This post (at least the title!) is inspired from the fact that I am totally in love with this song I am listening to right now (Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy) and that the following topic was the one discussed over lunch with my friends yesterday….so read on..!


There were these little weird habits that I had when I was a kid…and what I found out from that discussions yesterday was that everyone had their share of these thingies :D
(But apparently I was a tad bit too weird and hence the winner :)

I remember that that when I had to wear flowers on my 5 inch long hair, I was so particular that it should be worn in a particular fashion. The gajra had to be longer that my own hair, and I should be able to see it. (rolling my eyes) So it has to be pinned right in the front hanging down from my head blocking out half my vision! I won’t be caught dead looking like that now. And when it was a rose, it had to be a high pony tail with the flower sticking out of my head like some kind of a lightning conductor. Shudder! Thank god I don’t wear flowers any more

Those were days without cable television. DD was THE entertainer! (it sounds ridiculous now…in fact more of a paradox). The weekly dose of movies were the ones played during the weekend. I never used to miss even the regional language feature films they played on Sunday afternoons. God knows I have watched Bengali, Malyalam, Telugu, Assamese, Oriya (guess even Bhojpuri) movies; without understanding a single word! The worst part was that I used to try and speak like the people in those movies for the entire evening…yikes! Imagine a 10 year old running around the house, trying to pull off a Malayalam/Bengali accent without knowing a bit of that language. I am only grateful that my parents did not fling me out of the second floor window. Phew!

My school used to get over in the afternoon so I was home for lunch. But my friends won’t be back until evening. So until evening it was upto me alone to keep myself occupied. Mind you these were when I was in my fourth and fifth standard. And those were days I worshipped Madonna (guess no different on that now!). So I used to take this old cassette of hers (Extended hits…I still got that one :D ) play it nice and loud…take an empty pearl pet bottle, use that as a mic and dance (read jump) around the house trying to lip synch. My mother did not give it much thought, in fact that kind of took care of the mess until one day when I fell off my stage (er…that was the sofa) and almost hit the center table. After that Madonna paatu ketta pearl pet-alaye vizhum :( Guess that's the reason they shifted me to those schools with the 'normal' timings the following year onwards!

Give me one of those white Natraj erasers…brand new ones preferred. Infact the eraser just had to be nice and white and smell a little bit good. And I’ll bite it off! The eraser doesn’t necessarily have to be mine and that landed me into a lot of trouble for encroaching other’s property. I had this serious ‘problem’ for a long time…in fact well into my higher secondary. Aiyoo shivane!

This one takes the cake and I am red faced everytime I have to admit this. In my early teens I had a monster crush on (gag me!) Salman Khan!!!!....uggggggghhhhh!
I can’t think what levels of insanity I had reached when I was an adoloscnet…listening to boy bands, even had a couple of posters of those girlie guys in my room. But this!!!...Salman Khan. Aaarrrgghhh! What on earth can force one to do such a thing in life?!
Okie that's it from me for now....I can only say so much without wanting to kill myself...Ppl if you have the nerve now...share yours :P

Posted by Sat at 5:24 PM
12 comments

Wow…and it feels good to be back :)
Diwali breezed past before I could know
As usual I did not have the time to book my tickets home so had to hitch a ride to and from Coimbatore :)
And it’s been a really long time since I had sat in the front seat on a long drive on the highway
And boy what a drive it was
Looks like the did-not-get-a-ticket folks like me were all over B’lore because when we drove out of the city early Friday morning…we had a fleet of at least 30 to 40 b’lore cars for company…(did I forget to mention a few bikers as well?)
(forget diwali…let’s go take POK!)
First stop; Reliance petrol a few kilometers off Hosur. Caruku petrol, enakku dosai and en akka husband (he was the one who was driving all the way home to show his wife his new car; and I gratefully accepted the free lift!) settled for Pongal.
Now the canteen was no less chaotic than the road; because the entire fleet was hungry for breakfast and decided to ‘dock’ at that exact same place.
In minutes the small A1 canteen was swarming with hungry Bangaloreans who had by now bypassed the supervisor and servers and were grabbing their pongals, idlis and wadas directly from the kitchen counter!...These IT people I say! :D
We pinned our hopes on the hapless supervisor who was still trying to get to his boys in the kitchen for the order. 15 minutes, 20 minutes…
Still no sight of the pongal and dosai…so me asked ‘what happened to our order?’ ‘Madam…no plates!’
Just then we saw the proactive Bangalorean crowd had now began stalking the ‘dish washer’ and were grabbing the freshly cleaned plates as well (!!!)
Finally the poor supervisor managed to bring us our dishes…By far he was the most scared little person in that whole place…even his subordinates were hell bent on ragging him. Anyway, we got our breakfast…chomped it down…no time for coffee…hit the road followed by the entire ‘convoy’.

And then began the ultimate race until we hit Krishnagiri…excellent road, the cars ripped past each other…good loud music….Aaah heaven
And then we reached the place from where the folks to Chennai departed the party and took the absolutely superb highway to Chennai while we poor Coimbatoreans queued up on the beat up single lane ‘highway’.
The race was over…but there was a lot more to come
About half an hour before we hit the ghats there was an accident a few metres ahead…didn’t someone tell them the race was long over?!
What else do you expect; traffic jam…bumper to bumper
Aarrgghhh!...and then someone said ‘Eureka…I found a road!’
Now this was a small road leading into the villages by the highway.
The entire convoy followed the lead of the unidentified driver into the road; much to the amusement of the local villagers…
Hell, it’s not everyday that you see 30 cars flying past that road!
Best part was none of us was sure where this road lead to…it was the correct direction alright; but will we ever be back to the highway?
If you ask me, To hell with the highway, this small adventure was far more beautiful complete with fields, ponds full of lilies and of course the small element of suspense ;)
Some 21 kilometres later we hit the highway…actually there wasn’t any road; only a mound we had to climb to get back on the road…
And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the long line of trucks wouldn’t let us cross over to the otherside…
But one brave bangalorean ‘uncle’ alighted from his car and stood in front of a truck with his arms outstretched ‘Thou shall not pass!’
Now that was indeed brave considering the fact that the truck driver was game enough to run him over than wait for the entire fleet to pass!!!
But then courage and humanity won and we were allowed to get onto the other side.
An indica in the fleet struggled but with some help from the inmates of the car and the cries of impatience from the truck driver, it made it.
The traffic was better as we had avoided the worst of it, but was still slow moving as we entered the miserable little town of Kaveri pattinam (don’t remember the name but let’s stick to this). Now KP was a cursed little place….
Small town, smaller roads, a rickety bridge…and full of buses who took the liberty of stopping right in the middle of the road to let their passengers alight; which was just about everyone on board! There was a bus station but it was almost empty…hell when you can stop on the road, who wants to go into the bus station?!
So another horrible jam! This time as the vehicles queued up patiently in the slow moving traffic, a fiat uno decided to take a different route.
Bangaloreans!...they’ll never learn :D
This gentleman drove over the muddy slushy mound by the side of the road in an attempt to beat the traffic…and of course he had a couple of followers.
What a shame, because the traffic began to move as soon as he left the convoy and after all that adventure, he had to join from the exact same spot on the queue from where he and his shishyas had left…sad!
Now by this time we had enough of this party, so we took a detour towards Mettur thereby avoiding the Salem and our happy bangaloreans…no surprise, some followed us in there too, but what the heck… I took a small nap …
My brother in law picked a tucsan to race with until we reached bhavani….
And just when my bro-i-l said ‘You know, I guess I’ve started to miss my bangalorean friends’…surprise…there they were on the national highway when we joined them past bhavani!
Another neck –n- neck race till we hit coimbatore only to be met by a huge convoy on the outskirts of the city
(Seriously….we should have gone to POK!)
By the time our vehicle crawled into the premises of our house…it was 9 hours since we left bangalore…and all I could think of was food…sleep!
But when I did enter the house; ‘ goo goo…agoooo…akhooo..bhrruuu…inglaeee’
Awwww….I can’t turn away from that 45 cm of pink bundle of joy, oozing cuteness called my niece now, can I??…
Hope you all had a goo goo…oops gala time this Diwali…now ..back to work!

Posted by Sat at 6:04 PM
18 comments