Then (i.e. when I was in high school, before starting undergrad):
I wouldn't enter a room if it had a cockroach inside

Now:
Cockroaches freely ran past me - they don't bother me, I don't bother them.

Then:
I'd run to the nearest chair or table to climb on it for safety if I saw a lizard.

Now:
I calmly watch it run away as I stomp my foot to 'frighten' it.

Then:
I'd call my grandmother to chase out the bug in the room.

Now:
I'm an expert in chasing bugs and moths out of my hostel room.

Talk about the things you learn living in a hostel!
P.S: Idhaiye saaka vecchu evalo peru treat kepeenga-nu enakku theriyum - idellam over ba!

I don't know whether to call this fate. When people knew I was going to Mumbai for my new job, they would excitedly tell me stories of that magnificent city - it's pace of life, it's human spirit, and so on. And about the metro train there - people travelling in it are actually kind, you know, they told me, they'll help you up if you're trying to board the train and it was leaving.
I was delighted when I reached Mumbai. It was just like Chennai - it was just bigger and faster. I'd always feel at home here, I knew.
I would start my work two days after I reached. I spent the first two days making sure I knew how to get around, with my "Ek gaav mein ek kisaan" hindi. It wasn't bad, I realised; most people knew at once (who wouldn't, if my ka's weren't any different from my kha's!) that I was a 'madrasi' and spoke in English they could manage. I was having fun.
Finally it was my first day to go to work. I neatly ironed my shirt and pant, and managed to tie my tie correctly (the umpteen lessons from internet I'd taken the previous evening really helped!).
I reached the train station. I had to go from Colaba to Matunga. Things went just fine. I found and reached the station right on time, and boarded the train right on time too.
Oh boy, aren't the trains crowded...crowded is such an understatement, rather. The coach looked like it was bursting on some invisible seams, ready to spit out people at every station only to take in more after people got down.
The Matunga station was approaching. To my rising panic, I found it difficult to get to the exit door pushing all the crowd. 12 B in Chennai is far better, I tell you. My panic reached its peak as the train started pulling out of the station.
It was just a few seconds after the train got moving that I actually got anywhere near the exit. I screamed, cursed, pushed and finally got down. The train had been moving at a pretty fast speed when I got down, that I had to sprint for a while before I could stop.
And just then, three men from another coach who were hanging at the doorway, swooped me right back into the train again.
Fate, really. Those three men (maybe I should be nice to them and say kind three men) had thought I was trying to get into the train. Thinking of it now, I laugh, but back then, I would've started crying.
By the time I actually reached my workplace, I was 45 minutes late. It took me that long to take another train back to Matunga from the next station, and to find the office in that darned big place.
Of course, now I know when and how to get down.

What's usually a mundane trip to the Supermarket out of campus becomes interesting too, if you're jobless. Or rather, when you stubbornly refuse to start working on all those pending assignments and wish to do anything other than work.
I went straight to the 'first floor' of the bus I boarded to get outta campus (yeah, going by the kiddo terminology of 'maadi' bus). I was so dead bored with life suddenly, that sitting right before the glass walls of the bus in the front side seemed so exciting. I couldn't see any of the 'tiny' cars and two-wheelers that were standing before the bus. I let out a squeal of excitement when the bus swept past a huge branch of a tree as it moved, as though I was on some roller-coaster ride and was about to brush past something as a part of the ride.
As I was walking toward the supermarket, a lady came rushing to me with some pamphlets in her hand. Uh oh, I was caught.
Guess the fact that I know tamil is like stamped on my forehead or something, she came and started talking in Tamil, rightaway.
'Irunga, please, rendey nimisham.' (Wait, please, just two minutes). She was almost threatening me and I stopped for fear she might stab me if I didn't. She went on and on about this donation for Down Syndrome children and how a 'small' amount from me could make a difference. I really felt like giving some money, till I remembered that if I donated for everything that made me feel bad or sad, things wouldn't really work out. I gave the best apologetic look I could and moved on.
On the way back, I was wondering if we would ever have these closed-door buses in India...seems so nice to even think about it....but coming to the negatives of it, you'll never have an interesting footboard journey!
Ughh....just remembered I didn't get the vegetables for my friend's hamster. Duh!

**I didn't have the scary quiz and assignment submission tomorrow?
**I didn't have the headache that's keeping me from studying now?
**I hadn't wasted all of Tuesday sleeping?
**I had had a useful recess?
**I had more than one recess for every semester? :P
**I hadn't come to Singapore at all?
**I hadn't been overconfident that I would come here?
**I had studied engineering and become another engineer?
**I had studied commerce in high school?
**I hadn't done well in class X?
**I hadn't joined DAV?
**I had moved out of Chennai after my class IV?
**I hadn't come to Chennai at all?
**I had a different name?
**I wasn't born at all?!
**everything is fiction, or a dream?
**nothing exists?

Such thoughts come to one when she is studying, believe me!

Room-la fan sadhi panni erichala irukkarchey ezhudinadhu.... epdi irukumo therila! :P

Swati and Sathya were competitors. For everything. For the first rank in the whole of class two. For being the overall sports champion. For being the one teachers call to work out the math sum’s answer on the board. Being the first to finish eating lunch. Or the first to finish the test. In short, everything.
Sathya, short for Sathyakumar, was one jealous boy. Every point Swati scored against him left him fuming. And especially when Swati beat him in the joint class II sports championship, he blew up. It was too much for him to take. He had to get the first rank this time. Not only for the section, but the whole of class II.
It’s surprising how such a little boy gets so much zeal to study – Sathya was studying at an almost maniacal fashion that his parents got anxious. They begged him to go out and play, ironical in that they always used to pester him to study before that. But Sathya paid no heed to any of his parent’s pleas. He went on resolutely, cramming things into his little six year old brain.
Four exams did go well. It was the annual paper, and he had just one more left. He was sure he would get a 100 in each of the papers he had written till then. Science was the last exam.
Sathya finished the paper early and was looking around. He looked at the big onion he had drawn for the last answer. It was perfection at its best, at least at the hands of a six-year-old, with the right shade of pink. He surveyed it with pride and smiled.
He looked around the classroom once more. Seniors from classes four and five were also in the room. He looked to his left and saw Swati writing something furiously. He was surprised, despite himself. Had he left something out?
After frantically searching the paper for any answers he might have left out, he looked back at Swati. She was still writing.
He had to know what. And it was easy.
He casually stood up, but peered into her paper in such an obvious way that the invigilator came running to his bench and whacked him hard on his back.
‘What are you doing, Sathya?’ she thundered.
Sathya was shocked. He was just trying to see what was taking her so long! He had completed his paper, he explained, he was not trying to copy.
Despite his breaking into tears, the teacher decided to take him to the Head Mistress. The HM saw his paper and told the invigilator to just take the paper and let Sathya leave, saying she was sure Sathya hadn’t copied.
That was correct, for Sathya got 99 in the paper, while Swati got a 100. Sathya had made a mistake in the answer Swati had been furiously writing at that time.

Updated: Discovered the perfect temporary solution: poo poatta plastic visiri! :P
Latest update (01/03/06): Hall office has been kind enough to give us a table fan (the longer version of it, I don't remember its name!) for the time being till contractors come to change the ceiling fan. Yiipppeeee!!!

A week of so much work, I can’t believe it. Last week was our recess, and it’s really sad when I realise it’s over even before I realised it had begun. And here I am, on the Sunday of what I expect to be a terrifying week, wondering what to do despite the work that has been loaded up, with presentations, mid term exams, et al.
What takes my disgust to its peak is the fan in my room…within a week it has seemed to have become miraculously slow! Damn you, you crazy fan….it’s surprising that less than a week ago it was perfect, and now it’s going at a speed which seriously makes me doubt if it’s sort of getting unscrewed from the ceiling – actually it’s even moving in a very minute pendulum-like fashion. Thank God, my bed is in the corner of the room, and not directly below the fan.
So bored now that I watched Roja for the umpteenth time, and recorded bits of background music from it. :) Mani Ratnam couldn’t have made a better movie – my all-time favourite it is. To add to the precious mix of Rahman’s music, Mani’s direction, Sivan’s cinematography is the handsome man called Aravind Swamy. Wonder why God makes such handsome men as him, Madhavan, Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves and Siddharth. Maybe just to compensate for every woman who’s born.
Tried my hand at minesweeper again. I have come back to being a little better than hopeless at the game. :( Unfair!
Have nothing better to do now, so I’m going back to Roja. Vetti post, vetti talk. Vettiness galore!

Yeah, at last....I won the expert round for the first time in my life!!!!!
And yeah, laugh all you want - I don't care!!!