‘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!!

I am bored.
Really bored.
Nothing interests me - not the novel I'm reading, not one of my innumerable campus newsletters, not Orkut, not YM, and my readings on the torture in Abu Ghraib prison - definitely no. I'm looking around for a way to waste time, but too lazy to talk to people :P Tried watching some English movies, but man, I want to watch some Tamil movies. MMKR would be awesome.
Having nothing better to do, I opened statcounter and checked the visitors to my blog. I have no clue what Google has against me (uhh, well, I know many of you'll face this problem!) but sends people looking for 'Chennai akkas' and 'actress Vani Viswanathan' to my blog. No, I have no idea about these people.
Some others come looking for how to cook (you're asking me?!?! God save you!!), Chennai (Ok, so I have the name in my url, adhukkunnu Chennai naale inga-va?!), to solve difficult decisions (because that's the title of one of my stories). Nope, I got no clue on how to solve 'difficult decisions'.
Someone recently came searching for information on 'Indian Kabbadi'. But the most searches that have led to my blog seem to be related to astrology and horoscopes. Blame me for writing a post titled Horoscopes and match making.
Now I know, some of the next searches that will lead to my blog will have something to do with Abu Ghraib.
Damn you, Google! Sigh!
And to think I am still bored!
Signed,
Velai irundhum vetti
Psst...I'm bugging, right? :D Grin and put up with it, I should get a life soon!!!

I haven't even been looking at what has been happening in my blog for a while... it seemed to be asleep, devoid of much activity, and I felt so bad for it, my poor lil' blog!!
It's been a helluva busy weekend and an even worse Monday of a new week. I'm just hoping I survive this week too, just like I survived today.

Last Saturday was filled with riotous fun, as we celebrated Holi here. Really late, I know, but it was awesome. I was celebrating Holi after almost eight years, barring the episodes in school when our version of Holi was silently laughing at the all the northie girls who came to school with pink ears and blue foreheads.
This time, it was perfect: almost three hours getting drenched in water from a hose pipe, and of course, the colours, many of which I even tasted because some went crazy and just rubbed it all over my face. :)
We played the most random games… Kabbadi, Dog and the bone, all the while getting drenched in water. Danced some weird dabbangoothu, adaludan-paadalaikettu-type bhangra (Yup, that’s all I am capable of!) and of course, jumped around like crazy. At the end, add to it yummy veg biryani and I felt soooo good!

As Saturday ended, I was sick with worry as to how I would survive today, but at last, it didn’t turn out as bad as I had expected…. Two presentations and great expectations (from Professors!) later, I’m back, happiness and enthusiasm bursting at the seams. I had lot of fun in one of the presentations where three of us presented on the Indian arranged marriage system for our course on Intercultural Communication. My Malay friend did her best to do an Indian English accent and kept me in splits. Another thing that kept me amused was how I had to pass off Mahatma Gandhi’s horoscope as one of my team mates’. Yeah! :) I had to find a horoscope for her, and the most decent one close to horoscopes I had seen was Gandhi’s, from Google.

At the end of the day, I’m smiling – I survived the day, I’m optimistic. And boy, that’s a great thing to feel.

Long one....brace yourself.
Read part-2 here.
He groaned. Women and their own niceties. Women and their silly way of putting things across. All he could do was give a glare back.
She smiled within. All he can do is to glare. She picked up her stuff and got ready to leave.
“Wait,” he said, and ran behind her. “Yeah.. you know what? I hate ABBA. I wonder how any silly person on earth could listen to their songs at this point of time. And to think I had to hunt around for a t-shirt with their pic just to think of vaguely impressing you! And yeah, I know you saw me dumping that damned thing in the bin… which crazy loon would go around campus wearing a tee with a silly old band’s picture. For a girl like you who thinks she’s really clever, it’s definitely not worth this much trouble. Wonder why I took your number at all. I’ve hardly seen anyone as conceited as you! And to think I wanted to ask you out….shit!!”
“Oh, really? Bloody, then why the hell should you have my number….some guy faking interests to impress girls has my number! That is totally disgusting to even think of!” she said. She snatched his phone from his hand and deleted her number.
“Oh yeah? You thought you could just erase off your number? It’s in here, woman, in here,” he said, pointing to his head.
And just then, he realised an I-don’t-care would have been more appropriate.
She laughed. “What an absolute loony! I’m really glad you don’t want to ask me out anymore! ”
And she turned to walk off.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Know that I’m a million times gladder!!”


They didn’t really meet many times after that, even accidentally. Any occasion when they happened to be close around, at least one walked away in a huff.
Almost a year later, as she was in the queue in a food stall, she saw him in one of the tables with some girl. Some pretty girl, flirting with ease.
“What a natural flirt,” she thought and smiled. Strangely, looking at him didn’t make her all that irritated as it used to till about two months back, before the long, summer vacation. She was in fact, amused to see him behave in an absolutely charming way with the girl, who, she could see, was also responding appropriately.
She turned to face the food stall and ordered, “Fried rice, to go.”
As she made her way out of the queue, she saw him standing in the queue. The pretty girl was still at the table.
And he saw her too, and after a moment, flashed a smile.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he replied, and scratched his stubble thoughtfully for a moment. “Uhh, long time!”
“Yeah!” she said. “And I see you haven’t changed your ways that much….”she continued, turning her gaze to the pretty girl.
He gave a nervous laugh. “Old habits die hard!”
She giggled. “God, you’re such a flirt!”
“Hey, if that’s a compliment, I’m happy…it’s coming from you, the most conceited girl I’ve ever seen!” he said.
She raised her right eyebrow and shot a glare.
“C’mon…just kidding!”
“Yeah, fine, you better be!” she said. “Got a class. Bye!”
“Hey, hold on…I was just wondering, yeah…you know… if we could catch up sometime and go for dinner… with Vandana, of course…oh that’s Vandana, by the way…” he said, pointing to the pretty girl he was flirting with.
“Yeah, maybe….”
“And…. your number?”
“Don’t you have it here?” she said, pointing to her head.
“Err…I still do. Just making sure it hasn’t changed.”
“No, it hasn’t. Bye, then!”


Almost two years after they met in the canteen, she still can’t believe how things had changed. He had somehow grown to be her closest friend, and she, his confidante. Vandana, he had told her, was the fourth attempt he had made after her, and unlike any of his previous tries, it was clicking quite well.
Leaning at the parapet wall of her new apartment, both were staring out at the beautiful setting sky.
“Hey, you know…” she said, still staring upwards at the sky. “ A guy can never be best friends with a girl he finds attractive….this comes in a movie...”and turned to face him.
He looked at her too.
“Yeah, ‘When Harry met Sally’….but yeah, who said I found you attractive?”
She glared at him, and returned to staring back at the sky, while he quietly laughed.


Yippppeeee! Concluded – before any of you give me more suggestions and ask questions!