Domino in effect

I can't even begin to fathom how it all started today. Technically speaking, I do know the roots from where my thoughts emanated and spread in my mind like wildfire, but I am still a wee bit skeptical whether or not I should let out my thought in the public domain. 

Here's the deal. There is a girl in my college who is a friend of a friend of mine. This girl I mentioned, qualifies just enough to be called a friend. You know the kind of friend, who you meet/run into from time to time, exchange a few pleasantries and move on. Now, being the gentleman that I am, and after this, also a liar, I don't like to drop names. So no one gets to know who is who. Besides, I am yet to get balls of Adamantium. 

So, back to this girl who happens to have become lot more ubiquitous a sight, and also thought, happened to cross my mind a few hours ago. So I did exactly what every Tom, Dick and Hari would do. Wait for it..... Wait for it...... Wait for it....... By the way, any guesses?

No points for "You checked her out on Facebook!". 

Yes, I did. Lame.

What happened next was, well, lamer, if such a word exists. 

As I was scrolling down this girl's page, scaling my own heights of lameness, I came across something. It was a photo. Oh yes, sir, it had the photo of the girl whom I was technically stalking virtually. What the photo also had was something that blew my head away, So now, if I look in the mirror, if I can find a mirror lying on the floor somewhere, there'll be nothing below the neck. My body might be searching for me, but I am scared that my toes will stub into my eyes while walking around during the search. Trouble is that I can't even shout, as somehow, ears were built into the head during the course of evolution. So the body without the head is basically deaf, dumb and blind. Tragic. Too much for getting your head blown away.

By the way, what I saw in the photo, apart from this girl, was... er... her friend. Uh oh. Did I feel lucky, eh, Punk? Dhhichkyaoun!

No.

I saw this friend of the friend of my friend, and forgot about my friend's friend. Wow! That sentence must hold the record for the most number of times the word 'friend' occurs in a sentence.

I at least had mutual friends with the girl I started off stalking. With this new-found friend of hers, I only have mutual strangers! No connection what so ever. I can keep aside the thought that a girl is out of my league. This one is out of my reach. She might as well have been Deepika Padukone and it wouldn't have made a difference! 

What the hell am I doing? In the last couple of months, I had very firmly, with a lot of difficulty, instilled the thought into my head that 

"I shall not worry about things that are beyond my control."

 

It didn't take half an hour to reduce all my conviction and hard work to dust. So from now, this is the new thought I shall abide by....

"I shall not worry about things beyond my control, and also about pretty faces with strong jaws beyond my reach." 

It is not just this pretty face that troubles me right now. When I 'ventured' to her Facebook page, I found out that she was bonkers about photography. Not just bonkers, bloody good at it too! It looked like she had the answer to the question "What are you passionate about?". And I hate such people who know the answer to the question "What are you passionate about?" ! How, people? How? What did your parents feed you? What did you do for 10000 hours? When I confront this abominable question, "What are you passionate about?" I find myself staring at walls for hours on end, usually during class. At the end of all the thinking, I pick up some book from my bag and start reading it, or just doze off, all this while sitting on the first bench. LIKE A BOSS!! Even my professors have given up hope on me. Goodness only knows why I sit on the first bench. 

Chuck all that. I have barely one more year of incubation period remaining in the place I call 'my college'. After that, it is two things, Rat race and Get-Fat race. And I look forward to neither of them!

I feel ashamed of myself right now for not having yet figured out my passion. People find their passion in photography, some in drawing, some in music, in sports, studies, research, cooking, some even in screwing with the heads of others! And I? Well, I don't know.

There is placement season going on in my college with all of us happily putting a price-tag on our own heads. Maybe that is the cause of my despair. I don't like asking Sambha "अरे ओह साम्भा! कितना इनाम रक्खे है सरकार हम पर ?" (Hey Sambha! How much has the government(read 'company') promised the bounty hunters for my head?).  

And how I wish that I wouldn't be fighting myself just for the sake of living, a year from now, like I have seen my elders do. 

It is like the boogeyman, who's coming to catch you. You can either run like a bitch, or you can stand and fight. And since I ain't Flash, it's time for HULK SMASH!!

In the process of writing all this, somewhere I have lost track of both the ladies I was planning to stalk. I even forgot one of their names. So that is a good sign. I'll get back to reading how inflation is affecting the country.  

 

Love thy runners!

On the day that I write this, I haven't run a single mile. But there are folks I have around me, close friends, who have gone that mile, maybe even that extra mile.

But first, a bit on running. 

As Jason Statham says in the movie Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels,

"Squeeze in if you can. Left leg, right leg, your body will follow. They call it walking.", just hasten the whole process a bit and 'they' will call it running!(whoever 'they' are)

Running is one of the most simple things that a human body has been made for. As a sport, it didn't even have to be consciously 'invented' as such. And it is probably the most beautiful thing our bodies can do, obviously apart from all the 'other' beautiful things the body can do.

Now, coming to the runners....

They are a separate breed among us. They have definitely not been rare. Go out on the street early in the morning. Be it any village, any town, any city anywhere on the planet where humans are residing, one is bound to find a few pair of legs moving faster than the others. And they are a sight to watch!

These folks come in all shapes, all sizes, all age groups and move a wide range of distances on land. Some do it to reach somewhere early. Some do it to lose weight. Some do it to socialize. Some do it for a cause. Some do it without one. Some do it just to find out how hard, how fast and how far you can go till you can't anymore. And they are all over the place. In the gym, on the treadmill. In the garden, on the road, on the beach, on hilly roads, on rocky roads, in the wilderness, in the desert, on snow and every possible turf this earth can throw at us! Sometimes when you pass by them, you feel a strange sense of kinship with the fellow. Well, that's only if you are in a vehicle and they are huffing and puffing. 

But what if they are in your way?? "Eh! Chuck the brother/lady...I'm overtakin' !"

They do their thing irrespective of the weather. They do it when people are laughing at them, specially when they look a tad bit flabby. They do it when their legs are screaming in agony. And they do it so that they could fly for a moment before their next foot came down.

And they know they are in love with what they are doing. Then we ask "Why love them??". It is because running takes effort. And anything that takes effort is completely worth appreciating. Maybe the end result is not beautiful. Maybe it is not as graceful as it should/could be. But hauling one's arse takes determination. A lot more than sitting around and watching other run. 

More than everything, what excites a runner is the last leg. There's always this restlessness inside a runner the moment the Finish line is visible. There is an extremely apparent change in their body language. Everything about them gets progressively faster. In the runner's head, this is the time when Bill Conti's track "Gonna fly now", the song in Rocky, starts to play. The runner visualizes him/self as Rocky Balboa (Or whatever a Female 'Rocky Balboi' may look like), and they gun it!! All the way to the end!!!! "Flyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!"

And at the finish line, they raise both their hands, as they would in victory. A small victory, before the next bigger one tomorrow.....

Fighting to get close

Two people who apparently have nothing common between them at first can go a long way, for some very strange reason. Logically speaking, each friend one makes is a stranger before he/she becomes a friend. But then there are a few specimens in your friend-list, (not the Facebook friend-list....) whose presence is somehow inexplicable in life.. After reading the last sentence, I realized that 'this' part of my life is what I call 'overdoing'.

Two years ago...

It was  my freshman year. I was sitting jobless in my room, when a very close friend of mine(No.. I won't mention the fellow's name) walked into my room. We chatted and yapped for a while and everything was going fine, just that five minutes into our conversation, we both knew we were dead bored. We gave each other this blank look, both thinking "So what to do now?". This friend of mine can be annoying at times. He had collected the numbers of  'many a ladies' from all over the freshman year, some by asking the girls, some..... by hook or crook. He said "Let's prank the girls by calling them.". I still remember the twinkle in his eyes when he said that. I didn't exactly feel any emotion till the time it was my turn to make a call to a girl. If I remember correctly, at the time, there was this controversy around one of the teachers leaving the college for some very strange reasons. There were rumors all around about the same, but no body knew exactly what was happening.. Okay, that's my way of saying that I was probably the only one around who had absolutely no idea of what was going on.

Moving on.....

So, looking into the 'contact list', it was  a matter of pure 'eenie-meenie-minie-mo' to choose any one number, dial it, and press the 'Green phone button'. So that is exactly what I did. After I pressed the dialing button, I got this very strange feeling in my belly. But I couldn't exactly connect the 'strange feeling in my belly' to the weird feeling I was getting all over my body. I could specially not understand my sudden urge to fart. Hmm.. not good!

Suddenly, someone picked up on the other end.. SHIT!!! SHIT!! I sort of scrambled for words for the first five seconds. Then I managed to pull off my 'Robert-Downey-Jr.-baritone', which would have made me sound something like.... err... Mila Kunis... Never mind, it's all in the head. So I blabbered something.. Not sure I remember what it was I said... Oh yeah!! I asked her for her name. She told me hers. She asked me for mine, I told a fake one... but you see, not that it mattered(or so I thought...) and I asked her if she knew what the controversy about the soon-to-be-leaving-teacher was. I don't remember what she said about what she knew. She sounded a bit skeptical about who the oerson was on the other end, I suppose. She asked me who I was again... This time, I said who I was....or at least who I thought I was in my dreams....

"I am BATMAN!". I was planning on saying the whole thing "I am VENGEANCE, I am the KNIGHT, I am BATMAN!!!". But then, even back then I had the smarts to understand that would be a bit too much for her to handle.

So I kept it short, and pressed the 'red phone' button as fast as I could with my almost frozen fingers.. Somehow, I managed to not fart. So that way, I saved two people. Guess who? One's my friend(Duh!). The second one's the girl. She too would have died of the smell perhaps. So I really was a super hero on the day it turns out... Eh! Chuck it!

After my turn, my friend called another number and did his part of the bargain.

Somehow, I felt miserable for losing my time making that call. It did give a rush of a strange kind. But the excitement got killed at the end of the first call, and I decided not to do it any more. But the next thing I was planning on was a suicide mission. I decided to apologize to the girl I had called. But I wasn't up for doing that over phone. That would have just made things a bit too 'Phoney'. So I found out which class she was in, and decided to go to her the next day.

Come the next morning.....

I waited for the break session at 10 o'clock.  I was slightly hesitant about the whole 'apology' gig. For all you know, you never know when it's your chance to get pulverized to pulp at the hands of a lovely lady. After I saw who I had meddled with the previous night over phone, I was certain about that day being my turn to get pulverized at the hands of a lovely lady, To the extent, that I actually decided to flee from the place. It wasn't anything about her looks or anything. As a matter of fact, there was something extremely endearing about the way she looked.But it was probably my preparedness to get beaten up that helped me stand my ground. Strange thing was, she was nothing like imagined.

Here's what I had imagined: The person would be this fire breathing dragoness, who, if given a choice, would burn me to ash with her fiery eyes... I know that not a word of that sentence makes sense, but at the time, nothing made sense to me either. So we just started to talk... err... or rather, I just tried to apologize and get my sorry-ass out of there as soon as I possibly could, before she turned into the lady dragon I was afraid she would turn into. But she started smiling and talking back, and it all went fine. Maybe it wasn't all that big a deal. ORRR I was already in hell, sleeping, tied to a big log of wood, dreaming for the last time,  before those puny beings in hell burned me in my sleep!!

Thankfully, it wasn't all that big a deal, it turned out. I even told her my real name after that.....!

And hence, the two of us parted ways smiling, I specifically smiling because I came out of it miraculously unscathed!

Two years hence......

There's this atrocious process called a pre-registration that my college subjects us to, each semester, without fail. And it would be absolutely frivolous to describe to anyone what the pre-registration is all about. Each and every student goes around the college to-and-fro about 2-3 times, just by chance if all formalities fall in place on time. Otherwise, forget your pre-registration

So, somewhere about 3 months ago, in my last semester, while I was running around the college to get my pre-registration done, I walked into a girl and asked her for what time it was... When the girl turned her face to me for replying, a current ran through my spine....

I forgot what time it was she told me. And then, she looked at me, squinted at my face and said "Hari, right?".

After taking five more seconds to register what she'd said, only one picture can describe how I felt at that moment.....

She remembers my name! Yeah!! Beat that!

 But then I realized that as a proof of how big a joke I would have made of myself in the Ladies-Hostel..... just because of a single phone-call...

Over the next few days, we kept running into each other at random. It's kind of cool to still realize that I am still alive, given that she has had sufficient chances to make a pulp out of me, but so far, has gracefully shown restraint to any such behavior that would be a cause of great humiliation to me. I mean, what will my friends say?? "Look at that chap! He got beaten up by a girl! Ha... Ha... Ha...".

Touchy feet+Intellectual Begger+filmy feeling!!

And at last, something out of the usual to put down! Here's the one time when things went exactly according to plans. Of course there's always the "Well, almost."

There's something about the conversations we all in general have on Facebook, that I would like to add here, as out of place it may seem.When we are in the middle of a Facebook 'chat' that has been going on for a few days, there's this strange inexplicable anticipation from the other end that develops inside the head, I guess, specially when you secretly look forward to running into the person on the other end, in reality. Moving on.

Three days filled with fun, amazement, nostalgia and loads, loads, loads.. loads of food and a bit of that above mentioned eager anticipation throughout, specially on the last day, were to follow. And it wouldn't be far from right to say that all of it was expected.

Having reached the college a couple of days before all the hustle and bustle, it was a breeze completing all the formalities of getting into the next semester. After that was done, I joined two of my fellows for a long due trip to Palakkad, the home to half my ancestry.For th next three days, this song 'Khwaabon ke Parindey' form the movie 'Zindagi Naa Milegi Dobaara' stayed the only song in my mental playlist, that too in a loop.

A hop onto a train, and two and a half hours later, I stood on the  Olavakode station platform, a few meters away from the place where I remember spending hours of my evening as a kid with my grandpa, watching trains pass by. A small flashback here..

I am pretty close to my grandpa, whom I fondly call 'Dadaji'. As a kid, I visited him during vacations. Nothing unusual here. For some strange reason , he and I had a very strong rapport. On my visits to his place, he took me out for evening walks saying "Wa da, train kaannan pua"(Come on, let's go out to watch some trains...). He knew it was something I looked forward to. And I don't exactly remember how I developed a fondness for watching trains go by. So, at a place, a bit before the station platform, there was a small railway crossing, just enough to barely allow a few people, maybe a bicycle or a motorcycle to cross the tracks. I stood there with my Dadaji, sometimes, on his shoulders, watching train after train pass in front of us. I still ask myself why I did that. I just get no answer. Besides, I remember myself as a kid saying, "Dadaji, Eniyum uru train"(Dadaji, just one more train) each time it was supposed to be our last train. Strangely, I don't remember a single occasion when he got annoyed of, what now sounds like a very weired request.

So more than a decade after making my grandpa wait for virtually hours at that meek little crossing, I was back to the same place. Well almost, considering the small distance between that railway crossing and the platform I mentioned earlier. Never the less, the nostalgia was more than enough to get me to call Dadaji. He was ecstatic to find that I still remembered all of it. I clearly remember his happy voice over the phone. Not a bad start to a 3 day trip, not a bad start at all!

Traveling through the streets of Palakkad, it was waves of nostalgia, lashing left-right-and-center. But beyond a point, even the nostalgia got nauseating. So I gave it a chuck!.

Back at my friend, Daasa's(Aaditya), Nayan and I settled into his room. The next three days, I was going to be the cleanest I would be for all the life I have lived, and very likely all the life I am going to live. A bath twice a day is a MUST! It will be a safe move to leave this topic without getting into intricate details of my personal hygiene routine.

Moving on to all the moving around we did, we didn't do much moving around on the first day except for the train journey.

I haven't exactly had a 'boys only' trip of any kind before this, most of my trips involving err.... family crowd, but this one would be something like 'Dil Chahta Hai' with all the driving done by Daasa's father... And I am not complaining.

By the way, on the first evening, Daasa's father had proposed a morning outing to the park nearby, something Daasa had warned us about, and threatened  us against agreeing to. But then, who's afraid? The proposed time was 5:30 am. I couldn't sleep a blink after 4:45 am out of excitement. A new track, fresh morning air, what more can you ask for a start to the day? After our small sweat session, we were walking back to Daasa's place. There was this sound that came out from a very unexpected place.... and it wasn't from any of our backsides. What we heard, sounded like "Could you please give me some change, if it wouldn't be inconvenient to you?". The guy who said this was...... wait for it.... wait for it.... A beggar!!! The most sophisticated one I had encountered yet.

The first thing that crossed my mind was "Wow, even our beggers take Kerala's 100% literacy rate rather seriously!". But it saddens me that a lot of our potentially employable crowd is loitering around, unnoticed, whatever be the reason. I spent the remaining way to Daasa's place hoping we wouldn't run into another eloquent begger. 

After reaching home, I suddenly got this idea of going to the terrace of the house. Apart from my decision to spend 2 days at Daasa's, this was the best decision I had taken in the two days I spent there. The view from the terrace was tranquilizing. Although I couldn't see the Nilgiri range of mountains, as I could from my grandpa's home, the view of the horizon was refreshing. Add to that the fact that neither Nayan, ,nor Daasa followed me upstairs, it felt like 20 minutes of meditation. Those few moments felt exactly ripped out of a movie scene. Call me a narcissist, but in my mind, my hair was all stylishly flying and fluttering in the wind, like that of some bad-ass bloke sitting at the edge of a cliff. A bad-ass bloke sitting peacefully on the edge of a cliff, sipping a cup of piping hot coffee might sound like a contradiction, but all of it felt good! 

The rest of the day was bliss!

After all the morning running-around, our run-in with an intellectually superior beggar, a bath,  and amazingly amazing home cooked food, which we stuffed ourselves with, it was time for an outing. Uncle(Daasa's dad) dropped us off at MALAMPUZHA! It's one of the places I used to visit almost every time I visited my grandparents. But this kind of a 'Boys' day out' was a first.

After fooling around with, putting our heads into, and riding a ginormous crocodile made out of rocks, we decided to leave the croc to it's peaceful Tuesday-Morning solitude, as it was a Tuesday morning. Ever since we had arrived in Palakkad, the winds had been particularly strong, and cool. So despite the brightly shining sun overhead, the heat wasn't exactly an issue. After waling all around the Malampuzha garden, we climbed onto the Dam. On one side, there was this beautiful garden, on which, some 300 Crores had been spent for it's beautification, primarily a high-tech fancy 'looking' entry to the garden. That was all there was to the beautification. On the other side of the dam, there was this vast expanse of water, namely the Malampuzha river. For the sake of GK, it is a tributary of the Bharata Puzha(River).

The view from the top of the dam was 'damn' good. With kites playing in the wind all around above us, trying to reach higher by riding on thermal drafts or trying to stay still in the air against the strong winds, it was all worth capturing on camera, that is, in case one had a good camera. Again, in case......

The dam was also 'damn' long!. A lot longer than I had expected it to be. You see, when you're with your family, your mobility is pretty much restricted to your family's movements. Out of somewhere, a cranky kid starts crying because his hat/pants flew away, the girl wants to fix her hair as they too are flying in the strong wind, one more uncle says that walking in the wind feels like resistance training, someone else is having some other random problem, and the list goes on..... and on! When it's three fellows with raging hormones, even if one of them has a bit too much of 'surface area', it doesn't really slow a gang of three.

The three of us walked, sprinted and climbed our way all around the dam. The long straights on the dam caused a very strong urge to sprint the entire length of the dam, and I had no intentions to quell my urges. Running against the wind was like running through a cake. It gave a new meaning to the phrase 'it was a cake-walk'. Okay, sorry, it was a cake-run. Thankfully, Nayan too was quite excited with the prospects of running through cakes. So, the two of us got into our elements and got going! Daasa didn't exactly share our enthusiasm for cake-running. He was more busy eating the cake, I guess.

Nevertheless, we got to on of the 'far ends' of the dam, just to discover that we were about half way through it's whole length, as far away, we could see the dam extending farther away. So we were like "Let's chuck it, we'd rather get back and watch a beautiful King Cobra." 

Next stop, the Snake park. Daasa is fond of snakes. But Aunty(His mom) isn't. And hence, he seldom gets to go to the snake park. And that's exactly where we stepped in. For Company.....

From what I had heard about the snake park from Daasa in his earlier mentions of it, in my imagination, the place was this wild forest with a glass tube cutting right through it, for the protection of visitors, and snakes wreathing, wiggling, twirling and turning all around, outside the tunnel, of course. And what the place turned out to be, although only from the looks of it, was a children's park with a few chambers and glass boxes thrown in. Again, that was from the looks of it, and Looks... Are Deceptive! For instance, as much as the guy looks like Tom Criuse in the mirror, everyone knows the truth. 

Coming back to dangerous creatures in the park, they were all around! I was just hoping that another one wouldn't come out from someone's pants!! Okkay! Sorry!! Bad JOKE!!

But the park fellows had a joke ready for us. At the entrance of the park, there was this wall describing all about snakes, their names, their usual prey, their typical habitat, and stuff. There was this one rat-eating snake, who's name I cannot recollect. Apparently, the snake typically lived in people's houses.... So where did the people live?

Soon, we were all tired of all the jokes we cracked, and decided it was time to head home. So that's what we did. Back at home, we watched the James Bond's 'Thunderball', the movie that virtually added the jet-pack into our imagination. I slept during the movie.

At around 5 in the evening, it was time to get out again! We basically moved out to check out some second-hand books. On our way, Nayan found his love. It'd been a while since he had started his search for something with lots of chocolate in it. And here we were, standing outside a shop selling 'Dark Chocolate Mousse'. All three of us have a penchant for dark chocolate and coffee. As a matter of fact, we barely escaped getting into an argument with Uncle(Daasa's dad) about how coffee is not good for the body.

After that, I specifically insisted on heading straight for the book store, as I am STINGY AS HELL!!! Specially when I realize that I will soon run out of cash.

At the bookstore, I ran into this cult novel 'Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. I didn't want another thing! Thankfully, the book store had a second copy of the book, which kept Daasa and me from getting into a wrestling match over the book. Getting out of the bookstall, I felt like a 5 year-old girl who had just gotten hold of her favorite Pink dressed/haired Barbie doll. I actually held onto the book, refusing to put it into the carry-bag that Nayan was holding. But at on point not much later, I got a feeling that I was being a bit too touchy with the book. So I popped the book into Nayan's bag.

We headed to Daasa's grandmom's place. There, more eating followed.One thing happened here. While we were leaving, Nayan did the most atrocious thing he ever could have. He went and touched Daasa's grandmom's feet to show off the  cultural values his parents instilled in him!!! It was one of those "That Moment When....." moments, which have gained popularity on Facebook. I am particularly not fond of this 'touchy-feet' custom, and had no intention to touch Daasa's grandmom's feet. And so, I didn't. I feel a bit uncultured, but not that comes in the way of my peaceful existence. Then we headed back to Daasa's home. That episode was still further followed by more eating. At the end of the day, I felt like a stuffed chicken! Then it was another night's sleep, as the next day, we were headed back to college.

In the morning, after a good breakfast from Aunty, we got ready. I was opening the gates of the house for Uncle to get his car out, when I suddenly had this strong sense that Nayan would go and touch Aunty's feet! I just turned around to go and tell him not to do so, and there the bugger was, doing exactly what I was going to plead against... Arsehole!

I walked up to Aunty. I am not exactly the 'huggy' types. I somehow managed to give her a hug. I wish I had given her a more tighter, warmer hug. In the car, while on our way to the station, I felt as if I had just lost that one rare chance to hug my mom tight, whom I usually never hug on my way out of my home, out of my shyness. It's kind of a strange feeling. The last three days couldn't be summed up in better words than those of Nayan's. "It is now that I feel I am leaving home after vacations"......

I got a brand new girlfriend.

Yeah! Can you believe it? She said 'Yes'. It all happened in a blur. It still seems like a blur. From somewhere, I got the courage to muster up my courage to approach her. Even in my imagination, I would have found that hard to do, but I did. Somehow. Classes got over for the day. Fortunately, as I was getting out of my class, I just saw her come out of hers.

I walked towards her, thinking each moment “Shit! Shit! What the hell am I doing?”. For some odd reason, she looked in my direction. I bloody well froze! There was only one line blaring inside my head that sounded like “Man! You are so done!”. I was weak in my knees. I was weak in every joint, muscle and cell of my body.

Somehow, I stepped forward, noticing that she'd noticed me approaching. I had a feeling that she was thinking something like “Not this bloke. Not now! Please!”. Never mind, I just rolled up my sleeves, lifted my collar, in my imagination of course, and somehow dared to take a few more steps forward. And then I blurted out something.

Whatever I blurted out, must have been something pretty awesome and mind blowing, because the next scene I remember in the sequence of events that followed, is where she smiles at me and says 'Yes'.

I guess I asked her if she thought that I was an ass. Well, that's a reasonable explanation for her agreement. But if I correctly remember, the next thing I asked her was if she'd mind accompanying me for a cup of coffee

She said 'No'. As in, No, she didn't mind doing so. If I'd had a mirror in my hand at that time, I swear, I'd never look at my face. I would have been wearing that ugly smile that I have at times when I can't limit the size of my smile within the constrains of my face.

Now, I was Daredevil! I asked her if she trusted me. Sometimes, there are these moments when you become invincible, or at least inside your head, your t-shirt seems to bulge from all the right places, there suddenly appears a sigh of hope in the shape of a diamond on your chest, preferably red in color, the sigh that looks like an 'S' to ordinary humans, and you get the feeling that if you jump hard enough, you are ready to fly. That's how I felt when I asked her if she trusted me. She uttered a shy 'Yes'.

Man! I was flying. Dhan Te Dan! I'm SUPEMAN!

Suddenly, all my memory gets scrambled, and all of a sudden, I am sitting in this quaint little café with her. I'll tell you what the place looked like. That's the one thing, probably the only thing I find myself capable of describing. The walls were warm-red. The ceiling was a dark gradient of yellow, the kind you'd like on a Lamborghini. There was a balcony to the right of our table. There was a sliding glass door separating the insides of this café from all the dust and grime coming through the balcony from the main road outside. A mat made of straw and cane just hung beyond the glass doors to break the sun's rays. The walls were covered with all sort of enlarged retro-type photos. It all lent a very easy air to the place. The only cocky part of the café was it's name... 'Chill out Café'.

It was quiet. Very cozy. It was the kind of place that was hidden in plain sight, and intentionally left so. I don't remember much except for the warm coffee going down my throat and the even warmer silence between the two of us. It kind of made the cozy feeling a bit overwhelming.

I wanted to ensure that she trusted me, because such places seem a bit secluded. I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable.

The only thing I remember next is these three noisy blokes who entered the café. They bloody well destroyed the sanctity of that quiet little haven. The shortest one among the three was like a bloody noisy tyrant! The three folks looked like kids from the nearby college.

I remembered how I had quite recently come to this place myself, accompanied by two of my friends, one of who, recommended it highly. All of a sudden, the noise coming from those three fellows started to rise. It looked as if their voices were being controlled by a volume dial, and someone was obviously turning that dial rightward. The noise was continuously rising.

I couldn't understand what was happening. I noticed that she was saying something to me. I wasn't able to figure out what it was that she was saying, although. Somehow, the rising noise wasn't getting to her. Or could she not hear it? I was starting to get a headache. For some reason, the now shrilling noise sounded all too familiar.

I felt my hand subconciously searching for my cell phone. No, I wasn't getting a call. I had learned from too many articles that it is wise to switch off all sources of disturbances, being the mobile phone, when you happen to have the rare opportunity to be with your lady-luck. So, the wise one that I am, I had taken that precaution, early on.

As for the sound, it was getting shriller by the moment. Somehow, I managed to stop that cacophonic alarm. I squinted at the screen of my cell phone to check the time. 3:30 in the morning? What the hell?

Bollocks!!I have that shitty review article to finish! Shit! Shit! Shit! This sad life of mine! I can't even be happy in my dreams!

And if I don't finish that article by 9:00 today.....Oh! I even have that other assignment! Brilliant!

Squeezing it out

It was about 6:50 am when a friend came asking my room-mate to join him for a run. It had been a while that I'd been up. So I decided to join these two folks for a morning sweat-session.
My room-mate had been itching to take his new scooter, that he'd got from his brother, out for a little 'test ride'. So we were off.
Very usual morning, very bright, perfect lighting. It never makes you want to stop.
We reached the ground. The grass had fresh dew on it, sparkling in the morning sun. Our rounds began. One round, the second, the third.. Yeah, I know that the fourth won't come before the third, but then anyways.

There's something about going round and round that makes things very...mundane. Specially on flat tracks. It ain't a means to an end, besides, it doesn't have an end. Sure, there's a beginning point and you encounter that point a dozen-or-so times before you start wondering what on earth are you doing, going round and round. In Hindi, the word for this feeling is घनचक्क (Pronounced as Ghanchakkar). And I don't like that word particularly.

I like hilly terrain. All the ups and downs, the badly laid roads, they go a long way in making the whole sweating job more exciting. Either that, or a straight road, pointing at the horizon, not giving you a clue as to where you are going. Something like this,

But by the way, doing 'rounds' is no easy thing. It is indeed very difficult to motivate yourself, and keep yourself motivated while doing something boring.
So, by the time we finished covered the ground 4 times, I was done doing 'rounds'.
And I didn't want to sap the other two of their motivation. So I left the place for another trail which is a hilly type of a trail. I go there often, when I feel bored. It's got a few really dirty climbs that really kill you. It all went fine, just that for some reason, I felt very slow.
Sometimes, there are things that occupy your thoughts without you knowing what they are, but they don't fail in making you feel heavy nevertheless.. Probably there were too many things that were gushing in all-at-a-time while I was at my ground pounding. So taking a break from civilization looked like a good call. Enter 'The Trail', the same place I mentioned, where I go when I get really bored. It's a typical hilly countryside place. Unlike the usual, where if you are running, there will be people staring at you like you are a bloody alien. On the other hand, this trail of mine, it doesn't make you feel like you are on Mars, just allows you to breathe some fresh air.
The 'Agenda for the day' was to not stop, no matter what, till I had gone the distance I had in mind, specially after understanding that legs weren't going to move any faster. At least that was one thing I was happy about, for having stuck to.
I came back to my room, got rid of my socks. Goodness,  they could kill a man! The stench! Now, comes the good part. I went to the washroom, pulled my shirt off, and did something I had been wanting to do for a while. I wrung my shirt, squeezing out as much of my sweat out of my shirt as possible. Wow! It looked like a freaking waterfall! I wanted to do this, specially after watching this movie called 'Bhaag Milkha Bhaag', where the lead fellow, did something similar to fill up buckets with his sweat. There was this voice inside my head, almost in a taunting tone, saying "Yeah, man! You'r getting there!!"
It felt good though. 

Wolo molo wonder!

Yupp!! Today's a rare one. For a change, things haven't, proverbially so called, HIT THE SPOT, but, today, looks like the spot just increased it's radius.

Usually, this is how things start.

I am being chased by the hound of Baskervilles. I am running as hard as I can to keep my backside from falling into the hound's mouth. Then, there's this guy somewhere behind, on a horseback, whirling his lasso, aiming for my head. I don't know the scene exactly behind me. I guess I am drunk at this point. I can hear a whirling sound...which in my mind is the lasso. I hear this panting sound, accompanied by ferocious grunts..which in my imagination, should be the bloody hound. And, if I am not mistaken, I hear the taps of the horse's hoof. Mind you, that's the only sound, that of the hoof, that sounds pleasant... It sounds athletic. The remaining sounds remind you of some sort of frantic desperation.... Even your own breath. Oh! I almost forgot. A nuclear explosion is happening in my chest, each time my heart is beating.

All of a sudden, I just feel this 'thing' falling in front of my eye. It feels like a blink. But I didn't blink! The next thing I feel is a hard tug around my neck. For a second, I see the entire chain of events that is about to follow any moment. THEN...I feel the jerk around my neck.

I throw my hands in front to escape whatever it is behind me. I sit propped up on my bed, eyes wide open, heartbeat shooting through the roof, and my hands straight ahead of me, like a zombie.

I look around. Two of my room mates are staring at me. Apparently, I made a loud noise, while in the process of getting into my 'sitting-zombie' position.

That is how it usually begins..Exaggerations aside, obviously.

The start today wasn't different.

Okay. I look out of the window. Ah! Bright and shiny! For some reason, the phrase 'rise and shine' appears on this red neon sign inside my head. The blinking type neon sign. It looks more like an emergency SOS call.

A standard thought haunts me again. "Oh my goodness!! There's so much to do in life! And the day passes away like the wind! How will I do all that I want, and must?"Mom and dad must be thinking, Oh, what must our son be doing? He's just got another year-and-a-half of merrymaking in college! How, rather what will the fellow do after that?". I forcibly chuck the thoughts aside.

I performed all the morning rituals to purge myself. Then I headed out. Again, it was nice and shiny. There's something about the morning sun, no matter how hard hitting it is, that makes you feel very cozy in your clothes. I wash my hands in the sun's light. I felt this warmth on my palms...this slow heat. I could stand there literally the whole day. I almost ended up doing something like that.

I got late for the class in the process. Nothing special for the next two hours, except for the fact that I was able to grasp what was being explained. My friend, Jenifer was doing the explaining the whole thing. It was good.. I don't know why I am saying what I am about to say, but she's a good person to have for a friend, this girl Jenifer.

Lunch time! Yaaay!!! It's a Friday! Chicken!!!!! Yeah, so that's over. Then what? Oh ya, then the day's main attraction! First steps into forming a club in the college! TEDxNITCalicut's the name. Now there's something exciting! It seems like a dream taking shape. Another club, the Music Club,  I wanted to be inside, looks like an elusive dream. Chuck it... Not exactly. Any ways, moving on.

There's something about about waiting for people to turn up, that is extremely irritating. You feel a complete loss of control over your life! Specially f you are waiting for some permission of sorts.

You see, there's a permission for everything. Permission for running, for not running, for standing still, going to take a leak (remember class 4, 5, 6 or 7? Or for that matter, even now?). Thankfully, I was along with my mate, Nayan. He's like the stable(mentally) one among the two of us.

It ass sounds pretty vague. The whole thing. I mean, everything sounds so abstract. Looks as though someone gave bottles of colored water into a kid's hand and left him to his/her devices. Obviously, the kid knew how to open the bottles.

So, now it's back to the room. It's about 3. Middle of the day. Some looking into books was in order.  That was that. Then, the Phantom of the Opera looked short enough to finish in 15 minutes.

Poor guy, the Phantom. All he wanted was a lady to love him and be his wife. A lady did start to love him. Okay, she didn't exactly fall for his yellow face with black holes for eyes. But she somehow loved him and agreed to love him, and wed him(Wow! Now, I guess anybody stands a chance!!).. Sounds like a contract. Nice. I mean, for the Phantom. So what does he do, after the lady agrees to wed him? He leaves her to the guy she loves. And suicides. Arsehole! So the whole thing was an experiment.

Aim:To figure out if a lady could love the Phantom.

 Procedure:

1-Get hold of a girl who wants to sing.

2-Make her famous.

3-As she'll feel indebted to you for your deeds, she wants to repay you.

4-So you tell the lady to show you some love, despite the fact that you are hell-as ugly!(Oh! Did I mention, that a prerequisite for the experiment is that you need to be ugly as hell??)

5- If the girl disagrees, catch the guy, the girl likes, and threaten to kill him.

6-If the girl still disagrees,

6.a) Bad for the guy you caught

6.b) You may just have caught the wrong guy, so again, Bad for the guy you caught.

6.c) If the girl agrees, leave the girl and the guy to do their thing. Tell her it was a joke. Firstly, she'll kill you. But who gives a shit anyway? You already had plans to suicide after the guy and girl left the stage.

Sad shit!

A message to the Phantom: Dude, did you have the brains stuck up the wrong place??? Huh?

I look through another course book. Head out for a run. Come back , having happily hit my target, in spite of a 3 day bout of laziness. Then I sit down to gather my day onto a page. And Woalah! I just got over with about 1100 words! Phew! Must have been a long day! At least I am thankful that a few more hours remain.

And I got this new ear worm today. Ghulmil-Ghulmil Launda!!