Shedding a gloomy face

I was the kind of a child who was the teachers' pet at school, but was reserved to the core, especially when it came to matters of mingling with people. I was so very less outgoing. Even now I am not much better.

I used to put up a gloomy face whenever my mood was slightly or entirely off its best. Too much of time I spent on thoughts, and thus I used to be led to skirmishes of capricious threads, one leading to another and ultimately all these would squeal and scratch my skull from inside. Occupy all the pleasant space inside my mind. Over the time as my Innocence Quotient dropped, at the time of an increased reserve, my grey cells turned into a cornucopia of thought. This I welcomed with great relief. I was a refugee who sought something more than existence.

The coarse terrain of life weathered my reserved nature somewhat as I treaded along it, but my fervor for thoughts never died, it overflowed and some of it, words like these, left imprints on paper as well. The gloomy face was as effective as a Guy Fawkes mask in displaying a fabricated intent. It helped at times – at those when I did not want people to know what ran in my mind. But the same became a problem. 

It struck me a big blow when a well-wisher observed and pointed this out recently. I realized how much true his observation was, and how large an impact this had in my life. The gloom was read as an unwelcoming attitude, and thus many knocks passed by without falling on this naïve door.Opportunities are mostly biased to optimists. And I don’t want to lose any more chances in this rat race of a life.

Now I am shedding the gloomy face. I adopted a bright and happy face from then on - as a facade to positive thoughts that lay beneath. I try to think less, never let thoughts go astray, keep unnecessary anxiety at bay. Even without growing tumours of thoughts, it should be possible to spur my way through. I don't give a damn if the universe conspires or not.

The Chetan Bhagat Revolution

Gone are the days when companies used to come to campuses to do a very meticulous and selective recruitment of capable students. Now companies from the IT-services sector swarm into campuses and rope in hundreds at a time. Chetan Bhagat sweeps majority of the Indian audience in this fashion. The books sell at every nook and corner of India in incomparable numbers. Now the fifth of his books, Revolution 2020 are out, and I found it the best among the five.

This, I call, cotemporary writing. Even though the inevitable scenes of affairs and sex are included as in his previous novels, undoubtedly to sell more copies, Chetan has hit the right chords with the evergreen topics of love and greed that run throughout the story like stave in an orchestra composition. When writers spend months to coin phrases that might hold the verbose-liking readers to ponder over non-existent meanings, this IIM-A graduate has tabled his cards in a plain and simple fashion. Now here I might have hurt a few of you, but I don’t care - because bestsellers are not always meant to adorn the shelves of ardent literati fans and amateur wannabe pedants.

From a masala-point-something of a story to millions of books sold, Chetan has so far got the right going in everything. He was in the TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and he is the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history. Hope he uses this influence as a jig to instill in youth the realization of the need behind the youth to come forward for every common cause, rather than sulking away to comforts. He quit his career as an international banker, to dedicate his full time to writing. The Indian youth needs icons desperately, and this guy might have already proved his candidacy through his influence.

At a time when sins are redefined and erstwhile taboos have come out of sediments to the periphery, that the people (especially youth) have started to view corruption from a third person point of view gives hope. The book spits overt blame on the Indian educational system, but finally gives the reader a chance to choose which was right and which was wrong

Awesome reading, guaranteed.

How to Satisfy Our Daily Appetite

Slurrrrrrp!!!

I just wiped clean with my tongue the last drop of curd that tickled down the side of my right hand's little finger. Waaah! That was a lunch and a half I had just now. The menu was amaaazing! Rice, curd, pickle, 'dosa podi' and salt. I felt each grain of rice, the unique tomato garlic pickle, and amma-made-dosapodi filling my stomach - it was that relishing. Catch up to this line if you are held up in between the previous two lines, trying to read something there. No, there's nothing. That was it, the menu was short and simple but awesome. The best-to-have food, I found, is self-cooked. This would be the case with everybody, we get the most satisfaction out of having some food we have cooked, even if it's a delicacy or not. Objection, anybody?

It has been (just) two years since I started living neither at home nor in a hostel, and from then it has been a search for the best place to eat, to live. Of course, almost the complete later half of this period I stayed at my uncle's place in KK Nagar, Chennai, so during that time I had the best food I could get it Chennai. After that the hunt for the place which gave the next best food started again. I have been to many restaurants, 'messes', caterers and food stalls. The ones among these that managed to hold me as their regular visitor were 'Sridevi's Dosa Corner'* at Camp Road and Arvind Caterers in Muthamizh Nagar. I am not a great connoisseur of tastes, but I got bored everywhere because I found something lacking, in all these places. And each time I did, I would resort to something tedious and time-wasting at my first notion, but worth the toil and time spent in the end - and that act is nothing but cooking! If the end product of what I cook is harmless and eatable, then I find the element which was missing when I ate from outside - satisfaction. 

Eat-outs indeed give us tasty food we cannot prepare at home daily, but fail to lure us to come and eat everyday. The secret ingredient that gives our curd rice a 'five-star rating' is right there with us - our own culinary touch. But did I miss the most important clause - 'cooking works out only if we have time!'?

Now I am signing off for a nap, let me see if I will wake up in time to make an evening tea. 

*There was this 'normal dosa corner' at Camp Road, East Tambaram. GT and I used to frequent this place. Around the corner of the same road there was this restaurant, the name of which was so long and hard to remember, and my friend Sridevi used to eat from this restaurant. Later on, all three of us made this restaurant our official dinner place, and named this as 'Sridevi's Dosa Corner'. Thus the name.

I hate to blame the system to use the failure of the system as a curtain to conceal our unpreparedness. But sometimes the systems in place are so bad and inefficient that they just don't allow me to remain silent. 

Today something of this kind happened. I want to take my bike from my home in Malappuram, Kerala to Pallavaram, Chennai, the place where I live and work.  It's a 15-20 minutes walk from my Chennai home to office, and of late I have been thinking on this idea of getting a bike so that commuting to office and other travel in the city will be easy. The bike, a 100cc TVS make, is in average condition now and is used now only when my brother (he lives in Cochin, doing his B. Tech Mech Engg) or I am home.I don't want to spend too much to buy a new bike either, and this mostly rarely used bike at home is the best option I have. The bike will get a lifeline, its condition will better once I start using it regularly.

Now I need to get an NOC (No Objection Certificate) issued from the RTO (Road Transport Office) or Joint RTO under the sphere of which my locality falls. [As per rules this is not required - NOC is to be produced only if the registration number of the vehicle needs to be changed to another area, especially another state. I have a temporary plan only - I will use the bike in Chennai for another 7-8 months, after which I will send it back to Kerala, as my whereabouts after that time is uncertain!]. But to make myself equipped with all documents in case any traffic police wished to stop me, ask me to pull over to the side and expected cash to cover up any missing document, I thought I will obtain this NOC as well. 

I went to JRTO Perinthalmanna, as my residence is in Perinthalmanna Taluk. Now at the outside the JRTO, which is on the second floor of a yet-to-be-furnished building, there was a man behind a desk that had a small board on it which read 'Help Desk'. I was surprised and happy about this people-friendly arrangement. There was a very small queue in front of the desk - around four people. This was a proof for the efficiency of the man behind the desk, I thought. 

But it was not to be..

When I reached the head of the queue, a person came from behind - he was panting probably after a long walk in the sun. He too had come to get an NOC to use his vehicle in Kannur, and from his conversation with the 'helper' man I found that NOC form was not available in any nearby shops, forget at the JRTO. The 'helper', after learning from me that I wanted an NOC too to use my bike in Chennai, he asked me if I could get a form from a printing press a bit far away. I walked all the way just to find out that the press did not have any NOC forms. So I returned back to the 'helper' and described to him the situation. He then took out from an old file a filled copy of the form, and asked me to get a photocopy of that after hiding all written stuff using white paper. I went downstairs, went to a photocopy shop and got a couple of copies. An important thing was that the cash collection counter inside the JRTO would close at 1 o'clock and if I did not go in time, I would not be able to get the NOC before I start for Chennai tomorrow evening. And tomorrow and the day after are off-days for the JRTO. Finally, at about 12:45, with a lot of confusion the 'helper' finally helped me fill up the form, pasted a Rs. 5 stamp on it, attached the originals of my RC book, Insurance Certificate, Smoke Test Certificate, and asked me to submit it together at a counter inside. And from that counter I understood that the form I used was a wrong one, and that there was a separate form for NOCs outside Kerala. That was called Form 28. Furious, I wet out and asked the help-desk person about this confusion. He acted as if he did not know anything, and as if I was the one who got things wrong by hurrying things up, blah blah blah. And then he said that he had copies of Form 28!!! I shouted at him for not giving the correct information earlier, and then I saw that my watch, which runs 5 minutes fast, showed 1:10 PM. I walked away from the help-desk, showering my anger on the 'helper'. 

Now I cannot take my bike to Chennai tomorrow, for doing so would end me up emptying my purses to the Chennai traffic police. No wonder people make fun of people at government offices working in a sluggish manner.