Tag Archives: Raleigh

This is not a tag, and I’m not an ignoramus

For those of you who still are fooling around, this blog is still alive. The quiescent melancholy may make it seem otherwise, rendering it almost worthless, perhaps even depressing to those who love my blog (That would be just me, I guess!), but it is breathing nonetheless. And it will stay alive. But the only way I see to get my mojo back, is to hunt down whoever is running the new-age idiot boxes called Facebook and Twitter and kick their ass into oblivion. FB and Twitter have essentially killed the little skill I had in writing and confined me to one-liners and wordplays. To top it all, I tend to go overboard with wordplay that I make the world pay!

The safe (and usual) way when one can’t think about anything to blog, is to dust off some old tag and take it up with some utterly useless facts. A generally futile attempt at a comeback, it at least gives a signal that the blog is not abandoned. For example, “25 things I have done which made me look like an idiot” or “What am I doing right now”. I always wished to say “I’m giving a flying fart” to the latter one. It is fun to see disgusted looks in the faces of people. I get it.. but that’s indeed what I’ll be doing because if I don’t reply to that tag, that means I don’t give a flying fart about the tag.

Anyway, getting back to tagging, I feel it is the most unimaginative form of blogging. I’ve done it several times. That was because I was not being real. To quote a certain buji (Short for “Buddhi Jeevi” or intellectual(duh!) ) from NITC, I was playing around with equations in the realm of complex numbers.

So I am not going to take up a tag here. I won’t, until I start behaving like an imbecile and go against my words. So let me think about what I can write here…

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing!

I can think of nothing! It is a well known fact that I’m a literary ignoramus (Some people even say I’m just an ignoramus, literary or not, but that is debatable!). I have forgotten almost all the 3500 tough words in English from Barron’s which I mugged for my GRE. Hmm.. wait. I just figured that I remember “imbecile” and “ignoramus”, as is evident from the last couple of sentences.

So, since I can’t think of anything else, I’ll say something about what is going on in my life. It is boring, and it stinks, because I’m in deep shit right now. I don’t have a job (Heyy! Wait a minute! It is not because I’m an ignoramus. It is because the economy is fucked up!), I don’t have a life.. I don’t know what is happening to me.

What I have are an amazing family, and some amazing friends, that I forget all my woes. Little nuggets which don’t seemingly do anything useful – the incessant rain in Kerala… my mom trying to run when she passes by a nagging neighbor’s house… my dad trying to outsmart my mom during their morning walk… my brother’s silly complaints about his life in Bangalore… his switch from Telugu to Mandarin… my uncle annoying me and my aunt by showing the big sign in “The Hyatt Place” which is black or white depending of the time of the day, every single time we pass by that road… teaching my cousin how to make dal, when I myself don’t know how… gossips about V6… coming up with new nicknames for V6… gossips about me… some people saying they will commit suicide if a deserving guy like me don’t get a job… missing 1729D, Poker, Bamboo Garden, Pan-fried Paneer, Sammy’s Tap and Grill, and inane discussions with V6, the technically challenged girl (TCG) and the Green Dutch.

These little nothings in fact do much more than the somethings. What is life without real people in it, right? People who never fail to bring a smile to your face. Many of my friends too are going through tough phases in their life. Hope is all that is keeping us alive. The hope that good things will happen to good people eventually. That, and being there for each other!

How I broke into my own apartment

Shit happens to everyone. In my case, shit happens once too often. And when it comes, it comes not like a tide, but like a tsunami. As they say, when it rains, it pours.. (I’m not sure whether they mean the metaphor in the good sense or the bad..but whatever)

So, it seemed that fate got bored today and recalled it hadn’t played its cruel game with me for some time now. I got myself locked out of my apartment despite my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with doors. However, probably because fate was nice to a certain individual whom I threatened to drag along with me on my troubled journey, the incident was not as dramatic as my earlier trysts with unwarranted trouble. But it is definitely worth mentioning.

It all seemed to be another mundane day just like any of the days this week, partly because I really don’t have anything to do apart from hunting for a job, now that I graduated. The previous day, I had decided to start watching Lost. I started right from Season 1, which thankfully was in Hulu. After a marathon session of 5 episodes yesterday night, I woke up pretty late today morning. But I couldn’t help but watch another episode in the morning, so I quickly rushed down to get some cornflakes, and then started watching Lost Season 1 Episode 6. After that, I did my morning round of job applications, then decided I’ll clean the kitchen and throw out the trash. Yes.. Cleaning is my way of taking a time out.. (But I clean my own stuff, so don’t ask me to clean your apartment!)

I had trash bags in both hands. I was too lazy to climb up to get my wallet, which has the house key. I thought, the dumpster is just nearby; I’ll just turn the latch on the knob so that the door remains unlocked. I have this OCD of checking like 10 times if a door is locked whenever I leave anywhere. This time it was just that I checked if the knob was rotating from outside like a 10 times, before closing it. I quickly dropped off the trash and returned back, thinking that I will take a bath now and cook some delicious food. To my horror (yes.. I get horrified even if this happens to me time and again), the door knob was not turning. I was locked out!

Now I was in a real tricky situation. The door won’t open. My key was inside the apartment. Of the three people who had keys to the apartment, one had gone to India, one to Seattle and one was in Welcome, NC, about 2 hrs drive from my place. My cellphone was inside. My wallet was inside. I didn’t have a car. I was in a creased tee and shorts, hadn’t taken bath, had a stubble of 3 days on my face, an oily face and ruffled hair. I was like a homeless!

How did the door get locked despite me checking so many times? I kept wondering. The first thought which came to my twisted mind was that some thief saw me stepping out and jumped in to steal my stuff. He might’ve locked it after he escaped with my stuff. I said to myself, “Yeah right.. That’s one courteous thief who locks the door behind him when leaving. Use your brain, moron!” So I ruled out that possibility. (Well! Not completely, as you will know soon!)

I tried my luck with the back door, but that was obviously locked, so I couldn’t open it. Panicking, my next step was to call Srikanth, who was the nearest person with the keys. For that I needed two things: his number, and a cellphone to make the call. I needed a savior. Of course, there was my savior and friend extraordinaire right opposite to my apartment. I rang the doorbell of Lakshmi’s apartment, mentally listing out my course of action, starting with using her cellphone. I heard the turning of some latch for a second. Something was wrong! Generally they secure their door with like 20 locks and keys, so I always hear turning of latches for about 5 seconds before they open the door. Their door is like a safe. Anyway nothing was wrong other than she thinking that I was not in a presentable state to be let in (:P). I said it was an emergency, and she finally let me in.

I told her what happened, and being the nice person she is, she offered to take me all the way to get the key and back. “Oh yeah.. she does have a car”, I remembered. I was visibly tense, because I think she asked me about 8-10 times to sit down, but I didn’t sit down. I kept wondering if the thief was still hiding in my apartment, locking it from inside (even more ridiculous!),  so I kept peering through her window towards my apartment in the hope that I could catch the thief when he comes out. She made me some Bournvita, and narrated everything to her roommate, Priyanka. Priyanka, with her Gujju brains, came up with the idea of trying to pick the lock with a hair pin. I recalled that I’ve opened some doors using credit cards. So equipped with a hair pin and a credit card, we headed back to my apt. If we could avoid the 4 hour journey, it would be great. Would I get lucky in my misery?

We tried the card first. But the door was too tight for the card to fit in. Then we took turns and tried with the hairpin. Priyanka must’ve thought “What a geek!”, because I managed to wise-crack about how the tumblers inside the key work, and how lock-picking works, in the middle of all this. Alas! But knowledge is not everything, because both of us failed. I started contemplating the inevitable, when another group of friends saw us and came to check what the deal was. Don (Or was it Mavila?) suggested trying to slide the windows. If we are lucky enough, they might be unlocked. Sure enough, the kitchen window was unlocked. It was a tiny one, but I managed to climb into the kitchen. By that time, Priyanka had figured that the front window too was unlocked, and had climbed in through there.

Thus, I broke into my own apartment. I was in cloud nine. Lakshmi was also glad that she didn’t have to drive all the way and back. Yes! There was this small worry that we had forgotten to latch our windows, so any thief could have easily climbed in all these days. But it ultimately saved my day.

I mean, it could’ve been a lot worse

  • The windows would all have been latched in which case we would have had to make that 2+2=4 hour journey.
  • Suspicious neighbors could have called the cops when they saw us trying to break in
  • My apartment could have been on the second floor, in which case I would have needed a ladder to climb in through the window.

We decided to have a lunch outside together. I didn’t bother changing. I asked Lakshmi if I look okay to go outside.
She said, “You look a beggar”.
“A happy beggar”, I said to myself.


The case of sunglasses

This is a story about sunglasses, and their high profile life in the Indian society.

Now seriously!
Sunglasses have a very high importance in India. They are regarded as the ultimate level of machismo in Indian circles. At least that’s what I have figured. I will attempt to present my point with some events, during the course of which I may refer to some anonymous faces, which may be recognizable by at least a few people reading this. I will not tell the names here.

I have owned sunglasses for quite some time, but rarely used them in India because of two reasons primarily, the more important one of which I will talk about later. The lesser of the reasons is that I started wearing contact lens only 2 years back, while I have worn glasses since my 4th. I thought of it as rather a nuisance to carry two pair of glasses, and switching back and forth whenever I was outside or inside a building.

A few weeks after I came to NCSU for my studies, a friend told me, “Every Tom, Dick and Harry wears a sunglass here”. I mean, what’s the big deal? Why does someone wearing a sunglass stand out in the eyes of an Indian? I am at a loss to answer why. But I think I know how.

I consider sunglasses more as a convenience than a style statement. The vast majority of Indians think exactly the other way around. What they don’t understand, is the very fact that it is an useful item. I wear sunglasses when it is sunny, because that’s what sunglasses are for. I wear sunglasses when it is snowing, because studies have shown that a great deal of UV is reflected off the snow, and it is always a good idea to wear sunglasses.

A friend of mine once asked whether I was wearing sunglasses to show off.
When I gave my reasoning, he mocked me in the typical style only a Malayalee can talk in, “As if you wore sunglasses your whole life. You didn’t bother about UV and dust and other stuff while you were in India. You started wearing only after coming to US.” Most Malayalees have this bad habit of making fun of people who break convention. I remember another guy asking me to pick up littered newspapers on the road after I wrote this. Being a Malayalee myself, it is sad to see that most are a bunch of hypocritical 2 year olds who refuse to grow up.

Coming back to the case of sunglasses, the answer for that is the bigger, more important reason. It is better explained by the fact that even in US, when I freely wear sunglasses whenever it is bright outside, any known Indian face I meet on the way will make a comment about my sunglasses. “Bada cool dikh raha hai yaar”
Why don’t they leave my poor sunglasses alone? They are a pair of dilapidated old glasses, which have been mutilated more than once, including me sitting on a bag with them inside, and then having to bend the frame back to its normal shape. It is not worth $5 in craigslist. I don’t wear them because I want to look cool. I wear them because I don’t want to squint. I would have worn it in India too, if not for the reason that there would be 100 Indians instead of 10 that I would meet in the course of a day. It once even went to the point that a girl who was introduced to me one evening identified me. She said, “I saw you today morning, wearing sunglasses and all.” Believe me, at the very second, I was like “Why am I even talking to her?”, not because she made fun of me, but because of the hint that I was being pompous.

Now, imagine the horror of wearing sunglasses in India, if this was the case with a handful of Indian diaspora in US. You will have a hundred eyes thrust upon you wherever you go. And hundred is not an exaggeration because India is so populous, it is not difficult to find hundred people in a course of 1 mile.

My thesis that most Indians wear sunglasses only when they have to show off is cemented by a fact which you can notice if you are an Indian. I have seen countless Indians take out their precious Ray Ban from the closet, and polish them spick-and-span, whenever they are going on a vacation. In short, for them, they are meant to be worn only when you are going on a holiday. This has happened in my trip with my friends in US last summer too. I have never seen them wear sunglasses otherwise. Heck, I have even seen one photo in Facebook, where there was a guy who put his normal glasses on his head, then put on a pair of sunglasses on his eyes.. all just to pose for a holiday photo. (Deductive reasoning.. The fact that there are two glasses on his head suggests that it was an impromptu decision.)

To conclude, I will mention a funny incident that Kunal told us. He was talking about the accent of some people in Delhi. You will be standing by the roadside. They come with leather jacket and expensive aviator sunglasses. Then they ask in unrefined Hindi, “Bhaisaab. Tame kya hua?” (Sir, what’s the time? And he *does* say “tame” for “time”) You will literally be shocked if you weren’t from Delhi. That is because seeing the sunglasses, you would not have expected crass language from him. That’s how stereotyped sunglasses are.

The fact is that if you wear sunglasses, it will attract the attention of every single Indian in sight, whether you want it or not. Whether it is a constructive one or a destructive one, is completely out of your hands. The only choice you have is whether to be a robot or an alien.

It is one of the idiosyncrasies of an Indian.
Welcome to Incredible India!

More Evil Laughs

Well.. I got so obsessed with my own poor jokes that I dug them out from old tweets and FB status messages.. so here’s more…

1.
SS: Why didn’t you come to the Halloween party?
Me: I was there.
SS: Oh really, what costume?
Me: The Invisible Man

2.
Me (after the MAITRI Diwali night): The name MAITRI (NCSU Indian Grad Student Assoc.) makes sense. By charging $3 for the party, they are making me part with MY THREE dollars.

3.
(Not exactly what transpired, but this version is better)
My mom: Kiran bought a car. That’s huge!!!
Me: You mean, like a Limo?

4.
Obama snatched the Nobel Prize from me.. Now I’m gonna try for the No-Whistle prize.

5.
Q: Which is the favorite day of the year for environmentalists?
A: St.Patricks Day. Because it is totally green.

6.
FB status: I saw her. I felt that the force was strong with that one. It indeed was! Now I have five fingers engraved on my cheek! God! I should stop watching Star Wars!

7.
Me: I see two hot chicks in front of KFC, and the first thought that comes to my mind is “Oh boy! They are in a dangerous neighborhood. They may get caught and fried!”

8.
Me: What if a house stands right through a timezone border in US? Will half of the house be 1 hour ahead of the other half?

9.
FB Status: Facebook suggested “Wed at 12:24 pm”. I thought, “Okay. Do I at least get to know who I’m gonna wed?” Then I realized it meant Wednesday!

10.
Me: I was wondering…. Saas sans saans is just a dead mother-in-law.

Muhahahah!

I think I have a sense of humour. It’s just that some people call it good and some people call it bad.
Sometimes I crack the lamest of jokes (Yes I know!) but you should give me some credit, because I have had the history of humiliating other self-proclaimed PJs by simply dominating over them (whenever I’m on a roll, that is).

So, just for the record.. just to prove that my jokes are actually good.. just to make you regret calling me a bad joker.. here’s a mashup of bad jokes, good jokes, puns and (as some people call it) being a jerk, which I cracked out of spontaneity, and can now recall.
I am so sorry folks, but you unleashed this onto yourselves. You called me bad.

Note: Some names have been changed for anonymity, or because I had no idea who that was.

1.
ARN: Kate is hot. But I think Megan is hotter.
Me: Yeah… Megan is like Kate in an oven.

2.
DAG: I just had 2 shots of Vodka and I got high.
PS: What? It is not called “getting high”. You don’t get high on drinking alcohol.
Me: Yes you will. If you are on the second floor while drinking, you are about 10 feet high above the ground.

3.
Me: Why do we have smelly feet and runny nose? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

4.
Me: There are two types of Bengalis in the world – Sen’s and Non-Sen’s

5.
Me: I think the Danish people actually immigrated from West Bengal.
ARN: Why? (Making an expression of regret that he prompted, the very next second)
Me: Because everyone’s name ends with a Sen in Denmark.

6.
Me: Women make men complete! On second thought, Raymonds suit also does!

7.
Malayalam
———
Ge: ഞാന്‍ പിന്നിട്ട വഴികളിലേക്ക് തിരിഞ്ഞു നോക്കുമ്പോള്‍
Me: നിന്നോട് ആരാടാ വഴിയില്‍ pin ഇടാന്‍ പറഞ്ഞത്? അത് ആരുടെയെങ്കിലും കാലില്‍ തറചാലോ?

That’s all I can remember now. I hope some of you enjoyed them, but my real satisfaction will come when some of you bang your head against the wall out of frustration. This list will grow in future.

Anger Management

How often do you keep your cool when some stranger hits in your head with a rolled booklet? Have you ever had such experience at all? I did! A couple of days back! And I totally kept my cool!

This happened at the career fair. After standing in long queues, I got tired and came back to the lobby to have a seat. Ahh. The plush comfort of the couch! What can be more satisfying than having a coke in a couch? Apparently, checking my email was ! So I took my iPod touch out and started reading email.

Suddenly someone hit me on my head. I was startled for a moment. I quickly looked up to see which of my pestering friends it was, but to my further surprise, it was a total stranger. She froze for a moment. I had a temptation to shout “Someone call 911. I’m being attacked!” in typical Deepak-style. But I thought there were way too many people there, and someone might panic.

Anyway, after the moment of shock sunk in, the lady started apologizing to me. Apparently, the top view of my head looked like that of someone she knew. I was looking down as I was reading email, so my face apparently was not that visible. The only thing I felt about the whole “mishap” was amusement. Now, that was interesting. Because, had this happened 5 years back, I would have been real angry… even if it was a stranger.

There used to be a time when I used to get angry very easily. I used to scare away a great deal of people, who thought that I was not worthy of their friendship because I was rude. But only I knew that I was not rude. It was just… I would get angry very fast.  But as if to counter that shortcoming, I never ever held a grudge against anyone. I would forget that in a matter of hours.

I have become better and better at curbing my anger, since my undergraduate days, and although I haven’t rooted it out yet, I can be happy that the last time I got angry at anyone was several months ago. There have been three key people who have helped me get better at controlling my rage.

Deepu Chandran, who has been a great friend of mine, even after I did this to him. He has advised me a great deal on the need to remain calm, and how to do it.

My father, who I consider an epitome of calmness. I have never seen him get angry in his life. (Although he acts like he is angry sometimes, for example, when he doesn’t get food on time, he is a really bad actor.)

Thirdly, my mother, who is a good example that you can control your anger if you try hard. Recalling my childhood days, I remember that she used to be really short tempered. But nowadays, I would say she can give my dad a run for his money. She once said that one important thing in keeping your anger at bay was to not attach yourself to anything materialistic.

I have understood through the course of time how important is it to prevent yourself from getting angry. Anger, as I know it, doesn’t help in anything productive. It only lengthens the distance between two people. It doesn’t ease your tension. It doesn’t free your mind. It is an unnecessary and potentially dangerous vestige of human nature. I strive to be free of anger all the time.

Looking at this incident, I’m sure I have improved a lot. I was initially apprehensive about whether I was just not showing my anger because it was a stranger or because it was a girl. But I asked myself, if I was angry inside, about the incident, and the answer was “Not at all!”

It snowed!

It seemed a normal enough day today, when I went out to the bus stop just outside my apartment to catch the “Greek Village” bus to my work. It was 12.30pm. The temperature was around 40 F(5 C) when I last checked.

I went out. It was really colder compared to yesterday. I had to wear my gloves to save my palms from getting numb. There was the familiar and boring whoosh sound as cars and trucks sped by.

Then it suddenly turned into a dreamland. A hint of something white! What looked like tiny cotton pieces falling from thin air! It was snowing!

This was the first snowfall I have witnessed in my life; I was beaming, and I could keep my composure well within limits, although I did that Bill Murray-ish strut, which was a visible indication that I was so excited. I have never been happier in several months. So I just decided to share my happiness with my poor blog, which I have been neglecting since I started my grad studies.

I couldn’t take a video of this historic moment, but history will repeat itself, so I’ll take a video and post it the next time it snows.

Now, I have a tag from the one and only Miladysa – a tag called Random & Weirdly Meme. It is a bit weird that I keep getting tags about weird things everytime, but everyone is allowed to be weird once or twice, so it is not really weird to be weird.

The rule is to share 7 facts about yourself – some random, some weird.

#1 – I saw snow for the first time in my life today. (What else were you expecting as first fact?)

#2 – One of my favorite hobbies while in school was inventing nicknames with my cousin to bully my younger brother. I can remember about 20 different names from the top of my head now, but I’m sure there were more. My favorite one must be NKVKMKM, which had a very interesting full form. I won’t disclose it here.

#3 – I used to steal buttermilk from the refrigerator as a kid. The habit hasn’t died till date. Even today, I prefer drinking buttermilk when nobody’s watching.

#4 – I scored an almost high 28 on an online Asperger Syndrome test, but I don’t believe it.

#5 – I am really (unbelievably) bad at Cricket. I can’t play well, and I don’t follow cricket.

#6 – I’ve been using the same wrist watch for 11 years now. And I don’t even like it.

#7 – Weekends in Raleigh are boring because I don’t have a car, and there’s no public transit on weekends.

Now tagging 7 people is the part I don’t like. So I tag everyone who reads this. 😛