The Order of the Crutch

I knew this would happen, in fact I was expect it to happen and it has happened. Level 1 & 2 Korean class comes to an end in 2 weeks. I’ll be missing class next week as well. Final weeks class I wont miss but it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. I’ll go sit in class and things will zoom off at hypersonic speed over my head as I stare at my teacher with an expression-less face and she gives me the “you poor sad kid” look.

I’ve missed most of my classes, about 60% of them to be precise, due to travel for work. Last weeks class was awesome though. Plenty of reading, plenty of coaching on Wednesday’s class. As I type this, Kareoke of “Nobody but You” on Wondergirl’s plays in the speakers. An untold feeling of pain hits somewhere in the back of the thorax.

I really loved the place, Inko Center. I guess im gonna have to do it again. I will, regardless of how long it takes for me to do it. I guess ill take a break for Q3 since it seems to chaotic now at work with so much to do. I will miss this place much. I will be back.

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• 

Dear Gentlemen from <insert Indian city> or elsewhere you come from. I think I’m having an identity crisis. For 3 years I’ve held these words inside my head but I think I need to put this weight down now and tell you how I feel. I feel very alienated. I feel like a stranger, lonely and different from the rest of you. Its amazing how you can behave and be so nice with everyone, especially the ladies and the airhostess on domestic flights but completely turn around and be a douche bag when you set foot into a flight when you are flight out of country.

For starters, airhostesses are not whores. Nor are they some kind of a slut. Yes, this is true contrary to how many of us treat them on flights. Specifically in the Singapore, Bangkok, Manila, KL routes I frequent. Additionally, a few airhostesses are trained to speak the local language in every flight. I travel for work, a lot. About 90% of my work involves travel. When I say a lot, a lot in my terminology is when I update my Facebook status telling friends and family im home only for people to call me and take my happiness for a ride for missing out on things. Every weekend is flying out. So much so, I have a few friends who are airhostesses. I have made such friends in 3 different airlines and its good to get a great insight on to how the airlines industry works.

From what I know, learning the local language on routes you fly earn you brownie points, Lots of it. So please, avoid cracking jokes on the air crew in your mother tongue because some of them can understand. Just because they don’t react does not mean you are smart. Yesterday, two of you got drunk and failed to resist your urge to feel the breasts of an airhostess aboard the <Insert Asian city> – <Insert Indian city> flight. Please note, Asian women are petite. They’re not skinny to impress you. They’re not Air India crew who proudly display child birth stretch marks by wearing the saree in a way you cannot avoid but notice simply because they can do it and get away with it. They’re just made so, genetically. Additionally, when they speak English it’s a little bit funny because they have a lot of mother tongue influence and it sounds like they speak child-like or rather it looks artificial. This should not be mistaken for “ooh, she is hitting on me” at any cost, because that most certainly is not the case.

Yes, airhostess often step on seats to reach overhead luggage compartments to fix them. When they do, if their uniforms comprise of a shirt you can of course gladly get an eyeful. I will admit, its nice to observe the female form, regardless of where you are and what you do. Its sort of like therapy for us men. However please note, regardless of the situation and what you think, its like a museum. See, but do not touch. More importantly, they’re not Go Go dancers in a bar on a Bangkok Street. So using this to poke fun at them is not, funny. Yes, while mentioning Bangkok, I understand that city is full of whores. Its whore heaven, practically. Its not like if I told you how awesome the Thai culture is and what awesome things I’ve done and learnt with a couple of Thai friends I have in Bangkok, you would agree to reconsider your opinion on that wonderful city. That is not any of my intention and I will not spoil Bangkok for you by distracting your with small things like culture, cuisine, people, art etc., However, I assure you to the best of my knowledge that there are no such “Girls” aboard that Thai Airways flight to Bangkok.

I’ve got like 3 Thai guys and 1 Thai girl from the aircrew, whom I know personally and they confirm so as well. No call girls in flights, what a party pooper, I know! So please, stop cracking “boom boom” jokes at them because I know for a fact that it’s a bad pickup line. Perhaps a “Sawadee Kaa” would impress, try it next time. “Boom Boom” jokes at a Thai person is like going to some guy in Chennai and asking them “So you are a madrasi, huh?” or worse, asking the same question to a Hyderabadi fellow. Its just insane.

Alcohol is free. Alcohol served is also of very good quality compared to what we can buy here. However asking for drink after drink, after drink is meaningless. I mean, can you even taste that drink post your 2nd large and savor it? For the life of me, I cant. Yelling at the aircrew with “hello, what is this?” is kind of rude. There is a button on your seat. If you push it, someone will come to you. Its worked for me for the past 3 years, always. Yes, sometimes mistakes do happen and you get ignored. Yelling is still an extreme step. It’s a small flight so even if you make eye contact and beckon someone, they come to you. An absolute NO NO is grabbing a airhostess hand or pulling an attendants shirt/jacket/collar. When you fool of a took’s were making fun of that Chinese airhostess yesterday, she fixed you a drink and came to me while she walked back. I was caught in a seat with a box under my foot so I was in cramped space and suffering much. She re-arranged the box and asked me “are you comfortable now?”, in my mother tongue. Sadly the same language that you used to define her speech and tone as something to hit on you and called her an “item” as well in front of her.

The amount of shame I felt post her question, I have no words to describe this pain I feel treating someone so badly. I know it’s a lot of freedom in your hands when flying out of India and you cant be identified by someone you know and your reputation spoilt back home but please, put them air crew in your wifes, sisters, daughters & mothers place. Apologies for the cliché movie dialogue sentiment but im not sure how to put this in better words. They have one hell of a stressful jobs. Knowing a lot of them, personally as friends I know sometimes they work straight for 3 days before taking a break, lodged in some cramped shitty hotels for a brief 8 hour day, before getting back on the air.

Also, this behavior of a significant minority fucks things up for the insignificant majority of us. Its like because of one Osama Bin Laden, every Muslim is a potential Osama Bin Laden. I know, its insane isn’t it? Think about it, please. I’m, and im losing sleep over it.

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• 

There are times when you are so confused and shocked at things people say it takes about a few dumb minutes to realize, if you should be offended or not. Today was one such day..

So I get down from the bus in Chennai after an overnight journey from Bangalore. Koyambedu it is and Auto Drivers scamper around and snatch the suitcase while you watch helplessly. One screams out “saaar, I have dropped you before saar. I have dropped you before and I will drop you in your doorstep saar…”. So I think I should write off the price of my elbow crutch to this prick today, instead of the ones whom I don’t know. Known devil is better than an unknown angel it seems, as the proverb has enlightened us from 4th grade schooling.

So after graciously agreeing to settle for Rs. 300 from Rs. 350 (not before telling me how nasty velachery as a place was to drive in & live in was) I get into the auto only to stop 2 minutes into the ride. Now I’m thinking this dude is stopping to take a leak or put thoppukaranam in front of pillayar kovil or something. Then I hear a conversation in the background involving the driver but im engrossed why the EDGE network on my cellphone isn’t getting activated despite rebooting the phone. I mean who does not want to check Office email + Gmail on a Saturday morning at 6.30 AM?

The Auto driver walks closer to the vehicle and the conversational volume gets louder and clearer, it finally ends with..

“Madam, avaru handicapped thaan madam. Onnume illa madam, summa thairiyama okkaarunga. Problem illa! 2 nimishan thane!” (Madam, he is physically challenged. He is of no harm or trouble. You can sit confidently. After all, the ride is barely 2 minutes..)

This guy jumps into the drivers seat and before I realize what’s happening there is this cute girl staring at my face with a “are you going to move your behind to the other end and plaster yourself to the auto’s wall or what?” look. Blame the testosterone, probably… I move over to the other side and continue fiddling with the EDGE settings and the Auto Driver adds lately…

“saar, avanga okkaaralaam illa saar?! onnum problem illaye?” (Saaar, can she sit. This isn’t any trouble to you, right?)

I’m thinking, if this question is a bit too late or something or was it a mandatory obligation that he had committed to as a result of his circumstances. Unfortunately, the maramandai works very slowly after being jolted for 7 hours in a cramped bus with lousy seats that I shelled Rs. 550 for a ticket.

So here is the deal. What exactly did this guy imply? Did he imply I’m incapable of any sexual advances I could make or hit on this girl because of my physical condition? How did he arrive at this idea and by what logic? I can assure this isn’t the first time I’ve been ‘described’ in such a context as a “harmless and / or useless” with reference to my sexuality. One part of my crocodile brain tells me I should just grab this girl, kiss her and before she realizes it kick her and send her flying out of the auto which is already flying at 80 Km/h. At this rate this guy cannot even break properly and before he knows it I would have pulled my Swiss pocket knife and stabbed him in the neck and tell him he was so wrong to make such assumptions about me.

For the record, technically speaking, all impotent guys are physically challenged but not all physically challenged guys are mandatorily impotent, although I admit there is a high possibility if your limbs or your back is affected we could be shit in bed, by all means. I mean its Physics and sex isn’t what you see in Porn.

I fail to rationalize what gives people the audacity for them to comment on other peoples sexual potency or capability in broad daylight? I fail to understand how someone can take that as a valid reason as well and comply with the idea, in this case this girl who sat beside me for a brief 2 – 3 minutes. I felt sorry for a moment, that she was ripped off Rs. 50 for a bare 1.5 Kms and she looked so shocked in disbelief as the Auto Driver insisted “Madam, minimum charge-e muppadhu rooba” which sent me into shock as well. When did this happen, I was never told so! She didn’t look like she was from the city. From her looks and from her accent she was probably of an orthodox / conservative origin, but then I concluded she deserved it anyways.

I mean if you could buy one bullshit, you gotta buy the other one as well right?

It seems like, the problems with the effectiveness of my courting and copulative capabilities are not my business anymore. A Times of India style analysis of this subject is everyone’s constitutional right. At least that’s how it seems to be from how its handled and discussed.

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• 

Get a life, seriously. Actually, give me back my life, rather my childhood, please. I sit here today like a lonely Michael Jackson on a tree in the middle of a nowhere forest singing “have you seen my childhood?” to myself. All of this because of you. Yes, you… prick!

Ongalukku ellam vera velaye kedayatha? Onga veettula appa amma enna pana maram valarthaangala? Wasn’t school just enough? Wasn’t it too much anyways? I mean, I saw you folks go to school at 6.30 in the bleady morning. Which loser does that? No, don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical one.

School starts at 09:00. Apparom enna special class at 7:00 ? Your teachers and all had no purushans to cook for and pasanga to kulupaatify and get ready for school’a? Enna velayaadareengala? Dei! Seri, pogattum.. athenna school mudinja apparum innoru special class? Your teachers have no house’a? They’re all homeless people who stay in school till dinner and go to shelters to sleep’a? Do you realize how many times when I had scored less than 80% in that physics test and my father and mother used to quote how much special classes you kids are attending and how special it makes you? I mean if you were an item in Saravana Bhavan hotel menu, you guys would definitely been named Special Dosa of sorts. Ethulayume neenga sadhaarnama irukka matteengala? paruppu!

Seri, athenna compulsory swimming class? Boy’skku oru time and Girls-kku innoru time? What’s the point? Thani thaniyaa swim panni enna kizhikka poreenga? Arive illaya onga swimming instructor’skku? For the money you guys paid for school fee’s nirosha must come in swimsuit like this and teach you guys everyday, everything apart from the curriculum.

Seri atha free vudunga. Athenna ellarum classical music kathukkanum? Cinema paattu paadina enna urugiyaa poyduveenga? Naangalellam Agni Natchatiram version kekkumbodhu neenga ellam Carnatic music version paduveenga. Atha kettutu enga appanum aathaalum kaari thuppi engala ellam moonji melaye methipaanga. Athu thane venum? Rascals!

Paadinaa pothatha? Aada vera aadanuma? Athuvum bharathanattiyam? Naanga ellam intha pattukku dance aduvom…

Neenga naduvula poonthu, intha madhiri aadittu poiduveenga…

Adhukku apparom paatti vandhu engala “en da ippadi avuthu pottutu adareenga?” nnu thittanum! Athu thane idea? Thiruttu kammunaateeengala. Nasama poga!

Seri etho adineenga, padineenga’nnu free vutta athu enna hindi class, hindi prachara sabha’la? Who the hell speaks sanskrit on an everyday basis? Evan ongala ellam poi second language atha edukka sonnan? How many of you are poojari’s in temple today? tell me I say! Apparom poi hindi exam ezhutha vendiyathu. Ongala pathuttu enga amma appavum get us into nonsensical Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha exams. Mavane! 12 mani veyyilla T. Nagar’kku bus puduchi andha ezhavu edathukku poi fee’s kattanum? Enna velayaatta irukka ongalukku ellam? dei!

Anyways all you did at the end of it is this only…

Seri etho hindi is our national language and all that shit vadakkathi veriyans claimed and your folks fell for that bullshit. But why French? Omlette venumna brilliant tutorial vassala poi “anna! oru aamulettu podunganna, vengaayam illaama” apdeennu ketta you will get one for 2 Rupees no? Adhenna “omelette au fromage” sonna than jeeranam agumaa? Alpom pudichavanungala! You went and studied french no? English padathula french kissing panna kooda amma will close your eyes and turn off TV. So you obviously did not learn how to french kiss as well but paid enough money that would fetch you a french wife today. Why? Lose’a? French class’kku poi french kiss panna pakkathula irukkara figure’oda practice pannalenna apparam entha mayirukku ponai? yabba… tension pannareenga da onga logic-oda. Anyways like all obedient boys US lendhu 12 days leave pottutu vandhu you got married at 31. Just in time for you to officially exit the meat market and then only you lost virginity. En indha scene, with all this french? I’m sure even your wife does not allow you to French kiss being the good Indian girl she is. En? Why this pain ya?

Karate Class. You eat thayir sadham. I also eat thayir sadham. Who are we going to fight with apart from the sister/brother? Athukku ethukku Karate kathukkanum? Anyways maths’la centum varalenna appa is gonna beat the crap out of your miserable existence. Its not like he will spare you if you know like some 10 kattas or something. Anyways all those kattas were for you demonstrating it in front of that nosey uncle and aunty or relatives whom you have never met in your life before. Anything you show them with haa hoo sound they will always say “enna azhaga pannaraan kozhandha, thrishti suththi podungo!” and place a big fat kiss on your cheek with with bad breath and ugly 1 rupee sized wart on their face which has hairs coming out of it and all.

Anyways, being the gundu payyan you are, all that you can do is put scene to impress that sumaar ethirtha veettu figure by breaking already rain’la oori poi nanji ponna, paasi pudicha sengal. I mean, anyone can do that. Even the pakkathu aththu thaththa who had no teeth and walked with a crutch could have pulled that one off. Its not like impressing that figure is gonna get you married to her right away. Ava enna caste’o, appa amma wont othufy for that and all..

Because of you, we were forced to join some karate class or tae kwon do and that instructor would semma adi adichify us everyday under the pretext of teaching us and disciplining us. Adi vaangi vaangi, soranaye illaama pochu odambula. The only good thing out of that was in school when teacher asked you to show back of the hand and beat with scale it never pained and all. All that othai karate instructor gave previous day in class made our odambu marathu pogify completely.

We cant able to put maanja and fly kite also. All the folks at home will say is, <insert cousin name studying in PSBB> paaru, samuththa free time’la rangoli class porathu. neeyum irukkiye, porukki kaathadi uda pora!”. Seriously, how many of you people get up in the morning at 5 am and vaasal’a thanni thelichify and put 36 pulli kolam? En indha vetti bandha and all going for rangoli class?

I want compensation. Either invent a time machine and send me back to my childhood. I will murder you all before hand. Pull something off like John Conor in terminator padams so that you don’t exist in the first place. Adhu mudiyalenna pay me! I want all your money! The ladies, I want all you pretty girl friends numbers except the ones that studied in MOP vaishnav college. Andha gang’a ennala sathyamaa tolerate panna mudiyaathu. I cant able to buy Gucci tissues to wipe the cold coffee that spills of her lips while she needs to have that at trident everyday and I have to ferry her by a A segment car only and drop her back.

So when you are done reading this, text me and I will send you my bank account number. ICICI or HDFC is better since I can get money faster on these accounts. Yes, and one more thing. I know you got married at 32 and you are relieved you are getting laid and not dying a virgin and all but putting your wifes photo as your Display Picture on gmail chat, facebook, twitter and all is completely unacceptable. Unless you want people like me to hit on her, that is.

P.S. this is one comedy piece only. romba tension aagina drink the ice more amma makes at home or adichify some filter kaapi and listen to some indholam on your iPod or something instead of calling my onnu vitta chithappa or vayasukku varaatha paatti a brammaharthi and all. also amits and neha’s who did not understand the tamil, maaf keejiye!

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• 

There are some people in your life who come for in to play their part for a short period of time and then leave a permanent mark on you. Then suddenly one fine day you recollect memories of this person and miss the times. It feels sort of weird but one such person I remember today is Dr. Jayson. I can safely say I’ve seen enough doctors in my lifetime compared to the average individual. Most of them were orthopedics or neuro surgeons and were consulted for my physical condition.

However there is one doctor who stands out in my head. This guys name is Jayson. He used to run a small but very famous clinic or rather to be fair enough, a room (shop) which was 6 foot by 6 foot right next to a flour mill shop close to home. Whenever someone fell sick, post all self medication and prasadham from temples the usual last resort was this guy. He was an excellent person and not to mention a personality as well. The only trouble is, his injections on the buttocks hurt like bat shit crazy for the next 5 days. You would never feel a thing, his touch was like feather but when you sat on the floor with your ass back at home I would have screamed “son of a biyaatch!” if only I had know such words back then, but then I was barely 6 or 7, sigh!. So yes, it was a dull and uninteresting “yamaaaaaadiyov!” for all I care to remember.

The most vivid memory of this doctor was when my curiosity as always brought me close to death or at least brought my parents close to shitting themselves. So one fine day after a lot of physiotherapy at GH and goofing around the house and getting ass whooped as you would get in a typical Indian family in the mid 1980’s it so happened to be the case that I found a shiny tin can with red and green/white text and it smelt like sugar. So I opened it and conveniently drank a lot of it. Sadly, before I emptied it all I heard a scream from my cousin. One like when them pretty boobied women give out before being stripped naked and killed in the Evil Dead movie, not before being paraded gleefully by roots of a tree 34.8 miles into the forest at 1 in the midnight.

Yes, it was baygon spray.

Of course, nothing happened to me. At least not immediately. So I was rushed to Dr. Jayson where this dude made me drink lots of salt water and I did not puke. I probably enjoyed all that salt water and pretended it was the sea. I don’t remember If I asked for some lemon and sugar with it, i might have knowing what kind of a brat I was. Anyways, this is when Dr. Jayson pulls out his magic. He gives you pills the size of a mustard seed or an ant egg, so to speak. You swallow that bugger and everything you ever ate in the past 4 days comes out of your mouth in the next 3 minutes. He was extremely famous for this. Folks in the house would be relieved seeing you puke till your internal organs came out.

Paatti would exclaim “Appaada! vaandhi eduthuttaya? avan kudukkara marunthu ellame appadi thaan. kettadhai ellam veliyila vara vechidum, aanaa nallathu!”

Jason doctor had this unique skill. He would probably cure HIV or something by giving you pukable pills, if he were alive now.

Last I heard, he went to London for higher studies. Post that I heard rumors that he died of cancer. I hope they were just rumors. It would be ironic If someone awesome like him weren’t alive today helping people.

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• 

This blog post is a rant. It’s sad, it’s depressing and it’s an angry note. If you are not in the mood to listen, you have the liberty to browse a page with better quality content. Please, save yourself the trouble.

If you are still here and decided not to leave, hear hear…

Preface:

The last time I read from a text book was sometime in 2007 and attended a class. This was for the Cisco certification. Of course, all of that was familiar territory. Computers are my forte. My bread and butter come from my nerd quotient. Cisco was of course an excuse to make a commitment. If I did not pay Rs. 10000 and join those classes I would have given up and not cleared that certification. Of course, there was this colleague or rather one of my closest friends back in those days, vidya who pushed me a lot to make that commitment.

So if I had to critically analyze and claim learning something new it would have really been graduation back in 2002. Post that, much of my education or learning new things have been via self-study. Download PDF from internet, study, clear certification exams. That’s how it went, pretty much.

The Story:

Fast Forward back to 2011…

I enroll in Korean Class. This is the most exciting thing ever, since 2002. I’ve never touched a text book never learnt something fundamentally new since college days. I paid my fees 3 weeks ago. I know I will hardly get 15% of attendance amidst all the travel I have and the minimum requirement is 85% to give the exam post the course. Why do I care? I have to start somewhere. Korea and Korean I find too intriguing and beautiful to miss out on for silly reasons such as exams and certifications. I think the certificate can go to hell. Nothing can compare to how it made me quiver with excitement when I learnt to correctly pronounce “Anyong Ha Se Yo” and “Gamsahamnida” today from my teacher. Like a neat shot of Grey Goose down the throat it felt, honest.

So I go to class and I’m just in time and folks are already seated. From what I was told and expecting I was very glad I was not in a class of 15 year old school kids. Nothing is more embarrassing than making an ass out of yourself, in front of school kids. I was glad. There were three Indian folks in class and a very elderly Japanese woman, probably in her late sixties or fifties. I was excited, I was ecstatic. Who don’t like to make new friends?

Just when life is beautiful scenery like a Windows XP Wallpaper things go wrong and you find bird droppings rain on you. I don’t understand, seriously. The coordinator of the program welcomed everyone. Our teacher was in class already. She introduced our teacher to us and was discussing books and material. The person sitting next to me talks to another participant in the class in Tamil. On top of this, there is chatter in Tamil about course material with the coordinator leaving the faculty completely clueless about what’s going on. I fail to arrive at a logic, to justify the use of a language when someone on the class clearly does not understand. Clearly, English was something we all can speak and understand including the Japanese participant.

This chatter turns into me somehow and I respond to everything in English. They still don’t seem to get it. I think by the 4^th answer one should have guessed but well, I guess not.

We watch a beautiful promo video on Korea and its culture on DVD on a large screen TV. I found it fascinating. Teacher asks how we found it. Everyone is pleased. It’s not necessary everyone should be though but still, same dude says when teacher asks “what do you think?”

“It’s all very boring to me. All this Buddhist stuff is very boring”. I immediately know where this is headed. I patiently wait for the teacher to come to me while this dude rants on about how Koreans follow Zen Buddhism and stuff he know so much about Korea. Teacher says it’s just to give people an idea and nothing about religion. He rants off about how Japanese people are so religious. By this time it’s my turn and I tell everyone what I feel. I said I’m fascinated to observe the differences in Buddhism in Korea compared to Thailand where I go to every now and then. Guy interrupts to mock Buddhism, I say Asia is very liberal and secular and irreligious compared to India and divert the topic away. We move on to pottery and rice cakes.

We learn to say “My name is <name>” in Korean. Our teacher is learning all of our names. One of the participants name is a complicated & long Tamil name with “Zha” on it. Teacher finds it difficult to pronounce. Dude jumps forward and says “You cannot say it. It’s tough. Forget it!” Teacher ignores thrice, fourth time hits back “Yes, I realize that but please give me a chance. I’m trying very hard to learn. Please?”

Enakku Naakka pudungindu saaganum pola irundhudhu, period.

Since today was just an orientation day, our teacher offers to teach us how to greet in Korean. We learn to pronounce greetings correctly. We greet in Korean going forward in class. I’m thinking “aaw man, this is killer awesome” and dude jumps and interrupts teacher and asks when is alphabets going to be taught and what’s the use of learning greetings without knowing alphabets. Technically right dude but you missed the bus by a mile. More Tamil chatter in the class.

Questions:

Where did we go wrong? What is wrong with us? I find someone like this everywhere I go to amongst Indian people. As an instructor that travels every week across Asia, I find this problem only with Indian and to some extent with Chinese folks. I can’t speak about Chinese folks because I simply don’t care. It’s not my country nor are they my people.

Where did we miss that civilization part?

1. Communicating in a language that people do not understand in a room, how does this even happen? As an educated young person who has a college degree and knows other foreign languages how can one not know this fundamental etiquette?
2. Interrupting people in a conversation.
3. Passing judgmental comments on things when you meet someone for the first time in your life
4. Telling someone is incapable of something out-rightly on their face while they put effort on doing/learning something.

My teacher left the class building while I was starting my bike. I really felt compelled to apologize on behalf of the dude but I refrained. I was uncertain if I would be over reacting and I did not have enough time to think it through. After all, I was going to see this person for the rest of the course. Of course, depending on how lucky I get to be in attending classes amidst my travel.

I feel very hurt today. The pain is so very real. It’s agonizing.

I won’t let this put my spirits down. I have something awesome to do. Something I have never done before. New things to learn and do. New turfs to invade and conquer. I’m not happy I resumed writing the blog today with a sad note but I’m not going to ends this sadly.

I think I’m totally in love with the Korean language. My teacher told us to look at the text book with love. Unless we look at it with love the language is not an easy one to master. I think I already am. If the Korean language was a woman, we’d be married and we’d have many kids and it would be one big happy family, I think.

Thanks for listening.

Gamsahamnida, Annyeonghi Gyeseyo.

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• 

Despicable creatures you are. As a 29 year old i do not download child porn, i never have. Let’s admit, we all have porn and we all love it. But child porn? Really? How about your grandson and granddaughter in one of them movies for a start? Every time i discover something nasty, child porn always happens to be a critical ingredient of that nonsense.

Why would you want to know what father saw when he walked in on his daughter? You have a daughter in law for heavens sake! What the bloody curiosity is itching you to click on it?

Also, all this while i was a small kid and i need to be told what to do but suddenly you want ‘duty free sarakku’ because i travel overseas every now at then? How come im suddenly this friends with ya’all fuckers? No i won’t bring that fucking 50 inch LED TV your son has purchased from some fucking country when i return from there, back home. You have no business asking your son to get it in the first place without taking my consent about bringing it back. I bring shit back for me and my loved ones. The ones i love. Not you, definitely not a low life like you. No, calling me arrogant and selfish is unacceptable because i refused.

Yes, i take jokes about Bangkok very very seriously. I go there for work and your “Boom Boom” jokes are not only irritating but gets on my nerves! I have bucket loads of Thai friends and they’re all nice people. Their country is nice. Its not as big and diverse as ours is but they’re genuinely nice people, unlike you or some of us in our great nation. Thailand has a lot of things to offer apart from sandwich massage. You of all hypocrites would not know that for sure because you don’t want to know anything beyond that.

Your performing sandhi two times everyday and watching that priest at 7 pm on TV talk about holy places and their significance makes absolutely no sense if you don’t act in accordance with what he preaches.

Also, when you get your despicable existence to a foreign country like say for example, Singapore the women there wear shorts and inners and walk the roads in sandals. They’re not walking porn. Passing rude comments behind their back in an Indian language is obscene. Its rude because many of them understand and speak the language and low lives like you fuck it up big for us. Now they lump all of us people together in the same shit pile just because we all look the same.

I’m tired of your bullshit. I cannot stand it anymore of this hypocrisy. I have no idea what im going to do about it but i will definitely do something.

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I know. Its not the usual me to write such mega serial type topics on this blog. People are much used to me bitching about something like religion, technology, politicians & governments. Its okay, for a change lets see if i can say something useful and make sense too without F’ing the hell out of people & things that just turn me off.

Off late i notice around me the amount of failed marriages or relationships are quite staggering. Most of them are the traditional amma appa paathu panni vechcha arranged marriages but love marriages are no exception either. Running around trees, holding hands like as of they were atomically fused from birth and scribbling love notes on facebook & twitter, what not? No difference. Everything is down the drain hole and it seems people get tired off each other quickly.

Now i know what you are expecting. You expect me to say we are not biologically programmed for a one man + one woman relationship, which i will but then I’ve said it already so many times i do not want to repeat myself and sound boring. What I’m about to discuss is the social aspect of a relationship or lets say the courting process in human beings.

Human beings are very different from other animals. The amount of “Social” exercise that we involve in is staggering. Any other biological race that would compete with us in this “social” experience would look like a mole in front of a mountain. It is this “Social” dimension that separates us from the other kind. I fail to understand why or how but somehow we humans seem to be pretty comfortable with a single mate for a lifetime (exceptions are plenty) and we actually progress far better on this scale with even more bio diversity compared to animals that have multiple mates every mating season depending upon capability i.e., fertility, strength, environmental circumstances etc., It is extremely fascinating to see that this single mate ritual is something natural selection has supported and has worked for us pretty well. Yet, we see it slip so easily, it all seems like the probability of a withered petal from a flower tree landing on another petal or in the dirt.

The idea of a one man = one woman is not bad, in fact its good simply because it removes confusion, chaos and violence from the picture. Any race devoid of confusion, chaos & violence will survive better. Its self explanatory why there are close to 7 billion of us today on planet earth. Credit that mostly to do scientific progress but also due to the nature of us becoming less violent by the day. Don’t believe me? Watch the TED video below:

The point here is this. Relationships of today are on the verge of a major evolutionary change. Traditional expectations in a relationship is killing that very relationship.

Due to my lack of knowledge in terms of how relationships work outside of India I’m going to stick purely to Indians and Indian families. The days of “Kall anaalum Kanavan, Pull Anaalum Purushan” is dead. Education & empowerment of women killed it for good. The possibility of the man overpowering the woman is reducing very rapidly by the day and it shows in the amount of divorce applications pending in court and how the numbers almost double every decade. While divorce rates are still the lowest in India (& Sri Lanka) the rate of growth in divorce is not really the lowest. Women are extremely happy to walk out of a bad marriage. Now consider this, if a woman in India can walk out of a marriage which has so much social pressure attached to it, non matrimonial relationships are far more easier to walk out of. The time of the man “keeping the woman” is here. Of course, thanks to the largest genocide on planet earth we Indians are committing openly without any remorse, the gender ratio is as mucked up as it can be compared to anywhere in the world.

People seem to get into relationships initially enthralled by the experience. There is sparks flying everywhere and there is fun and there is romance. None of them care about the commitment portion of it. In my opinion commitment should only come into a relationship on how actively you are trying to engage your love in your life. Expecting to enforce commitment in a relationship is a disaster for any one. This is precisely why relationships fail. There are these imaginary moral values that come from nowhere that dictate how silly fantasies in life can be denied on the basis of commitment.

To me ‘experience’ is like a big beautiful mother hen. The ‘commitment’ thing is like the small chickens that follow the hen. The ‘experience’ is the mother of all things. Wherever it goes, the small chickens of commitment follow. This applies to all relationships, specifically very much to what happens between a man and a woman.

Stopping the rant for a moment, i will say i get so thrilled to be in the presence of people who value the ‘experience’ of the relationship. I have a few cousins, my best friend & another acquaintance i know of that fall perfectly into this category. It is such a harmony when you see them interacting. The best part is they disagree in half the things they come across in life, they could show the middle finger at each other, yet laugh it off right after putting that finger down and figure out what’s best for them. It deeply pains me to say, such relationships/couples are a rare find. Its like browsing through a backup CD that is about 7 years old and finding the DOS version of “Prince of Persia” or “WordStar 4.0”. There is no joy in explaining how wonderful it makes you feel to be around such people.

In layman terminology if i were to equate this with an example its like a man and a woman going to the ice cream parlor and sharing a cone of ice-cream. You walk into the parlor, you buy a cone, any cone and you sit down and finish the cone and walk back home and cuddle into bed. This is the ‘experience’. Now lets revisit the scenario. Man prefers to sit at home and catch up with India vs. Australia T20 match, woman wants to go in for ice-cream post dinner. Man & woman go, woman wants cornetto, man says cornetto sucks and wants feast. Woman complains of sudden cold like symptoms. Neither have ice-cream, rather ‘share’ the ice-cream and come home empty handed.

I know this is not a very good analogy but then i hope you get the drift of what I’m talking about. The moment a man &  a woman have nothing to talk about (this includes an argument/disagreement) from then on its all just about commitment. Commitment is like a brick wall. It is static. It expects loyalty & sincerity and does not want to change. Experience is like the bamboo stick. You can bend it to make a roof or stretch it to make a wall lining. Experience always changes, it adapts to situations and people and environment. Experience is all about the moment, commitment is all about keeping the possibility of having these moments forever without ensuring the possibility of such moments to occur in the first place.

I just felt like writing this post today since I’ve  been postponing it for almost 3 weeks now. Now that I’ve gotten this out of my head and heart and poured it here i think I’ll lay to rest and hear from you all.

~fin~

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I was driving home from work, to my cousins place to have dinner with her before i leave for delhi the next day morning. She is here from the USA on a vacation and going back soon. I drove through habibullah road and just as i reach the junction at usman road i see a furry cute little creature run across the road. I know what i saw, a cute grey striped kitten. “how cute” i think and before i knew it there were 3 stray dogs behind it.

The kitten leaped and caught a thin branch near the compound wall of a house. The branch snapped and the kitten swung like spiderman and fell across the road near the road behind the ramp where Vishwak solutions office is. The dogs gave chase, i did. Accelerated the bike to 70, skid hard to my left and stopped and got off the bike. Sharp searing pain on my right hip. I need the crutch. Unstrapped my crutch off my bike and before i knew it i saw two dogs biting into the kittens backbone. Fuck the crutch, i crawled like a baby on the road and yelled at the top of my voice and the dogs backed off a foot.

Went close and saw dog saliva all over the cats fur, it was wet and sticky. No blood but i know the damage was done. The cat had its mouth wide open. Having raised more than 50 cats in my school days i know a cat does not live for long when it has a permanently open mouth and no noise from its mouth. Its the pain of dying, i can see it.

I picked up the kitten carelessly and it ferociously bit my thumb and i bled. I slowly unhooked the tooth of the kitten from my thumb slowly. I placed the kitten on my bike and drove far away from the incident. Laid the kitten to rest near a roadside temples trash dump. I went, had dinner with cousin, drove back at 11 pm on the way back home. The kitten was dead.

I’m a cat person, i don’t really hate dogs but i do now much since this moment. I know it sounds irrational but i cant help it.

It would have made a difference if i had gotten off my bike 5 seconds earlier, i did not. “The Order of the Crutch” it indeed fucking was.

These are the times i hate my miserable fucking existence. Life is not worth living with this shit. Its all so pointless. The crutch makes all the difference. If not for this crutch, that kitten would have lived to see the daylight. Fuck this, i’ve had enough.

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Okay, it all started like this. Narain was on twitter and apparently some gay guy found him irresistibly hot and tweeted out the below…

So some gay guy was troubling narain on twitter spamming him much.

This lead to that and finally we all decided that narain was just too hot for all gay guys in chennai and so was the hashtag #msnarainishot born. From this a few specks of gem were spewed out from various juntha in twitter. Here are some of them masterpieces…

Ratzz

@msnarain nvr needs a woolen clothing. #msnarainishot

@msnarain nvr gets to enjoy ‘cool’ drinks, coz #msnarainishot

Guys and Girls will be hunting for the lotion so that they can be safe while they are with @msnarain #msnarainishot

why dint @msnarain‘s folks buy a microwave? coz #msnarainishot

why did voltas ac sales go up suddenly?? Coz #msnarainishot

why cant we ever have winter olympics in chennai, Coz #msnarainishot

why did rajinikanth say Okay Buddy Cool in sivaji? coz #msnarainishot

Ratzzz switched off the fan to conserve energy then turned it on as #msnarainishot

Surajram Kumaravel

Okay. My server has crashed. Evidently cause #msnarainishot

Radio Mirchi is trying to rope in @msnarain as their brand ambassador. #msnarainishot

Dilip

chatti is called pot, maattikina ur caught. pullikky peru dot, olagathukke theriyum #msnarainishot

the cia has agents out in the field to kill @msnarain & arrest global warming. why? cuz #msnarainishot

theriyalenna kekkanum what? vayasu pasanga sight adipaanga lot, spam panna use pannu bot, global warming is proof #msnarainishot

war is always fought, lessons are always taught. fishes are always caught, everybody says #msnarainishot

era theva yeni, thannikku hindi’la paani. gudurai is called pony, #msnarainishot moodikinu po nee!

election vandha podanum vote’u, ragam therinja padanum paatu. address solla theriyanum route’u, ellarum sollunga #msnarainishot ‘u.

paduthu thoonga thevai cot, figure’a thallinu poga find a spot. meendhu pona biryani will rot, i dont care what u say #msnarainishot

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