True story. I kid you not.

The story that follows is an absolutely true one. Though it may read like a one-man disaster movie script, it actually did happen to me over a 75 minute period of my life that's never coming back.

Here's the dope, in seven scenes...

Scene One: The day is done

Finally, for the first time this week, I was in a position to leave work for home relatively early. It being a Friday evening and me not having much of a social life to speak of, I made plans to go to a movie with a few friends.

For various reasons that I won't go into here, I didn't have a car available. A friend of mine kindly consented to drop me home, and pick me up an hour later so we could go to the movie. One hour - ample time to have a quick bath (yes, I realise this is surprising, but I do bathe more often that I used to a few months ago), rustle up some dinner and change into something hip and cool (yeah, I'm laughing too) for the night out. Also, I very badly needed to use the toilet.


Scene Two: What to do?

So I walked towards my flat, eagerly looking forward to getting home because a. I was tried and hungry, and b. the need to use the loo was rising at a rather uncomfortable rate. And that is when the first Cruel Joke occurred. I didn't have my keys.

None of my flatmates or other friends staying in the same complex were at home, so there I was locked out of home, alone and in need of a loo. I decided to take a rickshaw to the movie complex (in a mall, where else?), figuring that there just had to be a toilet there.

There are usually three or four rickshaws standing outside my building, as there is a steady flow of customers. On this occasion, I was dealt cruel Joke No. 2. Not a single rickshaw in sight, and none turned up for the next five minutes.

I needed a toilet really really bad. And had no easy way of getting to the multiplex. That was when it struck me that there was another mall nearby that I had never visited. And where there is a mall, there is bound to be a toilet. The mall was about five minutes' walk away. And so I set off.


Scene Three: This experience didn't lift me

The very entrance of the mall did not augur well for the success of my mission. It was cast in shadows thanks to low lighting, and the parking lot was deserted. The security guards outside looked up from their chai in surprise, shocked that someone was actually entering the mall.

Inside, it was like a ghost town. Te lights were on, and the air conditioning was on in full blast. But there were NO people whatsoever and ALL the shops were closed. It was a freakin' desert mall.

I saw some signs mentioning a food court, and went by previous experience in assuming it would be on the top floor (the 4th). The top floor turned out to be the corporate office that ran this 180000 square feet of retail space in complete disuse. Plush sofas and awesome air conditioning, but no visible sign of the loo. I took the lift to the 3rd floor. Halfway there, Cruel Joke No. 3 decided to chip in. The lights went out.

Power cuts are not a rare occurrence in Gurgaon. Nevertheless, complete darkness in an enclosed place is kinda freaky. To the credit of the mall authorities, the lights came back on in a few seconds. But the lift didn't budge.

Let me summarize the situation at this point in time. I'm hungry. I'm in danger of soiling my pants. And I'm stuck between the third and fourth floors of a desert mall. This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments.

It took an agonizing and worst-case-scenario-thought-inducing thirty seconds for the lift to spring back to life and take me to the third floor. I staggered out to be greeted by a sign welcoming me to the Food Court.

The population of the food court was more than the rest of the mall put together. There were three men, of which one was a security guard. All three were lounging around and watching the India-England cricket match (which India won!) On enquiring (with clenched teeth and crossed legs) where one might find the nearest toilet, I was guided down a long and tortuously winding path to a little door with the word 'Men' on it. Woohoo!


Scene Four: I can't take this shit any more!

The toilet was reasonably clean. Good beginning. Given how life had been treating me until then, I checked that the water pipe near the commode was working; critical given that there wasn't any toilet paper. It was working. Thankful that things were taking a turn for the better, I got down to the long awaited business.

Several minutes of grunting and relieved sighs later, I had a smile of satisfaction across my face, and reached for the water. It was at this point that Cruel Joke No. 4 realised that it had been slacking in its duty to make my life a living hell and kicked in with maximum force. The water pipe did not work.

Now this crossed the line from irritating to just plain frustrating. The bloody thing had worked just five minutes earlier, but now was dry as... oh, I don't know, the very memory stresses me out so far as to ruin my capacity to come up with analogies.

Luckily, I had my trusty notebook (which I carry to work) at hand, and it had some trusty pages. So that was what I used. Not a pleasant experience.

The main taps in the loo were working, which was good. The soap dispenser was not empty, which was better. So I squeezed some onto my hands, which was when Cruel Joke No.5 joined the party. My hands started stinging.

I scrubbed them until the feeling subsided, and confronted the guard about it. His explanation? "Oh, Sir, no one comes here. We use the dispenser to store cleaning acid." #@$$%^@&!

So not only had I used high quality writing sheets as toilet paper, I had washed my hands with an undefined cleaning acid.

Life kinda sucked.


Scene Five: I need food to stay alive

One of my two initial problems - egestion/excretion and ingestion - had been addressed. But I was hungry going on starving. The food court had only one of six restaurants functioning, and the guy manning it (one of the aforementioned loungers) said that as they didn't expect any customers, they hadn't fired up their grills or whatever it is they do to set up a kitchen. The result? A waiting time of half an hour. At this point, my friend called up to tell me he'd pick me up in 10 minutes. I passed on the Food Court dinner idea, and decided to seek nourishment elsewhere.

Just outside the mall was a small home-run store. I bought myself a couple of fruit buns and a packet of juice. Very tasty indeed. I then crossed the street to an ice-cream vendor. I chose a cone ice-cream and realised 6 minutes and halfway back home later that that was not a very bright decision, because I now had a raging thirst thanks to the dry biscuit cone. Enter Cruel Joke No. 6 (admittedly not as astoundingly cruel as its peers) - the store was closed.

There was no one in sight, and there was nowhere within easy reach that I could get a mouthful of water. Swallowing as much saliva as I could, I trudged home consoling myself with the knowledge that my friend would be waiting to whisk me off to what ought to be an enjoyable movie and a capital way of putting the torture of the last hour or so out of mind.


Scene Six: The evening's final tricks

My friend wasn't there. Which didn't strike me something to be worried about. Given Gurgaon's traffic conditions, incorrect estimates of driving time are acceptable. What did get my goat (figuratively, of course; I don't rear livestock) was when he called up five minutes later to deliver Cruel Joke No. 7 - he was completely, utterly lost.

Not good news because the movie was starting in under half an hour and I hate missing any part of a movie and particularly the beginning.

It took 12 minutes and three frustrating calls ("Left, left, left! How the hell can it be on your right? Can't you see the signboards? Just come straight. No curves, no turns, straight! And yes, take the left turn. No the next one. Whaddya mean there's no left turn?" You get the drift.)... but he got here eventually.

"Hey, Kaka, I'm sorry man. Really sorry. You look angry, and you sounded pretty frustrated on the phone."
"Uh huh, you think so?"


Scene Seven: This Puppeteer ain't going to heaven

I don't know who pulls the strings of my life, which sadistic cosmic puppeteer controls the things that happen to me. But I hate him/her, and damn him/her straight to hell.

The only good achieved out of the harrowing experience is that I got a lot of material to write about. But I still hate the puppeteer. *(&^@*.

This has been a productive week...

For two reasons. And no, I won't tell you both upfront. (Yes, it's a rather cheap tactic to keep you hooked with pseudo-suspense... but hey, what the heck.)

Number One

I watched Sivaji. Sivaji - The Boss. Finally. After all the hype and hysteria. After weeks of conversations with every new person I was introduced to that went more or less like this:
"So, Arvind, where're you from?"
"I'm from Chennai."
"Oh, you're a Tam, eh?"
"Yup!"
"Have you watched Sivaji?"
"Grrrr....."

My watching (or not watching) Sivaji became a proxy proof (or lack thereof) of my Tamizhness, and it seemed everyone and their uncle had watched the movie (including a European in my office!). Everyone except me.

Anyways, I watched it. And my God, Rajnikanth looks fantastically impossibly young. And in no avatar is he more astoundingly stylish than in his bald one. Right from the swishing of his coat to the tapping of his pate. Check these out (I apologize for putting up two heavy videos, but these are just too good to be missed!):







The movie itself was pretty standard. The usual man-takes-on-the-system stuff everyone's come to expect of the director, Shankar. A whole lot of jazz and unnecessary special effects, colours and dance sequences. I found the movie kind of slow in parts. And Rajni's comedy bits really weren't funny at all. All that pointless drivel about trying to make himself fair... (Yes, I get that he was cooking a snook at his own darkness. And yes, I know some people argue it is a brilliantly sharp insight into the psyche of the modern Indian male. Pointless drivel, all the same.) That said, Vivek totally rocks, even stealing the scene from Rajni on multiple occasions! And thankfully, it was slightly less about Rajni the superstar and a little more about Rajni the actor than is usual.

All in all, a fun one time watch. Or maybe two or three. Five if one is just watching the mottai Rajni parts.


Number Two

On the eve of India's 60th Independence Day, I learnt two new drinking games. Two really fun games.

I could describe them in detail (and possibly add some humour to this post!) but why reinvent the wheel when Wikipedia holds the patent? Sorry, that didn't come out as well as it sounded in my head. Anyways, check out the links below

Flip Cup and Beer pong

And just in case you were hoping for some photos of me stone drunk... nah, not happening. :)

Cheers!

Memories

Memories slay me. Completely, totally. And try as I might, I can't block them or reconcile myself to the fact that they are just that, memories. I find myself succumbing ever so often to those memories. Of times when I was more secure, when life was less complicated and one had people who cared and who one cared about nearby, when I was in a better place literally and figuratively. We all move on, adapt, live life as we have to, but we always carry along memories of what was, what could have been, what one wishes could have been... and try to come to terms with the fact that the past, beautiful as it was, will never be back. For a while we let our minds drift back to those times, those faces. We allow ourselves to clutch at straws, consider improbable what-if scenarios, hope against hope. And then, once we calm down and learn to accept reality, we build mental barriers to carefully file away what was strictly in the past, and concentrate on the present and the future...

I thought I had accepted reality. I thought my defences were in place. But they are no match for the flood of memory. Closure, in so far as I had achieved it, has been shattered in an unsettlingly easy manner.

People, places, emotions, experiences. Some of them, I took for granted and never accorded the special status in my mind and heart they deserved. Others, I assumed naively would either be with me throughout my life, or could be dealt with easily when they ceased to be a part of my life. News flash, rude shock, slap in the face. All this while, I thought I was a guy of reasonable emotional stability, only to be reduced to a quivering mass of nothingness by a few mere words, a few images, a few short flashes of buried memories. A phone call out of the blue, a short meeting, an 'Online' status on GTalk, a jpg file dug up from the distant past, a sudden and unexpected Instant Message...

Some things, one thinks will be easy to let go of. Maybe. Over time, one expects they become a little manageable. But one brief glimpse is all it takes for the carefully built walls around a memory to collapse, leaving one weak and vulnerable and open an attack of nostalgia, love, remorse, hatred and all the surprisingly strong emotions one had thought were dead or buried for good.

All those cliches about the past are crap.

"Forgive and forget"? Crap.
"The past is gone, ne'er to return"? Crap.
"Out of sight, out of mind"? Crap.
"Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"? Crap.

The Noodle Bar Bar

That's right. Not just Noodle Bar. Noodle Bar Bar. Which, for those of my readers who don't understand Hindi, translates to 'Noodle repeatedly.'

Momofuku Ando's grave ought to be a revered pligrimage spot. The Japanese voted instant noodles their greatest contribution to the world. Not Nintendo. Not Godzilla. Not cheap fuel efficient cars. Not robots that compose symphonies and/or play football and/or wash your underwear and/or transform into cheap fuel efficient cars. The humble instant noodle. They sure have their priorities right.

I've been having a lot of noodles of the last few weeks. Noodles of all manner and sort of brands and varieties. Maida noodles, wheat noodles, rice noodles. Top Ramen, Nestle Maggi, Unidentified Local Brand With Cheap Red Plastic Cover, Unidentified Local Brand With Cheap Blue Plastic Cover.

<- SIDETRACK ->
Before we proceed (this is, of course, under the monstrous assumption that you want to proceed), here's a tip: Noodles go best with lightly toasted brown bread and chilled apple juice. Having a pretty young thing to give you company is pretty cool as well.

Back to the core of the post.
<- END SIDETRACK ->

It's fun. Once one admits to oneself that 20% of one's weekly dietary needs are expected to be met by noodles, one begins to experiment. There's only so much one can have of plain noodles. So, on the basis of extensive research and deep personal experience, here are the top 6 noodle based dishes I have concocted in the recent past, with detailed instructions on how to prepare them.

Chicken Mixed Veg Noodle Soup, aka One For The Soul:
Boil water. Add Mixed Veg soup (I find Knorr's slightly better than Maggi's). As soup becomes reasonably soupy, add a little more water. Add Noodles. Add chicken tastemaker (It's always part of the noodles pack. Except in the case of Unidentified Local Brand With Cheap Red Plastic Cover. @#$#$.). Stir until the consistency of the dish looks OK, or you can't bear the hunger any longer. Pour out into a bowl, and garnish with anything you like (I prefer Kissan mixed fruit jam. Really.) Voila!

Masala Tomato Noodle Stew, aka Pretentiousness Personified:
Almost the same. Except that you add Tomato soup and the standard veg masala tastemaker. Stir till it looks edible. Suggested garnishing: Oregano, carefully preserved from the previous night's Dominoes order. And, of course, jam. Lipsmacking.

Multicereal Noodle Extravaganza, aka Cereal Killer:
Ideal when cooking for a large number of people. Boil water. Add a piece/slab of standard maida-based Maggi noodles. Add a slab of Maggi Rice Noodles. Add a slab of Maggi Wheat Noodles. Add all the respective tastemakers. Stir well to ensure optimm mixing of the ingredients. Pour into a bowl, and garnish with that tangy sauce that's been lying in the fridge for months but doesn't belong to anyone in the house.

High Protein Egg Noodles, aka The Yolk's On You:
Boil water yada yada. End product, noodles. Run downstairs and buy egg bhurji (scrambled eggs) from the potti kadai outside the gate. Bring back said bhurji. Mix with noodles. Eat. Don't bother waiting to garnish it, else the bhurji will become cold and tasteless.

Rice Noodle Meal, aka Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai
A brilliant collaboration with our friends from across the border, China. (Yes, we DO have a border with countries other than Pakistan.) Shove MTR's Veg Pulao or Masala Rice into a microwave for 2 minutes. While that's on, boil water and add Maggi Chinese Flavour Thingy. Pour the rice into a large bowl. Pour the noodles into the same bowl. Mix the two with a vengeance and commitment that is almost, but not exactly, completely unlike the passion with which the Shiv Sena promotes Valentines' Day. Garnish with soy sauce and eat with chopsticks.

McNoodles, aka The Noodle That Almost Lived But Didn't Quite And Hence Won't Have a Multibillion Dollar Seven Book Series Based On It:
Boil water. Add the slab of noodles. Leave it to boil. Turn on the TV and spend 25 minutes laughing your rear end off at Everybody Loves Raymond. Return to the kitchen to find the dish burned. Throw it away and order a burger from McDonalds. Garnish with fries and coke.

Gyaan from Gurgaon

I've been in Gurgaon (Gudganva to the locals) for the last three weeks. It's been a VERY interesting experience so far... On the basis of my limited travels in and around this fine city (damn, I don't think the sarcasm came through as strongly as I intended it to), here are the top five things I learned/realized in all this time here...

Food
MTR's ready meals ROCK! All one has to do is pop them in the microwave for a couple of minutes and out comes fresh tomato rice, pulao, alu mutter and a whole assortment of other Indian dishes. Manna from heaven from a bunch of bachelors with a combined culinary experience that does not extend beyond Maggi. (Coming soon: The Noodle Bar blogpost.) Speaking of which, here's a friendly tip from one who knows: having Maggi more than four nights a week can cause unpleasant sensations in one's stomach. I know people say consultants are always full of gas, but you really wouldn't want to prove them right in a literal sense.

Traffic
This place is chock-full of lousy drivers. To the brim. I do not exaggerate. It is not uncommon to see a large truck zooming down a busy road in the wrong direction, a car choosing to travel half a kilometre in reverse just to avoid taking a U-turn, cycle rickshaws that Apparate out of nowhere (yes, I read Harry Potter 7 earlier this week), suicidal motorcyclists playing tag with Death, tempos carrying 400% their expected capacity careening past red traffic lights, traffic policemen waving their arms about ineffectually as a four road junction rapidly becomes a 15-directional traffic jam... on one day, it took us 40 minutes to travel home from work, a distance of about 1200 metres. The sad part is that it's not enough to be a good driver oneself. The maddeningly lousy road and traffic sense of everyone else forces one to conform, or get a severe knock or two. And yeah, just to add to the fun, I'm going to be buying a car in a month. Good thing I didn't tell the folks providing my life insurance about this.

Career options
It appears that most of the employment in Gurgaon is generated by just two roles - security guards and house brokers. Let me explain. Fuelled by skyrocketing growth in the services sector over the last few years, Gurgaon is a city that looks really stunning by night. Twinkling lights, enormously tall buildings and shiny glass in every direction, it's like Canary Wharf spread over about 50000 acres (I don't really know the area, I'm just throwing a figure so it'll sound impressive. Did it?). I've been told it contributes 35% of Haryana's income tax collection. The ever growing influx of multinational firms and their increasingly well-off employees has created quite a housing boom, and complexes of anywhere between three to ten 20-storey buildings comprising residential complexes is the norm, as are commercial complexes that satisfy two primary criteria - a. Glass everywhere and b. Never a normal cuboidal shape (there have to be weird angles, curves, shapes and towers jutting out, for some apparent reason).
More people implies more houses and offices. More houses and offices implies a greater need for protection/security given that the law and order situation here isn't anything to write home about (or rather, is something to write home about if your near and dear ones like reading macabre tales of robberies, road rage, murders and other assorted crimes). Hence, the need for security guards. Every major building has a posse of at least 4-5 of them, so if you're ever out of a job or fancy an alternate lifestyle for a while, you know what to do.
As I said earlier, more people implies more houses being built. And also more people searching for these houses. And also, given how much tax we're paying and how expensive living in this place is, more people searching for houses whose rent won't, ironically, drive them to the streets. Enter the broker. Usually an enterprising local chap armed with his trusty old bike and a vast network of fellow brokers, he is your guide through the frightening, wearying, frustrating jungle of house-hunting. For a commission, he'll take you to a bewildering array of flats that match your spatial and budgetary requirements, introduce you to (usually very well-heeled) landlords and help in negotiations. An extremely invaluable resource in the mad mad world of Gurgaon real estate.

Groceries
Big Bazaar ROCKS. If only because it sells stock that's close to expiry at dirt cheap rates. And has fundoo offers along the lines of "Buy 4, Get 2 Free" on a range of products from hangers to juices to diapers (no, that does not mean I buy diapers. I was merely illustrating a point). Again, this is a godsend for someone who isn't making as much money as he thought he would be (@$#%& taxation, etc) and is looking to save as much as he can in a place where the local populace seems to be oozing wealth from every pore and the cost of living mirrors this fact. And, almost all shopping is done at malls. Huge, glossy, popping-out-at-you-everywhere-you-go, neon-and-hip-young-things-filled malls. There are very few local kirana store type areas around here, and none within easy reach of where I'm staying now... as a colleague put it, "Even to buy a toothbrush, one has to go to a mall!"

Entertainment
In this day and age of mass consumerism and general optimism about the state of the economy, it is apparently acceptable - in fact, quite the norm - to pay Rs. 175 or more for a movie ticket. I believe the average price is around Rs. 225. I haven't actually checked them out myself for fear that my wallet will scream in shock, jumped out of my pocket and down my throat and attempt to throttle me for having exposed it to so fearsome a situation, thereby causing me to die a painful death. Reliable sources tell me the accompanying popcorn costs upwards of Rs 100. My conscience does not allow me to wallow in such luxury, and I look forward to going back to campus and downloading all the movies I want to watch. With a Rs. 20 Maggi + Lime Juice combo to keep me company.

Well, that's it for now. More insights and experiences coming soon!

Sigh...

The Taj Mahal, timeless monument of eternal love.

The famed marble lovers' bench.

Me, all alone.

Sigh.

AC, the Tagged!

I've been tagged by DD! Actually, she tagged me a long time ago... sorry for the delay ma'am :)

The rules:
1. Players start with 5 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 5 random facts.
3. Players should tag 5 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

So here we go...

1. In school, I wrote a poem describing a battle between two much loved teachers fighting over who would take an extra class for us. This poem found its way to the Principal, who read through it, smiled and complimented me on my literary talent!

2. To date, Suraangani remains one of my favourite songs.

3. At one extremely drunken weekend in Oxford during my internship last year, I lost my passport while dancing in an Irish bar.

4. I like Himesh Reshammiya's music, and I'm not afraid to admit it.

5. I have an unhealthy fascination for British Reality TV (with the exception of mind-numbingly-boring, blatantly-exhibitionist, puke-inducingly-contrived Big Brother shows)

Rise, Nandan, Goach, Shrikant, Pps and Vishnu... I dub thee Tagged!

Alvida... for now

I'm off to work. At last. After cooling my heels at home for what seems like an interminable summer. Gurgaon awaits, and I strongly suspect it has no idea of the pestilence (i.e. me!) that is about to hit it.

I'm leaving tonight, and it'll be atleast a week before I can get my laptop and an Internet connection. Never fear, though, I'll be back! The last couple of months of relative peace and quiet have reawakened in me the desire to write and the realisation that I am back to blogging and enjoying it, almost as much as I did two years ago.

For those who were hoping (some quite fervently, I've been told) this would be the end of this blog, all I have to say is a mocking "Ha Ha!" (Listen to it here.) (APA Ref: Nelson from The Simpsons, for the benefit of the bugging stickler who posted the first comment to my previous post.)

Ciao, all!

That funny little thing called Love...

I've been thinking... and no, that was not meant to be a joke. I admit my cognitive faculties have wasted away over the last couple of months that I've been at home, but these faculties have dimmed only in the context of financial calculations, economics, operations management and all the other stuff I've spent the last two years studying. In matters of human interest and general ruminations on emotion, worldly ties and life, the brain remains as active as ever.

Hence, this post. What's caused me to think rather more deeply than usual about love is, firstly, this post by Nirmal and, secondly, the astonishingly large number of marriages and/or alliances being formed in my immediate social circle. A very large number of my friends are engaged or are going to be engaged. A number of weddings of dear ones have taken place since April, and a very close friend's marriage is up next in a couple of weeks. In the last three days, three of my cousins have taken a decision on who to marry and when. The maamis seem to be in cracking form.

What makes two people decide they want to spend the rest of their lives together? In this context, I'm not going to consider arranged marriages. The criteria for the decision in these cases is usually based on
- Caste
- Social status
- The education and employment status of the two
- The looks
- A few brief, hurried meetings between the two

At least, this is what my impression is from what I've seen of friends' and family weddings. The families decide the acceptability and appropriateness of the union, and if the horoscopes align and the brief discussion between the potential couple doesn't throw up any nasty surprises, compatibility is assumed. Love, as a concept, is never a consideration. It will come, it will grow, it will happen with time, is the sage prediction. And yeah, that's how it usually happens.

But what about the good old, somewhat filmy, boy-meets-girl (or the equally acceptable girl-meets-boy; no one better accuse me of gender bias!), fall-in-love, get-married story? I find this to be the predominant form of marriage among those that have occurred over the past few months. IIMA seems to be a great place to find your soulmate; several batches would testify to that. These couples found what they believed was love, an emotion that gave them the security and faith in their togetherness, and that helped them take that big decision to spend the rest of their lives together.

What is love? I don't know. Each person probably has his own definition. I could count the number of people I can say I love on the fingers of one hand. Even if that hand were to be missing a finger or two.

Love is, to me, something almost unattainably elusive. It is, at its base, rather simple but finding it (or, perhaps, allowing it to find you?) is what is complex. Love is, to me, not a trivial emotion, not something to be bandied about freely. It is a rare emotion, straddling the stratospheric heights of our strongest feelings, our most personal emotions, in touch with our wants, our needs, our inadequacies and insecurities, our self-image, our very humanism. Love has the power to change us, to make us feel whole again. I think Jack Nicholson's character in As Good As It Gets captures the essence beautifully when he proclaims his love with the line "You make me want to be a better man." A pithy statement, phenomenally expressive. Yes, love can have that kind of effect. Yet, at the same time, it can crush us, making us emotional wrecks, mere shells of our former selves. At times, the sheer force of love and how it affects us makes the emotion almost insupportable, making us wonder why we loved at all if it was going to cause so much pain.

George Eliot said, "What greater thing is there for two human souls that to feel that they are joined... to strengthen each other... to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories." I could never hope to be as eloquent, but I understand and agree with the sentiment of those words. There is a certain selflessness and surrender involved in love. And not in the silly, mushy and idiotically sappy way portrayed in most movies and books. These love stories are travesties. I find them portraying a parody of love, some infantile romanticized version of love. Love is not necessarily about roses and kisses and promises and saying 'I Love You'. Love, if recognized and appreciated by both parties, doesn't needs words or objects. These are mere symbols, a means of relatively explicit expression which should not in any way be taken as a substitute for the emotion itself. Nevertheless, these symbols must be used sincerely and carefully. 'I Love You' is probably the phrase that must be used with more caution that any other (with the possible exception of 'Kick me in the groin'), since for a person who is sincere it carries an immense weight of emotion and expectation. These are not words I would use lightly, and not words I would want anyone to use lightly in my context. I have seen friends hopping from one girl/boyfriend to another like insatiable butterflies, all the while claiming that they were in love during the relationship but not afterwards. It sickens me, it pains me. In our quest to find a kindred soul, be it due to loneliness or simply social/peer pressure, we tend to assume attraction, lust, perhaps even a mere flirtation might be love. That isn't being in love. That is being in love with the idea of love.

I'll be frank, I don't know where this post is going, or where it was meant to go. I just had a lot of these thoughts jostling for space in my small, over-emotional, slightly romantic brain... and needed to get them out. Lots of thoughts and memories... People I knew who I thought were perfect for each other, but whose relationship crumbled. Friends whose dreams of love followed by Happily Ever After were brutally crushed due to parental insistence on orthodoxy. Laziness and vodka fuelled discussions on life and love... rushing through the 'Eww girls are icky' stage of early schooling to the wonderfully exploratory (emotionally/physically) stage of adolescence to the mature and relatively level headed and balanced emotions of manhood...

Will I end up spending my life with a person I truly love? Probably not. In fact, I don't expect I will. Perhaps most of you reading this will not. But will I experience love? I live in hope. There will come a day when it will crush me, I am sure. And that day, I will rue the moment I allowed myself to love. But, as the popular verse goes, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Raindrops keep falling on my head...

... because I don't wear a raincoat or carry an umbrella. Much against my parents' wishes, I might add. I guess they have a point - I could catch a cold and, possibly, die. Not the best thing to happen two weeks before one is shifting to a new city and a new job. But I think it's simply criminal to go out into such awesomely beautifully wonderfully lovely weather - a light breeze, light rainfall that occasionally fizzles into a gentle drizzle before perking up and upgrading to light rainfall again - buried in protective clothing and sequestered from the weather. (Aside: That was one hell of a long sentence. 46 words!)

So I stepped out into the soft afternoon rain, walking along the city roads as I took in the sheer beauty of the weather. The tall roadside trees wept in delight at the rains, shedding theirs tears on my hair as I ambled by. Little drops splattered on my skin and rolled off, leaving a trail of gooseflesh. The tantalising smell of fresh wet earth filled the air. Nearby, a little bird trilled in the sheer ecstasy of the moment, and a watery rainbow shone across the sky. Perfect.

There are those who choose this season to make a splash. Quite literally. Yes, I'm talking of those who drive heavy vehicles - trucks, buses and the like. It becomes a competition among them to see who can splash more pedestrians. If they see a puddle with pedestrians beside it, they charge at it like an aroused bull at a cow in heat, or a RSS worker at a nude painting of a Hindu goddess. "Ha, so the 47G rascal splashed seven people, did he?" thinks the driver on route 10A, and vrooms in and out of the widest puddle he can find, drenching nine people. "Take that, nameless faceless long-suffering pedestrians! Guahahaha..." As a result of the sporting instincts of these drivers, I was drenched down my entire right side within 15 minutes of stepping on the road. Outraged at the unfairness and inequity of the situation, I crossed to the other side of the road so as to give the left half of my body a chance at being drenched.

The Chennai Corporation, of course, had its own unique way of contributing to the ambience of the monsoon. Open potholes, filled with water and spewing mud, played 'Guess How Deep I Am!' - a popular game in this season - with motorists. Open-air sewers (one of which is, I believe, officially a river!) overflowed their banks, spreading bacterial cheer and sending an ungodly stink rising free through the air. The occasional electric pole or tree crashed to the ground, inducing pedestrians to practice impromptu high jumps as they went about their business. And, as usual, blocked or non-existant storm drains made paying for a swimming pool membership redundant.

However distressing the infrastructure might be, however, the true character of a city in the rains is represented by its people. Motorists, leaning forward to peer through the windshield wipers, drove with their windows open and their ACs off for the first time in months. Street urchins, some more naked than others, screamed in joy and jumped in and out of the puddles. Professionals in formal clothes held their pant legs up gingerly as they tiptoed along, the water invariably sloshing into their shoes. Riders on two wheelers drove at full speed, experiencing the brilliant feeling of rain on their faces (helmet law be damned!) A lone athlete rowed manfully along the Adyar river. Couples, both young and old, came out under shared umbrellas to savour the most romantic weather imaginable. Some were probably aroused to greater passions - I saw a girl on the pillion of a bike nibbling her partner's ear. Schoolchildren, their bags on their heads, sloshed along happily. A roadside tea vendor grinned in sheer pleasure as he made roaring business. A group of nuns sang as they walked down the street hand-in-hand. Policemen garbed in impressively large head-to-toe mackintoshes and galoshes and floppy oilskin hats stood at their posts smiling at the passing populace. And I watched the city go by, and soaked it all in.

As Dr APJ Abdul Kalam has a habit of saying, FANTASTIC.