current one for two years. No power rise, no new frame. :(

Doesn’t matter, the happiness overrides the disappointment. I’m all smiles. :D

“Rakshasa!” is how even my mom calls me now. This ‘nickname’ was given and popularised by my elder brother 10 years back, when I was a brat who refused to learn to swim.

It all began one fateful day when dad decided swimming was one essential thing left out in the plethora of extra-curricular activities that I was in: tennis, modern dance, carnatic music, painting and sculpting. My brother Vipul, well-established (so he claimed!) swimmer (all because the guy who crossed the English channel was his senior in school; I know, the connection’s really weak, but I didn’t know this much then!) was given the charge of taking me to the pool and leaving me with the instructor. And so began trouble.

Swimming is no dangerous stuff; but I freaked out and wailed the moment water entered my ears. Our instructor, Thangadurai sir, though, was convinced that this was natural, and made sure my ears were well covered before I even stepped into the water. He began with teaching me to float.

Floating did go quite well, as water really didn’t enter my ears nor did I have to breathe with difficulty. But the moment sir decided I was ready to go the next stage, he had it. The first day I cried so much that he actually got terrified and asked my brother to take me home and console me.
After fake promises from my parents that I would no longer be taken to the pool, I slept that night, reassured.

But my parents had their own plan; “Vishal has to know to swim,” said dad. So my brother did take me to that fateful pool the next day despite my wailing all the way to the pool and even one attempt to jump off his cycle and run back home (like I knew the way! But that time I’d do anything to avoid the pool.). That day, sir was more considerate than usual and put me under ‘special’ training - I was to wait till all others in my ‘class’ finished and then I was taught by sir – special attention was given to me. That day went fine as not much water entered my ears though at the end of it I was shaking and thanking the Lord for making me come out of the pool alive.

Sir was encouraged by the lesser amount of fussing I had made that day. But he took the wrong step the next day – he made me go deeper into the water.
I was shocked. And outraged.
I screamed my head off, claiming sir was attempting to kill me. Sir tried telling me that he was teaching me how to save my life in case I was drowning, etc., but none of it worked. He became stubborn too. He refused to give in to all my tantrums and held on. When I realised he wasn’t going to let me out, I didn’t know what to do. I grabbed him by his hair and pulled at it ferociously, threatening him to let me out. After three minutes of struggle, I won. He pulled me out of the pool and told my brother it was impossible to teach me. And the moment he said that, my tear-stained face smiled. And my brother was enraged. He picked me up, scolding me all the way, and ultimately concluded that I was a rakshasa, a demon.
And the name has stuck because I still refuse to learn.

P.S.: Sigh, I don’t know how to swim, too. And I have never tried to learn, too. My class mates in university are surprised that I don’t know swimming though I come from ‘ a city on the coast’, but how’ll they know that swimming is the last thing my parents want me to do in the beach! But I guess I have to give it a thought now that water-related disasters are occuring often in Chennai!

God, I’ve hardly posted with this frequency in the recent past. Still ‘velai irundhum vetti’!

After playing minesweeper for hours losing every minute, I decided to give up. Luck wasn’t favouring me at all (well, only in the case of Minesweeper, Lady Luck!) and every guess I made was going wrong. I was getting bored and thought of going to the kitchen to see what my mom was doing. One look convinced me not to near the area: she was making ‘pori urundai’ for the Karthigai festival this evening. I had done my part of the work: I’d peeled and powdered tens of cardamom seeds. That done, I have silently refused to do any further work by retreating into my room and ‘working’ on the computer.

Then mom wanted me to find the dhobi guy in our apartment. I went down and found him sleeping. Then I went past him into our lil’-park. I went and sat on the swing when two old women gave me weird looks. Concluding that they definitely thought I was too old for the swing (sigh…I’m not that old!!) I got down, depressed that I was getting old for many things I wanted to do. Then I realised that I would feel young in one place: the gym. I went to the apartment gym and found it locked. I peered through the curtains and was delighted at all the things inside. I decided that I had to be fit when at home especially, since I was doing nothing but eating, sleeping and watching movies. Then somebody said the gym wasn’t working properly.

Dash it! I returned home. Found some random self-improvement books: 25 ways to motivate people, 52 ways to live successfully, and finally Improve your English. I decided I didn’t need any of those and went back to my huge Shantaram book.

Damn…can’t even read that now. I have so much to do (what, I don’t know, but that’s what my mom says), but I don’t feel like doing anything. Probably watch a movie. But that’s a bad chance to take since going anywhere near the television would mean a good shelling from mom (and chances of work: cleaning the lamps!). Right now I’ve spent some ten minutes wandering around the apartment searching for people and another ten minutes writing this. Another 8 hours 25 minutes left before everyone thinks it’s high time I slept.

-- Velai irundhum slight-a vetti.