Smiley Face – Day N

By On · 2 Comments · In Just Rambling

Day N, because it doesn’t matter which day it is.

One thing I figured from this exercise is that it loses all fun then moment it becomes an exercise. It just happens when it has to happen; I cannot force it to follow a schedule. For that reason, I think it is futile to chronicle my trysts with joy. This will be the official closure of Project Smiley Face, although I stopped it some time back. And to my surprise, the joy of making people happy came back, because it was no longer a chore.

It also led me to retrospect on what I want. My best friend said I was selfish. A stubborn side of me refuses to believe that, but the other side of me trusts my friend implicitly. Although it was mentioned in a different context, it got me thinking. Why do I like bring a smile to people’s face? I am thinking, is this really my altruistic side, or just my ego? Do I expect anything out of this? I do want to bring joy to the world in my small way, but by chronicling it in my blog, am I trying to brag about the little Amelie Poulain inside me? What is my real motive? Is it to paint an I’m-an-amazing-guy picture myself? Is it my insecurity talking?

I thought and thought. I now know the answer. If selfish means doing something for personal gain, then I am selfish. I am doing the little joy activities for myself. I get a kick out of it. Yes I do. I am not doing it for anyone else. I am doing this for my personal joy. Because there is no one else to make me happy. I started getting that lonely feeling which I had 5 years earlier. My friend is again right when she said I am not as happy as 2 years back.

But is it really how you define selfishness? Do I manipulate people for my personal gain? No. Trying to make someone smile can hardly be called manipulation. Then how can I be called selfish?

I am unhappy. But I’m done trying to run away from unhappiness. I am going to face it. I don’t know how to face it, and there’s no one to tell me how to, but I will try.

So here I am, with my laundry list of character defects as is evident above… Truth is…. I’m Ironman (That was just for the effect!)

Smiley Face – Day 0

By On · Add Comment · In Life etc.

I should learn not to make loud entries. Last time I asked if you smell what I was cooking, I didn’t follow it up properly. Whatever I was cooking would now certainly be smelly because it will be rotten by now. No excuses there. I probably just had more important things to do in my life.

2 days back, a chain of events unfurled on an otherwise dull day, which made me think of what many people call “random acts of kindness”. I took it up a notch, and instead of being randomly kind, I was randomly funny. Not that I am not used to being randomly funny, but this time it was to a stranger who I didn’t care about. But to my surprise, it was such a self-gratifying feat, and I was not able to figure out why. Why would I feel happy that I made a stranger smile?

I followed it up, when someone (again someone I don’t really care about, but a little better than a stranger) made a snide remark about my height ( which, at 5’8″, is perfectly average by Indian standards ), and I took it in stride and actually made a self-deprecating joke out of it to get a smile out of that person ( and, I hope, a bit of repentance out of them for being shallow ). It was an amazing feeling. And who wouldn’t like to feel good, especially if it is so easy.

I have always been fascinated by how people interact, and what is the takeaway from interactions. Maybe because I always had the trouble to interact with people who are not really close to me, without a little nudge here and there, I always wondered how more gifted people do that. It is not that I have trouble having a conversation with a stranger, but more often than not, to the love of my life, I cannot figure out if they are interested in the conversation, or if they are just bored. This self-doubt is the reason for my disposition towards being introverted; I will make the first move, but I will rarely make the second move. But what is the takeaway when you just make one move and leave the game? Is it worthwhile? Will world be a better place if everyone commits to make at least one person smile? Will *my* world be a better place if I commit to do that?

To know the answer for this, I decided to start a social experiment, which I would call Smiley Face. It is to make at least one stranger laugh or smile per day, and document it. I want to see how far I can go with this. I will stop the day it gets boring, or I feel that the warmth that spreads inside me when I do the deed is no longer warm enough.

I hope I can inspire at least some people. And yes, I sincerely believe that happiness is the goal we are looking for in life. We just have to figure out how each of us attain happiness.

The Second Coming

By On · 5 Comments · In General

Finally… (It didn’t come out right, let me say it again)

Finally… (One more time)

FINALLY… The First1 has come back to Pensieve 2.0!!!

8 months.. 8 long months… That’s how long it has been since The First made his appearance here. This was not a sudden decision to come back; in actuality, I never intended to abandon my blog. But I had been through a lot lately, and my life seemed to go in a downward spiral. Blogging was possibly on the lowest echelons of my priorities for quite some time. What is the point in letting the world know what disappointments you have, right? Anyway,  I have absolutely no idea how I’ve been able to hang on to my self-worth after all I’ve been through. But I have hung on (with the help of some amazing people who have given me the needed moral support – my uncle and aunt, my parents, my brother, and what would I have done without you, my dear V6?), and I am thankful that I am strong enough. Now that my life (or whatever I think life is) seems to have started falling back into place again, I knew it was time to get that old mojo back!

The works for the comeback started a month back. However, my blog was somehow still a low priority, and I kept procrastinating. Fortunately or unfortunately, the push I needed came over the span of last couple of weeks. I have so much to say, but no one is listening to me. My blog is there exactly for that – to hear my rant any time of the day, any day of the week. It is probably wrong of me to expect that from a real person. Second, I always have needed a person (or an inanimate object which will reach out to more people) to talk my heart out to. Don’t worry, I won’t whine. I will hide my insecurities by being funny. (I go with the people’s opinion that I really am a bit funny)

Perhaps, I won’t see my problems when I am mad as a hatter. I will keep myself dumb, and tell people, “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK!”.

(On second thought, it does, so please comment!)

So, from now on, I will be searching for that old self who is crazy as hell. Right here! Let me try being a free bird once again. Just for the heck of it.

More fun to come soon… but if ya smelllll… what The First is cookin’!!!!!

  1. The First = Me. But you already know that! [↩]

Nationalist Robots and Proud Hypocrites

By On · 11 Comments · In Just Rambling, Think about it

It is an anomaly that probably doesn’t occur anywhere else in the world. The driest day in Kerala occurs not in summer, but actually during the retreating monsoon. October 2nd to be exact. The day is an especially sad day for Malayalees, because it is a dry day – the one day they can’t buy alcohol anywhere in India.

This October 2nd was, however, different because there were two other anomalies which were unusual.

  • Anomaly #1: Rajnikanth hogged all the attention away from Gandhiji
  • Anomaly #2: The same people who were ashamed that India was hosting CWG suddenly became proud after seeing a grand opening ceremony

Oct 2nd is supposed to be a national holiday, being the birthday of a certain someone called Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or Mahatma Gandhi. But for the majority of the youngsters, it is one of the once-in-a-blue-moon days when they feel “proud to be Indian” in Facebook/Twitter (The others being the release of movies like “Rang De Basanti” and reading some news articles/stories about Captain Vikram Batra or Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan) This time even that traffic was down because people had time only to talk about a movie called Endhiran (Robot). I’m not complaining here. I’m just observing that if the people who usually “respect” Gandhiji on Oct 2nd didn’t feel so this year, this smells of something fundamentally wrong with their pride/patriotism and such other words they attribute to themselves.

Lets start by analyzing if the nationalist feeling of people is actually real. (I don’t mean to see if they are faking. I mean to see if they realize what nationalism really means) A nationalist is someone who loves and defends his country with unwavering faith. Not someone who criticizes that “CWG brings national shame to India”, and on the very next week comments “Proud to be an Indian” on Oct 2nd. People think that to be patriotic is to be proud about the good things and to criticize the bad things! Or in other words, show the world that you care. I digress on this matter. According to my opinion, one has to be a good citizen first. A good citizen who not only acknowledges the shortcomings in India, but also does something to remove those shortcomings, without expecting an immediate change. A good citizen who follows the grass root level rules – obey traffic rules, respect other people, be courteous, resist vices like giving/taking bribe. Who does that? If you don’t, you don’t deserve to be proud, because there is nothing for you to be proud. Lesson #1 for everyone is be patriotic to your own conscience, and not your Facebook friends.

The movie called “Lage Raho Munnabhai” reintroduced Indians to a concept called Gandhigiri. Lots of people apparently adopted Gandhigiri in real life, and even blogged about it. I don’t see any one talking about Gandhigiri these days. What happened? People just got bored of Gandhigiri, because it is a tough path to take? Ask yourself, what are the good things you are taking for yourself from these? What is the point in being proud of India if you can’t make India proud?

My Failow Indians..do whatever you want, criticize India, make jokes about corrupt politicians, but don’t make a joke of yourself by saying you are proud because CWG opening ceremony was grand, if you had no part to play in that. You are just being a hypocrite.

I like Facebook because a few people in Facebook are intellectuals and have an opinion on almost anything. But for the last couple of days I hated Facebook because the majority of the people were just robots who really don’t have a strong opinion for themselves. Well, at least Facebook provides a “Hide” feature which lets me remain oblivious to such bullshit.

Update: Patriotism and Nationalism are not exactly the same, as pointed out by Lakshmi. My bad… made necessary changes.

This is not a tag, and I’m not an ignoramus

By On · Add Comment · In Humor, Just Rambling, Life etc.

For those of you who still are fooling around, this blog is still alive. The quiescent melancholy may make it seem otherwise, rendering it almost worthless, perhaps even depressing to those who love my blog (That would be just me, I guess!), but it is breathing nonetheless. And it will stay alive. But the only way I see to get my mojo back, is to hunt down whoever is running the new-age idiot boxes called Facebook and Twitter and kick their ass into oblivion. FB and Twitter have essentially killed the little skill I had in writing and confined me to one-liners and wordplays. To top it all, I tend to go overboard with wordplay that I make the world pay!

The safe (and usual) way when one can’t think about anything to blog, is to dust off some old tag and take it up with some utterly useless facts. A generally futile attempt at a comeback, it at least gives a signal that the blog is not abandoned. For example, “25 things I have done which made me look like an idiot” or “What am I doing right now”. I always wished to say “I’m giving a flying fart” to the latter one. It is fun to see disgusted looks in the faces of people. I get it.. but that’s indeed what I’ll be doing because if I don’t reply to that tag, that means I don’t give a flying fart about the tag.

Anyway, getting back to tagging, I feel it is the most unimaginative form of blogging. I’ve done it several times. That was because I was not being real. To quote a certain buji (Short for “Buddhi Jeevi” or intellectual(duh!) ) from NITC, I was playing around with equations in the realm of complex numbers.

So I am not going to take up a tag here. I won’t, until I start behaving like an imbecile and go against my words. So let me think about what I can write here ……………………………………………………………………..Nothing! I can think of nothing! It is a well known fact that I’m a literary ignoramus (Some people even say I’m just an ignoramus, literary or not, but that is debatable!). I have forgotten almost all the 3500 tough words in English from Barron’s which I mugged for my GRE. Hmm.. wait. I just figured that I remember “imbecile” and “ignoramus”, as is evident from the last couple of sentences.

So, since I can’t think of anything else, I’ll say something about what is going on in my life. It is boring, and it stinks, because I’m in deep shit right now. I don’t have a job (Heyy! Wait a minute! It is not because I’m an ignoramus. It is because the economy is fucked up!), I don’t have a life.. I don’t know what is happening to me.

What I have are an amazing family, and some amazing friends, that I forget all my woes. Little nuggets which don’t seemingly do anything useful – the incessant rain in Kerala… my mom trying to run when she passes by a nagging neighbor’s house… my dad trying to outsmart my mom during their morning walk… my brother’s silly complaints about his life in Bangalore… his switch from Telugu to Mandarin… my uncle annoying me and my aunt by showing the big sign in “The Hyatt Place” which is black or white depending of the time of the day, every single time we pass by that road… teaching my cousin how to make dal, when I myself don’t know how… gossips about V6… coming up with new nicknames for V6… gossips about me… some people saying they will commit suicide if a deserving guy like me don’t get a job… missing 1729D, Poker, Bamboo Garden, Pan-fried Paneer, Sammy’s Tap and Grill, and inane discussions with V6, the technically challenged girl (TCG) and the Green Dutch.

These little nothings in fact do much more than the somethings. What is life without real people in it, right? People who never fail to bring a smile to your face. Many of my friends too are going through tough phases in their life. Hope is all that is keeping us alive. The hope that good things will happen to good people eventually. That, and being there for each other!

Who am I?

By On · 2 Comments · In Just Rambling, Wacky Humor

I am always torn between choices whether to seek the light or sink into the darkness. I tend to swim in different directions.
Being well liked for my kind and sympathetic nature, my charm of manner and carefree nature has impressed many. I am compassionate, and unless pushed to the wall, will rarely hurt anyone. I will rarely hurt anyone even when pushed to the wall, because I’m not exactly the kind with big muscles. I apparently am very caustic, but the sarcasm is not always direct, so it generally goes unnoticed. However, it lands me in a spot every once in a while.

I find it difficult to conform and follow rules or to cope with discipline. When the going gets really tough, I don’t get going. Instead I may try to flee down river and hide amongst the vast schools of fish swimming lazily around. However I’m not weak-willed enough to indulge in alcohol and drugs to escape. Alternatively, I pour out my emotions in creative arts. I put my emotions in music, short stories, idiotic writeups, or ridiculous ramblings, but never poetry, because I can’t write poetry if you hang me upside down over a lake full of crocodiles.

I seldom open up to those around me on a personal basis. Although I might be impractical and somewhat uneasy with the real world, I’m brave and prefer a lot of independence. I like to delve in spiritual matters and I’m fascinated by the occult, especially the connections it has with Quantum concepts like entanglement and teleportation. I tend to think that I’m psychic, because my dreams can be strange and portentous. I always remember one thing even if I get amnesia and forget everything else: I am the culmination of all that has gone before, I’m the symbol of death and eternity, I am the distillation of all the other signs. I am the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. Yet I’m not Bret “The Hitman” Hart.

I nicked it from Astroyogi and added liberal amounts of masala to it.

Of eagles and men

By On · 4 Comments · In Just Rambling

Why does the eagle like being up in the sky all alone? How does he manage to cope with the loneliness? And how come humans don’t really embrace or even tolerate solitude?

I think the worst kind of loneliness that a person can feel is not having someone to ask you how your day went.
But wait for it.. it is a little more complicated than that. There may be people who will ask just for the sake of asking, and just when I stumble in front of them just by chance… They don’t count, as I really don’t wanna tell them how my day went, because I don’t care if they care.
You just cannot be friends with a person just because that person thinks highly of you.. the respect should be mutual. As Aristotle once said, “We should behave to friends as we would wish friends to behave to us.” Doesn’t always work; lemme tell you that!

The question is… do I deserve to suffer in this purdah, this state of forlorn desolation, because I am biased? I am selective in that there are only a handful of people who I consider my real friends, i.e. with whom I would share thoughts which I wouldn’t otherwise. And despite whatever they say… I keep wondering what they think of me. I mean I’m not sure if I’m expecting something from them which they cannot offer. As far as I can figure out, I demand only one thing from them.. talking to me. And they are not giving me the chance. This is not something I want in the friendship, but it is something I need.

They only thing I need to be considered worthy of.. is being worthy of talking to. I hope the people, whom this is meant for, understand what I’m trying to convey. Because they are not giving me a chance to convey this to them directly.

I hate being an eagle! I just want genuine people around me!

How I broke into my own apartment

By On · Add Comment · In Life etc., Trouble Trouble

Shit happens to everyone. In my case, shit happens once too often. And when it comes, it comes not like a tide, but like a tsunami. As they say, when it rains, it pours.. (I’m not sure whether they mean the metaphor in the good sense or the bad..but whatever)

So, it seemed that fate got bored today and recalled it hadn’t played its cruel game with me for some time now. I got myself locked out of my apartment despite my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with doors. However, probably because fate was nice to a certain individual whom I threatened to drag along with me on my troubled journey, the incident was not as dramatic as my earlier trysts with unwarranted trouble. But it is definitely worth mentioning.

It all seemed to be another mundane day just like any of the days this week, partly because I really don’t have anything to do apart from hunting for a job, now that I graduated. The previous day, I had decided to start watching Lost. I started right from Season 1, which thankfully was in Hulu. After a marathon session of 5 episodes yesterday night, I woke up pretty late today morning. But I couldn’t help but watch another episode in the morning, so I quickly rushed down to get some cornflakes, and then started watching Lost Season 1 Episode 6. After that, I did my morning round of job applications, then decided I’ll clean the kitchen and throw out the trash. Yes.. Cleaning is my way of taking a time out.. (But I clean my own stuff, so don’t ask me to clean your apartment!)

I had trash bags in both hands. I was too lazy to climb up to get my wallet, which has the house key. I thought, the dumpster is just nearby; I’ll just turn the latch on the knob so that the door remains unlocked. I have this OCD of checking like 10 times if a door is locked whenever I leave anywhere. This time it was just that I checked if the knob was rotating from outside like a 10 times, before closing it. I quickly dropped off the trash and returned back, thinking that I will take a bath now and cook some delicious food. To my horror (yes.. I get horrified even if this happens to me time and again), the door knob was not turning. I was locked out!

Now I was in a real tricky situation. The door won’t open. My key was inside the apartment. Of the three people who had keys to the apartment, one had gone to India, one to Seattle and one was in Welcome, NC, about 2 hrs drive from my place. My cellphone was inside. My wallet was inside. I didn’t have a car. I was in a creased tee and shorts, hadn’t taken bath, had a stubble of 3 days on my face, an oily face and ruffled hair. I was like a homeless!

How did the door get locked despite me checking so many times? I kept wondering. The first thought which came to my twisted mind was that some thief saw me stepping out and jumped in to steal my stuff. He might’ve locked it after he escaped with my stuff. I said to myself, “Yeah right.. That’s one courteous thief who locks the door behind him when leaving. Use your brain, moron!” So I ruled out that possibility. (Well! Not completely, as you will know soon!)

I tried my luck with the back door, but that was obviously locked, so I couldn’t open it. Panicking, my next step was to call Srikanth, who was the nearest person with the keys. For that I needed two things: his number, and a cellphone to make the call. I needed a savior. Of course, there was my savior and friend extraordinaire right opposite to my apartment. I rang the doorbell of Lakshmi’s apartment, mentally listing out my course of action, starting with using her cellphone. I heard the turning of some latch for a second. Something was wrong! Generally they secure their door with like 20 locks and keys, so I always hear turning of latches for about 5 seconds before they open the door. Their door is like a safe. Anyway nothing was wrong other than she thinking that I was not in a presentable state to be let in (:P). I said it was an emergency, and she finally let me in.

I told her what happened, and being the nice person she is, she offered to take me all the way to get the key and back. “Oh yeah.. she does have a car”, I remembered. I was visibly tense, because I think she asked me about 8-10 times to sit down, but I didn’t sit down. I kept wondering if the thief was still hiding in my apartment, locking it from inside (even more ridiculous!),  so I kept peering through her window towards my apartment in the hope that I could catch the thief when he comes out. She made me some Bournvita, and narrated everything to her roommate, Priyanka. Priyanka, with her Gujju brains, came up with the idea of trying to pick the lock with a hair pin. I recalled that I’ve opened some doors using credit cards. So equipped with a hair pin and a credit card, we headed back to my apt. If we could avoid the 4 hour journey, it would be great. Would I get lucky in my misery?

We tried the card first. But the door was too tight for the card to fit in. Then we took turns and tried with the hairpin. Priyanka must’ve thought “What a geek!”, because I managed to wise-crack about how the tumblers inside the key work, and how lock-picking works, in the middle of all this. Alas! But knowledge is not everything, because both of us failed. I started contemplating the inevitable, when another group of friends saw us and came to check what the deal was. Don (Or was it Mavila?) suggested trying to slide the windows. If we are lucky enough, they might be unlocked. Sure enough, the kitchen window was unlocked. It was a tiny one, but I managed to climb into the kitchen. By that time, Priyanka had figured that the front window too was unlocked, and had climbed in through there.

Thus, I broke into my own apartment. I was in cloud nine. Lakshmi was also glad that she didn’t have to drive all the way and back. Yes! There was this small worry that we had forgotten to latch our windows, so any thief could have easily climbed in all these days. But it ultimately saved my day.

I mean, it could’ve been a lot worse

  • The windows would all have been latched in which case we would have had to make that 2+2=4 hour journey.
  • Suspicious neighbors could have called the cops when they saw us trying to break in
  • My apartment could have been on the second floor, in which case I would have needed a ladder to climb in through the window.

We decided to have a lunch outside together. I didn’t bother changing. I asked Lakshmi if I look okay to go outside.
She said, “You look a beggar”.
“A happy beggar”, I said to myself.

The grass on the other side of the hill

By On · 8 Comments · In General, Life etc.

Woah! It’s been quite some time since I even came here in my blog Dashboard.

I’m 27 year old now (that happened about 2 months back, yeah but the nerves to my hands don’t fire that fast these days), and trying (and succeeding to a degree) to convince my mom I don’t need a marriage yet. Now don’t stare stupidly; the figure is right – 27. And the grass on the other side of the hill is still green. I’m still having fun in life, albeit in parts.

I still look the same, still behave the same. You will not know that I’m 27 if I don’t tell you. Some people have even said, “Yeah right! Who are you trying to fool?”, when I tell them how old I am. Then I’d have to flash my Driver’s License to prove my age. Hey, but at least the waitress at Ruckus bar didn’t say to me “What do you want, Sweetie?” with motherly affection, unlike to some others.

Grad life and Facebook have nearly killed my blog, because I seldom find the words or time to express myself these days. I should devote more time to my blog (Yeah! I know!). It will start in mid-May, when I graduate, because I will have no job other than job hunting after that. But for now, bullet points.

  • I still am, among other things, weird, emotional, outspoken and dreamy.
  • I still can joke with a straight face, and people will keep wondering whether that was a serious statement or a joke.
  • In the last two years, I changed from a well-paid money launderer to a broke grad student with absolutely zero bank balance.
  • I started learning the piano with a little bit of help.
  • Useless TV shows which I never miss – 24, The Big Bang Theory, House, WWE and Idea Star Singer
  • KBCT (Kerala born Confused Tamilian) syndrome will kick in next year if there is an IPL team called Cochin Coconuts. Who will I support then? CSK or CC? Oh… I still don’t like Cricket.. But IPL is different.. I already miss the MRF Blimp.
  • Talking about IPL, I got curious about Karbonn Mobile after seeing the utter plug(Utter in NITC lingo=very bad… Of pathetic quality. Short for atrocious) of Karbonn Kamaal Katch. I checked the Store locator, and sure enough, the default location was Kunnamkulam-Kerala.
  • For non-mallus, Kunnamkulam is the infamous place where you get low quality duplicates of any brand in the world.. Examples which I have seen include “NESTEL KATKIT” chocolate and “BISMILLARI” bottled water.
  • Fun Resolution #1: I will sweep the Bohemian off her feet, come Fall 2010. If nothing else works, I have a few banana skins handy for her to step on and slip, but I.Am.Gonna.Make.Her.Fall.For.Me. (The Bohemian Gimmick is getting a bit trite.. for those who know.. so this is probably the last one.)
  • Fun Resolution #2: I am going to start saving money to buy an Audi A8. Then I will hunt Lakshmi down, wherever in the world she is, and show that I now have a car with a V8 engine, much better than a V6 engine. I will even show V8 written in the back of my car, and say “Dandanakka!”
  • Fun Resolution #3: I am really gonna walk around Avent Ferry Rd wearing a white blanket over my head at 1am, just to freak people out. But I hope the 911 will ignore calls about sighting of ghosts.

That’s all I can think from the back of my mind right now.. I don’t wanna write anything serious in this post. They are reserved for a string of future ones starting in about a fortnight.

I hope I get my funny charm back by then.

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