The Charm of the Mirror

Someone once told me that if you begin your day by first looking at yourself in the mirror then your day will go well. For some reason, I decided to give it a try. This other morning, after my alarm rang, I groped my way to the bathroom and opened my eyes in front of the mirror. Instantly there was dazzling light everywhere, as my eyes got adjusted to sunlight, but after it did, I couldn't help wonder for an instant, "will this really be a lucky day?"

I carpool to work everyday, and so after dressing up, I put on the helmet and rode my bike over to my carpool partner's place. Along my way all signals seemed to turn green as I neared them and traffic too seemed totally minimal. The weather was pleasant and a few passersby actually smiled at me... Nah.. all this is just coincidence, I thought, the mirror's lucky charm can't really work this real, can it? I put the bike at my carpool partner's place and then we drove in her car to work.

All throughout the day, was it my imagination or was it real, I could not tell, but for some reason, I found people noticing me much more than usual. It felt like they were holding on to their gaze a bit longer and smiling a little more! Right from the security personnel, to some workplace acquaintances, to some of my own team-members, everyone seemed happier to see me! In fact at lunch time, as I walked my way to the cafeteria, I found people, even ones I didn't know, smiling at me. More so, as a flock of ladies passed by me, one of them kept staring at me until she actually broke into an unmistakable smile, which I managed to shyly return. Wow, I told myself. My last straw came when this cute lady on my floor actually smiled at me as we met at the kitchen (she typically never smiles at anyone!). Bless you Mirror Magic Charm, I thought. But wait, I had to be sure...

So I walked over to my friend's desk and told him about how people (esp of opposite gender) were noticing me more than usual. He too gazed at me for a moment, but then turning to his computer, he said in a rather matter-of-fact tone, "Yeah, that's probably because you are looking very horny today". Without thinking I snapped back, "Are you sure no one slipped vodka in your coffee this morning?". Not turning back, he lazily replied, "Go look at the mirror if you don't believe me."

One look at the mirror and I almost burst out laughing myself... Jutting out of my scalp, result of wearing my bike helmet incorrectly, were these two naughty standing bundles of hair, making me look like I had horns on my head!!

The Unforgetable Look

Just last Saturday that went by,
we went on a drive, roomies and I
Deep down south on page mill road,
a forest so scenic, like god's abode
Dense dark clouds above the head,
we just drove, where the roads lead
A gentle drizzle blessed our way
A fresh breeze made it a spray

I lowered the window,
put out my face
as the car picked up some pace
Opened my mouth, lowered my tongue,
to taste these drops so very young
The wind and water felt so great
I was in one, really happy state!

Then our car stopped at a red light,
beside us was another car, in close sight
Staring at me was a poodle so white
Our eyes met - the moment felt like eternity,
it gave me this look - all smart and witty
I pulled in my tongue, but it was too late,
it had already made its statement, mate,

"Behave yourself, will ya?"

A Tamil Day - Part II (Comedy Drama)

Continuing on the tribute to our tamil roots, I and my friends headed toward the Sunnyvale temple from UCB visit where the Bharati Tamil Sangam was having its Tamil New Year Celebrations. We were there to check out a tamil comedy drama by CMU students working in the bay area, most of whom graduated in the same batch as me. We reached well over an hour early for the play but were glad that we did! Entertaining us were a number of really talented performances by young and old alike. I particularly enjoyed the Pattimandram or a debate. These debates are one of those things that make you happy that you understand the language :P The topics they select are typically controversial (this one was, "Who are more responsible for marital bliss - men or women?") and so brings out some cool debating action and some really funny retorts.

Our final takeaway for the day was of course the tamil drama. Titled, "worstu begaviouru" it was about this indian dude and his 'hot nondesi gal' who he is dating. Things start to get interesting as his very cultural parents come over to US from India for his birthday surprise. Now, perhaps it was just something leftover from the morinig ucb visit where I er.. discovered some facts about my ancestral history or it was because these were all CMU alum, I once again found this sense of pride welling within me as I watched their hilarious performance. Fortunate to have been carrying my cam with me, I managed to shoot the whole drama and put it up on youtube. If you understand tamil and have some time, I would certainly recommend checking it out. It may start off with some random mokkaification, but gets you giggling soon enough.

Kudos to you ppl! Keep it up.

A Tamil Day - Part I (UCB visit)

With the dual intent of visiting the famous campus and also attending the annual ucb tamil conference held there, I left with my friends early in the morning. UCB campus is really worth visiting if you live in the bay area. Apart from the panoramic Sather tower views or the beautifully architected buildings and museums, every street corner or park may help you understand why US is such a big consumer of sunscreen lotions ;)

After shamelessly helping ourselves to free lunch, we made our way to the room where the annual berkeley tamil conference was held. If the feeling of being back at campus, attending lectures was anything great, it was only to be surpassed by an even more pleasant surprise - many panelists in that room were of non-Indian origin and were telling us about some of the most intricate details of the tamil era of kings from 14th -17th century. I felt a strange sense of pride welling up within me as the professor recreated the history of pandiya kings and their valor in battles. For all I knew perhaps these were my very ancestors, my own blood! As the prof spoke, I felt myself instantly being transported to those ancient lands of glory...

As the mighty prince Jatavarman Sundara, I feel the hot afternoon breeze in my hair as I stand watching over my splendid kingdom with ministers and princess. My fair lady huddles close to me worried, "O noble prince, look, the evil Kongu king and his armies are marching here. Will you go to battle?" Taking a deep breath, I return a reassuring smile to her, "That will not be necessary, O fair princess. I am the powerful warrior of the lunar race and I shall unleash the mighty strength of the sun god on these insolent fools"... My wise ministers eye me skeptically, but they dare not question my power! I step forward and eyeball the situation - it is true, the Kongu king army is mighty and is marching fast at the horizon, but he will be defenseless against the power of the sun god. Reaching inside my robes, I take out my canister of deodorant and spray liberally into the air, chanting some deep incantations. As the pressurized canister empties itself, its vicious CFC compounds rise high up into the atmosphere. The ozone layer is temporarily wiped away because of this and the sun's harsh UV rays scorch the marching Kongu king's armies... his mighty men burn to the ground as ashes. After I complete the incantation, I turn back to my people. They are rejoicing, "Hail King Jatavarman!". I hear the Azeem-O-shaan shahenshah song being sung. In the midst I see my fair princess walking toward me. Her face as splendid as the moon. As I smilingly reach out for her, suddenly without warning, she kicks me hard in my shins!! "Why did you do that? my lady", I am shocked. But she does it again, even more hard this time. "Princess! STOP IT" *...

Suddenly, the whole scene transforms and I find myself back in the ucb conference hall. I think my last words had broken the silence in the room and a few educated heads had turned to look in my direction. The prof made a momentary pause before resuming with an unmistakable smile. It wasn't my princess kicking me, it was rather my roomie kicking me awake, "Get up you sleepy lazy bum! We need to leave now, or we'll miss the CMU tamil drama at the Sunnyvale temple".

to be continued...

* - Jatavarman tales date nearly a thousand years ago. Ozone layer depletion is happening right now. Yet to some of us the latter interests us no more than the former.

The Incredible Restroom ;-)

(Some facts mentioned here can be verified by visiting the IHOP restaurant at Santa Clara)

If you like pancakes, chances are you probably love the ihop restaurants. Apart from their array of different pancakes and waffles, every table has this "sugar boat" with different sweet syrup dispensers - strawberry, blueberry, butter pecan and so on, which are fun to experiment with, if not just delicious. Sometime back I had gone for dinner to one such restaurant at Santa Clara. My friend had chosen this place after looking it up on an i-phone (it seems to be a hip thing to do these days for some reason :P ). At first sight I somewhat felt like this place was a little oddly located, but didn’t know what was exactly odd until much later...

Towards the end of our dinner, I decided it was time to answer Nature's call. The thing about nature calls is that there is a limited number of times you can hit the "busy" button before running the risk of either prostrate distress or taking the call in public! Therefore, I excused myself from the table and hurriedly made my way toward the door where the signboard clearly read "RESTROOMS". The moment I entered this door, though, I knew instantly that I had made a mistake - before me was a small carpeted room with four comfortable looking chairs, a little table and a young lady in uniform who seemed to be waiting on something. Before this lady could notice, I hurried back through the door and asked the nearest IHOP waiter where the restroom was. To my surprise he pointed back at the same door! I was confused, but my nature's call was getting louder. So I suspiciously re-entered the neat room. This time the uniformed lady was expecting me, "How may I help you?", she asked in a thick accent. "Er.. I'm just looking for the restrooms?” I stammered. As if expecting this question and barely letting me complete, she quipped, "Please take a seat sir, someone will be here to assist you"!! I was aghast, "Excuse me?! I think I'd rather do this on my own!", I replied back, but the lady wasn't even listening, instead she quickly disappeared behind another door. Honestly, I didn’t know what was going on... I truly appreciate Americans and their professionalism but this had got to be the heights...

Seconds later; another officious looking lad, entered the same door the lady had disappeared through. "What may I help you with today?” he asked in a rather pompous manner. I was a bit restless, but I repeated my question patiently. "Oh", he smiled, "please follow me, sir, I can help you with that"! ... It felt a chill run down my spine. Did I really look like I needed assistance with this thing? Before I could object, the lad was already leading me via another door and a small corridor. Not too far away was a more familiar pair of doors with the men's and women's room symbols. I felt a wave of relief, but before I entered, I curtly, said a "Thank you" and saw to it that this lad walked away before I entered my much sought after restroom!

Relieving minutes later, as I exited the restaurant, my friend pointed out that this ihop joint din't really have restrooms of its own and so they just made people go to the Holiday Inn lobby in the building right next to their place when needed.

Phew.. what an experience!

Holi at Stanford

An invitation to go to an event at Stanford, whose proceeds will be used to fund education in India was quite irresistible. Now here's my little secret - I am not really a big celebrator of Holi. Back in Mumbai, my definition of Holi was pretty much to not get wet during those 2 days while making trips to the grocery shop or to the nearby temple. Over the years, I had become somewhat adept at spotting those small wet explosion marks on the ground and immediately scouring the high rise buildings for some clown with a ready balloon missile. Oh these missiles quite often met their targets - unsuspecting meek creatures like the postman or a slow old man on his walk or little kids or me. Even in the odd years that I participated, it was always about filling water balloons and practicing casting projectiles at friends and dodging theirs. We never really played around much with colours other than to mark each others' faces with 'war paint'. In fact some of these paints were those Y-U-C-K-Y oil paints and the powders were rough arsenic mixtures that sometimes wouldn't come off for days. Coming over to the other end of the planet, my experience was somewhat different...

Lazy as usual, I reached Sandhills fields a bit late and my friends were already in the fray and their cellphones were totally unresponsive. So as I stepped out of my car I felt a little odd noticing that everyone else had company. Some with hands around one another - the usuals ("hey I'm in the US of A - I can do whatever I want" types). But along my shy walk over to the registration desk, I noticed another guy looking somewhat just like me, wearing a white cisco t-shirt, also alone. At first I felt a bit sympathetic to him, but was I to be proven otherwise or what!

For now let's call him Mr.Confident (I never found out his real name anyways). Both of us entered the grounds at about the same time. What lay before us was a sight worth remembering - an enormous playground filled with a thousand colourful faces. Handful of colour powders were distributed at a desk. Not fully sure what I would be doing with them, I just followed Mr.Confident over to that desk. Along the way as hard as I tried, I couldn't help but get distracted by some uber-gorgeous angels gleefully bobbing along with colours and shouting "Happy Holi". I think I may have even tried mumbling something incomprehensible back with little effect. Now following Mr.Confident, I too filled up my fists with colour powder. His next step was of course much harder to follow.. Bobbing over toward us was a really beautiful looking young lady. I couldn't help notice that her immaculate cheeks were relatively void of colour, perhaps no decent person had the heart to taint them. Mr. Confident stopped her dead in her tracks, and as I watched in dumbstruck silence, without warning, grunting "Happy Holi", he brought both his colour powder laden manly palms down her gentle soft cheeks, instantly transforming a thing of heavenly beauty into something virtually unrecognizable. "Oh you are so dead, dude! ", I thought to myself. But to my utter shock, her sweetness lifted her palms and coloured Mr.Confident's grizzly face back with a chirping "Happy Holi!", before bobbing away. If anyone had noticed, my jaw would have probably been a few inches lower. "Wow", I thought, not only did he survive, he even got rewarded for it. Then I watched as he repeatedly achieved the same success with others. "It's all about confidence", I had decided to myself, but the shyness in my DNA wouldn't let me attempt it initially.

Then the most amazing thing happened, without warning, another nice looking lady (a few inches taller than me), caught me off guard and doused my hair, face and specs mercilessly with green colour powder. For someone who was used to handling rough coarse powders for Holi, this felt like talcum! From where I got my confidence, I have no idea, but I actually found myself returning the favor to her, albeit with trembling hands, before she walked away. Knowing that I was coloured and probably unrecognizable, with all niceties locked away in some corner of my heart, I then launched on my own simpler parade, catching not the unsuspecting ones but the rather expecting ones, class B, C not class A ;) and smearing them with yellow, pink and green. This went on for quite sometime, and was super great fun.. I was wearing a mask, unrecognizable, free! Of course, soon later, to much dismay I heard my name being called out.. It was one of my undergrad friends. Sheepishly I asked them, "am I really recognizable?".. Well once you are with friends its a different story all together. But I shall always remember the inspiring Mr.Confident as the man who taught me Holi!

"Happy Holi"

A Humble Tribute to Back Benchers

They're the daring destroyers of boredom,
drawing sweet smiles in their kingdom..
Should any lecture ever go sore,
they'll bring laughter with a roar..

History or chemistry, it doesn't matter,
class too quiet? silence will shatter..
A few wise cracks, sounds once or twice,
mischief is hatched with splendor n spice,
often the end effects are just so very nice..

Sometimes teachers might give up,
sometimes principals get fed up..
They're but a wise teacher's pet,
for they are not too dumb, you bet..

Like a good press in democracy,
cracking up stupidity, lies n hypocrisy..
They're unsung heroes of the rear,
might even top the class, beware!


Being a back bencher is good fun,
I was proud to have been one..
What's one to do - those days gone past,
Little more time, I wish they would last..
But past is gone and the future yet to come,
so many memories, thought I'd share some..

Blogging seems to be fun, sounds so cool,
its' like your online diary, your own tool..
Just put up these bits for all to see,
servers will replicate n preserve, for free..

But donno if i'll have time - all day I slog,
nevertheless here goes, my very first blog!