The morning after

I slept soon after writing that depressing post last night and intimating Disha (who had sweetly asked me to not be an ass and continue blogging) about the addition. Negativism characteristically dispirits me. Couldn’t bear to push my few readers through the same too.

So probably after a huge sense of guilt, I woke up at 4 in the morning. Partly also because I felt something brushing against my right hand which I think was royally twirled over my head beyond the bed post and almost touching the floor. Sudden panic is so not good at that hour in the morning, worse when you’re sick and in much-desired deep sleep. The sudden jerky motion that brought the top half of my body ninety degrees closer to the bottom could partially be regarded to the rat infestation in our house for the last few days. As much as I find these creatures cute for all visual purposes, I have no love to rear and nurture and feed the pests. We (hereafter referring to me [@nitinsgr] and my flat mate Nithin K D [@nithinkd]) had managed to catch four of the family with about a quarter of a Parle G in the space of one night. I had no clue about KD’s awesome creativity when it came to murder (too). He lit a smoky fire in an unused earthen pot, kept the catch in the cage over it’s face, and covered it all with a cloth. Painlessly asphyxiated with a little carbon monoxide. There are about half a dozen more to be caught and executed in similar or smarter fashion. Will keep you posted.

So this friend calls up very early in the morning, having just returned from a Sufi music night, and a shade too moved to sleep. Few minutes into the conversation and I figured (or she confessed) that she was a little horny after the experience and needed some incitement. Okay. I like this new job. Though I remember I conveniently killed her desires talking about my running nose and phlegm and grey cough. Sorry about that girl. Some other time may be.

Also met @ambikajoshi after a gap of two years. She’s grown fabulously hotter and prettier, except for the fact that her getup makes no bones about her being a mixed South Indian. I think somewhere along the long conversation I mentioned her coming across as partly lesbian. And I still think she has the coolest parents ever.

Mamta, my cook has been barging in and out while I’ve been trying to write cribbing about their being no aata in the house for paranthas. She’s the most unsentimental woman I’m likely to meet. None of my jokes work on her. The sneers she would welcome me with in the morning continue till she steps out of the apartment. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m a nasty human being and if not for the money I pay her, she would cut my spleen out with her swordish hands and gaze.

I’ve taken another off from work today. Dad seems pretty convinced that I couldn’t possibly get swine flu, and so far it’s just a change of weather according to him that’s hit me. I agree with him due to lack of options. I would anyway hate to die after a cardiac arrest (learnt this morning that’s how people with H1N1 are going).

I’ve good reasons to start looking for the next job, as I approach the end of my one year in the present one. Plus a colleague at work did me a psychic reading and claimed my karma in India is almost done with. I was terrified in the way she conducted this session and so I don’t quite believe too much in her foretelling.

We used to have a lot of pretty girls coming in to Mr. Raghu Rai (my next door neighbor, and yes the acclaimed photographer)’s house all the time. I think they did not appreciate me in my expensive Levi’s denim shorts and just that as every morning I lay chase for them in the corridor with tea in an even more expensive Borosil glass. No footfalls any more.

My foot fetish has taken a beating off late. With winter round the corner, I hope the girls will cover up and all that would be left to see and admire will be the bottoms. And whatever has happened to these amazingly hot girls in Delhi! I mean where’s the factory that’s producing them in such huge numbers anyway! In fact I remember a bunch of eleventh grade students from a school for the excessively rich had come visiting us at work for I don’t know what academic reasons; and the girls there! I mean I did not notice when I switched from talking about software and IT to telling one of the girls how pretty her brown streaks looked! There are just not enough men to match up to these growing numbers of desirable women. Sigh.

Okay. Blogging is not a pain after all. I can be interesting. Right? RIGHT?

In which I (re)discover I have a blog

Thursday seems to be a pretty irregular day to write a blog. But let’s not get into that, considering there’s been no wordfall here in the last couple of months. I calculated I’ve been writing consistently at intervals of 75 days. But there’s definitely one truth I would like to share with you – I’m most honest (with words or wisdom) when I’m sick. Have you figured the rest of this post shall be equally menacingly headless meaningless?

So I’m down with major flu right now. Took an off from work and it got so incredibly bland and difficult to not do anything that I’m here.

One thing I’ve been telling almost everyone I meet these days is that our jobs make us sad people. That, when I’m one of the very few workers who love what they do. I’ve changed since I started working. Tremendously. And it has cost me dearly on a personal level, while I’ve only grown happier on the material level. I used to be a most sensitive friend, boyfriend, son, brother, kin and all the rest. It has taken a definite beating. When I saw I could be a perfectionist on the work front, I let go of the obsessive desire to keep every part of the rest of my life in good shape. It sounds terrible as I write it and read it and hear it in my ears. But truth must be told. Even to self.

I stay in what could easily be the most peaceful location for a room in an apartment in this city. I’ve spent endless hours in my balcony that stretches to give a panoramic view of about 180 degrees of South Delhi, with beer in one hand and uncertainty that I’ve tended to clutch in the other. A decent number of women have come and admired the view and collectively the person who it belongs to now. I can recount almost no weekends when there’s not been a friend or two to drink with. I look at it as some sort of a calming influence after six mad days at work. My social circle has by all means expanded like crazy once I got into the job, but the time I spent with no body by my side has grown inversely to that number. I’ve met a lot of interesting people in the last few months, but few who I’ve come to really respect. Somehow finding faults with people has only gotten easier. And so has accepting them as they are. The manner in which I understood humanity has turned itself on its head. I remember I was a fairly closed person earlier. I hope some friends have known this. These days while my perspective has undergone a sea change, and by virtue of that I should be able to judge more wisely, I don’t. I let things happen. To me. If there’s a concept of living every day, I practice it now. I’m not averse to change of any kind. I assumed I can always go back to being what I was. Unfortunately, that time has never come. I’m only sinking deep into the shit of life and its ways.

As long as you were in college, it was pretty straightforward to not worry about the future. There was a set timeline when you knew things would happen on their own. Once out of that routine, time loses its significance. You know every day that you’re not inching closer to any deadline. The maximum you would do is remember how soon the year is coming to and end, or how long since the time you kissed a girl. Everything else ceases to exist. You don’t worry if you’re getting old. Or if your parents are. Because you were just thrown onto a mechanical belt that shall henceforth carry you through different stages of a process you will never figure. You are expected to obey and just do things, not worrying about what and where and when.

This is also the time when you derive a lot of useful information from things and people and events around you. Suddenly you will start to notice where your peers have reached on the ladder of life, and what struggles you must now do to keep up. The sheer magnitude of ways and means you could move ahead in life can drive you crazy. How many of us have been blessed with the vision to weigh and anticipate all options and choose the best?

Anyhow, the pills have worked on me undeniably. That’s the saddest I’ve been in like a long time! I shall write again soon. I promise. This time, I hope it’s not another 75 days.

Time for some adrak chai now.

Irresistible

Reproducing word for word an email I received this evening:

Dearest one,
I am a single girl searching for my soul mate, after reading a little about you whlie i was surfing the net, i became interested in you So please give me the chance to introduce myself to you.
My names are Rose Jasmine Awa i am 23 yrs old , i came from Liberia in Africa. I am the only daughter of Dr  Wilson Awa.  my late father was the director of ‘AWA INDUSTRIAL COMPANY LIMITED’ (AICL) before his death from the war going on in my country .It was on one early morning attack to my family killing both my parents on a cold blood as i am the only one left. i flew to a near by country Dakar Senegal where we are staying now as a refugee. I am doing my second year in nursing school before the incident occured.
Please kindly contact me with this my private email address so that i can send my pictures to you for further introductions. I will also want to know your likes and dislikes. I will tell you more about me in my next mail.
Awaiting to hear from you very soon, God bless you
yours faithfully,
Rose Jasmine.

Life in bullets

• I had a draft from last weekend discarded today thanks to lost relevance as the week happened. It was an astonishingly depressing read. I’m happy things change pretty quickly.
• I just had strawberries. For someone who is hippo lazy with eating, let alone buying fruits for his constant bi-dimensional self, this was a real treat.
• I’ve literally been living off beer and eggs for the last couple of weeks now.
• I’ve become very particular about reconnecting with old friends and making new ones lately. That front sees good progress.
• I’m much more of a geek now.
• My job is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in my conscious life. As it turns out, I’m surprisingly good at what I was hired for. Pray this lasts long.
• I got my ID done the day before. I’m so glad that I can avoid those distasteful grins from the lady at the reception who it seems finds it thoroughly satisfying for a day’s work on the job to open the doors for me. I know I’m generally smiling all the time but for the first time ever I feel this capacity is being taken undue advantage of.
• The official addressing phrase used for me in the office is ‘Sir’. Believe me, the recession hasn’t hit me.
• Tequila is good for even the seasoned ones. And I narrowly missed seeing someone cry yet again after a Thank God it Is Friday drinking last evening.
• Delhi 6 sucks. The drinking mentioned above was the natural effect of having hurt our feelings as we dragged through the monstrously disastrous storyline about raamleelas and kaale bandars and communalism and unmarried beautiful girls. High quality shit. Thanks to Sonam Kapoor’s well-aligned teeth and oh-so Simone Singh-y arms and the company of some very interesting people that I survived after a sleepless night the day before.
• I’m excited to move in to my apartment. I think it happens the coming weekend. Primarily I’m fantasizing about keeping a stockpile of beer cans in the refrigerator and hence lots of crazy parties. Someone suggested a housewarming. If you’re in Delhi, sign up in the comments section.
• I plan to keep a wish list. For all the bankers and consultants I have for friends and everyone else who loves me.
• I need to apply for a credit card. If you know any pesky callers, please forward my number. I realize I should have not registered on the DND registry everywhere.
• I’m tweeting since the last week @nitinsgr. If you are on Twitter, regardless of how interesting you are, kindly let me know how to find you. Facebook and this might actually kill my blog.
• I’ve loosened up a little on my financial strings. On the outset, I hope to drive most of it down the kitchens of some fine places to eat around the city.
• I’m looking forward to a lot of things/events this year. One of them being having more of my IIT friends joining me here in Delhi.
• eM has a boyfriend now. Regular.
• The bloggers I know have lost faith in writing.
• I was told a guy from our batch from a different hostel is a father now and looking for a job. IITians are a funny bunch.
• I need to salsa. Start by taking classes. Two things – partner and motivation.
• ISD must get cheaper now. Some people last a month in what it costs me a minute.
• New Friends Colony market is visited by some of the hottest (not pretty nor charming but plain hot) girls in Delhi.

It’s time to sleep.

Favorites from ‘Abstruse Goose’

• Ask a silly question
• Lie of omission
• Math text
• I never
• Rabi’s question answered
• Blind date
• An elegant weapon
• Best friends
• Family reunion
• All good things
• You’re not as cool as you think
• Hotel California (Awesome)
• The purposeful life
• Gift horse
• Holiday tradition
• Father knows best
• Lie of omission part 2
• The secret lives of photons
• Unwritten
• Confession
• At the zoo
• iScreener

2009

Happy New Year all.

Having said that, and to some of you personally on sms, I realized how terribly useless some of us find to wish each other on days like this. I myself have never been quite a wisher in the sense of it as such. I remember when I got my first cellphone when I went to college (DCE, before IIT happened and then life would never be the same again), the number that I kept for four-plus years, and that super classy Nokia 3310 that lives with Mom now. The phone made me real popular, thanks to that game of snakes that was such a fun reason to spend hours in my furnished room as I grappled with my JEE books, trying to look focused and force people into shameful exit. Back then receiving a call cost you 7 bucks a minute, and making one about 10 I think. The latter is still pretty much the same for the overwhelming majority of calls made from my phone, but anyway. In those days, 4-5 years I’m talking about basically, I used to send perhaps three of four smses, and that was all the happiness I could spread at the cost of my own on New Years for example. It’s unbelievable now how one recharge would last me a month easily. A missed call from home meant I must show up at the telephone at the guard desk. I wouldn’t pick Dad every day because it cost him his own money and left a sorely disappointed me after every *123#. The idea of instilling a sense of frugality as a consequence of such rationed actions, hasn’t unfortunately gone as planned. It has made some mentionable impact though. I marvel at my remarkable capacity to squeeze all that I want to say in the space of 160 characters provisioned per sms by our carriers. And by squeezing in I mean till the last drop. I’m not a happy person if an sms I send has space for few more characters and I can’t fit in anything sensible. It has been a lot of effort and practice with the girlfriend of two years, who I’m sure hasn’t noticed this penny-wise-ness yet. Never mind my dear. I hope we stay together long enough for you to completely realize how wickedly insane I could be.

So getting back to wishing people. Clearly these days most young people don’t make much sense of the act. Young on Orkut once, I used to walk around in a princely gait after I’d received 100-plus scraps on such occasions. It was nice to know that people cared, even if more than half had just remembered you because you happened to be on their list while they ventured to spread greetings serially. But it has all changed now. I made an exception this year. I tried to remember people I had not spoken to in the last six-months or year. At least one person was pleasantly surprised, while there were few ‘Thank you. Do I know you?’! I used to be this person once. I would just give, and expect no return. I don’t know when this changed. And I can’t say if the present liberal state of mind would stay.

Though I can confess I’ve been happier with life in general of late. I have been given/gifted a gorgeous Apple MacBook, the aluminum-cast one-piece object of a nerd’s desire. I got new blades for my razor, and suddenly day three after shaving has this sexy greenish stubble that has me drooling over myself. I have totaled Dad’s new car beyond 5000 kms. I watched Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and Ghajini, both first day first shows, the first time in my life, and this being exactly the kind of thing(s) I say you must do with the one you love. Somehow being crazy together does bring two people really inseparably close. You can’t win with the mundaneness of life anyway, so some little cheer and fun and laughter with a special someone is all you ever ask for. G, the girlfriend so far in the post, has been with me this entire December (that must partially explain no posts in the last 31 days. I wasn’t thinking of anything else). Being with her, and some external influence in terms of ideas about where my life is going, and aging itself, made me realize how simple and materially uncomplicated I want my life to be. And I believe that is ultimately what we all ask for. It is rather unfortunate, and I really mean it, that most of my closest guy pals have been unlucky in love. So far that is to say. I know these guys will make some girls very lucky (however dumb that sounds), but it just hasn’t happened. They’re so ready to give and take love and get into relationships to take things ahead. Anyhow, I guess no one really gets it all. You gain some to lose some for a while.

I was also catching up with a friend from school after like six years. And one of the things she asked me after we had talked about the rest of the world and where all we and everyone we knew had been all this while for an hour, was if I still dressed the same as in school time! Something tells me I should have studied a little less in the 1990s, and looked a little more after myself. I knew most of the good girls, I mean pretty or intelligent or both or plain desperate, more than liked me. But they all just stopped shy of something. I think I now know how my seemingly lousy style of dressing up killed those sweet love stories that could have been.

One of the two wonderful things I have to look forward to this year is staying in Delhi at least for the next year, doing a job job. I’ll tell you more as things roll on.

My folks deserted me on yet another vacation to the North-East end of the year. Not that I regret not making the trip. I think at times I just miss spending more time with them. Me and my emotional baggage!

Anyway, I haven’t quite figured out how, if at all that is, I’d like to change things about my life this year. I began the year visiting a Sai Temple and later praying to Radha-Kishan, Sita-Ram, Ganeshji and Thakurji, something I’ve never done before. I did not ask to be made a better person. That kind of objectivity is too difficult for even the Gods to understand. I had specifics in mind this time. Perhaps this way it’s easier to work for changes. Perhaps I must stop here and not ward you all of for the whole of this year. Have a good one my friends.

Conversational gaffes

• Top 10 irritating phrases
• 20 most hates cliches

So basically, I must be a horrible talker..!

Kids

Sabeer’s crying at this Microsoft wisecrack!

“We’ve designed Hotmail storage to grow with you, but at a reasonable pace. That means you should have plenty of storage unless you suddenly want to store the planet Jupiter on Hotmail, in which case we’ll send you a nice e-mail asking you to please not try to store planets on Hotmail (although gradual storage of planets, moons, and asteroids is ok).”

Either way, I like the new Hotmail.

The one where I ‘write’ write

I know. I’ve been a total ass these days. I realize that this space is not a Twitter substitute (OK OK. That’s the last thing about technology in this post!), nor is it the place to read your morning headlines. It’s a blog for fuck’s sake. Let me try to help this page regain some lost glory and attention.

If you are one to read news and breaking news online, not necessarily about dozen times a day like me, I suppose you do erroneously surf the Times of India’s website at times. And so if you have a keen eye, you would have noticed this minor addition to the tabs in the top right snippet corner, the section titled ‘HotKlix’. It demands nothing of your imagination and intelligence with respect to what the links could contain. The primary objective is to cater to the lecherous amongst us, very many by that classification and thus the revenue model is perfectly in place, so to barely preclude an anxious parent’s lawsuit against the obtrusive immorality being served on these pages, the smart guys throw in lots of popular and very relevant news items as well. It is anybody’s guess that once you actually land up on the website, Nicolas Sarkozy is nobody and Wall Street is nowhere while Kim Kardashian with the same size bust and butt is the person of the moment and the next moment. Right now, two of their four top headlines are about a $5 million bra (wonder by Jove!) and a sizzling hot desi model on the ramp.

I have also lately taken a fancy to reading quotes of all kinds from all sites. I wouldn’t hold back how I feel about it. I think it’s a very intelligent habit. I just have to try and remember some of them. Although I wonder if the authors just happened to say them in the middle of a conversation with a person nobody remembers or did they actually thought hard for hours or months about what to say when and to whom about what, with a singularity of purpose before sending a bunch to add to an ongoing compilation. If it was Shakespeare or Einstein then I’d understand: for one it was a job and the other had more brains than thousands of me combined. How they did it, doesn’t matter. It’s the other comparatively insignificant lot but significant in number I’m worried about. Basically, a thing I once said in passing that really made sense to one of you or cracked you up so nicely that you wished you had more holes in your body, could it ever graduate to a celebrated quote? Probably I’m all desperate to get famous, and clearly not in the right way(s).

I came home yesterday to find my sister reading ‘You are here’ by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan. Yes. Her. eM. The Compulsive Confessor. The girl with a blog that continues to raise eyes, among other things, you know. I mean who gets a tattoo marginally above her hip and puts a tantalizing digital display of that seductive art up on the web! With this tiny hint, I think it’s easier to understand why some publisher scrambled at her feet to put together a book with content right off her wildly famous blog. I must actually tell you how she once replied, yes, responded one-on-one to a comment I’d left on one of her posts. This was about the time when I’d just started my own blog and was heavily into randomizing on the Internet in search of people to blogroll and hence comment. I can also tell you how for that entire day I was aroused in a non-sexual sort of way. Such was/is the spell of the sorceress. Anyway, back then I was yet to meet any of the girls who would soon be my girlfriends, and Meenakshi was just too fascinating. Later however her bubble burst. I found her on an NDTV show, and what I saw would strongly tell me her life couldn’t possibly be as explosive as it sounds in print. I hope she finds me out someday and takes me for a reality check ride to Turquoise Cottage. I shall introduce the new Wills Classic Verve to her if she hasn’t smoked it already while she gulps her shots down and in her half-intelligent situation I would finally tell her how I think she’s outrageously overpriced.

Next week post Diwali I have a couple of my (still rich) investment banker pals from London and Hong Kong visiting. Yes I do have friends in all the right places. I see lots of good food and drinks in my immediate future. Plus lots of talking and talking of subprime and American accent and IIT and common friends and Chinese skin and living costs in England and girlfriends that are and that were and that could have been and that should have been and that could never be and that could still be.