The Waaanderer's Tag!!!

This is a long overdue tag...better late than never...i leave in 2 days...dont think i will be venturing outside often in Delhi to blog in this heat...it'll be almost 2 months b4 i lay my hands on my laptop.

5 people who top your sh1t list..... and why:

- Arjun Singh, for taking reservations to the realm of a new social injustice

- Arjun Singh...anyone wants a reason???

- Arjun Singh...my blood boils when i see his slippery face on TV!!!

- Arjun Singh...I am not against any of the reservations till date and pray that reservations be only for the poor in our society but he forgot he crossed a line...for the first time since independence, ordinary indians have raised their voices against our bastard politicians.

- A.K.Antony for wasting a gift-wrapped super mandate from the people of Kerala for developing the state


Close brushes with death/danger:

I never had a close shave with death yet...i guess God doesnt want me spoiling his party at heaven any time soon!!!

- A bike accident on Christmas Eve outside the Jimmy George Stadium...didnt even know what hit me...lost consciousness for a few hours and spent a precious night in a moota-infested medical college general ward observation room.

- Getting lost in the Agasthyakoodam
forest...we were scared shitless then, but now we laugh abt it like veterans who were out then for a casual stroll.


5 Modes of Suicide

What an irony that the guy I have found most easiest to unnerve, initiated the craziest of questions for a tag. well its not my idea of fun...so i move on!!!


5 Guilty pleasures:

- Chilled beer, a friend for company and a little sun and heat to go with the ambience

- At my native place, drinking kallu right off the palm trees.

- Chivas Regal, with 4 icecubes(my friends joke that ever since i took a liking to it, they never thought highly of it again!)...

- Amul Chocolate...you wont believe the reaction on my face, when I set eyes on it in a Delhi Bakery. Eating it after 16 years brought back so many sweet childhood memories...oh shit! i forgot to mention it in my Remembering the 80's post. I actualy bullied and tempted Pappanabhan, a frantic chocolate eater for a few days until i felt sorry and told him where to get it.

- well I criticize the Church a lot, and even feel at most times, that Christianity and religion arent important to me anymore(though God is), but yet on early sunday mornings being at a church and spending some quiet time there and attending mass makes me feel just great!


5 things you never want to forget:

- My grandma fainting the night i was leaving for the States

- The pride on my parents face when they saw me recieving the Master's diploma

- The first time my sister thrashed me...i was shellshocked...the thrash on my baCK erupted like a Deepavali cracker...since then she lost the surprise factor...but having got to taste blood whenever we quarrelled she would begin to cry unless I let her beat me atleast once.

- The only accident in my driving career - i had just finished learning to drive and my dad handed over his new Zen to me...trying to get on to the main road at a curve banged a boundary wall...the left rear door was a sight to behold...still can hear my dad's wild shriek ringing in my ears...the bill came to around 10000 bucks...but it was a lesson well learnt!

- Having beer with my dad for 1st time. When I'd finished 3 he was struggling with his first...his question, "nee hot adikkumo"...my response, "illa hot enikkishtamilla, pinne friends nirbandhichaal oralpam...."...cant forget his sarcastic quip..."ho, ashvaasamaayi"


5 things you wish to forget:

- The first time i wore a mundu with my mom's help...in the 8th. Wore a bermuda under and a belt over the mundu as protection and i was sure i looked like a dork taking feeble steps...the comic relief was coming to class and guys who didnt dare to wear it from home coz of the crowded schoolbus begging me to help them tie theirs thinking i had wrapped mine single-handedly...i remember that whole day we were skipping from tree to tree, hiding & tightening the mundu when it loosened. We realized we couldnt get better at it unless we started wearing lungis at home.

- Last Labor Day weekend in Baltimore...my uncle had arranged a karioke party with all his mallu friends...we kids were by now given the license to drink...the uncles and aunties made me sing "Onnam Ragam Padi" in front of them...afterwards everybody had a huge grin on their faces.

- The onset of adoloscensce...wasted an entire pilgrimage trip to vellankanni meant for my 9th standard final exams on praying to god to find me a remedy to this illness!!! If I was an anonymous blogger I would have had so many anecdotes to share with the world on how a band of brothers bumbled their way to enlightenment!!! Much later in college, thanks to Arun Hari's loud tongue I realized to my dismay that the story had even travelled to the gals in the class.

- The first VAAL...had too much to drink on an excursion to Kodai...passed out, began a vomitspree, got dehydrated, hospitalised and much worse...became the laughing stock of the guys and had to suffer great indignities...anyways it saved me from becoming an alcoholic...i have mostly stuck to beer and scotch ever since!!

- Having the indistinction of being hit for last-ball sixes twice in schoollife...lost both the matches on account of my complacence...and that too to two tailenders who barely knew how to hold a bat...and at every reunion somebody brings it up to put me to shame....again and again!!!


5 really exotic dishes you have tried:

Have eaten a lot of cuisines of the world while in LA and San Diego...cuban, ethiopian, korean, lebanese, mexican, thai, etc, etc, etc...embarassingly enuf i still found some of our traditional mallu dishes more exotic as they were more rarer...but then i've always been like that!!

But dishes i really like and savour.

- The Kappa, Karimeen Pollichathu, thavala and Anthikallu at the Karimpankala Shappu near Chenganasseery

- Puttu, Payaru and Pappadam for Breakfast

- Any nonvegetarian dish my mom cooks...an amazingly capable woman the speed with which she cooks is a sight to behold...chicken curries, cutlets, karimeen varathathu, fish moily, prawn, crab, fish curry, parinjeel...its all part of her amazing oeuvre...i can never eat non-veg food at a hotel to my satisfaction coz of her...but i always tell her that like most xian women she sucks at vegetarian dishes.

- A dream meal for me wud be...rice, pulisseri, payar thorran, aviyal, pappadam and a fish fry

- The Dosa and Chicken combination we once tried at a small village kallu shappu near the Neyyar Dam while in college...its taste still lingers!!!


5 crushes/loves in your life... in chronological order

- if i was an anonymous blogger...first names would have sure made its way here...neways most of those gals are wives and even mothers now!!!

But lately - Ash Rai in the new Lux Ad just knocks me out of my senses every time i see that...the only words that escapes me for a few mins is..."Abhishek Bachchante times"!!!


Strangest dream you ever had:

- its a childhood nightmare. A snake chasing my sister and me thru the paddy fields in our native place and how i escape....BLACKOUT!!!
i cant recollect dreams/nightmares anymore.


5 most valued personal possessions:

- Except for my clothes all the other material possessions I acquired I have lost/given away...but then 4 other possessions wud be

- my family, they have been so understanding, so encouraging...yet i have never done justice to their love/affection...only time i wish i was a different person is when i think about them.

- strong friendships nurtured day by day, over the years...it is in moments of loneliness that you thank God for these people who by chance becomes part of your life.

- a wealth of experience/mistakes...wonder where i get to mortgage all that!!!

- my smile, its a personal ahangaaram...i have seen a smile melt hard-nosed interviewers, soften unrelenting cops, cool down agitated teachers about to take me to task and win friends by the dozen...its a genetic/acquired/studied trait from my dad who i have seen use it as an effective weapon with foes, strangers and friends alike.

...today all of my possessions are abstract at one level but more concrete/lasting than anything material at a higher plane.


5 favorite superheroes..... and why:

- I'd say I loved Giant Robot and Johnny Saco so much...I was heartbroken when GiantRobot got killed and the series ended...like Mohanlal in the the film Adhipan I wanted to dial Doordarshan Kendra and call the man-in-charge the only theri i knew...PODA PATTI!!!

- Inspector Garud of Balarama(heard Dileep is planning a movie on him...am sure it'll be a bigger hit than CID Moosa!)

- Mayavi and Luttappi(yeah!...luttapis face makes me laugh!) of Balarama

- He-Man...he certainly was a phenomenon in those days

- James Bond...for all the babes he beds...when i wuz younger he misled me to thinking women were easy prey!!!


To pass it on...I think everyone else except Arun Hari and Neil have done it...upto u guys then!!!