Blame it on the movies.

::

Again, long ago, once upon a time.

Must be my fourth standard. I heard this announcement in class, that they are starting to teach Karate in school. Well.. I was this skinny guy, hardly had any tissue which can be legally called a 'muscle', was a bit short, and I was normally bullied by every tom dick and that guy who passed my way. Karate seemed to be a good option, as I was seeking revenge of all sorts. 

I dont know how I managed to get the permission, but I did join in. So, I became one of the senior guys by the time I reached 9th. In fact, only four of us seniors continued, making me one of the four senior guys, with a higher belt. Needless to say, I was still bullied, this time by my fellow senior guys (who had the same belt as me in Karate, but were one year senior to me in terms of class), because they were better in size and built. And when we had to fight, I was normally on the receiving side.

I never had a problem with that, until that fateful day. 

About 6 girls (yeah, beautiful girls) of my class joined for Karate. 

Which means I will have to teach them when our sensei (teacher) is late. And suddenly I (along with others) started to come early, started to train harder. I started to spend more time in front of the mirror, checking frequently for any trace of the aforementioned tissue. Sigh. So did others. 

And when we had to fight, they became more ferocious, and I ended up with having a better stock of pain balms. 

And then, one fine day, I decided something. I might have got the motivation from some stupid films those days. There were a lot of movies were this thin, poor chap will get beaten up in the beginning and then something happens and the poor chap will have the revenge. Like in Rocky. 

So with all the spirits, I went straight ahead and challenged mr R for the fight that day. We even had a bet. I proclaimed proudly, that I would win this time.

Came evening. Fighting comes in the end. 

Me: Sir, can we have the fight now??

Sensei : No, not today. may be next day.

Me: No, We want one today. I want it with R.

Sensei (Surprised) : You sure??

Me: Yes.

Sweet thoughts of me bashing up Mr R flashed through my mind. Images of the six beautiful girls admiring my fighting skills. Possibility of one of them having a cush on me, and then..

Ajumen !!

That was the call to start the fight. 

We took our positions, I had a look at him, and as I was about to plan my first move, 

There I was, on the ground.

A round kick, straight on my jaw.

it took three days for me to talk normally.Since then, i refuse to be motivated from stupid movies.

:D

::

Aah. Tequila.

::

(I am really, really drunk. I have no clue what i might write. readd at your own risk.)

I still cannot believe myself. I opted out of the free rum and whiskey and dinner at Chancery Pavilion, and rushed down to purple haze. For some reason, I had this excessive craving for Margarita and chicken Spring rolls since morning. And when they started off with the dinner session at the conference, I took of to good ol Purple Haze at Koramangala. I took my usual table, and asked for Margarita. I took a look at the  DJ. Wrong guy. The guy I hate.  

As expected, stupid song. Stupid songs. We have very few places where they play calssic rock in bangalore, and Purple Haze is one of them. Named after the classic song from Jimi Hendrix. Funny, they play jimi rarely.

Things are changing, and these days kids believe rock is all about thrash metal and death metal. They believe loud music is heavy metal. I see stupid men with long hair and throat vocals on the LCD. Its all this guy plays. 

Sigh. They dont play thin lizzy. no Lynrd skynrd. No grateful dead. No Blue oyster cult. No Led Zeppelin. No Stevie ray vaughan. No Satriani. No aerosmith. 

And then the guy brought in a Mojito. 

Did I say Mojito?? Anyway, I took a deep sip, sipped in as much as I can, and then, called the guy and asked for my Margarita. :)

I was missing a lot of things. I was missing the kind of music they once used to play. I am badly missing my hair. I am missing a girl. I have a regular table here, but the chair on the other side was always empty. 

I have no idea how much i drank. I had a walk back home, and I logged in. I rushed past the insignificant mails. I checked the blogs i read these days. I saw the thanks giving post by CD. was happy to see my name in there.  I checked my blog and hated the banner. I have no idea why i chose that one. I need a new banner. I need my hair. I need new underwear. I should start wearing glasses as the doc says. I shuld stop drinking. Maybe I should drink just red wine. or may be not. May be I should sleep. May be I should talk to someone. May be I am getting crazy. May be it is the tequila. It cant be the spring roll. It cannot be the waiter. 

aah. 

I miss my hair. I miss shampooing it. I miss drying it out. I miss NOT mending it. I miss asking rubber bands to girls.I miss the funny look on their faces when I ask them.

Yeah. Thats me. Withe the hair. and beside me are my sisters kids. They are planning something. Beware. 

Tequila makes me miss things. 

Whiskey makes me fall in love.

Rum makes me philosophical.

I dont drink brandy.

Wine makes me feel healthy

Beer makes me sing.

Vodka slowed down an important muscle (Read very very important :D) of mine. I have stopped drinking vodka since then. 

Gin did nothing. 

I dont have money to buy champagne. 

I feel i am dozhing off. I hope i hit the publlish bitton. 

::

The night that should have been.

::

A few stars glimmered. Faint traces of thick black clouds covered up the already faded moon light. He stood still. Staring at the different shades of black. As the day calls it, what is left, are shades of black. Below his feet stood the depths of the cliff. Below his heart stood the shadows of the past. Below his eyes stood the images of the new found meaninglessness. Below his mind, lied emptiness, not longing to be filled in. 

His head refused to look up. Somehow, he felt comfortable looking down. The voices of the past did upset him. The voices of the future haunted him. And he was deaf in the present. A thousand whispers asked him to do a thousand things. A thousand hands refused to show up. A thousand eyes shut themselves. A thousand hearts refused to beat.

The cliff of unknown depth showed up, as the clouds below cleared up. All he need to do is to have another step. 

And then, I woke up.

::

Yeah. Blame it on the TV

::

Long long ago, once upon a time. There lived the great me and my friend.

I was lean, @ about 50 Kg, funny hair, he was not lean, not fat either, curly hair, glasses, very fair.

So It was night, about 12, and I was watching late night TV. And that was when I got his call over the land phone.

he : "We will go to black thunder now".

me: "Now??"

he : yeah

me: "Why now? we will reach there by 5, and they wont be open till 10."

he:  "Yeah I know that

me:  "So you are watching late night tv too. "

he:  "hi hi"

me: Will go in the morning.

he: alright.

For those who dont know, Black thunder is a water amusement park @ coimbatore, which is about a 5 hour drive from my place. A couple of week back, wrt the date of the above conversation, we were there, and yes, there was a good collection of the female species in wet outfits.

So we started. Woke up early. Scared my parents. They never saw me wake up this early. I dont remember what i told them, but that was not an age when I could tell my mom I was going to an amusement park to see girls in wet outfits.

Yes. We were there at last. That was when we realised we did not take anything with us. Not even an extra pair of dress. Not even a hand kerchief.

So I bought this cheap shorts. I tried changing, and that was when it tore up, showing up a  significant portion of my underwear. I dont remember How I managed that, I might have bought another one.

And we went out. We were too early, and there was no much people around. We started to climb up simple, uncomplicated rides.

And then it happened. Well. It was raining men. Not just men. Men from sabarimala. All in black. Men in black.

Scores of them. straight from pampa, to take a dip at black thunder. I thought they take a dip in the holy rivers. Most of them had not seen water since ages. Why, why today??

Damn. No a girl in sight. well yes. there is one. And she is with her husband, I guess.

We ended up at the games center, and both of us are good in spending money or stupid, useless things. We gamed our way to glory, and spending about 500 bucks, we did win something. I remember it was a tweety bird look alike bird/animal/something/, about the size of an index finger.

We changed, and we came back.

I have stopped watching late night programs since then.

::

The species called women.

::

I continuously fail to understand them. I would love to hate them, but I have realized it is difficult to survive without them.

Well. Last time i cracked a joke about women drivers, the girl who sat next to me ate my ear. She hit me wherever she could. She  belonged to this category called 'Feminists.' The category who I hate pretty well. The ideologies which i refuse to accept at any cost.

I find women very complicated. I dont have much issues in designing a complex circuit and writing a firmware for anything. I am sometimes good in negotiating complicated issues. But I fail to get along well with a girl. Things start well, goes for sometime, and 'ends up bad.

I was once having this very casual talk with this girl. We talked about a lot of things, and bang. I cracked a very simple, non offensive, non vulgar, joke about her domain, and there she was. She would not talk to me again that day.

And this girl. We were casual friends. We talked on phone every weekend, or twice a week, we mail once in a while, and things were fine. Then. She disappeared. She would reject my calls, and she wont reply. I still have no clue what happened.

And things went on. As life moved on, the perspective has changed. The way I looked at girls has changed. There was times when I was curious, there was an age, when i looked at them as someone from another planet. I could not understand them much. That thing has not changed a bit. I still cant understand them. I still cannot understand what offends them, what does not.

I hate them when they keep me waiting at the boutique.

I hate them when they ask me to buy them smokes.

I hate them when they cant wait.

I hate them when they play the weaker sex ploy at their discretion

I hate them, when they drive at 30kmph at the middle of the road, and will not move to the left so that i can pass.

I hate them when they cant walk at all.

well. the list goes on.

All said and done. I have to admit I cannot live without them around. I love them when they are around. I love them when they make me feel wanted. I respect them when they do things i cant. I admire them when i see them fight and make their living.

I have no clue if I feel the same as time pass by. I do not believe I will ever understand them. I dont have to, either. I just need to learn to accept people the way they are. I guess cutting down on my ego might help, but then, it is close to impossible for a hard core Arian.

::

PS: this is not about me hating women. I do not hate them. But i do hate the concepts of feminism. I believe women has the right to do what men do.

The Engineer Evolution

::

I am here at this Symposium. They teach you about the  (read market) new Microprocessors in the market. I had this invitation, because i have registered with them before. Since it was free and also since i love to work with microprocessors, i dropped in. And yes, the free buffet lunch. 

Hundreds of engineers in different sizes and shapes have joined in. Some of them in suit, some of them in casuals, some of them with a huge pot belly, some with hair, some without any hair. i could see the IT evolution cycle. 

The unsure freshers, most of them thin, and with humble looks on their face. Trying to adjust their posture to a very humble one to every 'big shot' who came in. The freshers, most of them terrified/excited by the posh ambiance, continued to press the click button at every amusing frame of image that came by. They are the innocent lot, who is about to be pushed into this mold of next generation techies. 

The next lot in the mixture are the ones, a bit bigger than the freshers. They seem to be serious than the freshers, they have this firm belief that they know a lot. They refuse to smile, they refuse to mix. They will be mostly seen in conference sessions raring to ask insignificant questions. One of these guys even asked a question in a session even as the presenter has just completed his first two sentences of the session. Needless to say, he asked about oranges while the talk was about strawberry. They will be normally dressed in strict formals, they carry the smartest phones, and will be using them in an interval of about 3 minutes. Well, I saw one of them using it while he was taking a leak. No, idiot, i did not peek in. I just saw. :P

The freshers will graduate to this category, in about two years. You can notice the difference by looking at the pot belly, and the amount of fat on the face. It wont be a bit too much, but it will definitely be noticeable than the freshers. vocabulary starts to trim down. 

Here comes the team leads/managers. Mustache, for most of them. Serious, yes, But, they have this look on their face which says they believe they run the place. The pot belly has graduated. So has the hairline. They can be seen dominating the stalls, strongly suggesting their products are better then yours. (Yes, the mine is bigger than yours ploy) Most of them are married by now, and you can see that right on their face. So you can see this 'I am the boss' attitude tuned down a bit less , possibly due to the fairer sex at home. They are half way down the mold. 

The top bosses. They can be seen in a suit. They cannot look to th right or to the left, or down. They have a selected set of vocabulary. 'leverage', 'scalability', 'driven', 'figures', 'quarter' etc are the most common and only words they use. They are You will see them using their phones only once or twice, but you neither see them long enough.

Well. Misfit, i was. 

I represent my small single man consultancy, I continuously fail to understand the corporate way of putting things. I have never worked under anyone. I do small things to make my living. I work when i feel like working. I had refused to go down the mold. That way, I refused a fair share of money I could have easily made. On a rethink, I know I would have never been happy that way. I refuse to make what they recommend. I refuse to live most of my life in a office. I ended up with my own ways, my own vocabulary, and my own vision of life. Neither of them are great. But I still have mine with me. 

The price for a free mind, is real expensive. And as years go by, the price is shooting up. 

The wishlist.

I realised I do have a wishlist/bucket list buried deep inside me. (courtesy the movie in that name)I dug in, and here it is.

1) Antartica. I need to be there.
2) Learn to use a parachute.
3) Inter - National Drive in my car.
4) Around the world in a hot air balloon.
5) Go under sea in a submarine.
6) Take PPL
7) Design my own satellite
8) Win at any International robotic games. (My previous attempts failed miserably :D)
9) Visit at least 40 countries.
10) Live ONE day, without any  issues bugging my mind.

Well. I need to find a very rich girl to get married to.
As to why she should marry me, is another question.

::

All in the name of being a human

::

Every lines bearing the thoughts
of a women being alone
see the never love kiss
dark shades of the loyal

can the memory fade
will i ever feel the warmth
of the no where love creeping
 no where lust of desire

can I live my life
just holding on to my soul
my heart to soul,
my life to dream
just in the name of being.

Aah. Dates.

::
I got hell lot of work to do. And thats the only time when i love the breaks.
Thats when rediff comes out with another stupid thing, an article on how to impress your date.
Interesting. They should have written this many years back.
http://www.rediff.com/getahead/slide-show/slide-show-1-specials-tips-for-a-first-date/20101111.htm

Well. Been a long time since I took someone for a date, and I do not think I even want to take one these days. But looking at it. I guess would normally do what the writer ask you not to.

I shall call the writer DE (Date expert)

1) Right venue!! DE says not to go to a pub or a bar. 
Well. I just cannot think of any place other than the above two. Restaurant? No way.

2) Making the right conversation. Damn. 
There is a huge list as to what not to talk. Seems like I will have to print this in small size and then refer it every time I start the conversation. Or may be I should learn how to use those fancy mobile phones I hate like anything. I guess they will surely have these features to filter things.

3) Dress appropriately. Double damn.
I am normally seen in this t shirt, never ironed, and in my shorts, or in my jeans. I am sometimes seen in my running shoes, or mostly in my bathroom slippers. I wear them to hotels, I wear them at my office (Me being boss- no one dare ask a question :D) and I wear them when somebody drops in for an interview. I wear them when I go for long drives, I wear them when I go for parties.  Well. I cannot dress different for a girl. No way.

4) Manners. oh. 
Well. I remember my first date when I ate up almost twice as the girl ate. Well. I am a known glutton. I normally do not scratch my butt or poke a finger in my nose when someone is around. But. I do dart for the last chicken wing. I believe in eating up everything.

5) Dont try too hard. The DE says do not exaggerate.
I have no idea if I do. Sometimes I do, I guess. But these days, its quite the opposite. I keep pushing myself low.

6) Dont be too Judgmental, says the DE.
Well. I will have to. I do not mind a date being messed up for many reasons. But I cannot accept lies. I cannot accept a girl trying to be someone she is not. I hate the girls who says 'achooda' and 'chweet' and is all Bollywood. I would love it if the girl can be on her own, do her things and can survive alone.

7) Similar to point 6.


8) Dont bring up the ex. 
 I will not. But if the girl asks, I will. But unfortunately I dont have much to tell much against her, as I was the reason why it broke up. :D

9) The DE asks me to read the signals, as if things are going fine. 
I wished I have that ability. As to know if the girl is interested. Only if it was as easy as reading voltage in a meter. All you have to do is to plug in two wires on either of her ears/forehead and the digital display will show the percentage. ! Well. I guess I will settle down for the handshake. No. Not the handshake. But not the kiss. May be a hug. Yes. Hug is better. Or may be if the signal is too weak, I shall wave the hand.

10) Follow up.
Well. I never do. I wait for the girl to put the first step.

Just As I believe. Dates are too complicated. I am better in making robots and sky watching with telescopes and in driving the car. Good ol car. Here I come. We got a long way to go.
::

That One ride.

::

I badly, badly want to travel.

Yes, I am getting old. I cannot hitch hike the way I used to. I used to take the first train, take a full ticket and get down where ever I felt like. I used to walk, I used to sleep at the railway platforms. I loved them better than a ride in the cab. I could feel the people, I could feel the soul. 

Am sick these days and I dont think i can be that adventurous as I used to. But I have made up my mind. I am taking the good ol Maruti 800 on this trip. All India trip. I have charted the route. that sums up to about 15,000 Km and touching almost all states except some of them in the east. I badly want to make it to Arunachal, but my friend in the Army at Assam Rifles say common people take the chopper normally as the roads are, a bit non existent.

15,000 Km means a month. well. A MONTH.

I guess I have to take this trip at any cost. Should get back the fire I have long lost. C'mon dumpo, you are not that old as you think you are. Like they say, you are just 18 with 12 years of experience !! :D:D

GRR.

::

Yes.
It is true. I am drunk.
it been some time since i was drunk. This drunk.
When i say I am drunk, it either means I cannot drive fast, or that I have taken more than a liter of whiskey or vodka or martini or rum, or the simple fact that i will not have an erection right now even if the best of the beauties come in naked, or that i am completely out of my senses that i will want to delete what i have written in my blogs the morning after now.

Sadly, i never edit my blogs except for silly spelling or grammar mistakes. I simply write them straight into the blog text box, irrespective of the toxins that transverse my brain.

I badly wanted to write something when  left the bar. I reached home less intoxicated, thanks to the wind and the fruit juice.

I just wanted to say some thing to some people who has been important in my life. and some who has been comparatively less important. Being a male with a huge ego, i normally refuse to acknowledge man things i know i should.

To my real sis. If she is reading this.

I know it took 29 years to understand you. I have no idea how to behave like a normal bro, because i have never did that in my life, even though we shared the same house for more than 23 years.  But just because i dont know how to behave doesnt mean I do not  have the feeling. I will be there. 

To Sh
I wished things were different between us. Things has been good while it was. Me and you cannot delete the past. things have to move on.


To A.U.
I will keep the promise when i can make it.   And i really meant every word I said at the chat today. Thanks a lot for being there for no reason at all.

To R.K
I have no idea what to tell you now. Its all up to you. You are matured and CAN take decisions. I will be with you whatever decision you take.  Just try to enjoy your work.

To DRCIVI
Always treasured the friendship. Dont have to say anything much. both of us know better. Its been 24 years now.  In fact I know you better than I know my parents.

To SON.
Carry on. proud of you for what you are. Go on and make your mark.

To the sweet little thing
All I wish is you regain your individuality. You are much better an individual than you think you really are.

To Naughty kutty.
Never meant to be harsh like that. Have been harsh. And I know that. sadly, as you know me very well, i have been very insensitive at times.

To Ronin
Enjoyed the times with you man. You have been one guy i liked to be with, right from post college times. And enjoyed the ride at the ghats. You rock.


::

Cant be more sicker

::
Went to an ENT and discovered I have asthma, Went to a Skin specialist for my Hair fall, went to a physician and discovered my liver is getting fat, went to a Urologist and discovered I have a UTI, went to an Eye specialist and she discovered my right eye have a reduced eye sight and that  I have an inflamed sinus, and visited an Ortho for my back pain.

All in the last two months.

What is left, is the heart and the brain. Things are getting very very unlikely me.
::

Back.

::
This is the third time I did not keep my word.(I told the world that i have stopped blogging)
And it is also true that who ever I told it to, did not take it seriously.
::