mental explosion

ever heard of anyone dying  by cramming too much , as a result of which the brain just explodes. i am on the way for that feat. i have turned my brain into a bloackhole for absorbing data in a infinitesimal amt of time and unfortunately there exists a wormhole somewhere else from which most of it escapes out into oblivion. Additional to the infection caused by caffeine , taurine and panadol inside my gut,  and the short circuit of some fuse in the eye which had made it big, reddy and itchy, i am simply hoping for a heart failure so i could get a MC and wiggle my way out of the firing squad. the execution occurs slowly, for 2 hours, making torturing every cell in the brain , trying to extract information that imply isnt there anymore, and punishing the eyes simultaneoulsy.  at the end of which , the mental faculties crash completely and need minimum 1 week of unconciousness to regenarate, if possible. but no, i am not to be let so easily off the hook. that 1 week turns into a nightmarish 4 hours ,after which the cycle repeats again, with more vigour. aaaaa, i hate exams. i hate it even more when i mess it up and can shoot myself.

reading week seems to be the magnet for making me catch up on movies. old, new, funny, sad- it never matters. anything, anytime seem to work. heres my list for this week.

Schindler’s List. Doubt. Reader. Mamma Mia. Sophie’s Choice. Vicky Christina Barcelona.

Sad/Horror seem to work best though. takes the edge of the immediate impending doom. makes u think  there are worse things to worry about than an arrear..

the 80’s hits

stumbled upon ABBA vids. the dancing queen made me double up with laughter. their  costumes ,get up, movements were outrageously funny, that it looked as a spoof version at first..then after prolonged browsing, i could only marvel at the tastes of 70’s and 80’s pop culture. but it was more interesting than what we have right now..the other tracks, gimme gimme and winner takes it all were too good but the best was i have a dream. frida rocks with her magic voice. though some of them have been put in the musical- mamma mia, the original vidoes are the best entertainment- the funny dance moves, and super wierd costumes and hairdos..

Obscurity

Its 5 pm. I am on the bed, installing Xilinx in my freshly diskcleaned computer. The process is damn slow. The worthless comp is waste with its measely 1 gig RAM. No use upgrading a dump that breaks down once a month. With a meeting an hour away, i needed the 1 hour to write some miraculous code ,if at all the dump installs the software that is.. I wish the clock would tick slower. That was the last thought before my eyes closed and i completely shut down.

Something was pounding my head. it too me a few minutes to realise it was the door. It was pitch dark , i have succesfully missed the meeting . there goes my peer review, up into smoke. Cursing again,I stumbled through the mess to get the door. my headache skyrocketed as booming shouts greeted me. it was a stampede. A great party of loud boisterous friends in an upbeat mood pushing their way into the cramped room and royally encroaching my bed.. There was no way in hell I can get back to sleep. Sometime along the way, I had become a hermit and barred entry to all other souls  into my room. Amidst the sea of ppl invading my privacy, one particular face caught my attention. I couldnt place her. but there was this amazing feeling of familiarity, closeless..even more..I reached out to grab her. I had to know who it was.That smile lit something inside me. a small glimmer of peace inside a heart gone cold and tired. I struggled to get closer.. The scene was fading away. the face slowly disappeared. I was clawing at the empty air, standing alone in my pitch dark room, shouting ; hallucinating.  the door was locked, my computer was lying on the floor in a broken heap. The confusion increased 10 folds. I ran to inspect the damage that could cost my future. It was irreparable. the broken harddisk  escalated my panic . My mind was busy estimating the cost of the new laptop, the data I had lost, the s/w needed to be installed and programs i needed to finish-all before the next day. I thought of dying.

With a jerk, I woke up, instantly reaching out to my pillow. My hands found the keyboard. THe progress bar of the s/w installation was running on the screen. No knocking at the door.It was not dark yet. not 6 yet. I dint hallucinate. I dint break my laptop. I dint miss my meeting.I took a deep breath. a bad dream, is all it is..Funny, how my life is so entrenched in senseless things that even the nightmares and dreams cant function without them..

WHat a wonderful world..

I dont listen to music much..but there are some songs, that that goes straight into the head and does all kinds of fuzzy things that feel so good..

the college experience

I recently read this article by a MIT alumnus, describing a list of things you GOT to experience in your blessed college life.sry, i coudnt find that post right now..it was a pretty long one covering the usual stuff – night outs, dorm life, muggin, exam week torture, dating etc. It was a little boring and a little irritating, his life is obviously on a different plane than most of us, poor souls . Usually I think people just over exaggerate about the college experience ; white wash it with  phrases-   “those good old days” sort of thing. They dramatise on their few and farly spaced happy adventures  of bunking the classes, drinking through the nights etc..but convineantly leave out the routine – the shitty times, the time when you realise how exactly insignificant you are,  when you find out how seriosuly you had  overrated your level of intelligence ,  when you cant remember  your last meal and your stomach  constantly  makes all kinds of  hollow rumbling sounds,  when you wake up most of the nights in various states from midly irritated to outrightly terrified, times when you meet with the worst luck that can strike a person even without the saturn enjoying the seventh house,the time when all you need to get through  is a  small hug and there is no one around to give it to you ..

Its this really hard phase where you dont know who are anymore but it’s also the time where you  actually learn the most important lesson in life: to suck it up and keep going . This is when the delusion of  childhood breaks and you realise that life is going to be crappy  throughout and its you who got to make it survivable . This is when the  expectation of being taken care of by “someone” is shattered and you finally find out there will never be anyone to depend on apart from yourself. and most importantly: this is the time where you learn to laught at yourself. THe most important item in that list of college experience  is  actually the times  when you have friends who make you see the sly humour in the worst of your situations,make you  joke about your non- existential  hopeless relationship attempts and make you laugh abt the times you ve made  an utter fool out of urself..In those moments, you suddenly discover  a completely new perspective, understand yourself better, recognise your weakness and being anew with a new vigour.

Maybe  when we get to the stage with bigger mess ups awaiting, this stage might indeed  become  ”those beautiful good old days”.. Until then, lets survive and make more happy memories for future  use.

There are dreams..and there is a career..

Aah, here comes my final year of my school life. Its such a major phase of one’s life. hectic, neurotic, awkward, challenging, yet the best. and its coming to an end. Great. and so begins another phase of life – career, future, job,money..God, scary terms. and BIG TIME MOKAI. A brief stint at the industry has made myself embrace school with a whole heart.So, the liberation of youth hands us over to the horrifying claws of the corporate giant.

The career office of my univ has decided this is the right time for us to choose which of the giants we want to be caught with. Hence, an endless seam of talks, presentations, from all the major sharks are flooding my evenings these days. The depression dawns as they go on talking about how great the company is, its funny, they way they throw off terms like “passion”, “enthusiasm”..I donno Which neurotic idoit can ever find passion in working as a replacable assembly line machine at a bloody bank?! Its just the green notes that make everyone queue up to become a willing slave, who will eventually take  theraphy with  electronic blogs that no one reads. They tell you can make a lot of money , become v.rich. But they dont tell you other stuff. That you would be  making  a living as the lowermost end of the corporate foodchain, stuffed with luxurious perks yet without a purpose, replacable in a minute. Its an amazing irony. All my life, I dremt of joining such a high profile institution making lots of money, keeping good grades at school. Yet when the moment arrives, the dreams change. drastically. Wonderful new dreams, fun dreams where you can enjoy the work  - farming under the brillaint blue sky along a luch country side, keeping  a sea side restaurant watching the waves all day, seling icecreams in a tricylcle chased by laughing kids, working as a zoo keeper with interesting animals, a sailor on a small ship…My parents would have a heart attack if they stumble on this thought.

Yet reality knocks the doors of engineering graduates. As I sit listening to the greedy monsters go on and on about my future- i can think of only one thing .   A suffocating space before a stupid machine looking out from the window of some 42nd floor  at the endless stretch of  similar windows on other concrete structures filling up the entire place..

Maturity?

How do you define maturity? Does doing the things people of your age in your soceity do in general marks you as mature? Does it mean you have to pack up all the stuff that u enjoy and start following others to get that brand? We are let loose free till the tenna age begins where no one judges us, there is no pressure to imitate, to follow any peer culture. But right from 14, things begin to change. Accepted addoloscent trend needs to be followed to get into the favour of the peer group. Social rules are made up. Dramatic conformation to the new patterns need to be obeyed. Friendship acquirs a new meaning, that gets confusing . “liking” is given a whole new definition. We begin to “go out” , step into the bizaare world ruled by imitation, stereotyping. .

There is another such crisis that occurs at the end of the teen phase. The beginning of 20s. the entrance into adulthood. Things aquire a whole new meaning yet again. Social norms of behaviour are further changed. It gets more confusing. Girls are handed out specific roles to play, different molds to grow into.A sudden transformation is mandatory, where they are expected to understand things differently, magically turn into responsible women, gain super cooking and house keeping skills. Loud laughter is no longer acceptable unless u laugh to a lilting rhythm in a nightingale sweet voice. All personal opinions are to be voiced from the “book of mature women”. . Everything familiar is to be radically erased from memory and this image of new nice woman has to be taken over. Fashion sense is strict.

Its difficult, this metamorphosis to a socially acceptable bewildering stranger. Its even more difficult to find your freinds already transformed while you are still trying to understand the ABCs of this new species. That is when the concept of maturity is brought up. What is this thing?  I was shocked to get back home to find myself surrounded by my recently “mature” friends. According to them, immaturity is : The inability to appreciate their obvious pathetic attempts of proposing to their girlfreinds,  yawning  while they are busily recounting their happening love life in agonizing detail, voicing out any opinion that is against the listener’s point of view, declaring their  future plans of marraige and kids as humbug and gently suggesting they better put some efforts in securing job and making money first, laughing out at jokes they were thick enough not to understand , doing something just for the sake of fun and nothing else…Mature Girls are either supposed to be extremely agreeable and homely -meaning a mother hen who keeps pecking at her boyfreinds and basically play a second mom  for free.. or be this whole hep version of pub going  types, a ready entertainment and companion. There are supposed to be no in-between. oh,  Having a boyfriend is also one qualification. putting up with his mokai with a sick sweetness is the next stage of elevation. did i say mokai? Sry, thats supposed to be invisible to you.  Irritating phone calls , one every hour has to be welcomed enthusiastically  even if you want to scream at that person to back off and give some space. The comedy is when such an idiot keeps calling, to check on what you do every hour, its supposed to be interpreted as a protective gesture. The psychotic pattern continues.. A ready “can go” attitude has to be developed whenever you get called to a restaurant or movie, even if its a torture to maintain nonsense convo where you are not supposed to give any difference to opinion that might harm the macho effect.. and main rule- you gotto dress always in haute couture when you are  seen outside with them. And the pile of shit goes on and on and on…

All this needs to be perfected and practiced/ if not, atleast understood and approved  by the time you hit 20. Else, be at the risk of being branded with the immature tag. At the end of the day, you might as well be dead with boredom.The sense of having fun is becoming a rarity, humour- almost extinct in people these days. Taking small pleasures in whatever we do is what life is about, whether its a whole body loud laugh/satisfaction of calling a jackass as one to his face /bicycle races  on busy roads..   Its so much so better to be normally “immature” than to fake it up to attain this hypocrtitical “maturity” and get all the fun extinguished from our life.

fathers and villans

this post is dedicated to the super special skills of my father who can give courses in “how to irritate people into doing things as u want”. Infact, if there can be any such rankings on effective annoyment(free my englise if the word doest exist), he ranks first. I am writing this post after being driven to the highest point of insanity in my life till date. and it was done in a matter of 15 min. its simply amazing ,actually. it is an art. I have been effectively coerced into doing all the chores my parent wanted me to do, in a super fast mode, all in return for a single mouth to shut up and give me blessed silence. my head feels like its ringing like an aluminium alarm piece. if u r wondering abt how i got to this phase, its described below.

scene: I’m sitting on the couch after dinner, tinkering with my comp. my dad finished watching news in all available tamil cable channels,swtiches off TV, turns his attention on me.

first the ranting begins on my near 18 hour usage of comp, how i waste bandwidth, how i waste electricity, how i waste battery etc etc etc. then, the ranting goes on to my “poor” performance in clg, comparing me to all the neighbours kids, relatives kids,  every boy/girl whom  he has , so far, eveasdropped me mentioning to my mom, occasionally using made up names while running out of real people. after that topic is covered in detail,  the focus returns to the mess in my room, mess i make at home, the mess that i am, the mess i spend his moeny for, etc etc etc.

so far,its the standard tactics all  dads use,  to which all kids have gotten immune to and expertly  play the deaf adn dumb role. It is at this juncture my dad reveals his spl weapon- combining physics and biology. he  multiplies it 100 times in echo effect to be delivered in a voice that makes ur brain cells cringe in agony . DO u know how maddening it is to hear someone say something over and over and over and over again.? I know. That too, when u r tortured with the echo effect within an inch of ur ear..well, its wartime torture. and when that prose is composed into poetry and sung with a matching dance by middle aged grinning father with the echo effect , its super maddening, its near insanity, its murder to ur senses.

Still on escaping to another safe zone, they follow like preying vultures and keep on screaming in the most annoying tone till u fall on the knees and beg them to shut up. till u promise to do anything if they keep their big annoying mouths zipped, till u personally go over to fetch a cellphane tape to stick it together. By this time, by some miracle, their facia muscles begin to fight back and so they shut up finally , and go out to take a break. AAh, the exquisite relief when he goes out for some time is the most amazing moment of my mortal life.
But alas, as all good things never last, i can now dinstincly hear “ennadi vandile petrole kaanum! nethu thane petrol potten, yenga oora sutthina..echo..echo..echo…”.

Magic of the hidden shapes..

It is one thing to read about the numerous stars and be amazed by pictures of magnificent constellations but it is completely breath taking to actually discover them in the night sky. After a long time, I happened to meet a good friend today, who is an ardent enthusiast of astronomy. Thanks to him, I was introduced into a real time star gazing experience that I am sure to cherish for a long time. I have read often of the centauri sisters and picturesique zodiacs. But it has been a long time frustration for me to make them out on the sky. Well, it was worth the wait when I could finally see them, atleast a few of them on the sky tonight and when I was patiently tutored by my friend of their actual shapes, it felt like a small revelation , that pop of hapiness when u can actually figure out how the thing works. To see how the boxes and quadrilaterlas were actually the torsos of centaurs, the umbrella was the scorpio’s tail..It was simply AWESOME . What more? I saw the moon, the craters of the moon, I saw them for the first time in my life. Again thanks to my gilli friend.If only the telescope was in a better condition, I cud have seen Saturn’s rings too.

At that moment, i could  feel the complete charm of the skies, the pull of its mystery, the magic that drew numerous people to lie down and gaze at it for hours, the magnificent beauty that makes our troubles insignificant. I felt hope, courage, contentment.
One can spend an eternity in the isolation of a clear star studded sky , surrounded by nature, seas, life. ok, before i digress into another world, I’ll just urge everyone to spend some time alone with the stars; the feeling is too precious to be missed.