First day at school

I remember my first day at Kendriya Vidyalaya Mysore so vividly, I just love telling this tale.
I joined Kendriya Vidyalaya Mysore in the sixth standard, and I was all new and shiny like a pair of freshly polished boots. I think Mamma scrubbed me really hard to get that effect.
This was my first school in a big city (yes, till I was in the fifth standard we were in KV Dharwad)and I was not looking forward to it. I remember that Mamma bought me a new pencil box that looked like a Cadbury's bar, the chocoholic I am I probably wanted to eat it then. In the box were Nataraj pencils(you know the black and red ones) all pointy, a new eraser and a pencil sharpener.I kind of missed my previous fancy pencil box which had a magnifying glass, magnets to both the doors (yes, a two-doored pencil box), in-built pencil sharpener and little slot for the eraser to go in; I can't remember the other useless attachments it had but it was pretty and pink and smelled of strawberry. Oh yeah, poor little "my-earlier-pencil-box-smelled-like-strawberry girl".I went to school in an auto-rickshaw which worked on a pool system. There were kids everywhere, some spilling out of the rickshaw, some inside who were jammed, some sitting and some standing in that two feet of space.

The great pearly gates, oh alright I'll stop exaggerating; I stood in front of the huge iron gates of KVM, very sceptical of stepping in. I spotted a statue of lord ganesh at a distance and the good hindu girl that I was immediately went there and asked for blessings on my first day of school.

I asked around and finally found my classroom which was on the first floor of the building. The teacher asked me to sit next to a girl; someone who I don't remember now.Everyone was quite excited or so it seemed then, to have a new girl in the class. The girls already had their own groups and best friends and I wondered if I was ever going to fit in. My neighbour asked me, "Are you a chinese?" Yeah, I used to get that a lot . Thanks to my small eyes and nose (and I am proud of it). No, I am from Belgaum."People thinking I was and calling me a foreigner annoyed me, always. I am proud to be an Indian."I am Indian. I was born in Belgaum." I had to convince some of the girls who had gathered around me.

During the break the girls took me out of class, to get some fresh air. And there was a swarm of blue and white (our school uniform, white shirt and blue pleated skirt) in a matter of seconds.There were girls pulling my cheeks. "She's like a doll, so chubby and so pink."Some were poking my hands. "She's so fair man. So nice no."I really didn't know what the big deal was. It was just weird. And I won't deny it, in a way it felt good to get all the attention and not sit in a corner and worry about not making friends.Suddenly I was in a moment I had probably sub-conciously craved for and now that it was here I didn't know how to handle it.So, I just smiled, extremely embarrassed, and told people that I was Indian and that my parents and whole family right from the start of the family tree, was Indian.

I had confused some who thought I was lying about being a chinese and they thought I was at least chinese-Indian, there surely had to be some chinese blood in me. :D

So my first day was a hit and I went back home, again in the bursting auto-rickshaw, waiting to tell Mama about my new school and confused new friends.

A Visit To The Dentist

Once my friend called me over to some adventure sport and I said, ‘no thanks’, I am happy with my dentist! If you were to rate the scariest things on earth on a scale 1-10, I am sure the local dentist tips the scale to 9 and the 10 goes to the ‚orthodontist’- for it’s his unique capacity to send shivers, not just when he’s operating on you but thereafter, when he sends the bill!

Eating chocolates is a very happy & thrilling experience. Happy because, it releases endorphins- the happy hormones that makes one (read Dentist) happy!’ and thrilling because you will be on a scary ride thereafter, courtesy- The dentist! I was one of these chocolate consuming creatures that often made the world of dentistry happy.

A visit to the dentist is like a horror flick show. Like the horror movies, they don’t show the monster (read Dentist) at the beginning, the nurse and his receptionist helps in building up the tension and then our protagonist just lives to it! Talking about horror flicks, I just figured out the reason, for horror genres to be more popular than the other movies, when I recently visited a dentist. Like the horror shows that keeps the cash machine ringing even when it’s speaking in foreign tongues, the dentist no matter what language they speak, vernacular or otherwise, they can just manage to keep you scared stiff. After a brief ceremonial exchange of wishes, in the name of courtesy, the dentist proceeded to examine my teeth. After the initial probing and tapping, what I call the Fore play! He clicked his tongue swaying his head sideways and said, cant save tooth, tooth should come out’, well then lets wait for it him to come out, I thought. Maybe the doc didn’t want to ask my tooth nicely and resorted to his learning’s! ‘Teeth extraction’ he said in halting English. ‘Big Molar, very very bad’. ’Is it the wisdom tooth doc?’ I asked. He looked puzzled and said ‘no no he’s a bad tooth’.

‘Will it pain’, I asked and he looked at me, like I just farted in a funeral and said, ‘Nein’. He then proceeded to give me a local anesthetic shot’ and went away to attend on another patient till I get just right for the ‘Big Play’. It was a big room and was plainly decorated with just a few postures stuck around with tips on dental health and there was one big blue poster portraying an array of sparkling teeth in an anonymous mouth and it read , ‘Smile and the world smiles at you’. It must have been half hour after the shot and after a heavy feeling of numbness, when the doc stepped in. I smiled at him and the doc’s eyes weighed upon me, his intentions of a serious business. ‘So much for the poster’, I thought.

He seated himself, beside me and started the ‘foreplay’ again just to see if I could feel anything. Before I realised, the nurse stuck a small Hoover in my mouth and the doc proceeded to cut my gums around the ‚'Bad Bad Molar’. He now brought forth a small drill and asked the nurse to hold my tongue with a probe, lest I tongue his drill. He then said in a muffled voice, ‘tell me if it pains’. Must have been a joke, `cause the more I grew stiff with the slowly progressing pain, the firmer, the nurse held my tongue, `maybe, the dentists have progressed to telepathy’, I thought. The ´Bad Bad molar´ turned out to be a `Big Bad Molar’ and the shot was just too weak for him and I started to writhe in pain.

After a time, that seemed like eternity, the doc finally won the dual and held the molar proudly, with an expression of holding out a trophy! Only when I thought, everything was over; he proceeded to stitch the gum. `Now `, he said, 'ALL OVER' . You were not as cooperative as the patient before’, he said .The patient must have passed away, after his shot, I thought. `Any Pain?’ he asked. With the nurse still holding my tongue , I decided to answer him better, with a sign language. I wanted to show him ‘The Finger’. A large bloke as he was, with an assortment of Dentists’ paraphernalia, lying beside, I decided to use my prudence better and showed him my ‘thumb’.

Writers Block: SPF 365

When I woke up this morning I seemed to have a lot of "writing" ideas. You know what they say about free flowing creative thoughts when in a state of semi-consciousness, well I don't know exactly but it is true.Now, it seems like I am having the writer’s block again, no it's not sold in an environment friendly recyclable container; but seems like I have adequate supply, any takers?
I wonder if writers can insure themselves against this henious, comes-and-goes-as-it-likes disease.
What if my next meal depended upon it."Hey girl, you've lost an awful lot of weight." "Yeah, I'm having the writer's block."
Oh well, you can't say it does not have any advantages after all.I wonder how these newspaper columnists churn out piece after piece every week. Well, they're not all good all the time, but even then, it is a commitment and they have to keep up to it, else they will all be joining the skinny brigade.What about authors who have editors and publishers breathing down their necks to meet deadlines? Is the "block" a valid excuse for missing a deadline? "I would've made a best selling author but I just got hit by the block."Have you ever had those brief triumphant moments when you've written this extremely brilliant line and that's that. For hours after, you keep staring at it and no more brilliance is oozing from nowhere. And the harder you stare the brilliance of the brilliant line also keeps diminishing till frustration prompts you to do the inevitable, ctrl+a and shift+del.
Oh the number of times I have been on that trip.And then my friends ask me, "Hey, you haven't written in a long time." "What happened to your blog, is it still there." Of course, it is still there. You think the blog people would dare delete my blog, which is waiting to overflow with brilliant writing.Err, maybe it has been a while, you know writer’s block and all, but that's just a passing phase. I think writer’s block can hit you at any time. After one line, one paragraph, one page and in my case sometimes even after one word."Preposterous", I thought I was getting somewhere with that word and thought I had a great piece outlined when it hit me. So after the staring and crinkling of the nose and sheer disbelief that I couldn't write further I just hit backspace; ctrl+a and shift+del would've taken longer.

There it is again, I know it, I can feel it. And people ask me why I end my writing abruptly.

Unaccustomed Earth

Well this is the first time i am writing a book review...read this book couple of days back and all i can say is....AMAZING!!!!

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures,” with her immigrant characters and their Americanised sons and daughters, Jhumpa Lahiri tries to reveal the truth of immigrant life in her latest offering “Unaccustomed Earth”.
After her debut short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies” and novel turned motion picture “The Namesake”, expectations were surely high and she had lived up to them. All the stories in Unaccustomed Earth are based on the Bengali immigrant experiences in America while chasing their dreams and lives.
In the title story, a widower’s new found independence surprises her daughter Ruma and proves her all vexations about inviting him to move in her house wrong, he declines her proposal in the pursuit of enjoy his rest of life with his new companion “a girlfriend”.
As the synopsis reads “Everyone has their secrets”, Lahiri is her wittingly simple presentation goes on to carefully reveal all the secrets that engulf the readers in a compelling emotional landscape.
Book is divided in two sections; first section has four stories “Unaccustomed Earth”, “Hell-Heaven”, “Only Goodness” and "A Choice of Accommodations", while the other section titled “Hema & Kaushik” takes the readers to a journey as 16-year-old Kaushik and his family, having returned from India, move in with 14-year-old Hema and her parents. His parents are searching for a house, and the month long sojourn marks both teenagers in profound ways. Kaushik's revelation of the true reason for their return shocks Hema out of her childhood innocence. Her crush on Kaushik could not find a suitable way out until after 25 years, when they meet again after bearing so much of turmoil in their lives. But destiny had something else written for them.
Travelling through their lives, Lahiri emerges a true storyteller, in the course of three stories; she subtly acquaints us through the load of expectations that Bengali immigrant parents push on their children, who some times fail and some times rise to the expectations.

I highly recommend this book for everyone...and yes post a comment after u read this book.....

cheers

pheonix

Celebrity Musings

Next thing we might read about Bachan family's trips to the water closet or toilet. The bahu rani goes around flaunting her body in France and the moment they return to India she acts like this sati-savitri head to toe covered bahu. What people wouldn't do for publicity and limelight after aging????????????????? Aishwarya bounced from one boyfriend to another and finally tied the knot to someone who's got a famous last name. That's one way to ensure fame and popularity after she stops working. (She is not a good actress) Amir Khan wants to be in the news because he's been out of the acting circuit for a while. I am sick and tired of watching remakes of Hollywood movies, Hindi remakes of South Indian films. Priyadarshan thinks casting Akshay Kumar or Paresh Rawal in a comic role in a South Indian remake would make a hit film. Just because some things sound funny in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam or Kannada doesn't mean it would have the same effect in Hindi. Filmmakers argue they chose exotic locations to entice the slum dwellers in India. How many Hindi movies were filmed in Switzerland or Canada in the sixties or seventies? Those movies with their melodious, ear-pleasing songs were entertaining to Indians. So why this shift to women in scanty clothing, flaunting their bodies, singing ridiculous songs running around in navel-displaying sarees in snowy locales while the males are bundled up head to toe in the Hindi movies? How many folks in India walk around in their houses dressed in expensive clothes, lots of jewelry and lots of make-up and drive a new car every day of the week? How many people live in palatial homes in India? There are people in India who were poor in 1947 and are still living in poverty without access to electricity, clean water, medical care. The affluent people have a servant to clean their unmentionables in India but there are people who still live not knowing where their next meal is coming from or where they will sleep for the night. There is palm greasing going on at each and every level of government and non-government agencies. Every so often an actor or actress will try to publicise the plight of so called disadvantaged people but after that day no one pays any attention to the disadvantaged folks. Everyone from stewards in Jet Airways to desk crew at airports, office employees to people riding overcrowded buses and trains have nothing to offer but RUDENESS. Those who can afford to send their kids to expensive schools in hopes of making them doctors and engineers even though they might be employing child laborers in their houses to do jobs they are too lazy to do. Try looking at India beyond the sarees and vehicles and opulent houses. Try getting an LPG connection, phone lines repaired, electricity restored to your house, getting a street lamp installed near the house, navigating through knee deep rain water through the muddy roads near big houses. There are people still burning wood and charcoal to cook and clean and pollute the environment. There are still people who think boys are better than girls. There might be boys and girls dating but caste, skin color, status, money rule Indian society today as much as it did several years ago. Indians go abroad, live in shanties and save and send money to family in India. We are a nation full of intelligent doctors and engineers and yet our very own democractic nation does nothing for its down-trodden population. Everyone sets out to make money and politics and acting become their means of livelihood. How many actors and politicians do you think actually help Indians? They might make donations here and there to get tax breaks or for publicity when their movies are about to be released. How many Aishwaryas, Jayas, Amitabhs, Shabanas, Prietys, Ambanis, Mittals, Julias, Pitts or Katrinas do you see going around wiping snot off kids living in slums, getting them a proper place to live, providing education for however long the kids want to. Should we teach our kids to be bullies just so they can get ahead in life under the pretense of competition? Should we teach our kids to be generous when it befits them? Should we teach our kids to put themselves first before thinking about others. All of us are selfish one way or another. We all have lunches and dinners to network, use ourselves. Should we teach our kids to be narrow minded geeks who get used by their own parents? We are always trying to please someone. Who is that..................................

SPARE A THOUGHT!!!!!

In the new India , everything is shiny , new , sleek and costly especially our cars , till they stop at the Red light and you find so many eager faces begging for money !! There will be a couple of boys , all around 8-10 years old , one pregnant woman with a child , one small girl with hands that remain wet somehow in the heat of the afternoon and in a distance , if you are sharp , you can see a man lounging or watching with keen eyes the goings-on !! Familier discription ? It is the same sight all over India in its metros , almost as if there were a common script to it all !! probably it is . India , with its teeming millions is a place ripe for business , of all sorts and begging is BIG , if big it can be !! But finally , just spare a thought for the poor boy or girl forced to become a part of this mafia for no fault of his.


We pay taxes , social cess , road cess , kargil cess and so many taxes that the government is overflowing with funds , so much so that it is able to take , many a time impractical decisions at our cost !! Why cant Poor houses be made in our cities , why cant the poor , forced to beg , be made to work in our infrastructure projects that are so woefully short of manpower of all sorts !! lets spare a thought and let us ask our representatives what will they do about this ?? Lets spare a thought a give a brighter future to such kids !!

HERE COMES THE QUEEN……

“I am just kidding.”
“Dude, if you kid too much, you might just end up with a dozen!”
“That’s the worst PJ I have heard”

So, yeah! I am the PJ queen (my friends say so...) Not much of a title and I don’t get to strut around in a bikini and blow kisses to a raving crowd with a shiny tiara on my head. But it’s alright. To keep my title I just have to crack the most pathetic jokes people have ever heard.No, you don’t have to make them up all the time. You may pick some of what you’ve heard somewhere and just tell it like a story.

Let me warn you, the story ones might actually prompt somebody, maybe be your closest friend, to just pick up a knife and butcher you. Oh no, they wont be happy with just stabbing or slicing. How do I know? I get that look a lot. That’s when I know I have to run.
There are some PJs which you can repeat;
all the time.

“hey! I am hungry.”
“Hi hungry, pleased to meet you.”
That’s not original. But you keep doing that over and over again and I can tell you my friends are this close (0.0069mm gap between thumb and index finger) to killing me.
“I am so hungry I could eat a horse right now!”
“That’s a weird name you’ve got. Pleased to meet you anyway.”
“I am so going to kill you”
“Never heard of a Chinese with such a long name. Pleased to…” Slapping and thumping in the background.
Annoying knock, knock jokes. Oh the joy of telling them.
“Knock, Knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Mos”
“Mos who?”
“Mosquito”
There’s that look again. Just a blank stare. The you-did-it-again look.
“Knock, Knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Anna”
“Anna who?”
“Anna-ther mosquito.”
Now, I get the raised eyebrow look. That’s like a warning. If you get one more word out of your mouth, I am going to cut you up into teeny-weeny pieces and flush you down your toilet.Not difficult to stop then, is it.

I started narrating a really spooky story once, during a pyjama party. Of course, I had an audience who were engrossed; some even had their fingers in their ears. Thing is, this was just another ruse to get people to listen to me. And when this ‘spooky’ story ended up as a detergent commercial, I was mauled. 15 people huddled in thick blankets and expecting the ghost to eat up the victim; I didn’t stand a chance.Sometimes I like to just cut short my friends, when they speak.
“I am so tired of this bad coffee…”
“Well, that’s a funny surname you have but pleased to meet you”
The you-did-it-again look.

“Man, I went out in the hot sun yesterday afternoon and…”
“Never heard of a cold sun, have you?”The that-was-a-bad-one look
“Oh shoot…”
“You? Gladly!”
Ok, now this is when the staring starts. The will-you-stop-it look.
“I am so going to kill you.”
I get this a lot.
“Hi ‘So’, pleased…”And then you just run.

I sometimes wonder why my boyfriend hasn’t left me yet. I guess his tolerance level is high. What’s supposed to be a mushy romantic conversation ends like this.

BF: I love you too.
Me: Me too. Great band.

But then sometimes he is just as bad. :P

Me: You know what?
BF: Yeah! He invented the steam engine.

A combination of the zombie look and the will-you-let-me-finish look isn’t a pretty sight. Yeah, I have thought of auditioning for ‘Evil Dead 4 – Return of the Mangled Prom Queen’.

And before you start pulling out the hairs from your nostrils, assuming that you have already pulled out all the hair from your head, this is me signing off.