Swallowing Bitter Pills...

I got an email from Ashok, a true guide and well-wisher, reminding me of the importance of credibility in the profession I am about to undertake. In his words, I had misused the trust, readers endowed on me by writing something that never happened. Though I defended my position in my reply to him, I feel apologetic now. No propaganda to label the movie, Thalappavu, as offbeat happened. I used it unnecessarily and dishonestly as a stick to beat the cult of superstar worship that I have grown to utterly hate. A big sorry on my part to all of you. Anyways let what I wrote, stay as is. I will never forget this lesson learnt and hold no bitterness. Thanks to varnachitram for showing me for what I was - yet another pen-pusher with an axe to grind.

Now that is done and I feel at ease and peace, I need to somehow let loose the other things that perplexes me. Heading back home in a week, with no idea what I will be doing beyond the next two months - the heart beckons me to continue in trivandrum but I can't decide between becoming a part of the social circle of my parents and old friends which anyways will need a lot of money and mundane social interaction or follow the path of the last 2 years where I have kept largely to myself and lived an existence dictated by what interests me and nothing else. I am not sure that second track will lead to personal happiness but somewhere in my mind I feel a little happiness in having insulated my inner core from the recent prosperity besides the urge to expand that currently tiny warehouse of experiences which have been my best teachers. Hope neither of these become a casualty amidst the influences of kerala society and the comforts of home.

And, I need to give this blog a break. I keep telling myself I am about to be friggin' 28 and I am wasting the youthful energy and insights of this age. I keep telling myself I haven't published a single work or for that matter even put the effort into it. I have been getting the feeling, perhaps wrongly, that I am investing too much into this blog, that its too much a part of my life than it should be and that its time to focus elsewhere. Its a hard decision, to let go of a good thing but I have thought over this hard for the last one month. And I doubt I can be gone for long, considering India is a place where blogging ideas abound for somebody passionate like me. But I HAVE to make that start on writing that first piece of publishable fiction, and I will return ONLY after I set a steady pace in that effort. Call it my faith in materialization powers - in simpler words, the belief that saying the stuff I want to do, out loud, will prod my subconscious mind to find a way, in helping me achieve that desire.

Cheers everyone, and please spare me the embarrassment of wishing me all those good things in life and of missing my posts, etc, etc, which I know you guys will insistently do. So I am disabling comments on this post.

Surviving the Quarter-Life Crisis...

Before the "quarter life crisis" struck, I vaguely remember a young ambitious man, a recent engineering grad from a tough as nails Master's program, eager to work hard, make money, do his mba from an ivy league school in a few years, dreaming of marrying a beautiful girl, investing his money, traveling to exotic places, keeping his parents happy and well provided for, winning every struggle that came his way and living the life, middle-class youth of today's India can aspire for and be definitely able to reach. And then from a point where he thought everything was figured out, the plot to his life went awry. His dear and near ones helplessly watched the show as he gradually retreated into irritability, unhappiness and aloofness. Today, what he wonders though, is the crisis striking him late, say five years from now, and he turns a gun on himself, realizing it is too late to change tracks. I have heard many a Tom, Dick and Harry in my generation say they are in QLC and surprisingly their lives go on just how it was before their supposed crisis began, the lucky ones beat it by jumping jobs or going to B-School. Mine wasn't so easy - it lasted three years and changed me inside out, hopefully for the better.

When I left India it was an escape from the long looming shadow of my dad. I have believed that every generation born into a family which can provide for their education has the responsibility to go one step ahead of their parents. Making a new life in a new land was my idea of that step ahead. The quarter-life crisis changed everything for me. It all began on my first job out of university, a startup in San Diego. While my batchmates plumped for big companies, I opted for a job with subsistence-level basic minimum pay but with a tempting stock option offer, believing the day they went IPO I could retire with a six digit bank balance. The American Dream was about to sour. I realized I couldn't sit on a chair inside a cube for more than half an hour before the world outside beckoned me or in conference rooms where people deliberated solutions to business challenges while I nodded away to puppetic perfection. I was too restless beyond my own comprehension. My mind began to work in ways I couldn't control. Ideas of an alternate life, a rewarding life started entering my head. It took 1 1/2 years and four jobs with varying degrees of success and failure to help me take that first step. I gave the first of my childhood ambitions, the UPSC a shot. For close to a year, I had a semi-reprieve from my early-life crisis but it returned with a bang when I realized the civil service exam was an effort undertaken too late, too unprepared.

The US was my escape route again, to weave the next plan of action. I found a new field and a new job that I have been working at, for more than a year now. But the crisis continued with me - the comfort level with this job was just an illusion, it told me, and the way ahead offered me, just more of boredom and dissatisfaction. I penned down on a piece of paper all the careers that best fit me. It took me to a final answer after much frustration, enforced loneliness, soul-searching and soul-searing. The choice may not be the perfect fit but it shines a lamp, enough for me to see a narrow path to start walking on, knowing if I stay the course, wider roads will appear in their own sweet time. The crisis waned. I was at peace finally. I found my happiness again. I now look back and believe this was the best phase in my life. In my hardships and mental turmoil, I discovered my own thinking, lifestyle, personality and most importantly my writing voice that reflected on this blog. I get scared at times now, but a beginning has to be made. I am lucky. I have given myself a second chance in life. I thank my parents - they have backed me through it all. I should remember to give and afford my children the same freedom and courage to dream.

Last weekend, I was in Chicago with one of my closest friends from school and our parting revelry was broken by a brother of ours mailing in that he had resigned his high-profile job in Manhattan. The early life crisis was claiming another short-term casualty. I returned from the holiday thinking and believing he had done the right thing and deviously decided on sparking a fire in a college pal's smooth life. This was a guy who I thought would go on to become an entrepreneur and a leader of men and instead lived content with waiting for his green card and life as a programmer. Though I have no right to interfere in another person's life or be judgmental, I lost patience with the tepid ideas he kept suggesting and dropping, never to be heard again and offered him a piece of my mind, on the precious time he was losing and what a lazyass he was becoming. The crisis was good for me - it has given me dreams, it has given me a reason to work hard, it has made me strong. I don't know about success, but I will survive. I will be happy. But I am feeling guilty and horrible now - I hate this tendency in me to give advice and support when not solicited - why did I do it to him, will he go into that churn now, what if he had put a roof on his dreams to continue supporting his family, will a QLC do him good, was I being stupid? Time will tell...

A Time To Rewind...

I decided to move this by now customary year-end post up ahead. Two reasons for that, one is I had to get out of a blogging rut and this post had a template I have set in the previous years and was easy to replicate, the other reason being me getting back to my hometown in december, and memories, family, friends, places, habits, occasions are all going to come together in one overwhelming medley and hopefully supply a lot of posts to this blog. Readers have read most of this crap already, skirt it unless you have nothing better to do. 2007 was my year of passivity, it was my year of stability, it was my year of restless soul-searching, it was my year of loss and gain, and a year of lot more, which I intend to flesh out as I write on.

Ups - God - I haven't mentioned before that I spent six months from late september last year to late march looking for a job. The money I had saved up was all but over. God came along and took me under his wing once again as I was about to lose my direction in life. I had quit the UPSC preps by January when my forms didn't reach India in time. I had a return ticket back home for May, but a return to what and for what. I didn't have the answer but HE saved me the trouble. I haven't seen the inside of a church in six months, but every time I look back at how I overcame miraculously the challenges at work and in my mind, it is his unseen guidance I am compelled to acknowledge. Why is prayer such an impossibility for me...i struggle to find the answer. Maybe god lives only in a home, i am living in a sathram, maybe when i make a nest and settle down to it, HE will have a permanent dwelling place.

Ups - Career - The the longest I have worked at one place in my professional career - 8+ months now and counting. Last september when i returned to the US, I had made a firm decision to not go back to programming, i kept with it despite the delay in getting a job, took training in Cognos, a business reporting tool, and it has looked so far to be a right choice I made as a kind of wayside gas station to refuel and a stop-over motel to rework strategies on unravelling the big mystery to my purpose of living. Work was lazy till managers changed and now its hectic but I have been able to deal with it. I continue to be sick of meetings, the dozens of emails to be read and replied, the tasks to be managed, there are times I feel like running away but the money that has come in has helped. Thoughts of frustration and mediocrity have been relegated to the fringes of my existence. Love for, needs satisfied and the temporary security provided by money have given me justification and motivation to carry on for a few more months. A new career will beckon soon, it is a start from scratch, unless I find myself in it, I won't believe I made the transition. I am scared too. That is why I keep it secret.

Downs - Blogging - The latter part of the year has been a struggle to keep this blog going. Except for the upcoming expected interregnum in december I except this downward slide to continue next year too. Decided not to put pen to paper on thoughts arising from nostalgia and past memories and instead write only of present and future. Sadly I didn't do anything significant in the present, and the few posts I came up with in the last few months arose from career thoughts. To be frank, the hazy dreams of the future is the only thing playing in my mind now and there is space for nothing else. My mind is muddled and my words are lacking in flow now. Hopefully being back in tvm will put me back in some creative orbit. Still there will be positives from this year in that I arrived on the guts to post on this blog, a malayalam short story in january. There is some mystic almost spiritual energy for the malayalam language bubbling in me...I have a gut feeling that if I write to publish, it will happen in malayalam and not in english, despite all my inadequacies in the language. In february-march when 5-6 months had passed and i was still jobless and at wits end, i dug into my reserves of humour and memories and wrote on funny incidents to conquer all the worries and regain my sanity. Beyond blogging, as a writer this year was significant in that I tried to take classes in creative writing and screenplay to master the techniques behind it - I lost interest midway through, but I have the notes and hopefully will peruse them some other day. In writing fiction, a thankless process is coming up with story ideas, atleast once every day for the past one year, I have gone on a journey with my mind to craft many a tale, most of them never got anywhere, some find their way to summarized scribblings in my notepad jotted down while half-asleep, possibly never to be expanded on. I finally have another story to write now, but am troubled, with both the english language and determination deserting me in the effort to write. And finally grammar. I have given it a total miss all these years in the freedom of ownership that blogging offers...maybe it as to do with the rigid syntax checking enforced on us techies by programming tools! But using the right tenses, placing commas, spellchecks, I am making an effort to get these as right as possible nowadays. On re-reading my older posts, I now wonder if I slept through the english grammar classes in school!

Downs - Travel - Last year presented me with the opportunity to travel in North India. It was a great learning experience for me, my eyes soaked up the lives of so many people, and the sights of so many places. a lot of that found expression on this blog too. In contrast, this year found me wallowing away at home. In the past, I have done road trips in the US and covered the country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast. The absence of people, and not learning anything new in these travels has affirmed in me an aversion to travel here. All i can think of as travel this year, was a trip to chicago to hang out with cousins, one to florida for a family reunion, a weekend camping at hollister hills near san jose and a sailing trip few weeks back(my initial enthusiasm to don a sailor's cap during the trip and hoist and turn sails, etc died down in the open sea with rough waves giving the boat a real tossing and me a mild attack of sea-sickness which I did well to conceal from friends...whoever named the Pacific Ocean so, had an incredible sense of humour!)

Downs - Reading - I'd blame the computer and the internet for distracting me with youtube and malayalam movies and indian websites but my inability to set all this aside and take up a book and read, which i know would give me the same pleasure, is baffling to say the least! First library books, then amazon.com...i thought since the library books are free, buying from amazon would force me to read...no luck either ways. Brought a lot of malayalam works from kerala to read, most of them are still waiting for me. Shame on you, jibster!

Ups - Health - One day I took a bus, it braked, I almost got thrown but for the grip on the sidebar, i felt the muscles on my back stretch and dreaded for a second, of it tearing(I am now on my fourth year running in the US without medical insurance. I don't know why i keep taking these foolish risks...but i am glad i dont give any money to the scamsters!). That day i came back home, and announced to my sis, who had been cajoling me for a long time to hit the gym, that i would join her. We hired a personal trainer, who has managed to work wonders to my lean, atrophying physique and after years and years of being skinny and perpetually underweight, i stand today at a healthy 70kgs. I have had the worst eating habits too...i have skipped breakfast for close to 10 years now because of stomach trouble or because of running late for school/work but have now got back into that habit. I have been a compulsive outside eater too for the last many many years, cheap junk food from the fast food chains here like MacDonalds,BurgerKing, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc have been my main source of nourishment in the US, i'd rather starve than cook, but now its been goodbye to junkfood for quite a while now, salads and a little fruit is all part of my diet now, and its as great and feel-good as chicken. The sis has been urging me to eat at home for a long time, I feel guilty making her cook after a tough day at work, but she convinced me that despite all my liberal postures, in my heart of hearts i am yet another mallu male chauvinist and that she wouldn't grudge me for it, but asked me to think of money i can save, not eating out, that i can put to better use for the future. Anyways all's well that ends well and i haven't had a fever for more than a year now. Touch wood! Looking forward to the reunion at school next month, and giving all 'em big boys a good run for the ball, when we play football and basketball.

<-> - Sleep - Is it a blessing or a curse I dunno. I have to take a nap once I get back from work. Without the nap, I am like a chathakozhi all evening and feel totally passive all night. Some nights, I get a good early sleep without the nap, but my habit of digging for stories is at its peak when i lie in bed, sometimes this causes me to become restless or excited and i stay awake for hours. But with the 2 hour evening nap, it gives me a cushion to go to bed at 1 but fall asleep only by 2 or 3 in the morning and wake up at 8am, and it all adds up to the perfect sleep hours! The sad part following the 2 hour nap, is that I haven't channeled my rejuvenated self to any constructive work in the 5 waking hours i get after.

<-> - Time - Time flies. Another blessing and curse dimension! A blessing in that my life from monday morning to friday evening at work and from friday evening to monday morning at home is over so fast, that the months gone by feel like a thankful blur and the months lying ahead to my D-day also look to pass by in that same fashion. It is also a curse in that, I look at some illustrious people in their twenties, many of them my classmates, and it pisses me that while I laze away, these people are working hard in their respective professions and doing a lot of fruitful stuff. Maybe my time is yet to come. Ha!

Downs - Friends - This was the year that friendships moved several rungs down the priority ladder for me. Previously I couldn't conceive a world without friends. As a part of my experiment with life, erected a wall between them and me, for several months of this year. I angered many of them. It was a cold, dark and empty world without them. But I managed. I joked to myself, talked to myself and lived for myself. The cellphone became an irritant. The experiment ended the day I decided on my next career, and rang some of them up. I was relieved, that I hadn't damaged the ties I consider more important to me than the ones with my relatives. I now see how these friendships will work in the coming years, from daily, the contacts with them had become weekly, now its monthly, in time we will be lucky to catch up once in a year or years. Career and family first, everything else comes second. Its a practical law of the universe, and it has caught me also in its drift.

<-> - Misc -
a. Watched quite a few good indian movies, old and new.
b. Have become an absent minded, impatient driver
c. Learnt to skip.(with rope!)
d. Drink a lot of water nowadays
e. Drinking rarely now, but when i drink its becoming a binge.
f. Too much youtubing (my faves)

Downs - Resolutions - The latest resolution made was just yesterday to take the 25 day lent for Christmas. There are a set of bad habits that I wanted to give up. Inspiration came from the 41 day Sabarimala vratham that Sreenivasan took in Chinthavishtayaaya Shyaamala! Maybe I love my weaknesses too much or I am too stuck in the morass of worldly indulgence. Not even one full day into the fast, I sheepishly promised infant jesus that I would try and welcome him into the world in better fashion next year! So no more resolutions...i have given up on reforming me...whatever good things happened, came by itself, the bad i invited in. Hopefully I have atleast learnt to reject new temptations.

This is my log of the year's activities. Sorry for the occasional bad language and haphazard writing. Goodbye 2007. Yours was a year I was caught stationary in a place, time and circumstances helpless in pursuing the call of my heart, meanwhile the earth went around the sun and did its full circle...you are also almost history now, but I am still standing. What if I run with the earth in 2008, do a lot of things differently, where will I be, 366 days hence, will I look at yet another winter sun and sing to him a different tune, will I perceive his balmy warmth on my face, and be able to offer a thankful smile in return? Is happiness always a thing of the past? Is satisfaction always a soother of the present? Is uncertainty always a primer for the future? Well life goes on...it dances only to the tune of those who can clear their minds of all the jarring notes, but Hope is the brand name of the dancing shoes I wear, and it keeps me on my toes. Enough of getting profoundly idiotic...wish you all a very happy new year.

Idle Blogging...

I have blogger open. I usually type up my posts in notepad and paste over. Today is the day before thanksgiving. I have a four day weekend coming up. My friends in LA are off on a trip to Hawaii. Our ideas of a vacation differed. So I backed out. Now I will sit at home and twiddle my thumbs. I am not in the mood to work today. I have had a hectic month. So today is payback. I am not in the mood to blog either. But I have to do something. I am tired of browsing and reading other people write. I am obsessively compelled to add my share of bytes to google's huge memory dump.

I am at my desk, surrounded by 4 walls which do not reach the ceiling, the glorified work space we post-modern employees call a cubicle. Papers lie carelessly strewn all around. I am not a sucker for order. The carpet is clean today. Someone must have vacuumed the floor over the weekend. Last week, there were bits and pieces of chocolate strewn all over the floor which I frantically tried to clean, but ended up smudging with my shoes. I had bought a slab of white chocolate. It was too hard to break it. So I had to bite at it. Chocolate is one of my innocent pleasures. I will never outgrow my childhood when it comes to chocolate. Lets not speak about childhood here. The coffee is growing cold. I need to get another cup. I love the coffee in winter. It warms me up. I hate the taste though...they call it by different names nowadays but it all tastes pretty much the same...for me nothing better than filter coffee at a South Indian vegetarian restaurant. It also helps me overcome my hunger. Speaking of hunger, I mix up my lunch on weekdays. Monday and Wednesday are Indian, Tuesday mexican, thursday american, and friday something different. There wont be a friday this week. So today I had italian for lunch. A cheesy lasagne with spinach on top. I spend liberally on food. It is in revengeful memory of the days I had to starve, some years back. But let me not go back to the past again.

I was in an all-day meeting yesterday and this one was productive for a change. I looked at the 10 faces around. Faces from all over the world...america, china, india, england, south-east asia, persia. I noticed this glib-tongued desi consultant who held forte for most of the meeting. He spoke remarkably good english, a very healthy usage of american pronunciation enhancing his already perfect indian accent. I was envious, i would never speak so good english. I love the way americans pronounce words. They stylise every word to give it the best sound. I think Indian English sounds the next best. I hate the way brits and aussies speak english...it is hard for me to understand. I hate their accent. Period.

I am biding my time to get off work. Usually we get to leave early on the eve of a long weekend. No such email announcing early pack-up has come today. I don't care. After all there is nothing to do at home. And I bill by the hour. I have deadlines to be met, but I will come back on monday and start over, I have decided I can't work today. I am not a professional. I never will be one. I will never make a good manager either. It is going to get dark early. Even if I drive back home at 4, I will need headlights turned on. I hate driving in the dark. There is nothing to look at, other than the road ahead. By now the road has been mapped firmly in memory. I know which lanes are faster at each bend, and at each stretch, I know the side roads to divert to when I hit traffic. The commute takes me 25 minutes sharp, both ways. I wonder if I am part robot, part zombie, part human or like in Matrix am in a world someone's programmed for me.

Now what? I have four holidays. I love to sleep heavily on weekends. I have been sleeping a lot lately. I have a dozen books and movies in various stages of reading and watching, my concentration span has always been short. We don't have a TV at home so that I don't waste time. My knowledge of american pop culture is at zilch as a result. TV shows, the NBA and the college football season, music bands...i know nothing of all that. What I know is from the internet and google news, I am loving the dems' presidential debates put up on youtube, i am supporting Hillary just because i absolutely love Bill Clinton...Obama is definitely the better man, but i don't think he will win this time, I hope Hillary takes him on as running mate so that in 4-8 years of his stay in DC, he will have grown in stature internationally. His strong candidature has shaken the rest of the world which thinks America is racist. Alright the email has come in for us to take leave. Blogging for the sake of blogging...the fall of another blogger, ain't it? Enough bull, i have served you all...that was a real overdose of disjointed and random musings. Apologies and Sympathies! My holiday season is beginning. This is the time Americans erupt in a wild orgasm of senseless spending followed by gasping at the depleted bank balances. There is a lot of mysterious excitement building up for me too...more of that later.

The Young And The Affluent...

This weekend some of my mallu juniors from the Bay Area came visiting. These are the kind of guys I would love to avoid but they shower too much affection on me that I just can't get away from them how much ever I try. It is just not them, even my best friends from school and college...the way their lives have taken off has left me breathless and of course, inspired. Some years back I wrote a post on how my American friends were faring professionally. I also wrote a post on our awkward beginnings in America. Today all that is history. I am amazed really at the changes happening in front of my eyes, half-scared, half-wondering why none of it rubs off on me. The flashiest cars be it the Porsche Boxters, the Nissan 350Zs, Infiniti G35s, Ford Mustangs, Range Rovers rest in their garages, the coolest accessories like Versace glasses, iPhones, Diesel shoes...they have it all and flaunt it too with a panache that makes me laugh at all those cliches of Indians being geeky/nerdy/shy, sticking to corollas, camry's, civics, can't even get it up with a girl, etc. My friends are changing all that. These guys dine and wine at expensive places, have begun travelling to exotic places, some look to and succeed in dating americans, you name it...its all there in their "resumes". These same guys who were once so self-conscious of their FOB status, now look at people coming from India, especially the hordes of on-site visitors and watch with amusement as they too learn the ropes of becoming cool.

We drove in to this high-end shopping mall in Beverly Hills. I assumed we were in for another one of those bouts of window shopping and kept muttering restlessly.To my surprise the guys actually went into a few stores and came out spending a cool amount of money on designer stuff that left me a little irritated, a little unhappy that I who probably made much more than these guys, thanks to a greencard holding, free-wheeling, overpaid consultant job felt the pinch in my pocket, though it was they who laid off those greenbacks.
I asked one of them, "Dey, nee enthina inganathe carum saamagrikalum vaangiche kooti kaashe kalayunne?"
He told me,"This is why I came to the US. I want a good life. Why did you come here?"
His poser left me sorry for asking, and I gingerly replied, "I had the greencard."
"What do you do with your money?" he asked not letting me off the hook so easy, I guessed there was talk amongst them, that I was a miser.
"I let it add up or send it home. I don't know what else to do with it."
He thankfully left it at that...but I felt like a child in front of this "kid" who was 4 years younger to me.

A few months back I was in Chicago at my cousin's place, and similarly put-off by the high-end lifestyle she and her friends lived. I probed her about it and she gave me and the rest of us younger kids a pep-talk that went miles into helping me decide finally what I wanted from life. She and friends studied hard through school and college not wasting time fooling around, found good jobs, banded around other super-achievers like them, made sure they were placed for vertical growth and now could fall back a bit and enjoy all the best things money could provide. She advised me to do the same, identify the right career i wanted to pursue and start putting in the hard work atleast now. She opened my eyes to a grave misreading I made about youth, friendships, etc. I was the kind of guy who prided myself on having an amazing school and college life, great friendships, wonderful memories, etc but I realized none of it was of any use now. I was wasting time then as I was now. I looked around, and realized those same friends who were part of those rowdy gangs had moved on, started taking life seriously, are in line for great success,some married already and are great husbands, yet they never lost their bonds with me and could talk in the same vein of our heydays, crack jokes, call each other obscenities, give each other advise knowing it wont be remembered in the bonhomie of our chatter.

You guys will be wondering why I have so many back-to-back personal posts. The reason is, these are some new lessons I have learnt along the way the last few months, lessons that if you who is one of my younger readers who is enjoying life like I did, may not have realized or won't have anyone to tell you. I am at a stage where bad habits have hardened and tough to be changed, where its natural to come home after work and rest and do nothing though your mind wills otherwise, where weekends are spent sleeping, browsing, watching movies, or hanging out with friends even when something keeps chanting in you to change course, where the danger of being satisfied and even further accept this mediocre existence lurks perenially around the corner. I have always wondered why the world has so many proverbs and aphorisms on time, but now I feel the pinch for every minute wasted. Happily there are no regrets for the past yet, but the present lies wasted(Sarah emailed asking, besides telling me other good things, "Why do you think the tense for now is called "present" in the english language?"). The title of this post may be a misnomer...i may or may not agree with the materialism that has gripped my friends, i guess i have no right to judge them...their lifestyles may have changed but they are still the good old guys i knew back then. Their affluence, my restlessness, the youthful vigor on which these friendships were built, our paths are diverting away from the junction we once ran into each other...when we meet again, years hence, at another confluence, what new tales will I have, to tell of their exploits?

On The Birthday Eve - Ten Confessions

Two years ago was my 25th birthday and it proved a singular milestone that offered to a lost traveler, a chance to once more feel the joy of living...I don't know what was different with me then and today...maybe I have grown in the knowledge of who I am and what this birth means to me, or maybe not. I remember of being content then with all I had to do to get to that point, and thus wrote that post...I was ready to take my life in my hands, though I knew not what I wanted from it. Today is another story, the past is a distant blur, the present an insignificant blip on the horizon, and the future stands right before my eyes unattainable yet. Every approaching birthday, these last few years has been a time for churn, change and new resolve...2003 i dug my heels in and decided to salvage my MS, 2004 i quit my first job without saving up a single penny, 2005 mustered the wits to give the UPSC a try, last September swallowed my pride and came back to the US. This time I have been lucky to have undertaken the by-now customary bday revolution quite earlier than September, but find myself dealing with the struggle of surviving 200 days before the next attempt to chart yet another course in life begins. I donot know what the intention of this post will be...is it to record for my posterity, my frame of mind at this point of time, or is it to find some clarity, which writing, more often than not, gives me.

Existence
I am appalled that several people close to me, expect wonders to happen. I think this blog gave them that idea. I can't think of anything else worthwhile, that I have done, during my time on Earth. Several things that I did, I now see as being done to give meaning to my existence at that point of time. In school, I read books to escape the confines of my introversion and my complexes. Later it was my friendships that defined my existence, and the books lay forgotten. In college, I took up drinking, hoping it would make me a man, hoping it would nullify self-questions of my adolescent manhood - such superficial stuff for me today like unsprouting facial hair, being underweight, and lack of physical courage. During Master's working at the Film School and my growing interest in movies gave the "Jeene Ki Ik Wachah". At work and lost, blogging came to the rescue, at Civil Service coaching travelling saved me, today surprisingly it is the naked need for money to satisfy a lot of my needs over the next few years that is helping me cling on. Of course it is my hope that these experiences/memories help me in future.

Flicker
Blogging used to be not just about letting my thoughts wander and capturing them in words but also about being part of a blogger community, reading my fellow bloggers, appreciating and imbibing their views and writing styles, leaving comments, etc. Nowadays I hate to wander in blogosphere. I feel a sad guilt at not doing my duty because I know how much a blogger loves to hear from a fellow blogger about his/her latest post. I am reading, M.Mukundan's Haridwaril Manikal Muzhangunnu, a superb novella of hardly 100 pages, but I can't read beyond a page at a time before my concentration wavers. It must be jealousy at play, how such wonderful yet simple writing takes shape, whether in blogging or fiction writing. I worry that with my interest in reading at such a nadir, how my thoughts and ideas and love for writing can grow beyond the frankly adolescent level, that it is now at.

Waiting
For a lot of my life, I have waited for others to give me a helping hand. More often than not, that hand never came. I have longed for friends or relatives to begin path-breaking companies, so I can go work for them, for friends to break into the entertainment industry, for my dad to push me through into a field I can succeed in...riding on other people's wings was a lazy fantasy that I nurtured stupidly for far too long. Its been some time since I have realized the initiative to better my life had to come from me, and yet I can't help thinking why things are taking so long to change for me. My dad always tells me, "If I had your talent, I wouldn't have wasted it"...and I wryly muse,"Pops, if I had your ambition..."

Smiling
I remember I used to have a perpetual warm smile, once upon a time. I have caught myself several times with a frown on my face, several times with a weak, laboured and artificial manufacture replacing that once all-powerful beacon, while a deep emptiness resides in that mysterious place somewhere inside, that once powered the lone good thing about me.

Yearning
What is the idea of home? It cant be just the four walls of my house, my parents, my people, my language, my awareness of culture, tradition and history...it must be something much deeper than all this, that has found an abode in me, that has me going back, every moment these last many years. At a family reunion few weeks back, my uncle the novelist chap, remarked, that "Perhaps Jiby, has not, unlike the rest of us, found himself melting into the American mainstream like the rest of us." My sister's reply confirmed why she will probably know me better than anyone else on earth, "Achacha, it is nothing about America that he finds uncomfortable, it is India that drives him." Those words from her mouth, had to find its place in this post...she has stood like a pillar carrying me along, speaking for me when I lost my voice. No sister of today's times ever lifted a brother from failure like she saved me...I've always wondered how the finest human beings are people who are unassuming and seem ordinary to me.

Weariness
why cant I approach every day with reinvigorated zest. Why every day begins, continues and ends in intermittent tired yawns. Going to the gym would help, I thought, but the physical energy just doesn't seep into my spirit. The brawn is beginning to show up, the brain remains clouded in a perpetual suspension of all purpose. Wonder if Yoga will help. I tried hypnotism but that's a hilarious story for another day. Took online creative writing and screenwriting courses but gave up on it midway for lack of ideas and inability to stick to class schedules. There was a time in life that I had a spring in every enthusiastic step I took. The summer of my fatigue has bade goodbye, now the winter of my discontent is past the threshold and at home, will an eternal spring with fresh spirits come knocking at my doorsteps soon?

Impatience
For several months now, I took life as coming, Week by Week, with the weekend resuscitating and rejuvenating me. Until I took the decision on the next career. Now it is becoming harder to plough by each day. Each hour brings thoughts of what will happen ahead, the thousands of hours to be furrowed ahead to get there worries me no end. I used to be the guy who others envied for living life carefree and how I have changed! Will i lose my job and not find another one soon enough, will I meet my financial targets, will I fall sick, will my plans be derailed, a myriad such thorns plague my path ahead, wish I was that witch with the broom who could sweep past all this and fly ahead to meet the next call of life. Or is this life in all its colours?

Preparing
A week back, I serviced my car, then took it to a carwash and on the way back a feeling of well-being on how smoothly it ran and how good it was looking coursed through me. For some months now, have been urging my weak soul to reconcile with the material losses to be suffered and luxuries to be rejected, if I am ever to shed this moneyed mediocrity that is pinning down my happiness. Unguarded moments of such coziness will surely keep making life difficult. Will having all the accessories and luxuries of life compensate the sadness of living a most sterile, untested, homogeneous existence...I ask myself if I am the most foolish Indian in America.

Fear
There was a time I earnestly looked up to this bday as a time for setting aside singledom. I was vainly confident in the knowledge that family, NRI-ship, career and character could win me the right girl, any day i set out for it. As I set about rebuilding my ship caught in choppy waters, I realize its just not the career that is wrong with me, the person that I am today is a demon shrouded deceptively in human garb. If there is a fear in me today, it is one of commitment to another human being...I find myself incapable of any kindness, even to the people who love me most. Ironic that having discovered the girl who had captured for a long long time, my wonderment and unrequited, unspoken inquisitiveness, I scared myself away and realized it best to let things be and stay off it all. Some lives move in a tangent, barely touching, never intersecting...maybe that is the fate with this un-dis-lodge-able pinprick in my heart too.

Something
I don't know what it is. Something tells me all this will change. Something tells me I will find motivation. Something tells me I will persevere. I trust that Something...I agree to play along.

P.S - After the first read, I thought this was quite a silly post and decided to junk it. But the second read prompted me to resolve and I realized it wasn't such a bad exercise of looking inwards after all. Resolutions for this bday include surfing news websites every day without fail, reading two novels a week, blogging once a fortnight, writing one short story a month, and pen down a malayalam film script within a year. I leave you folks with a beautiful song as a birthday treat, my favorite this season, it is a christian devotional, but then doesnt good music transcend all these narrow boundaries.

Antony, You Too Brutus!!!

Like Antony, who has now forsaken his mushinje naariya kadar shirt and mundu, even I made a decision few weeks back on my career...it was a choice my close ones suggested much earlier, but I rejected on the grounds of some principles, which today has been rendered obsolete by change. Change is good, change is a must for me...less than a year remains for me to face the choice i made...until then its my little secret. So, no questions asked!

A Selfish Existence...

I was in the process of taking up another tag from Silverine but what struck me midway as I wrote it was I didn't know the real India of today at all to finish that post. And I digressed. When the summer began I had anticipated initiative, peace and drive to fill up in me. Nothing like that happened, beginnings were made but never finished. A little over 5 years have gone by since I stepped out of my home. In my heady youth filled with non-stop excitement I skipped the most important question of modern life - a career. No one warned me either. Everyone thought I'd figured it out already. The question came back to haunt me with a vengeance when I turned 25 and has seared my soul into searching for the answer ever since. Its almost 2 years and that search still goes on...

A few days back I inadvertently caught myself in the midst of doing a tally up of my debt, duties and plans. It still revolved around money, money that will burn another few years of my precious twenties and a fleeting moment of disgust passed by before I returned to happier fancies. India has been in my thoughts but fact is I am a stranger even in my own home. For me, India is an IDEA. I haven't known what it is to work there, I havenot known the pinch of paying Rs.50 for a litre of petrol, of going to a wedding and being expected to gift nothing less than gold, of falling sick and reconciling to a huge medical bill. I am a simple fool who knows nothing of cost of living, all I think of is some dreams of returning to a glorified past, which today seems a make-believe nest weaved inside a cocoon built over years of effort put in by my parents. A few years back I warned my friends in trivandrum, Shan and Anoop that they were leading a too lavish lifestyle. Their reply was a lesson on New India that still fails to strike root in me. "When you spend more, the drive and ambition to earn more also increases"...this was the answer they gave me and it sent shock-waves through my antiquated system for a few seconds...I was still in the world of my parents and their generation who disparaged any wasteful expenses.

When the accursed first discussion on my wedding plans came up and I replied with a fierce indignation which surprised me that I would marry only if I can live in India...Pops quoted me a desired earning of 1 lakh a month in trivandrum, for me to sustain the family and the high standard of living he has maintained so far. Should I do an MBA in India and get a firm foothold on home soil? The thought troubles me, because unlike the corporate-obsessed youngster I was a few years back, the same thought of working for them feels revolting nowadays. Which brings me to the status-quo. I go work, I come back, take a long nap, some days I hit the gym, other days I watch a good movie, browse for a while and then go back to the struggle of getting another few hours of sleep. I stay away from my friends in the US, much to their pain and anger, but they are from my past. My present is a struggle to thrash a way out for my future and the deluge of free advice I keep getting irritates me. I never thought the reclusive trait in me would resurface but it has. Solitude is bliss and the cellphone is a bitch. Reading has suffered and the booklist I had made up many months back to start on still awaits my perusal. Blogging works best when your mind is clear and thoughts flow in order, but its a churn in there and I unfortunately have sidelined this hobby too.

I don't know and havent cared what picture of me people take out of this blog. I have been warned to stay away from writing personal or negative stuff on this blog because of some news-piduthakaar "anubhaavikal" back in Kerala and I acquiesced for a few months. But this blog is for me. It is to remind me years later of the person I was, the angst I've been through and the person I want to become. The weaknesses in me...it is time to kill it.

2006...As It Stands

The journey in life takes you through so many places, situations and experiences you never thought was possible. Following your heart is simple, but the equations that rule your upbringing does complicate matters a lot. Ever since this blog has begun I have had a post in december, dedicated to the year gone by and the one ahead. In many ways this year was a failure on several fronts, i saw my courage melt, i gave up on the Indian Dream a second time in life, if being a man means standing up on your feet, working for a living, having goals in life and all that crap, i find myself today a drifter, so far away and lost to all the people trying to drill sense into me.

Jan - Hmmm...enjoyed the delhi winter, studied all night through streaming cups of hot tea, made with milkpowder, played cricket at dawn on the terrace for an hour with the sun looming on the horizon and a fog hesitant to depart, and then went to bed, only to wake up in the afternoon for classes stretching all the way to night. I remember Rang De Basanti released around that time, and i went thrice to watch it in the first week itself...what a rage and wonderful change that movie was for us youngsters. Another funny thing then was my fascination with orange juice and how i believed drinking lots of it would kill my suspicious intuition of an impending fever...and it happened, though when i least expected it to.

Feb - Feb was the month i screwed up the upsc. Got too close to my roomies, indulged a little too much in fun, movies and non-curricular reading and studies suffered, though i missed not a single class. The night-outs continued but the sting was blunted. The backlog that crept up therein was the Waterloo. But there were good things too...on every sunday i would wake up very early if i slept, walk, take the cylce-rickshwaw, auto anything that came my way and go to the malayalam church some kilometres away. That was the only time i saw delhi mornings out on the road...the temples opening up, its bells ringing, the dairies parcelling out the milk supplies for the day. Like the cows still in slumber, only a handful of the million vehicles that would later buzz like a bee in the huge city were out...it was as peaceful as it could get. That was the last I've been to church, never felt like it after that, even the dozen weddings i attended later on i stood outside waiting for the reception to begin, later i stayed a few hundred metres from the church above, and could only smile at the contradiction i was. Maybe all the socialist, rationalist thinking and readings which the upsc examination demands got onto me at some level. Or maybe its just a matter of time.

Mar - i moved out of my heavenly quarter realizing any time longer spent with these boys was harming all the sacrifices made till then. It had been a good time really...we discussed Tagore, Neruda, reservations, communism, the past, the present, future...a lot. For a long time I had known only friends who could talk movies, drinks and fun. The new place was a room on top of a Sardarji's business establishment. A centimeter thick curtain of dust invited me every day to sweep, the taps wouldnt work, and there was never water in a huge barrel kept for our needs. The romanticism with Delhi was over. Well...it wasnt all that bad, a beautiful girl working in a callcenter was the tenant next door, but then thats a story for another day. And well if this blog is alive today it has to do with this first piece i wrote with pen and paper at 4 in the morning...the first of an irregular series of posts i wrote, riding on sheer inspiration which crept in out of nowhere. It was my longest break from blogging, and i hadnt written a single post in 6 months that satisfied me, when this happened.

Apr - One of my classmates, a girl with one of the best south-indian faces i saw and kept admiring despite knowing she was married, committed suicide. We never knew what happened. That night quite depressed and taking a walk, right in front of our eyes the next suicide attempt happened...another upsc aspirant who had not cleared the interview round and exhausted his chances. The Delhi summer had begun and I was just happy to go home. You know there are times you think you have setup everything so well, for that last lap, that things totally off your control happens. Pops landed up in hospital with pneumonia, and with mom away i had to take charge, the viral epidemic began in trivandrum, laid me low and i never quite recovered till the exam got over.

May - It was a valiant but foolhardy attempt. Noone must have cracked the upsc prelims in 6 months but I think I got real close. For me the end of that road had begun and that hated feeling of running-out-of-time-and-steam hit home. Delhi was beckoning again but this time I had a totally different plan in mind. There was a part of me I had yet to explore...a traveller to lands till then unknown to me. Nothing could stop me, i took up quarters in a forgettable part of Delhi, a place i couldnt stay for more than a week without wanting to escape, the only relief was a friend as neighbour, who was a philosopher-orpoet-ordrifter-orgenius which of these, i dont know yet...sometimes alone, sometimes with him in a park that at night was a haven for long conversations, interspersed with equally long moments of tranquility, discussions on life, psychology, literature, the people around us, it was a new experience for me. Thinking of that park, I am reminded of this great poem by Derozio - A Walk by Moonlight, as i write this.

Jun - The wanderer in me had set out...there were classes seven days a week, but despite that on weekends i ventured out, the sights and sounds of Delhi, the hill station of Nainital, it was an exhilerating feeling. It was my vengeance on modernity that demanded i study, work, earn big money all year long, then start a family, then buy a house, then have kids, and all those "set" ideals...i was in some ways now like the characters in books and movies who travelled to exotic lands. I knew it wouldnt last...my money was running out. It would have to be back to the staid old life i abhorred...but i would come back and keep doing this for the rest of my days. There was another new beginning and in no way insignificant, after 12 years i wrote for the first time in malayalam, a translation of an english interview by uncle had done for his novel. It came as a big surprise initially that i could do it, then a feeling of loss, then a feeling of uyrgency, that i had ignored my mother tongue for so long, and i wrote on...my first piece of fiction that i rode out to completion was born, and it was a short story in malayalam...a language i though i was never comfortable in. Today i have brought along a huge collection of malayalam literature to the New World hoping it improves my vocabulary and feel for the language. We will see.

Jul - July continued in the same vein as June. The upsc study continued to fade away, the travelling increased, the classes on the weekdays too became a casualty, this month was to UP and Haryana, if the heat wasnt enough humidity had set in too worsened by the blackouts. We were all getting sick, the tiffin from the kerala hotel which was a relief earlier had begun to loose its glory, the difficult re-entry back into modern society had begun to depress me more than the surroundings, the delhi phase of my Swades journey was all but over. The schooling in life doesnt leave you with any degrees but lots of bittersweet memories.

Aug - Haridwar, Rishikesh, Yamunotri, Mussorie, Dehradun, Agra all seen and relished, still so much of the North and the East and the West and the South to set eyes on...India is a country like none other, even for its citizens the sheer diversity of its culture must be a wonder, i have traveled vastly in america and a little of europe but nothing excites me like India...in those places you get to see all uniformity...all cities look the same, the natural beauty is great but not wild, the people are nice but predictable, Oh...the sights, smells, sounds and touch of India...isn't it all one heterogeneous, mostly discordant,yet congruous mosaic that goes from one day to next knowing not if its a flood, an earthquake, a bomb, a riot or a celebration thats going to rock their life.

Sep - The city of your birth and most of life and hopefully the rest of it, yet a city that holds little promise for your future, its a sad testament about trivandrum i have heard so often...not just from me, but so many others who left it to mould their future, not knowing the way back home is harder than imagined, almost impossible. The one month at home was fun, laidback and memorable. Yet, today i regret i never made a serious effort to find if tvm had some job that i would love to do. I fell into the same anxious cliches of ordinary men running out of money and who had sniffed big cash earlier, going back again out there for another kill.

Oct - A forgettable month. Did nothing other than wavering, pondering over what next to do. Yeah wrote that kite story for a change. And of course a fun trip to chicago for a reunion with schoolmates happened. After a year of hanging around many idealistic young men of a different temperament the career-minded, joke-cracking bunch that these guys were, was a big difference...i wondered how easily i fell back in this circle too.

Nov - Back in action. Back into the "real" world. Goodbye to programming, taking training in data-warehousing, hopefully a less stressful, undemanding job, 2 chapters of a novel which may remain unfinished, a thanksgiving trip on an RV to Arizona and Utah with my still other circle of good friends, married ones...who tempt me to join their jolly band. I can see how happy and contented their life is...but i know failure stalks me down that aisle they walked.

Dec - Out in a job market conked out cold by the holiday season, a new, strange resume with 6 years experience, jobs in unknown places, a new skill-set yet untested, and a whole pack of lies scribbled on it, thanks to desi consultants in whose hands i have once again pledged my career for a 4-month contract despite old mishaps from which i dont seem to learn. The year promises to end on a cracking note though with Viswan, my college mate and closest friend coming from NY, Kicha, my schoolmate and chum in Delhi arriving from Berkeley, and Rajay and Rege, juniors from college all descending on LA for the XMas break...should be back to the kind of mallu parties and drinking i thought was over for good. Well that was the year 2006...sorry for this long diatribe, and if you got this far my heart-felt commiserations. I did mean that!

Res - Oh! Dont worry...this is not a new month in the calendar, how fun/irksome can writing year-end reports be without a glimpse of forecasts for the next year. Well...made humble beginnings in fiction-writing this year...hoping to carry that forward next year with better sense of purpose, A new career seems to be opening now...need to keep my focus on this for the next few years, and if no creativity exercising career options arise in life this might be my ticket to an MBA or doing a business. How much more boring can a resolution get, yeah you bet...india beckons in may for the stated reason of writing the next upsc exam which for now looks a mere formality, though i know what will end up happening is this lonely lost wanderer getting to exercise his goddamn propensity to travel...to his heart's content.

A Novel Madness!!!

So what next? That is the question i have been asking myself with regards everything...the future, the blog, the career, et al. Having written that story I was tempted to begin writing another one. The story was the second one I have written in my life, the first was in malayalam...its either inside one of my ias history texts i left back in india or lost. I will have to wait another 3 months when my sis visits India, to find out if I still have it. Anyways the National Novel Writing Month is here and I have decided I am going to write a novel in the next 30 days. Now you guys must be wondering why I would shoot off my hip and let everyone know before I have even penned a single word to it. The reason is purely psychological - it is to put pressure on myself so that I actually sit down every day from this moment on and write one chapter a day and post it on this blog. I wonder how decently it would turn out and hurried the novel would look if I manage to finish in 30 days but for now thats the least of my concerns. I will be disabling comments until its all over.

Actually about 15 years back my childhood buddy, kichlu and i began writing a book on the lines of The Hardy Boys, we called them "The Fidswilliam Boys"(lol!) but after 6-7 chapters we realized the story was developing "quite" similar to a Nancy Drew one we read then, if i remember right called the "Mystery of the Missing Mannequin" or something similar and we gave up. The funny thing with writing stories, i wonder how other people do it, like they fix the story outline and then proceed but for me the story develops as i write it...even I have no idea what should happen next. I have spent the last 2 weeks scratching my head, wondering what theme to take up. A few ideas came up but got nowhere. I even searched on google for "How to Write a Novel". I read The Alchemist just a few months back and was surprised the book couldnt inspire me as much as i expected maybe coz of the fact that I had set course on a journey akin to the young shepherd a year back. But one line in the book fascinated me, If you dont listen to your heart, soon the heart stops listening to you. I have this gut feeling that if I dont try this novel thing out now, my life will soon go on the same track of moneyed madness that I had so much difficulty in coming out of last year.

What to write? I had this story idea of an American who travels to India for a vacation, fumbling into a lot of intrigues, finally falling in love with it, taking his family there and their struggles with assimiliating into the culture but I got scared at the thought of it falling into cliches. Maybe I will take it up later. And then I had this idea of a family story, set across generations from tales I heard of my grandma speak and from the biographical descriptions of some ancestors in the Kattakayam Kudumbacharitram book that was recently published but I have decided anything I write in fiction about Kerala has to be in Malayalam first. Though I havent written anything I have this belief that I can write better in Malayalam than English. As of now I am focussed on a story about schooldays. School is something I still relate with, blessed with a huge repertoire of memories from then, and an interesting array of characters who are still an integral part of my life to some extent. I am wary if the final product will mimic Tom Browns Schooldays, a masterpeice I last read 12 years back. What amazed me most about that novel is the timeless quality and universal appeal of that book. Even 150 years hence, the story of Tom Brown and Jimmy East, the two main characters of the book is one, every child identifies with and lives through, every day in school.

As far as life goes, i am in hiding. Only my closest friends have my number, i hate speaking to my parents coz I feel like a total loser as I go about bashing all their hopes of me finding a steady career, and thankfully all the nagging my sister does is insisting i wash my dishes and watch movies with her. Anyways the next 30 days of November promises to be an interesting time if i manage to keep the novel afloat. If by any chance I loose steam midway and give up please dont hold it against me...that certainly would be embarassing after this loud declaration of intent here. As I wrote the last line i couldnt help remarking here that except for writing on this blog every other challenge I have taken up over the last 2 years I lost. Discipline. The one thing I lack and what I need most now. Coz if I can pull this off I think I will gather the guts to write a script. And the magic that newcomers can do to films these days. Looks what James Albert did with Classmates!

A Vagabond Comes Home...

Every time I decide to let the blogging habit die in me old friends, family or casual acquaintances show concern that leaves me a little perplexed! I have fed everyone with so much juicy details of my life that its become hard for them to detach from me and even harder for me to forsake one more reason to keep blogging. So I guess its fare enough to blog down both the good and the bad bad days.

A Summer of Discontent, And...
When I reached home, I peaked into my spotlessly clean bathroom, the first thought that struck me was what a fine place it would make to sleep unlike my 8ft by 6ft dinghy that served as my room in Delhi made worse by 8 hour blackouts that killed the zest for sleep and aggravated by rains that raised the humidity rather than dipping the mercury. Playing hop-skip-jump on cow-dung littered streets and developing batman like skills to traverse those same streets at night, flea infested bylanes, an array of colds, throat infections and dysentry's that kept dogging me and my friends. It helped though...the dissatisfaction with my surroundings fuelled the interest to venture out to the world around. Delhi's ancient wonders, Agra, Yamunotri, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Dehradun, Mussorie, Haryana, Nainital and Mukteshwar...some of the many places I have dreamt of visiting ever since I was a kid...lay conquered at my feet. The trek to Yamunotri was an adventure to paradise...a picture post is on the way!

A Sabbattical at 25
Exactly 12 hours since I am at home. The sights on the train right from the Konkan Coast upto Veli Lake have been so beautiful...no colour in the world makes me so happy as green, The weather in tvm is so pleasant, so balmy...i just love this place. Well, Almost!!! What are your plans...enthaanu ninte future plans...i keep getting the same question from everyone except my parents who have continued to be so wonderful and supportive though i just dont deserve it. Everyone wants to discuss with me, help me out, talk me into a firm decision...i dont blame them, the jiby most of them knew was never like this...noone realizes I just cant be helped. I wonder if i should go back to coding, i wonder if i should go back to the US, i wonder if i should continue with this mockery of a civil service prep that I've lost interest in, i wonder what to do next and all i have is a curious optimism that i will somehow strike a path...an absolute vacuum stares me...but i am oddly happy...i realize this is the hard path to maturity...its sad, everybody would have loved my story to end up like Swades but its turning out all like Varavelpu and I have only my personal failings to blame.

Some New Beginnings...
25 years on earth...yet this fine dawn when i should have have been cozy in bed i woke up to a new resolution...to win back my health. The few earlybirds must have wondered why a 55kilo crackpot needs to jog but man i feel so good now...i barely could run the 1/2 km to Pattom Junction and struggle back today, but in a month by Sep 15 I will be running all the way to Kawadiar Palace and back. The 6km trek up Yamunotri when we were humbled by several oldies was a wake-up-call as we struggled to catch our breaths and egg our tired bodies on...i realized my body had aged almost 20 years over the last few years of inexercise, poor sleeping habits and irregular diets. The hard part is to win back all the pounds I lost in Delhi...

Books, Movies...and Guilt
I am so in love with reading again. On the two days in train I lapped up The Alchemist and Five Point Someone, both books which had a distant echo of similarities to my personal life. Today I have picked up my uncles novel and am just breezing through it...I need to put up a review on the blog and try to get more of you to read it if it releases in India...problem is i am so proud of his work i wonder if i can be objective...he seems to have kicked up some controversy in the US Church but I think its high time more reforms came up there! Today i wandered around tvm and picked up a jhumpa lahiri and tolstoy from roadside vendors. So many good movies too coming up this Onam. Man i really am having fun...oh shit, the last thing i want to feel is guilt...its odd...peer pressure never bothered me all these years in life but now I think of my friends hard at work and here I am lazing away in the comforts of home. Dang! I am seriously messed up or what.

A Blessing in Disguise...

A chance request heralded in a refreshing change in life. My uncle needed a malayalam translation of an interview he gave for his forthcoming novel. I hesitantly embarked on it, scared of not being able to do justice to something that would be appearing in the papers, 10 years after i last wrote something seriously in malayalam, the 10th ICSE exams and barely escaped from disaster. But the words flooded in, the beauty of the malayalam language manifested itself in me, something that never happened in 10 years of cramming malayalam at school. Oh! I have rediscovered a lost love. All the years of wondering whether I squandered a legacy in the mother tongue has lingered like a permanent scar, several times in life i have rued my overt fascination for the english literature at the cost of malayalam, but this time I am determined to make a new beginning.

And so a new beginning, i think i am making...a friend who has come into life like a whiff of fresh air, a person who has begun to make me think in new dimensions, look at human relationships from new perspectives and introduced me to paradigms in philosophy and psychology i had not cared to observe...handed me a collection of 6 scripts of M.T.Vasudevan Nair. I took it up pessimistically, with a valid reason too...none of the 6 films, Kuttiyettathi, Murapennu, Olavum Theeravum, Nirmalyam, Iruttinte Athmave and Kanyakumari...I had not had the priviledge of watching. I wondered how I could relate with it, but what an experience it has been, scripts as a branch of literature have come to stay!! MT's character have so much life and feeling in them, he invests his simple stories with such multi-dimensional relationships and the beauty of his language just leaves you captivated. As I write this, i am a fortunate reader transported to the banks of Bharathapuzha, wondering if characters and families like this still live, whether time has eroded the values, stigmas and burdens these people carried and so much more.

Its been ages since that romantic feeling coursed through my veins, I never thought it possible again...somehow i have become charged and inspired to pick up my pen and start scribbling in malayalam my thoughts, and the also resume an old habit that i thought had died in me...of writing little stories. Its such a painful, tiring process...to be laboring with the language thats my mother tongue, my diary which had for so long been eclipsed by this blog is coming alive again...i know its now or never. Its like the next few months are all I have been given to do all I want, before I sacrifice myself at the altar of what's still a maddening world to me...of careers, consumerism and monotony. When MT talks of silent, sometimes unrequited love i gush at how convincing and universal his characters still are, i wonder if it will remain so for eternity. I once read of how all of MT's male characters are weak, vacilliating, defeated creatures and how somebody wrote a peice called Shantante Amarsham(An Impotent Man's Rage) deriding him...but i now think no amount of criticism can take this man's genius away from him.

Anyways I just cant wait to head back home, walk into DC Books and come out with a shelf-load of modern malayalam literature. All those years in college of fretting at long, boring homilies at Sunday mass where I was more impressed by the command of the priests over the malayalam language rather than the message they strived hard to impart, and the online reading of Manorama, Deepika and Kaumudi must have struck root in me somewhere. Else I wonder how I achieved my little feat of doing the translation...i was about to give up even before i looked at it, but my dad, my most earnest motivator urged me to look at it as an opportunity...tonite as i pen this post down in my diary to take to the cafe and key it down, i wish you readers could feel my euphoria, my excitement and happiness at discovering a lost love. When life gets too boring and that accursed question mark hovers about you...a blessing comes in disguise.

A Defeat, And Its Aftermath...

Tears welled up, threatening to roll down, as I tallied my right answers in the History paper with the sinking feeling building up every second from somewhere deep inside. I couldnt even count on my fingers the last time I cried over a poor exam. My above-par performance in the GS paper had come to zilch. I furtively looked up at my sir, expectantly looking on to see which of his students would raise their hands in success, while I buried mine in my face to choke the liquefied remnants of the 7-month long hardest-fought battle of my life. The moment passed, the tears receded somewhere back into my eyes...the disappointment lingered for a few more days...all that is left now is to log it down in this blog of mine...and get it out of my system totally...hopefully. Exactly two years since I walked out of university, brimming with optimism, 4 jobs that didnt work out, a migration, a gut-wrenching life-sapping effort for a job with a three-letter tag attached to your name...all to be rewound and begun again...its been a string of galling failures to make my education, jobs, inheritances, experiences and hard work all count.

I looked at the man seated opposite me, who I had hoped to avoid for a few months. The plush suite I found myself in, was in "stark" contrast to my Rs.1300 room in a rundown colony in North Delhi populated by a few struggling CS aspirants like me, hundreds of unskilled workers from kerala amidst decadent partition-era refugee Punjabi families still mourning their fall from riches. For a second I dreaded the thought of him suggesting a visit to my new place and searched for a suitable excuse. Like always he made suggestions for my future. Unlike always, this time I had no answer, no comment, to pass back. I could sense the disappointment my dad tried to hide despite his unconditional support for all my efforts. And the excuses he must be offering others, for my failure. Oh God, was I becoming an embarassment? The impasse that kept developing in my life in America and which I hoped to skirt through coming back to India had somehow inevitably arrived. Maybe it was inherent in my restless nature or overt idealism...maybe there will be a turnaround in my fortunes, or maybe not. I have chronicled the heroics of friends who utilized failures to achieve greater things in life, somehow I wonder if I am capable of replicating their efforts.

My blog took birth almost 2 years ago in my frustration but somehow every word that came out here looked to the sunny side of life. In every defeat, I saw positives and so spun them around here to boost myself and keep me going. This perhaps is the first time ever, a post appeared here tinged in negativity. What more can I write when the year holds nothing for me except studying more of the same thing...my sir says I am a sureshot for next year's attempt...but I am not so sure. I am tired...maybe when classes get over next month, I'll travel from Kashmir to Comorin, maybe like other plans even this wont materialise. This is me at this point in life...the journey continues...maybe I will come back some day and laugh at myself for writing this post...or I'll laugh at the astrologer who predicted in my jathakam that I would "prabhuthulyanaayi vaazhum".

Herbert and Pip...

This is a story of two friends, Herbert and Pip. Ofcourse most of you have heard those names come alive in Dickens great novel, Great Expectations. I looked at the shiny smiling faces seated opposite me. To compensate for missing his wedding, I was taking my longtime chum, Motta and his fiance out for lunch. Motta with his goodnaturedness and unpretentious simplicity, the girl...sweet and pretty with a shy smile, the both making a very winsome couple, and myself carrying a burden of wondering what future lay ahead for me but overjoyed for my friend...all brought alive the characters of Herbert, Clara and Pip in my thoughts. It reminded me of a memorable line from the book about what Pip says about Herbert..."We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived the old idea of his ineptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the ineptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me."

Right from school, I would wonder how motta would survive in the hard, tough world out there. He was forever falling in and out of love, never interested in his studies(well, for some reason i considered myself superior to him in this dept!) and never serious about life. While a huge horde of us took up all the elite engineering branches, he took the only seat available to him in kerala...for architecture, but there again he ran into serious problems of back papers and impossible odds of clearing his arrears. I would advise him, but as usual it all hung lightly on his shoulders...in terms of unflinching optimism I never ever met a more equal match to him. Life has its ways of bringing out the best in a person...personal tragedies which we feared would drown him, instead propelled him to emerge stronger...breaking university records he passed his exams, intime he had begun to love his field of work and his peers began to admire his drawings. He had taken on life with a smile, when friends needed a kind word, when old classmates returned to the nest called trivandrum, he was there organizing weekly gettogethers to keep the loyola spirit alive, after many girlfriends my "Herbert" atlast found his "Clara" and finally he had learnt the trick that lay behind the success-act in life...hard work!!!

One of the most memorable moments for me this time in tvm was visiting motta's office, as last time was all abt seeing my collegepals Shan's and Anoop's new chic office building at Vazhuthacaud. It was around 10 pm at night...motta was holding deliberations with a client who had come all the way from malappuram...letting them go on I wandered around the unruly office...there were papers lying strewn all over the place with rough drawings, calculations and unintelligible scribbles on them, his portfolio lay on his drawing table, he motioned me to the computer where I browsed thru a ppt file of his drawings...my admiration for him growing with every next button clicked. Among his works there were a few houses outside tvm, a small shopping complex at medical college, and a superb mini-mall coming up at Vazhuthacadu which I am sure will soon become a building-of-note in tvm. All this he had achieved after labouring from morning to evening at a senior architect's office for a pitiable salary, and then from evening to midnight at this office of his which he shares with a few guys also running a web-designing firm there...so that he could afford the rent. His way up the ladder that lay ahead was obvious to me...soon he would need to hire more staff, kick the guys who shared his office out and finally earn the fame and respect which only the best get. I was really overwhelmed...the friend who I always despaired would never make it to the league of the rest of us go-getters, had raced past all of us. The moment the client left and he turned around to face me I enveloped him in a bear-hug and said..."Motte today you have made me so proud"...what I didnt tell him was..."I always thought of you as inept"!

Ofcourse like Pip the ineptitude always had been in me...Unlike motta never in life I could take firm decisions what best to do with my life and kept deluding myself that i had taken the easiest possible path to wealth, independence and contentment. I looked at his fiance...she was timidly stealing glances at me all the while instead of looking me straight in the face(this was the first time I met her!)...unlike many of my friends or myself, I knew by now with an absoulte surety that Motta coz of his rough ride to maturity, would make a great husband and she was a very lucky woman. As were leaving, like old times he joked to me..."nee ente pazhaya kaaryangal okke erakki kalyaanathine mumbe divorce aaki tharaathathine valare thanks"...we broke out into a smile and parted with a customary warm hug. As I walked away from them, I thought about myself...life's journey leading me back to delhi, an exam where my chances stood at a razor's edge, and beyond there was hardly any light to show me a way, almost 26 and still unsure what career-path lay ahead...I thought of my dear Herbert and prayed that his success find echoes in my life too.

Enter The Last Lap...

The last two hours were amazing...i recharged my fone after 2 weeks and the calls started coming in and going out...talked to my parents, grandmothers, sis and a host of friends all over the place...from India to the US...and they've done the trick again...got me into a state of mind where I felt like blogging. Its the first time in life that I've no friends at arms length to confide in, joke with and fool around... but the moment these people call, I am so cheered up as though they just left my side. My sis had spent the day with my usc pals, sujith and his wife simi and they bullied me to jealousy with how as of old they had downloaded and watched 3 malayalam movies at a stretch and of how i was missing out on all the new malayalam and english movie releases which never ever happened in 4 years in LA, thomman called from some jungle in kashmir and without net connection i had to convey to the poor fellow all the happenings in our batch in exchange for a round of "josh", shan's voice seemed all animated with the record cricket match at Wanderers and good old motta excitedly recounted the preparations going on for his wedding which i'm fated to miss and finally i teased my two lovely grandmas, one of whoim celeberated her 83rd birthday today, to blushes and infectious laughter which travelled with their sweet voices all the way to delhi.

Month of Disquiet...
I'd like to banish memories of february to the dustbin. I soon found out that a lot of study that i had seemingly done was washed away. I was appalled at my retention ability which was something i've always been proud of from the schooldays. I guess it must have had to do with the huge reading list day in and day out, that something new studied, cleaves away the old. I realized I had to start cramming - "to by-heart" was a phrase I hated with a fervor i reserved for pavakka thorran...and in this autumn of my academic life I had to learn to do some things anew. My motivation tapered off somewhere down the line, I began to watch movies and the india-pak matches too. A few hours into my books and without even knowing what hit me...I would be fast asleep. The model tests started and seeing my miserable scores and many ppl i had disdainfully rejected as non-starters in this effort scoring high, i was piqued, even humbled and i realised i had to do whatever it takes. Anyways March has begun well, I shifted my apartment to a ramshackle almost mohalla-like area witha perennial water problem, far away from the madding crowd and miraculously the ennui that seemed to completely envelope me has lifted, and I am back to "merrily" cramming away.

The Company of Good Men...
A good dose of peer "pressure" or to state it better peer achievements has injected a fresh dose of ambition in me. A classmate from Loyola, Arun cracked the MD exam at St.John's Blore in his 3rd attempt, kicha has been invited to join some of the most prestigious post-grad architecture courses in the US and Europe, a close bud motta is hiring an employee at his architecture firm to take the extra workload of his back(he works in the morning at the office of a senior architect and in the evening at his place!), two other schoolpals, jinu and ichayan began their Ph.D programs in the US, three other loyolites feel settled enough to begin married life soon and two of my fellow-savages from college saw their firm Neologix on a hiring spree reaching double digits and hungry for further expansion. Brick-by-brick everyone is laying strong foundations for succesful careers and I have realized I cant afford to blink now.

The Lost Moonflower...
My uncle's novel finally comes out this year and that is the title. It is based on Christian mythology...those of you who are expecting somthing akin to Da Vinci Code, feel ready to be disappointed...he's a preist...hehe! My sis and cousins helped in the proof-reading and cover selection and though he sent me the manuscript I've still not found the time to read it, forget even critiqueing it or give him any feedback. I guess I'll finally wait for an autographed copy to start reading! The malayalam translation I believe is being done by D.C.Books. One of my greatest regrets and source of envy is that my cousins got to be moulded, taught and guided by this great man while I've never been satisfied with the measly amount of time I've got to spent with him the last 25 years. An abiding memory will be how he introduced my grandmother to his churchmembers during sunday service when we visited his church during our US trip in '98. He said, "this 5th form educated woman taught me the ABC's of the English language and my first nursery rhymes"...and I remember everyone in the church including my mom, her other brother and all of us kids with tears in our eyes and she getting a standing ovation from the laiety. Finally, coming to think of it, from a malayalam-medium primary education in a tiny hamlet in Kerala to an English novel...wow, what can certainly beat that!

The Months Ahead...
D-Day is looming 60 odd days away on May14. The exam-fever has begun to strike home and I am beginning to feel the twitch in my tummy. A lot of work remains to be done. Its a battle where I was always strained for time, further compounded by my mental wrangles...but I still think I'm in with a really good chance. I came to write about something else, but have ended up not sticking to the plot. To blog or study well, you need a clear head and crisp thinking...but with so much history, economy and civics playing truant with me...I guess I'm still doing a good job and will overcome more rounds of inevitable disillusionment just waiting around the corner. To round off, an object of infinite wonder and a comrade in this effort continues to perplex me...Pappanabhan, this master of gaffes, continues to impress me...i doubt there would be another serious upsc aspirant who has a laptop and broadband connection for perennial company and he's even begun blogging too, at this late juncture while i've fearfully abjured the laptop and the internet for its forbidden pleasures which would certainly have lead me astray but is his way of maintaining sanity and a cool head.

Why Dont You Let Me Go, Dear Blog???

My blogging's become like the biblical seed sprewn amongst the thorn bushes. The blogger in me gets aroused in the early mornings after a long night but i fret and fume at my inability to lay my hands on a computer during those precious moments ...after sleep, classes and crappy food i am too crushed to write anything beyond a few lines...but then this has become one habit I hate to give up.

Paradise Regained...
Some days you see the clouds and the gloom it spreads. On other days you see the silver lining and am thankful for being so blessed. Thats a cycle of mood swings most upsc veterans warned me about but I dont know...I feel so happy and cheerful...being able to come back, being able to make this himalayan effort, competing with such an enormously talented horde of Indians...whatever be the end result I am just basking in every moment of this existence which I have been able to raise above the mundane. I now realize all the benefits of the education at Loyola stand squared...they maynot be able to match my general knowledge or english speaking skills but the sheer-single minded determination of these boys and gals from the remotest parts of India...some even from villages...humbles me, frustrates me and goads me on.

The Boys and I...
Finally I caught up with them...and what a day it was. Five of my buddies from Loyola in and around Delhi came calling and we caught up with each others lives for the past 4 years. Chairman, took the train down from Hissar and I was seeing him after 7 years, Tharian and I was seeing after 4 years and he looked so stressed out from YumBeeYe horrors that he fell asleep a few times, Puppy had to be cajoled out of his temporary abode at Kerala House and make it here. Thomman flew via Delhi to Srinagar and its been a long 4 years since I've met him. He grabbed me in a huge bear hug, lifted me off the ground and we stood there out on the road in a warm embrace for quite some time until the guys had to break us up. And finally Kicha arrived and for a change he arrived on time! Seeing him after 7 years, our affable, pleasant faced school leader gave me the biggest surprise. Long wavy hair and a french beard to go with it...i couldnt help remarking he looked so much like jesus christ in the picures.

I still cant understand how all these guys manage to stay so simple and cheerful. We automatically transform into the high-spirited teenagers we were 8 years back... Anyways we headed out for a teastall...sipped around 15 chais and samosas to go with it and chattering in animated voices that all the DU students hanging out there mus have wondered what freakin language we guys were talking in!!! The lone moment of sobriety arrived when we mourned the inevitable deluge of marriages about to set in from june and of thomman recounting the horrors of the earthquake and how they armymen gave up their tents and shivered thru the nite, though he was pissed that the people werent even grateful for the gesture. Finally the owner kicked us out, we took the metro(absoltutely f$%#ing marvellous...a sayyip would stare disbelieving....the taj mahal can take a bow...welcome to india's new wonder structures...kudos to sreedharan...i need to write a seperate post on this...shame on our tardy looking airports...the delhi metro is the face of new india...ok ok lemme stop!!!)It was an out of the world experience, more than the booze it was the reaffirmation that we were all an integral part of each others lives that struck me. Its a night that had a soothing effect on me...I havent laughed so much in ages...i had forgotten to borrow a mattress and four of us were left sleeping on my bed and a single blanket to cover each other. Like small kids we nudged, pushed and shoved for an extra inch of the bed and blanket and shouted and cursed at each other but i am sure we all finally went to sleep with a contented smile on our faces...

Untainted Idealism...
"Havent you read Freedom at Midnight and My Experiments with Truth???", thundered Chairman. I embarassingly replied in the negative. He gave me the old condescending look of yore of how I would ever become a good bureaucrat. Every batch of Loyola has produced its share of firebrands and here I was faced with an old friend who had worked at the grassroot level, travelled all over India and with a wealth of experience behind him, he had begun to prepare for the civil services. The harmless question chairman posed has brought me back to the world of books after a long long time. Besides grabbing the above two gems I stumbled on Pablo Neruda and my god, how I wish I could write atleast one poem like him. In October, when I leave Delhi for home one thing that sure will accompany me back home is atleast a suitcase full of novels that I plan to feast on, once this endeavour is over and before I embark on a new one. And to do me a world of good, I watched Rang de Basanti and I just sat amazed at the rapid strides Bollywood has made over the last few years. The way things are going, I am sure Indian cinema will soon take the world by storm like never before.

An old post comes calling...
The best post, I ever wrote, the basketball one found its way to some of the senior basketballers I wrote about and I am sure that must have been a proud moment for them and for me it was a revelation that a moment's inspiration is all I need to write a good post, though I often veer around to thinking that my best blogging days are over for good.

And finally though I am a day late lets all hope our country will again be blessed with men so unselfish and dedicated to the nation like Gandhiji and Bhagat Singh.

The Year of Breaking Free...

About this time, last year a speed post from India came visiting me in San Diego. Inside it was the application form for the Civil Services that my dad had send witout even my asking for it. He wanted me to give the exams this May by preparing for it in the US but I flatly told him I just wasnt inspired to make the effort. I guess I wasnt ready then, but most unexpectedly my destiny sure took me down that road. As 2005 slips away I am left with strong memories of a year that was undoubtedly the most eventful and possibly the best of my life. Every step of the way I trode not knowing where I was heading...when the year began I had no clear idea of my career in the long run, I continued to mingle and bond in a country I couldnt bring myself to call mine and a people I felt distant from in mindset, culture and upbringing. Last december, I looked back at 2004 and at the end made a vague but determined resolution of going in for a change of careers. I had no idea it would happen but then, but what this year taught me was the power of writing and the miracles that being honest to yourself and having the guts to play your thoughts out to the world can bring about. 2005 despite everything else...that is the little achievements, the few times I stumbled badly, happy times with my friends was all about blogging and the immense satisfaction and contentment it gave me. It taught me to be hopeful, to be patient, to believe in god...and the realization that a chance to go and follow my hearts desires would materialise.

The year started disastrously, with the desi consultant who placed me at M&H booting with my salary but fortunately the firm hired me directly for the rest of the 4 month contract. But what I would love to remember abt Jan was for a 50 movie watching spree that gave me such immense satisfaction, Feb I headed for that epic road trip from coast to coast with Bipin. In March I ended my contract, partly out of a most boring and unchallenging tasks and partly out of loneliness, at San Diego(will always remember it as among the most beautiful cities of the world) and headed for LA where my sis and many great friends waited. The job search took painfully long...ironically it was easier for me to move to Delhi from LA than from SD to LA. Realized I wasnt considered for jobs as I was thought to be an SD resident and not a local candidate(LA and SD are as far apart as TVM and Cochin!) and finally when I got the job and rejoiced, it was only to end in despair as I got fired(now I think my blogging at work had to do with it!). But in a week Universal hired and for the first time in the US I was on a roll. Challenging job, great team, good money... but that was it...I reached the end of my techie road...i reached the end of a road in the US where I came dreaming of making countless money for my future generations...it wasnt long before I realized my ambitions lay beyond making money.

I was soon approaching my 25th birthday and with that a lot of things changed within me. I couldnt continue to justify the course my life was taking...I was becoming bitter, reserved and resigned to a life in the US, the days of taking risks and following my heart seemed over. It seemed impossible I would ever get to live in Trivandrum...I was restless and nobody could relate with me. The first time I let it out was with the Seven's tag, Thats when the power of this blog on me came alive. I wrote this post on the state of our, constitution a few days later and I began wondering if I had a career worth dreaming about there. Once I cleared all those clouds of self-doubt I knew my days in America were numbered. I certainly miss a lot of America - I miss the friends I earned there and solitary drives at night in my car...but then I love the pleasures of drinking a chai on the roadside, walking side-by-side thousands of my countrymen not feeling uncomfortable of my place in society.

Finally I have hit an xmas season that bucked the trend of the last many years, 2001 had that trekking expedition and some good fun with my schoolmates, 2002 viswan came visiting me in LA, 2003 wuz even better as I visited him in Rochester and he had an unbelievable itenarary of skiing, camping, travel, two visits to Niagara and to cap the vacation,a smashing new year party at Times Square in Manhattan and last year bipin and I headed to Vikas's den in San Jose for perhaps the last time we 3 wud ever meet together. The year ahead gives me no room for resolutions...but one thing I lack is discipline and I have many weaknesses of the mind I'll fight to overcome this year. I have no idea what will happen after the mains in October assuming I make it that far...its a year that will race ahead at breakneck speed. I am already left whirring at the days zooming past me. I would be lying if i said life is easy now...there are times i wonder if this is an uphill task but there is also the curiosity of finding out where this journey will take me which spurs me on...10 years back people would have laughed if I said I would one day do well in the US or prepare for the civil services...and its also 10 years I swam with the tide never ever having the courage to take my self-belief to a higher level. I have come a long way from the introverted kid I was and I have seen many many miracles happen in my life. My parents tell me I have acquired a hero image in tvm but I know thats a mirage that could come crashing down. Well enough of my narcissm...to all you people...friends, family and blog pals wish you all a very merry christmas and a happy 2006.

While The Sun Shines...

The sun is yet to fade away here...delhiites are relishing all the sun they can get before dec15 when i heard it disappears for a few months. Its nice to see young and old, men and women, lay out their cots and chairs to catch the son and i think woh...what wud americans say abt this kind of sun-bathing!! Sachin lightedned up the Kotla and Delhi with his long-awaited 35th. I grew up watching him play and having missed the last 4 years of the new brigades arrival he continues to be my favorite. Another day and time I would have walked miles to see him play but yesterday, as I overheard my roomies debating the "worthwhileness" of heading to the Kotla in the absence of Sehwag I was tempted to go watch the match...but the innate tendency to bunk classes is unfortunately not my area of specialization anymore. The Daal-Chaval-Sabji routine hasnt been helping much in my body countering the cold thats getting pronounced day by day. Thats when we discovered this Kottayam achayan running a kerala mess far from the madding crowd in a real dinghy area. The barotta and beef there is keeping me alive...and its taste...oh my god...and its a wonder how they keep the place running in the heartland of Hindutva.

Today began much better. I woke up too early to not be able to plead any excuses for missing mass...so I headed out for the only church in the vicinity at St.Stephens. Arriving in a huff, wondering if I would be making my grand entry midway or to the end of the service I found the chapel deserted and the service to be in the evening which clashes with my classes. Anyways the solitude and silence was worth the effort to make it there. After 5-10 mins of contemplating, a group of boys and gals walked in and started playing the piano and guitar. I smiled at the expectation of getting to hear some good church songs and the tune they started to play seemed vaguely familiar to some song I had heard. And then a gal broke out into the song..."Pehla Nasha, Pehla...". I stared open-mouthed in surprise at the offending "church choir" and they gave me an embarassed smile. They were the choir all right, but were practising for a college fest!!!

As is with me...there is never a shortage of mallus around me. They are a curious set really...and their outlook to life is something i have never seen till date in any of the friends i made till now. One guy is a philosopher and writes wonderful stories in malayalam and may someday become a scriptwriter in our films...I have introduced him to blogging and he was inspired by Jithu's Mal blog. Then there's another guy who is an avid Christian and he is out to reform me of what he says are heathen beleif's creeping into my Xianity. The third guy is a lookalike of Mohanlal, in looks, height, dressing, way of talking, everything. And next month yet to arrive in Delhi is Mr.Andy Padman, my classmate in Loyola and roomie at USC who gave his first attempt at the civil service this year. Gotto play some box cricket yesterday at our terrace and it wuz so refreshing...it felt good to bowl my off-breaks, fox the guys a few times and once they learnt my tricks, having to try new things in vain and the realization that my batting has started to deteriorate as i got yorked, beaten and caught without wasting too many balls...either the hand-eye coordination is failing or i'll need lots of practise!!

Well studies, what do I say...its a process of unlearning traditional answer-formats followed in school and college, its a realization that logic and not chronology should be the approach taken to learn history, its a cycle of 2-3 days of intense 15 hour streches in front of books and then a day of languor where I catch up on all the sleep lost and again back to the books with the perpetual feeling of racing against the clock...my neck hurts like hell these days from studying on the bed...my roomies joke i smell more of himami fast relief than anything else...i guess the spondilytis that runs in my family has come to haunt me too...thankfully i move into the single room in a few days and will have space for a table and chair!! In the end if it has to be, it will be the coaching, my legendary good luck and my writing that could give me the edge over others...its a journey I am taking a day at a time, this is the life I have dreamt of living...the freedom to chase my dreams and making it happen with my effort...I have given up on the much-hyped vacation of this December...I'll miss the guys big-time but if I can give them a cause to celebrate in 2 years then I guess it'll all be worth it.