Morning news..

My newspaper guy doesn't like me! for one he refused to put a paper at my door for very long.. telling the watchman, putting up notices etc did not work.
and i really need the newspaper in the mornng,... especially the thick TOI types which has so much to gloss over and not much to read, but which you dont unfortunately get in this corner of hte world (here it is only the Hindu and Indian Express, both apparently believe in saving newsprint and printing only the boringest of news..and editorials..the newspaper gets over before it starts!...and then you have the mal paper Malayala Manorama which believe it or not, devotes maximum space to obituaries!! serious! the last 2 pages are obituaries..and it is almost certainly the most read page in the whole paper!..

..any way i have deviated to a sad kerala rant..so coming back to the newspaper guy..

one day i actually decided to catch the dude in the morning..so i got up at 5:30 and stood out to spot him.. and at 5:45 there he came dropping off papers to my neigbhours and ignoring me.. so i caught up with him and asked him nicely.."chetta..pls put the hindu at flat 3-5/2 tommorw.."
so the chetta replies.. "oh sare.. u r a bachelor?"... i m like hmm yeah!.. so he says sori.. cant give paper to bachelors!. apparently bachelors dissapear without paying or some crap like that.. so i fished out 100 bucks and gave him..advance good will money. so he promised to put a hindu at my door the next day.

next morning all excited i open the door at 7 and tada! there is a malayala manorama at my door!.. and hence all my attempts to make him put a hindu have failed.. obviously the watchman forgets, newspaper man does not read A4 size notices on my door which said "PUT THE HINDU"..

so now i sip my coffee with obituaries in the malayala manorama.. i think i am turning into a real malayali

blog or not to blog

I have not been blogging for insane long now.. but not that i have forgotten abt this page or not that there hasnt been much happening either.. (in fact a lot lot has happened.. more on that if i can restart d blogging)

but i was just thinking on why i should blog..

well, i think for one it is very flattering to think somebody actually reads the blog..makes you feel important in some inane or vain way..
then equally important is that the blog life seems so much more interesting than the real thing.. it is mysterious,vague and leaves so much to interpretation that almost always you end up looking smarter than you are
like for instance right now my social life can be summed up in two words (non-existent) .. yeah even one word might do.. nada!.. but till i said it you didnt really know right?
and somehow whenever i read blogs mostly i wonder how their lives would be and leaves me curious to know more.. again that mysterious things works for me atleast..

and of course you can use spell check and the thesaurus to put in big words, you can cook up variations in your story etc (no..i dont do that .. )

so in all.. i think i have convinced i should keep blogging.

for that cant be said..

CAR

My first car! looks like it s going to be the swift Diesel.. boy it has taken some deciding to finally get to the swift..
i think i started with a 3.5 to an upper cut off of 4 lacs. The Chevy Beat or the Basic Ford Figo were options I was thinking of in Delhi. In between i was even sure i would buy a second hand Swift Petrol..
then it was the i10, the i10 became the Ritz Diesel with the smart salesman working out cost of ownership and all all that..
The Ritz Diesel has now gone on to the Swift Diesel..
hmm..

Seduced..

Five months and she has got to me. The routine has started again, familiarity has grown and so has the attachment..
I think it has taken a little longer this time.. but Kerala has finally got to me..

familiarity with her body, and with her mind, but most of all with her sheer beauty..has taken me in..
Now with the rains still on, some of the scenes are so mesmerizing, it is a little difficult to remind myself that I am here, in that scenery, that the rain outside the window is the real thing, and not a scene from the TV or a National Geographic spread. I have not taken a single photograph since i have come here, but it feels like that is ok, because Kerala has so much beauty to offer, it is okay if i don't capture and save a little of her in my lens..she will be there tomorrow also, in her pristine splendor.

Familiarity is such a sweet thing.. for little routines to set in.. to find a nice breakfast joint, a classy restaurant, a familiar grocer, a well stocked book store.. good hotels for my travels... to know when it will rain, when there would be a power-cut..
It is nice to have roads which leads to places i know, to have a picture in mind when i overhear a conversation about a place

The screwed-up people, the lack of a social life, the smallness of the world here.. things that used to drive me to the brink still do, but they seem little less important now..
Well... i think Kerala has seduced me with her beauty..there is so much to travel..to explore.. now with the car coming in i should get all over the place..

mallu hallo

how does a malayalee say 'excuse me'.. there are three four things they do.. all proven and tested by many malayalis, and apparently better than the excuse me

first for instance if you are standing in someones way, or someone wants to call you.. malayali men and women do what i call the rattle snake.. they hiss.. one 'shhhss shh' noise.. very typical and unmistakable.. move out of way or atleast turn and look back
now if you are from outside, i.e if you happen to be non or fake mal then u obviously dont get this.. you continue to stand there right..

then the second attack comes.. this round starts with the squirrel.. which goes like 'stzu stzu stzu' said in a rapid spurt, this is followed with a set of non-committal giggles (normally looks around at other mals arnd who normally immediately understands the rattle snake, and makes out the outsider who does Not get the rattle snake, and a few silent hellos and muttering..

now, if you are ufortunate enough not have heard and reacted to this, which by the way would be normal for the non/fake mal, the third and dreaded weapon is taken out on the unsuspecting individual.. the scratch!
this is used especially by ladies, you can expect a scratch in the most wierd of places.. like the middle of your back, your fingers!, your waist..
and at this point the panicked innocent has jumped out of the way and in most cases out of his or her skin..

now the victor will walk by the vanquished like nothings happened, like all that was said was "excuse me.."

endodo

dentists! that must be the modern equivalent of the local torturer in the time of our ancestors. what fun it must be to you know.. generally cause people a lot of pain and charge through the roof for it!
today the dentist told me i might have to do a root canal.. while i have heard torture tales of root canals i ventured to ask her what is a root canal procedure..
she coolly tells me an endodontic therapy or whatever it is called is nothing but basically drilling a large hole in that teeth and pulling out the nerve and pulp inside the teeth! wtf!! pulling out the nerve ! and pulp! what is she joking! i told her i was not doing that endodoshit come what may.. so she asks me do i want off-white or tooth coloured filling.. c'mon really when you are talking about pulling out nerves in my mouth you think i care what colour is the filling? jesus! anyways that is closed for now and i hope "there may be pain and if there is then we have to do the root canal procedure" prophecy does not come true..

random mal'nes

There was a time when rice for lunch was a no no.. and suddenly after 3 months in Kerala i now look forward to a good oonu.. the nice round heavy mal rice with loads of sambar and rest of the mal gravies.. i guess it wont be long before the lungi, the "small" and remaining trademark mallu features become internalised.
now places and names in Kerala have a definite place in the mental map of kerala and have images to recall. I know roads there and can share stories of what to eat where and which train to take from there, which by the way is a fav past time of mallus - to quote train names and timings.. it is typical to have conversations of the 'Jayanti will come at 6:25 or the passenger coming at 7' now i am a veteran with experience of all modes of transport available here.. perhaps only the boats and houseboats are left.
initially i used to mix up the superfasts, fasts, limited stops and the malabars.. these being the different classes of buses in the state transport system, i have made the mistake of sitting in a malabar (which by the way is a dead slow bus) and travell6ing a 6half hour worth of 6distance 6in 2 or 3 hours.

shit..have to stop now, my oldie laptop is having a fit and is randomly typings 6's in my sentenses.. ugh..

Conphusian

in three months i still have not figured out roads in ernakulam, i always end up where i want to go, but i never seem to take the same road.. it is like there are always 5-6 roads to most places.

today for instance i drove 45 mins to reach almost exactly where i started, and it is not like i turned back anywhere.. i took a road that kept going and going and apparently was going in circles!

and i could swear that the road looked familiar like i had taken it before but nay.. it was just enticing me to burn some fuel.

Funniest is when you ask for directions, the looks of happy satisfaction on the face of the person you ask as he tells you,.."ayyo sare ningal vazhi thetti poyallo.." or literally 'haha you messed up'.. and that smile as he asks .. 'you are new here na?' and if you dont leave immediately they would want to know where you come from, what you do, what you ate for breakfast and names of your parents. also here people always want to know where you are from! like it is not enough to be me, it is like i am me, from this place! every single person i meet asks sooner or later.. so where are you from.. if you think you can answer vaguely and get away.. no way! they will prise your birthplace with surprising nimbleness. and then it is almost a matter of pride with everyone to say that .."oh yeah, i have been there. in 1976 or something i was there for this or that.. yeah i have seen tat place.." it is like.. ah i have figured you out now!

and in ernakulam you'd never know where the city starts and ends, there are areas in between where there is so much open space and greenery that you'd start freaking out that you have actually ended up outside the city, and then in a few minutes building prop up out of no where!

to add to the general confusion, place names change with alarming speed, in that sense that if you drive 5 mins in any direction, you'd most likely go past five places. I mean like in bombay you have a bandra or malad and these are large places.. there are numbers and roads within the area.. here it isnt like that.. each individual place has a name! yeah i think that is what it is.. local buses for isntance dont have numbers.. they have names.. people wud say "ah alice is comng at 3 and i'l get off at meneka and then walk to whatever next place".. where alice is the bus and meneka is the stop.

because of all this any address in ernakulam will have atleast 3 roads names, 2 place names, 1 house name.. seriously!

House.. Home

The larger your home is more is the number of things you need to fill it up. Since i moved into this house in Ern i'v been hunting for things to fill it up, for gawd is it really difficult to fill up 1000sq feet!
I'v always imagined it might be fun to do up a house.. the 'house - home' thing was always a thing of the future.. like "the day i get a house i am going to have this or that.." a mental picture of that day in the future. but then suddenly that day is here.. a house..all to myself.. and only me to furnish, and not only that. only me to clean, wash, dry, iron, cook, clean again, pay bills, clear garbage, clean again !! dude i finally wonder is it worth all this effort.
Nope.. it isnt. that is the verdict.
even the most intersting part of the entire equation, doing up the house to a cetain taste and style.. TOO much work! I'v been thinking of buying new bedsheets.. and in three months i still havnt got arnd to doing that. I mean i havent even figured out where you buy good bedsheets.
and anyways in the back of the mind there is the big question of how long am i going to hold on here..

I shant deviate into that topic here as that would be an altogether different argument..

And i think houses generally take ages to fill up, and here i am trying to age it in weeks and months. Like my parents house, i wonder if all the things came at once... i am sure item has a story and a soul. when it came into the house, who selected it, why and where.. and i pretty sure the stories are varied and interesting.

I know stories of some items,.. like the small wood elephants that sit on the doorway.. they were picked up by mom in alleppey, by the lake i imagine. she loves elephants and so one day parents were driving to the grandparents house and somewere in alleppey, which is on the way, they stop for a break and on the roadside there is this man selling them, mom wants them, dad grudgingly buys them. sometimes when i am at that house, and generally when i am there i have a lot of time on my hands, i remember looking at those elephants and imagine that story as if it were a recent memory and not a story before i was born, told to me when i was a baby.

louve for fmcg

Why would you want to be in FMCG and in rural markets?

especially if you want that rural market to be Kerala..

> you should love the thrill of seeing buses hurling down 6 feet wide roads and missing the sales officers bike on which you are riding pillion by centimeters..

> you should like hotel clerks who look at you suspiciously when you check in late evening (which by the way is anything after 6Pm), smelling like the combined stale sweat of a football team.. and who insists that you pay up the entire amount and a little more in advance

> the smell of 'Parotta fish curry' in the morning, oily fat drenched 'puffs' for lunch, and of course the sweet smell of 'wine' in the evening should tickle your appetite, and the food smashed down on table by waiters should be the epitome of service

> after travelling for 10 days in a stretch when you come back home you should love the fact that there should be 15 days worth of cleaning up to do, that ants have eaten through the plastic jar holding your sugar and other eatables, and that the window you forgot to close meant that the rain is in your living room

> you should realize that not having paid your cable, newspaper boy and water can dude because you were absent when they came for their dues means you dont have any of these services in the following month

> and primarily you should love the fact that it is you responsibility that every mallu eats your product, and if not you forcible feed your distributors

anchor

what is a frame of reference when everything around you change. When you are hit with a everything from a new job to new geography, when friends, food, home, furniture.. everything familiar changes, is it possible not to change a little yourself. to lose some of that personality that you find in your familiar surroundings. How do you, or to what do you anchor yourself so that in a months time you forget how much you have changed..

Cochin

so a bit has happened between the last post and now. new job, new location, new home. another relocation. and now back to the city of my birth, Kochi. So it is back to being on my own in a new place, though it is home territory it is practically a new place to me. While Kerala has never been anything more than a holiday and weekend spot, and geographically limited to the Tiruvalla railway station and Eraviperur, it suddenly has taken a whole new dimension - this is my entire universe. Moreover, all the problems of Kerala were good for making jokes but now these are so personal.
wierd restaurants, staring people, attimari unions, single car wide roads, constant rain and super humidity, brown fat rice, lots of rice, insane bus drivers, closed shops.. are all here.. and looks like here to stay.

stop run go

In the stock and commodity markets apparently all participants are assumed to have perfect information..so the price of a script is expect to reflect perfect information of all market participants put together.. but still prices go all over the place all the time.. so perfect information cant do crap to predict the future

so what do u do in real life when you don't have perfect information and still you need to make those big decisions.. what about those moments when your gut isn't screaming or even whispering what to do..

seems like i am building up to the new Adidas ad.. no it isnt that, to me it seems like lot of big steps we take in life are pure speculation.. AND if it is so, then why not just go for it and do what you like.. for it is speculation anyways!

pack that bag again

now it is a year since we left college.. a YEAR!

i am tempted to do a mental account of what i have done or if i have changed in this year.. nay.. i shall resist.. why depress myself. anyway i think people around me have changed more, surnames have changed.. jobs have changed ..

all I have done is go from one city to another, rather town to another. and now suddenly it is Kolhapur! even Kochi was in the fray. At one point in time it used to appeal to me, to travel and live in different places.. the rather romantic thrill of finding new stuff about new places.. shoot and paint the new sights.

it is enough to say that love affair has died down now. and anyway the dream of living in different places was not limited to the indian map. still, now i get the feeling that that is not the problem. i am just not wired for this nomadic life. Home, car, friends, familiar hangout places, domestic help .. i want all that! maybe even a dog!

yeah i want that dog.

now i still live knowing i need to pack that suitcase again.

memory trail

Some memories stay stuck in the brain, i wonder what made them stick rather than be forgotten in the flow. For instance there was this one time i was in an auto with a friend in Bangalore on our way to work, i remember pointing out a new store on Bannergatta road to her. even now sometimes this picture randomly pops up, distinct in its clarity. i remember the auto, the traffic, smells, dresses..

Similarly there is one in Chennai where i am driving down one of the small side roads close to my home. i remember the place, the weather, and the general feeling so clearly, nearly 8-9 years later.

when these thoughts come and go, the aftertaste is distinctly melancholic. they are not unlike waking up early morning and realizing truly how lonely we are, how small each of our problems and fears are and that we have to stand up to them alone. like being caught in the headlights of a car bearing terribly fast down on you. the sense of futility and realization of smallness that can only be felt in those few moments of sleep induced clarity. feelings that lose their tangibility the moment we wake up and they are forgotten

yes Mr.Picasso

“Everyone wants to understand art. Why don’t we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only an insignificant part of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world though we can’t explain them; people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.” - Picasso

“Unlike in music, there are no child prodigies in painting. What people regard as premature genius is the genius of childhood. It gradually disappears as they get older. It is possible for such a child to become a real painter one day, perhaps even a great painter. But he would have to start right from the beginning. So far as I am concerned, I did not have that genius. My first drawings could never have been shown at an exhibition of children’s drawings. I lacked the clumsiness of a child, his naivety. I made academic drawings at the age of seven, the minute precision of which frightened me.” - Picasso.

dual processor

i cant do just one thing at a time, you know.. cant view just one tab on explorer, I cannot watch just one channel continuously on TV, cant talk on the phone without doing something else at the same time..

When i open my browser always open 3-4 tabs at once, with as many different things i want to check out cause i cant wait for one to load and then read it. the basic funda s that once a tab is done i need to have the next thing ready...

When i watch TV i literally watch multiple channels at once, i master the remote so i can do this without looking at it, do you know all remotes even have this button that allow you to toggle 2 channels, so perhaps this isnt a disorder that is only mine

I have been like this as far as i can remember, when i was in school and i was expected to iron my own clothes each day, the ironing table was in a bedroom, a room that had no music or TV. so when i could i would drag the TV there so i could watch it and iron - of course driving the rest of my family to madness in the process. When i cook i read a book, i need music when i run, i day dream when i drive :), a novel is mandatory for the morning processes, company when i shop or go somewhere..

wierd eh

Paranoia

some nights when sleep does not come, time swirls around shapes change shapes memories play with the shadows and words want to be written down. when tomorrow looms closer than it is and what went by is still here. when all your dreams come back to haunt and moments become stationary.

thought process influenced by anxiety to the point of delusional irrationality. only to wake up into the dream again. when else can you reach out and touch; to have those feelings again that could never have been, when else can you hear words you once heard; things that seem unlikely to have been said.

through the ether of space i am suspended, the stars are under me and the river above. surging on, i see the wind and feel the moonlight. colors stream through me i thirst for the heartbeat to tell me it is real. that you are listening. that i am free, that i fly, that tomorrow i can face.

die

How easy it is to think it is all lost. climbing aboard a landing craft before the invasion of Normandy, a sergeant told the men that by the end of the day, nine out of 10 would be dead. on hearing that news each man looked around and felt so sorry for those other nine poor sonsabitches.

Create!

Every now and then i am affected by a desire to create. To create, something new, original and my own. and so i write something, or i sketch or paint something. and of late with the camera i tinker with the settings to get some new angle of a tea mug or knick knacks around the room.

But when i get down to this, there is always this pressure to make it perfect. When i sketch or paint i have the urge to capture the subject in its entirety.. as i see it. when i write i keep searching for what exactly i want to say to the point where my limited skills makes me give up.

and i guess this is exactly the opposite of what creativity is right? creativity is letting go, letting the work take its own way.. like a movie in which the script is written on the go. like life.

i was home in Kerala last week and i tried this. i took this nice white canvas, took out my oils and one long brush. sat down and started painting. I did not start with a subject. and i ended up with this..

well.. there is way more than the required number and amount of colour on the canvas. my subject, which happened to be the view from my moms kitchen, is only half of what came out. anyhow.. i now see why artists louwe oils.. it is such a crazy medium! since it doesnt set for a long time paintings dont have to be done in one sitting, meaning if i liked colours in a different order tomorrow my oils will follow my orders and move to the appropriate part of the canvas!

now they attack the German Bakery!

lost!

every now and then things go missing, right now it is the phone charger. It has absented itself for the last 24 hours or so. i checked everywhere from kitchen cupboards to the freezer. It wasnt in the bathroom or behind the TV. I go paranoid when this happens. How can something just disappear!

...btw it had been borrowed by someone from my room :).. but now my formal belt has gone missing! (updated)

gear

it is late in the night, and i dont have anything specific to say. but i feel like.. you know. saying something.

I get these moods .. should try it..

put off the lights, helps if the room is fairly dark. laptop on d lap and ur eyes adjust to the brightness of the screen so everything else is dark. Have some nice music.. i would suggest dark side or fidelity or porcelain or some nice budha bar trance.

and then lose yourself in the music

then dream that you are sitting in some huuuuge black dark open space. no wires, no power nothing near by. just you.

and then the gear up in the head starts rolling. thoughts roll. it is a nice feeling

try it

some shit

You should watch this movie.. up in the air. yeah the clooney one. and you would realize that most of things in it are real. i mean, they could be your life or mine. It is a frank statement of what a lot of our lives are like.

The things we do are mostly for the weirdest reasons, reasons that are born of a momentary thought, a random occurance, a freak chance of weather, traffic, infatuation.. things that don't matter to any one else, reasons that in most likelihood cease to remain relevant a week later even to us.

And as much as i hate to admit it, things that remain are the things our parents told us to care about, you know. yeah.

yeah.. real senti

and i was saying..

I was reading an article somewhere in which a dude was driving a lexus somewhere in the US. At one point his accelerator pedal gets stuck to the floor and he couldn’t stop the car. What would most people do? .. well i think try stopping the car by some means would be the ideal solution right? But what does the genius do.. he calls 911! I mean.. how stupid can people get, to call 911 to tell that my breaks are stuck goes down as one of the stupidest things if you ask me.

Anyways,

Talking about stupidity, I brought a camera some time back.. yeah the DSLR. Then I wasn’t shooting anything, I thought it would be nice to have a tripod. You know those sharp close ups of people and objects need that extra stability of a tripod. So I got a tripod (ok I did not buy it but a sweetheart gifted it.).. Then still I wasn’t clincking anything apart from pigeons from my apartment window.

So then I thought you know I really need a longer lens. If I could get to focus on that face without literally stepping on the persons feet it would be so nice! I needed it! It was necessary! So.. there went 17K and I had a heavier and longer lens.

I still wasn’t shooting. Damn. Now this is really a problem. A ugly problem. So I did some study, deep root cause analysis.

Oh yeah and I found the solution. I needed to get to the place where I could shoot- and how? I needed transportation. And a bike was just the solution. So being always the persons to find a solution, I got the Bike. A Pulsar.

Still no photos.

But I have now found the real problem. A real simple one, my laptop is too old to process the photos I take. Photoshop stutters and the granddaddy wheezes with the load of 10Mb pictures on its old back. I need a new laptop.

See, I have always been good at problem solving. A new lappie and I will give Iqbal mohd a run for his money

And did I mention the fake nike bag to carry the camera, filters, oh and the mp3 player for music when I go shooting, yeah they are all necessary. The photos will come