Two States

No, this is not a book review of Chetan Bhagat's Two States. It was a good read, but this post is about the verbal war between R and yours truly. The Great Bengal Tiger and The Delicious umm...dosa? Ugh. There's no way a Tam Bram can pull off a superhero name. The geeky sidekick, maybe. By now, if you thought my father is an accountant and my great grandfather, an engineer, you are mostly right. Way to live up the stereotype (pats self). I'm not the quintessential Tam Bram (I grew up in the sugar-loving, vegetarian Gujrat and the cosmopolition Bangalore), but I love my curd rice. It is right up there with Sambhar. I also think that Tamil is a language to be revered. Eating with my hand is the way I like my food the best and I'm a trained classical singer. Cliché enough for ya?

R, on the other hand, is a specimen. Of the babu moshai kind. He grew up in the lazy town of Pune and shakes his head like a good Maharashtrian any day, but relishes on the twin Bengali pleasures of pseudo-intellectual arguments and khichuri. Just like I draw the line before it reaches hero-worship of Rajnikanth or an uncanny knack of solving calculus, he drew his before the stench of fish assaults his nostrils or sweets ruin his love for spice. Typical, we both aren't, but we keep ourselves amused with our banter about each other's states.

I'm not very good with quick wit and retorts. My comebacks are thought out, but payback's a bitch. He is, however, quicker on the onslaught of sarcastic remarks on Tam Brams. Here’s a sample:

R: I’ve a few Tam Bram villain names. Wanna hear?
Me: No.
R: Okay, here they are!
1. The Revenge of the Curd Rice (Me: You dirty little ...)
2. The Sambhar Senam.
Me: That’s quite enough.
R: You’ve to admit, they’re awesome!
Me: Yabbaaa.
R: There might be something to that sound you keep making. Frowns in thought.
I am starting a new section on this blog on our repartees. They’ll be titled ‘Two States.’ I will put up the link in the sidebar. Hope you like reading them because I’m certain you don’t wanna be around in person when things start flying!

10 Reasons Why We’ve Been Spoilt Rotten at Google!

If you work at Google and if this is your first job, like it is mine, then you are doomed. We’re the spoilt brats of the rich daddy that is Google. 

Everything you heard in the grapevine about us is probably true. Yes, we work on massage chairs and read newspapers on Lazyboy (the latest one, in case you were wondering). Yes, we take our food to munch during meetings and enjoy internet speed in gbps. Some other reasons why it'll be darned impossible to step outside: 

1. The first mention has to go to the free food: When I went to the nearby bakery back home, I bought the pastry and gaped at the shopkeeper like an idiot for two whole minutes before I realized he wanted money for it.
   
   
2. A stall for everything: Tea, coffee, chat, coconut water… you get the drift.
   
   
3. Strategically placed Gym balls everywhere: It is colorful, it is huge and comfy as hell. I prop my legs up on them and work. I can’t think of how I sat in a chair earlier without them!
   
   
4. Some wise guy was bored while taking a crap. Reading material wasn’t enough, so the next thing we know, we have WorldSpace in the loos. Is music directly proportional to pressure? Ugh.
   
   
5. TGIF: A mini fest of sorts where there is music, there is socializing and food (duh). We’re like children at a candy store at 4 pm every Friday. If its barbeque time, all the more better.
   
   
6. Music: A little detail that I had taken for granted, but it is dawning on me just how much I depend on the constant background music on my noise-cancelling headphones while I work!
   
   
7. Stationery: There’s no end to stationery. Staring at the patterns a lava lamp makes while trying to put together a Rubik cube in Google colors is worth the time I spend on it! Not to mention post-its all over your desk with stuff written by your colleagues that is guaranteed to make you smile at any time of the day!
   
   
8. The outings: Resorts, gaming sessions, pottery workshop, color factory. Every quarter we crib about the team offsite being a drag, but miss it as soon as it is over.
   
   
9. The noise, oh, the noise! Randomly getting up to shout across desks, to blow on a whistle just because and screaming Happy Birthday in 3 different languages. Its college. Only there’s no professor rolling their eyes at you.
   
   
10. People: I kid you not; the people are the next best thing (right after the free tee shirts and mugs). You get all assortments here and you are most likely to make friends that you’ll keep for life. In a professional environment, that’s virtually unheard of and that’s what makes it more special.
    
    

We crib, argue, gossip and give a hundred reasons why we’re bugged; but when someone asks “Why don’t you leave, then?” we immediately reply: “Oh, we couldn’t. It is awesome here!”

I'd rather rescue myself

I was watching the trailers of New Moon and it made me flip through the pages of the series. The twilight series has captured many a heart, but I could never relate to it. Not even in the slightest, did the protagonist, Bella, invoke anything in me. Not even pity. I only remember exasperation. And irritation at her suicidal, psychotic tendencies. Its one thing to let a vampire bite you, but dude, if you are going to plunge a knife in your heart so you can save your boyfriend, then you gotta be visiting a shrink soon. Stephenie Meyers' lead ladies (Bella in Twilight and Melissa in The Host) have sacrificial goat tendencies. Both of them are underdogs. And unusually clumsy and mismatched to be worthy of their powerful protectors, oops...lovers. They seem to be constantly driven from one accident to another, only to discover that the dudes in their lives have to come over and take charge. Not exactly a great image to have. Notwithstanding the part where the ladies are, well, mostly just beating themselves up with all their self-pity, the leading men have been characterized with bullshit tolerating capabilities. Hats off to you, guys. You just reached a new level of stupidity.

While I can't say I care for her constant portrayal of "inner strength" (The writer is using this to justify the moronic and sometimes crazy behavior), what really caught my attention is that she continues to muck up the lives of people around her who are so much mentally stable than her. They're constantly pulling her out of the shithole she dug for herself. So much for therapy. Teenage girls (even those who don't secretly hope that their boyfriends would develop fangs) need a much more stronger role model than Bella. Or Melissa. Personally, I'd prefer a serious, but loyal Hermione any day. Or, as fantasies go, even an annoyingly cheerful and singing Cinderella. But then, I'd want to be my own knight, poison the step mother, give wart-inducing potion to my step sisters, slay a dragon or two and sweep my prince off his feet while he gapes, albeit foolishly with his mouth slightly open. Ah, I love dramatic entrances. But, I digress. With all the range of emotions out there, the only thing Bella could manage was equivalent of a pea. The brain that is.

Still, if you are into that stuff, I guess a blood sucking boyfriend would be kinda cool. Or not.

Update: Akx sent this site where this person wonders about the various unmentioned things in Twillight. Warning: Explicit language. Read only if you love mocking Twillight!

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

It hasn't been long since someone commented "You are always day-dreaming about the future. If you don't live in the present, you will lose out on important opportunities. Live in now." I am hardwired to tune out such statements and often, you'll see my eyes glaze over and a thought bubble appear with sarcastic comments on it. For drawing parallels, check out my earlier post on the aforementioned speech bubbles!

We had to take a mandatory psychometric test in office as a part of skills building. I love taking these tests. Psycho-analyzing people is one of my favorite pastimes and I often throw someone off with a random comment like "You use naivety as a shield so you can explain your mistakes over and over again?" Needless to say, psycho-analyzing myself during work hours was a delightful idea to me. When the results came in however, I was in for a surprise. My top strength was described as being futuristic. Futuristic people are fascinated by the future and what could-be. They inspire people with their visions. This combined with me being an organized, strategic thinker is what has helped me to take my futuristic ideas to reality. And here I was thinking day-dreaming is bad! Somehow, my oft-repeated weakness by everyone was turning into a celebrated strength. My manager commented that he would need entrepreneurial skills in a new project and my detailed vision of future for it would help. I had the strongest urge to call my mom up and tell her that my day-dreaming has actually paid off!

What is classified as a hopeless case, can be a strength that you never thought can be one! Tunnel-visions has been one of the fiercest battles I’ve had to fight throughout my life and on many occasions, have been labeled as ‘Black sheep’ of the family for the radical views I have. Never mind the fact that war correspondent as a career was the “radical view” I had proposed.

It is not only the older generation that I’ve been fighting with, it is also people with drastically narrow minds. Those that do not understand the distinction between what is and what can be because the masses don’t approve. Even being rebellious follows patterns. If you believe the masses, your life will be an endless stream of coulda, woulda, shoulda’s.

Something as basic as choosing the person you want to share the rest of your life with becomes a struggle. Some come through it with minimal trouble and others have to make sacrifices. My friends tell me that everything is a compromise. I find it hard to digest. Compromises with what, exactly? If you are compromising to be happy, then you are not completely happy because you compromised on few things, then isn’t that a contradiction? Have we become so ‘adjusting’ that we don’t distinguish between real happiness and pseudo-happiness that comes from seeing other people happy? It sounds selfish, but what’s wrong with being selfish to be at peace with oneself? I would pick happiness over compromise anytime, but when they both are interlinked, I stand on the edge, separating what should happen versus what I want to make happen.

It’s a fine line. And I stay steadfast to it.

How I almost lost my blog!

Well, not lost exactly, more like losing half the data in my attempt to create a customized template!

I'm bored of the look of this blog. So I ventured to find some new skins and templates that isn't flashy. My hardbound journal is my favorite piece of work which I spent days working on. Its easier when you've glue, paper, cardboard cutouts, paints and a whole lot of embellishments. Its a tad more frustrating when you've zillions of options on the web for a customized template and you end up liking many of them! Yesterday, I finally settled on one of the better designs from BlogSkins. I ignored the fine print and didn't pay attention to the part where it mentions that the template is not completely ready, I still have to edit the html to add everything that I want from my profile. I copy-pasted the example template and saved it!

...and my blog ended up in total disaster. My posts were missing, my blogroll was non-existent! I sighed and reverted back to the classic template. Everything was intact, but my blogroll still hadn't appeared. Slightly panicky now, I tried finding it out from the html, but couldn't. After several attempts, I took the html in a notepad in the raw form and edited it from there. Precautionary note: if you don't have a html editor with a visual view of the code, its likely that you're going to find that the font size you changed to 12 will suddenly become 20 and you'd have no idea where the bright pink came from.

I managed to make the customized template like something teletubbies puked on. By then, I reached the edge of irritability and was ready to worship MS FrontPage that I had hated using in college for editing. I decided to let the template go to hell and reverted to an earlier version of a basic template that I liked the look of. My entire blogroll was innocently sitting right there on the page like it could never leave my blog! After rearranging few elements on the page, I browsed through to find a good html editing software and found CoffeeCup (on R's suggestion) to be pretty decent. Its no DreamWeaver, but it would do.

I'm now coding a template from scratch. With a little time and few trials later, it will be up and ready to go on my blog. I'm trying not to code it into a smurf this time. Wish me luck!

This is the point, really

Just in case it wasn't clear enough the first time around, this really needs to be drilled into each one of our heads- again. 


Boy: Look, pussy, let's fuck.

Girl: Uh. No?

Boy: What a pretty pussy you have.

Girl: SO not gonna work.

Boy: When I look into your eyes...

Girl: Have you stopped looking at my cunt then?

Boy: I love you.

Girl: No you don't, but... wait, really?

Boy: I want to be with you forever. Marry me. Have my children. I've never loved anyone more.

Girl: Aww.

Boy: I want to feel our souls merge. C'mere.

And voila! After the kiss, he goes back to being the toad he is. There's the story we should tell little girls.

Akx, you have it right, girl! 


Disclaimer: All material owned by Akshaya Nandakumar. Resemblance to any person living or wishfully dead is the intention!