Guten Tag!

It's been too long. I know. I really want to post something but there is some voice inside me that just doesn't let me write anymore. Even if I managed to put together a few lines, I feel an overwhelming urge to delete it when I proofread it... an urge which I usually find quite difficult not to give in to.

I have finally decided that I really need to kick-start my rusty old blog again... and thus this post. A lot have happened in my life which would have led any seasoned old-timer at blogging to nirvana. Well better late than never is how the saying goes and hence I told myself to just start typing directly in blogger (so that the autosave assures some minimal protection from my deleting spree) and not to re-read the article to death before posting.

I really don't have anything creative to blog right now, but the least I could do is to post some travelogues and share a few experiences from what has really been the experience of a lifetime in my life. :)

The posts shall soon follow.

Hopefully.

The Civil Engineer

When the secretary of the Civil Engineering Association asked me to write something "informal" for the Department magazine "Arena", I tried for hours, obviously in vain, to write something short and funny, something along the lines of what I used to write before. I finally gave up and took out trusty weapons- a few rhyming words. 

When the world bursts with lack of space
And lands overflow in the modern mad race
Don’t fret, for I am here
For I am the Civil Engineer

I will provide you the shelter you seek
Give roof for the wealthy and the meek
I am capable and I am here
For I am the Civil Engineer

When the roads overflow with zooming cars
And the streets dissolve into cacophonous bazaars
Don’t fret, for I am here
For I am the Civil Engineer

I will give you the roads you need
Clear the path to do your deed
I am capable and I am here
For I am the Civil Engineer

When you’re dying for a sip of water
Or when you’re caught in a flood slaughter
Don’t fret, for I am here
For I am the one and only Civil Engineer

I will bridge all the gaps
And supply pure life to your taps
I am capable and I am here
For I am the one and only Civil Engineer

When into the earth your homes seem to sink
Or when they topple down in a blink
Don’t fret, for I am here
For I am the one and only Civil Engineer

I will assure you foundations, strong and safe
And placate mother earth off her chafe
I am capable and I am here
For I am the one and only Civil Engineer

Heads Up

What is with this world?

Why are we all this way? When have we become these needy, slimy, egoistic, chauvinistic morons? When has the entire concept of happiness been flushed down the drain? How has everything come to be so damn wrong?

Its not anything new that I'm writing here. I'm sure every sane one of you out there (are there any left?) have wondered about this at least in one fleeting, very much ignored, nanosecond. The blight seems to be prevalent at every corner of this globe.

The blight of illness.

It irritates me to no end how all of us (including yours truly) are so involved in our more often than not, self induced or self written maladies. The more the amount of suffering you are supposed to be enduring (and failing), the more high and mighty and pumped-up you feel.

And its not restricted to comparison of bite sizes left by mosquitoes. Need I even mention mental anguish? In any conversation, there is no end to the number of problems, horrors and nightmares every one of us are supposed to be grovelling under.

The other day I listened to myself ranting on and on about some stupid, irrelevant stress that I am facing because of some supremely insignificant thing to some poor, unsuspecting soul and it occurred to me.

Happiness has just gone out of style.

Its so "in" to be tragic and morose.

As you can see, this struck me so hard, it inspired me to indulge myself in some asperity by actually bothering to write again.

You know what?

Just shut up and be happy already.

A Little Wooden House

The little wooden house
With the white picket fence
How I'd love such a place
To live and to grow.

Always constant, always stable
A place to cherish
And to build memories
A place to grow old.

The rusty bicycles
With balancing wheels
And The little blue car
Parked in the garage.

The tyre swing swaying
The bird bath twittering
The little frog pond
The sun-kissed garden.

With the tulips and roses
Spewing heavenly damasks
The emerald ivy creeping
Into the bedroom window.

The gnarled oak tree
Tapping on the attic
The leaves whispering comforts
At the dead of the night.

Berries ripe for picking
Larders eternally full
Bread, fresh butter
Homemade pickles and jams.

Adoring little hands
Hanging on to your finger
Comfort hugs
And loving caresses.

The little wooden house
An abode of memories.

Mind Matters

The mind is a very powerful thing.

The strongest point of the human mind is its capability to put up facades. And its most cunning feature? After a while, even you yourself fail to identify the facades anymore.

Your heart clamours for attention... you are filled with needs and wants of love. You desparately hope that people care. You crave their time... you wish they would spare a moment for you.

Ask you how your day was.

Call to make sure you reached ok.

Buy you a birthday cake.

But you shut those thoughts down.

You want to be strong.

No, not WANT to be stong... you want to LOOK strong. With devil-may-care attitude you prance about as though you can take care of yourself, thank you very much.

You stiffen those shoulders and hold your nose high up in the air. Nothing is too dangerous for you, nothing too difficult to solve, nothing too heavy for you to carry. You little mind makes it seem as though there is no blow that is too painful for you to take. A feeling, a slight misanthropic sneer laced with superiority complexes and over-confidence, envelopes and soothes you with its narcotic stupor. Favours exist only when you are doing them for someone. Nobody owes you a thing, you'll say. And heaven forbid, you NEVER owe anyone anything.

Never.

Somewhere inside, a little voice cries out saying this is not true, but you mind makes you ignore it.

And slowly you ACTUALLY believe you are oh so capable.

Then somewhere, at the most obscure of times, the damage is done.

The facade is completely broken to smithereens. It would never be something out-the-world or something so problematic that only heavenly intervention would solve it. It could be as simple as a sarcastic smirk from your great-aunt's third cousin's brother-in-law's sister's grandson.

Then of course, you just shrivel up and die.

A Tryst with Gravity

The pain wasn't what you'd call extreme or intolerable.

But yeah, it was paining all the same.

I mean what was I thinking? What else should happen if anyone tried to involve themselves in as extreme an act of stupidity as I did? What else would I expect from being overly impulsive and leaping before I could think for a minimum of two shakes? What else should happen when my annoying conscience jumps wide awake from its normally safe and hibernating mode when it comes to other people's belongings?

What else must happen when I pit myself against gravity?

No, I wasn't doing an experiment on the feline powers on landing on the feet.

Nor a survey on the aerodynamic nature of the Homo sapien sapien body.

It all started with my three best friends getting their room a million miles away... oh alright... two floors above my room in our campus hostel.

Not so bad you'd say.

Not so bad they'd say.

Very, very bad, I'd say.

Needless to say, the inclination to translocate my not-so-inconsiderable fat ass two floors above via innumerable fights of stairs was something that had the potency to reduce me to a blubbering mass of lethargic angst.

So, when the inauspicious day came that I puffed, panted and wheezed all the way upstairs to visit my three best friends; who lived, as far as I am considered, on the top of the Mt. Everest (or Ever-tiring if I could have it my way...) I wondered for the umpteenth time why in the world was life as cruel as to subject me to such tiresome troubles. Nevertheless, being the altruist I am, I thought of granting my three best friends (well, friends when at sea level anyway) with great honour of a visit to their abode. After a journey that involved trekking of many a perilous stairs, I reached my destination.

After some meaningless chit chat (well, the only conversation that would be worth going through all that effort of the journey up three flights of stairs would be a conversation with God...) incessant rumblings from the general vicinity of my stomach prompted me of the only thing (other than the aforementioned) that would've made it worthwhile to embark on as tremendously tiring a venture as that.

Hunger.

Food.

Mess.

So as I shooed the three from the room to the stairs to scale down the stairs (curious how trips down the stairs, especially when you are starving more than an anorexic who's been told by her boyfriend that she seems microscopically plumper than she was last Wednesday, is always so much shorter and so much more painless) I inexplicably and inevitably (It's all pre-ordained and pre-conspired, I tell you!) left my bag behind in their room.

After being satiated with the more-crappier-than-usual food that they serve in the mess (the trick to surviving the ordeal of food from crappy college cafeterias is, you starve yourself so much that even grass served with the rind of a bitter gourd would start looking mighty appealing) and three minutes away from being chucked out of class for unpunctuality, I realized that my bag was upstairs.

Now as I already told you, two things.

1) Conversation with God.
2) Rumbling tirade ensuing from stomach

And not necessarily in that order.

Henceforth, I issued a direct order to Rekha, to go upstairs and throw the bag down.

As the bag whistled down on its way down after being unceremoniously dumped from the greater heights, two things ran through my mind.

1) Hair clip in the damn bag.
2) A very realistic imagery (with all the sound effects) of Kaarunya’s (my roommate) screaming when she finds her precious hair clip in pieces.

Showing the intelligence of a siliconed Hollywood blonde, I proceeded hitherto to rush to embrace the free-falling bag.

Ever heard of one of those did-you-knows that a penny dropped from the top floor of a sufficiently high sky-scraper could lodge itself in your skull and kill you instantly and agonizingly, if you’re unlucky enough for it to crash land into your head as it reached the bottom?

Well the effect was about the same.

The height was lesser, the weight- a zillion times more.

As soon as the bag pounded into me like a ton of bricks, I blacked out for what seemed like eternity to me. Well ok it was about three seconds. But, the point is, I lost three precious seconds of my life! My right arm felt dislocated. Without stopping to think, I rushed to class. It was only when I was safe listening to the comfortable monotonous drone of the professor did I dare to look at my arm.

Right in the plain view of everyone was a perfect round bruise which uncannily resembled a hickey. There was absolutely nothing I could do but suffer through a week of snide glances, unnecessary remarks and hours of pain of the time where every thing that passed by me would gravitate towards the damn bruise (isn’t it so unfunny how that happens with any wound?)

The climax of the story lies a week from this incident…

Scene: Room no LW 108, Ladies Hostel, NITW

Kaarunya: (bouncing into the room in throes of the usual perennial excitement) MALLADI!... YOU WON’T GUESS WHAT HAPPENED IN CLASS TODAY!

Yours truly: (wincing at the sudden increase in decibel level) Uh huh…

Kaaru: (Rushing to her bed and proceeding to bounce on it) Well basically…

CRUNCH.

Kaaru: ?

Malladi: :O

Hair clip: (chokes and dies)

Kaaru: Oh dumb clip. Never liked it anyway… Haan, where was I?...

Moral of the story: Hair clips are meant to be broken.

Yet Another Year!

I'm done with teenage.

That's a horrifying thought.

The "threshold" of adulthood is past... and I'm about to step in. I cannot fathom how time seems to make a fool out of me every single time. How do the years flow by so quickly?

Nineteen. I turned nineteen today.

I don't feel fit to be nineteen... I'm not responsible nor am I dutiful. I'm still a childish, careless, carefree, irresponsible, rebellious, idealistic brat! I still cry and I still yell. I still run around when the first drops of rain come falling. I still hug my threadbare teddy bear to sleep every night. I still feel lazy to do my homework. I still don't know how to cook and I have no idea how to manage my finances. I still play around with my mom's lipsticks. I still roam around on my rusted ladybird cycle. I still giggle and get crushes on cute guys.

I am still the very same spoilt single kid.

What am I doing turning nineteen?