Politically correct consumation

Warning: Adult content.

Sunday evening is when we all have our late night cuppa, and sit in the living room, with each of our lappie ladden laps, lazily browsing. Then comes the most common discussion among us.

Me: What type of condom are you planning to wear for your first night?

Let me tell you. This might be the millionth time we have talked about it. However, the question never ceases to stir our deepest emotions.

Roomie_1: I won't fuck in my first night. Dude, mostly I would be too tired after the whole ceremony. I will sleep.

The reader should be aware that the Hindu wedding ceremony is quite draining. Mostly sitting in front of the agni (ceremonial fire), and receiving blessing from elders which involves a lot of prostrating (push-up like motion). And we remind ourselves that "making lowe" is for polite pricks. Real men call it "fucking" or more aptly "action".

Roomie_1: Of course, I will get action every night for one full month after that. Then probably I will get bored.

Roomie_1 is the confident type. He probably mistakes "action" for some pious prayer that he can do in his room... alone. We politely remind him of the other character, Mrs. Roomie_1 involved in this process. And again with a brilliant show of confidence...

Roomie_1: I will divorce her if she does not agree. You know, refusing to have sex is a strong reason for divorce.

This is probably his only legal knowledge. I pray for him. Everyday. Then the second Roomie interrupts us.

Roomie_2: This is all bullshit. I will not be tired and all. But I still won't fuck her. I will talk with her and get to know her better.

Roomie_2 always needs to know better. He always reads nutritional facts before he eats anything, always reads EULA (End User License Agreement) before he signs. Even he does not understand what "polyunsat trans fat", he has to know how much of it is in his food. Ask him why he will not talk to her before marriage, and he has a ready answer.

Roomie_2: The first night is where you have a excellent opportunity to get close and talk. That is when you get to talk to your wife in private for the first time.

The dude is probably horny as hell, it is a shame he cannot show it. He thinks spouting such "sensitive" ideas will make him a ladies' man. He keeps forgetting, he is sitting among a bunch of ruffians.

Me: If you really go with your plan, your wife will probably think you are a girl too.

And then we all laugh at Roomie_2. Yes, we all have an excellent sense of humour.

Roomie_3: See, the first night is supposedly sacred. It is when you are supposed to unite physically unite with your spouse. Whatever I do, I will take a pack of condoms with me.

I give a smug smile because I beat Roomie_2 with an even better politically correct, statement. I also included in my answer an unpredictability factor. I did not talk of a singular condom but a "pack" thus implying all-night action. It is a winning combination.

However, they thought I probably will use "pack of condoms" to blow balloons! Sons of silly persons, I blow my nose in their dinner direction!

The best thing about Sunday night conversation is that, we all know that premarital action is out of reach, because you know "we come from respectable families". But even the seeming possibility of the supposedly memorably post-marital fuck looks forever postponed...

We brilliant graduate students, are infinitely intrigued by the random woman we are going to meet. I don't know if girls are like this, but every Indian guy talks about girding his loins for the first night-out with his wife.I know there are a bunch of married girls who visit my blog. Ask your husband what he thought was going to happen. I am sure he had wild dreams about his first night, before he met you.

* I think this is one of a kind document. No-one has ever written about guys like us.

* This is a work of fiction. My roomies and I are infinitely handsome, immensely sensitive, brilliant and successful lads. We use the phrase "making lowe" instead of the crasser alternatives mentioned above.

* The first female commenter for this post (who has got something real to say) will get a toffee. :-)

Tell Tale 18 - Postnatal story III

I woke and and found myself imprisoned in a short and soft cage. It did not have a ceiling but since I could not even get up, it was impossible for me to escape. I was very stressed out and I was beginning to show signs of early life crisis. I then tried to remember what happened last. I was with Goochi and she had tranquilized me.

Just then as I was planning my day, a bunch of biggies came in (pests don't knock, do they?). It looked like the circus was town, and they were very happy to find yours truly, newly caged. Then a biggie, reached out into the cage and touched me! Yuck! The hand was as big as my face, with nails as long as 1cm and just plain ugly. Can you imagine a huge dirty hand as big as your face touching you everywhere? I came to know about BlankNoiseProject much later started by biggies who did not liked to be touched by other people... but even back then I wanted to start something called BabyNoiseProject (actually QuaQuaProject)!

Then when a biggie touched my palm I quickly graped the finger, and I was glad I could grasp it firm. The biggies ignorantly understand my primitive grasp reflex of a new born as a way to hold on to mommy! Yea right! What they don't know is that, we hold on to your finger only to prevent you from touching us!

I had dexterously grasped every finger which came to touch me when there was sudden flash of light! They kept saying "cheese"! And bang, another flash! I was blinded by the flash and even though I had silently wished to be blinded than to see these biggies again, I never really meant it. The bastards blinded me! Again they called me "Cheese" and more flash bangs. I dawned on me that they had named me "Cheese". "Cheese" sounded like a very sophisticated and endearing name. I had no qualms about that.

A particularly interesting biggie was smiling a lot at me, and even looked proud. Initially, I was not sure about the source of the pride. Then I saw it come closer. Closer and closer. Aaarh! The biggie was going to eat me! "Qua qua" I screamed. The biggie was not proud but happy about the dinner I was going to become. Then in a grotesque display of magnanimity, it touched my cheeks with its lips and retracted! I prefer to be eaten than this. Why? Why did the biggie touch me with its lips? Is there even a reason? I also happened to see a close up of the biggie's face. There were black thorns covering the lower half of the face. The biggie had transparent eye protection, so I had had to abort my plan to poke its eyes.

Then the biggie put some grainy crystals into my mouth. Aarh! I screamed "Do you have to kill every one of my senses?". And I saw a sudden change in their behaviour. They were very discomforted by my scream. Did they really listen to me? I was stunned by such a vague sign of decency. After all there was hope. The effect soon vanished, and they got busy violating my senses again. I screamed again, and this time louder than ever. I kept repeating it until Goochi came and shepherded them away. I was much relieved, as though Goochi was any better.

I guess this is the punishment I get for screaming. So, whenever I scream, Goochi is going to come. I cried "save me! save me", but again like before, I was tranquilized with the yummy liquid and silenced. Caged circus animals are treated more humanly, I tell you.

Tell Tale 17 - Postnatal Story II

After I was born, I was put on a fabric, and wrapped all around. None of my personal preferences were heeded, but I was voicing them anyways. I should have had a tag saying, "store in a warm & dark place", not that the biggies would have cared to notice.

Then one biggie, who was also lying in the same bed (about 8-9 times my size!), was checking me. First the appendages (4 big ones) and then the fishy and was very pleased. I was watching its movements carefully and finally it looked at me and began speaking to me like this "bubbla boo, giggly gooogly ga", "goochi goochi", with very very interesting facial expressions. I guess this must be the biggie language. I was very impressed with the biggie language, but damn! even though the biggie was very animated, it lacked articulation and the biggie language had so many consonants. May be it wants me to do something... I said "quuuaa", for which it again repeated "goochi goochi". I tried to say, "goochi", but it was too hard. I promptly named this biggie "goochi". Then I realized that Goochi had a much wider range of vocal versatility: why don't they try to speak my simple "qualese" (the baby language)? Maybe, biggies are not so smart to understand my qualese, so I have to learn their ways. Hmmmm!

Then Goochi touched my tummy, and it felt funny. Actually, there had been a weird feeling going on in my tummy, you know not outside, but inside. Something like a pulling feeling and I had no idea what it was or what to do. Then Goochi took me closer to its body (the biggies have no sense of personal space) and tried to a thrust its sack like appendage into my mouth. I was in no mood for this kind of closeness, for I had just met Goochi. And I told that, "qua quuu quaa quaa". Again this poor hapless being's protest were in vain, even before I could finish the sentence, my mouth was full. With nothing to do, I grasped the huge sack with my limbs, and suddenly my mouth was all wet! Can you believe it? My mouth was full of some very tasty fluid, and unfortunately, it disappeared down my throat immediately. Just when I was sad that such yummy fluid was exhausted, there was more fluid from the sac. Hmm, Hmm... Oh! I get it, the sac must be filled with this, and Goochi must have been trying to articulate this to me! Goochi could have just told me that in the first place, and I would not have made such a huge fuss. I already liked this biggie. I had one more mouthful of tasty liquid. After plenty of yummy liquid in about 3 huge mouthfuls I was very happy. I also wrote a small poem "quaua quaua, quak qu!" (In case you did not understand, it means "Yummy Yummy, Happy me!")

A little while later, I could not think straight and my vision became blurry, and I could not keep my eyelids open! Goochi must have mixed some sedative in that yummy liquid. I have never in my 4 hour life trusted strangers and resolved I never will! Before I could realize, I fell into a deep state of unconsciousness.

To be continued...

Tell Tale 16 - Postnatal story

I am a just born baby and by nature babies think and talk very much like you grown-ups. But babies have short term memory loss so they seldom remember their pristine first moments. So, the world knows not a single nascent story. But I am gifted with an excellent memory and I remember everything. But here is the world's first postnatal autobiography.

The first thing I remember was when I tried to open eyes. Ah! and it hurt. Everything was so congested and I was stuck somewhere. I was being squeezed from my place, and I didn't like the new place one bit. I tried to squeeze myself back into the warm moist place but na-ha. Crap! There was an enormous force and in one fine twist I was out in the open. I felt like the soft wet Colgate toothpaste, squeezed from the pregnant tube onto the brush like world. I was chocking with air... oh wait, this air is cool but I liked it better when I was in the liquid, for I need not breathe needlessly. Soon, like a smoker I got used to feeling of breathing fresh air and I am now addicted to air and have fatal withdrawal effects.

It was too much work, I decided to take it easy for some time and let things happen. Only then did I realize there were huge things all around me and they all were exactly like me, but only bigger! I will call them "biggies", I resolved. They were all very powerful.

I took a look at myself and I had a torso and 6 things attached to it, four of which I could move voluntarily. A biggie lifted me and the bloody bastard cut one of the things that was attached to my tummy. Aaarh! Do you know what you are doing? I tried to say to him with "quaa qua quaaaa qua quaa", the dumbass pretended to not hear me and he dressed up the vestige of the umbilical cord. At least it did not hurt much. Now I could see 5 things attached to me, oh wait, I wanted to reclassify my attachments, I counted 4 huge attachments and the tiny but very interesting stuff between my legs... I called them fishy.

I was everyone's attention. And I liked it. The biggies were busy looking after me. They put me on a hard metal, and I looked at the dial and it showed 7 lbs (I understood "mass" and "weight" right after birth because like I said before, I am a prodigy). They prodded me with sticks and needles and I screamed "stop it, stop it!" like this "qu quaaa, qu quaaa!" Again everyone pretended not to hear me. There was only one obvious conclusion... "The biggies must all be deaf!"

To be continued ...

Twenty Thousand leagues under the Sea

I am a Science-fiction fan. My favorite is Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man". I am a fan of hard science fiction, where the author puts an appreciable effort to support the fiction with scientific reasoning. For this reason, hard science fiction is not everybody's cup of tea for it takes ample amount of prior knowledge to appreciate the author's reasoning and verify the soundness and validity of the logic. I found "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" in a old book store and bought it for Rs 30. It was originally written by Jules Verne in French and since I am not a "foutre vous" fan, I never tried to read it, but this one is an English translation. It was first published about 150 years back.

The story is quite simple. The oceans are explored in a submarine ship in which the protagonist and two others are held against their will, until they manage to escape. The fate of the submarine is unknown after a last mishap, and the protagonist lives to tell the tale. The protagonist is a scholar in marine biology. In the title, Twenty thousand leagues (a league is 2.2 km) is the distance they travel in the submarine.

There are a few popularly interesting things about the book. Firstly, his predictions of a submarine ship came true, and the actual designs were very close to his descriptions. He had a thought quite a bit before he wrote about the vessel. The mysterious and most interesting character is Captain Nemo, of the Nautilus (name of the submarine ship) is very famous.

What struck me was the protagonist Professor Pierre Aronnax. Prof. Aronnax is not a magician nor is he shown to have off-the-charts intelligence. Prof. Aronnax is shown to be a logical man and a social one too. In the beginning of the novel, when the world is dark about the existence of this submarine ship, but there is rampant speculation about an unknown sea creature with massive destructive powers. Prof. Aronnax convinces that the object of everyones attention is a narwhal (a species of whale). Even though that the reader knows that object is a metallic contraption which the world will call it "submarine", one will be convinced that Prof. Arronax's conclusion is derived from flawless and impressive reasoning.

The other important think I noticed about the book is the careful limitation of the characters. After Prof. Arronax, is the very necessary Captain Nemo who cannot be ignored in that story. But other characters are given a low profile and a lot of the fiction being spent on the submarine zoology, artifacts and adventures. It would be hard sustain other complex human characters. The undersea adventures are multitude, for they see the south pole, Atlantis, historical shipwrecks, fictional underwater Suez canal.

It is quite possible that the author engineered Prof. Aronnax based on
himself, for the scientific reasoning did not look like part of some piecewise constructed character but a real researcher with painful attention to detail and adherence to robustness of logic.

This book is a must read for any researcher and it would not be cricket to recommend this book to everyone.

Have you read book? What are your thoughts?

Naan partha penn - I

I was talking to one of my friends about Blank Noise Project and how the young girls were stepping over other people's rights in their campaign. I was wondering how I would react if I met any one of those people. It seems they have special campaigns where, the beautifully dressed stand in crowded urban public places. Apparently, they are honeypots for perverts. Hmmm.... I wonder if I would look at them! correction... obviously I would look at them, a good exercise would be to know if they would brand me as a pervert. The catch here is... I might be one, but how can you tell ? he he he

(I don't want BlankNoiseProject cyber patrol to find my blog and start sermons)

So, yesterday when I was traveling in an autorickshaw I had an brilliant idea! Not that any of my ideas are less than brilliant, but this was quite special. I wanted to see a girl. I was not planning to arrange a bajji, sojji kinda familial meeting, so a quickie :) I was quite brave because you know I was in an autorickshaw :)

So, the plan was to pick a girl and look at her. That is all. There was a huge traffic jam near Pothy's in Usman road and I was fed up with the fumes and traffic, and I completely forgot about the plan. Just then the traffic cleared up and the auto neared the Usman Road bus stop. There was a girl in chudidhar, with nice earrings(I fall flat for girls wearing nice earrings ) and she was talking to some other girl and waiting for a bus. The girl was very pretty. Before I knew I was looking at her, straight at her face.

Then time slowed down, and the few seconds seemed like a few more seconds. Then she turned in slow motion to look at me. Here the reader should be informed about the rarity of the incident. In all my 25 years of looking at girls, they have only given me dirty or disgusting looks, if at all they deigned to look at me. So, this girl looks at me and stops talking to the other girl. It looked like she stopped mid sentence. Now, I am unfamiliar to this kind of attention and I did not know what to do. She did not smile, but neither did I. You know the kind, who look at each other and start loving at first sight?

We locked into each other's eyes, and were talking silently. Even though we never spoke, I think I told her that she was the most beautiful girl in that bus stop, and I like her. She seemed to reciprocate. After few seconds with her, the auto crossed the bus stop, and I lost sight of her.

What do you think the girl must have thought? What if she was a BlankNoiseProject girl? What if you were the girl?

Krishna - Part II

I had planned to finish the Krishna panning in just two parts, but dropped the idea. Well there are a couple of reasons. I went to Parthasarathy temple and the tall and imposing Krishna was impressive. But above all the brisk mustache was a quite a divine fashion statement.

Moreover, I am in no mood to badmouth any God right now... but let some things clear up, I will have my day :-)

I am in my home town now and everything looks different. Maybe it is me, or as my mom says, I am really seeing a different part of the town (she is always right you see, because I am really staying in a different house now) Everybody corrects me when I call it Madras... it seems they changed it to Chennai. What was wrong with "Madras"? There was one thing good about it, the hindi belt in India cannot mess the name "Chennai", with the impossible degenerate overlapping of the English alphabet with the devanagiri phoenetics.

Coming back Krishna, the Parthasarathy Temple was very nice. It was disheartening to see Hanuman with a Namam (even though Hanuman is a avatar of Shiva), but like I said before I am in no mood to fight over divinity today. Then my father took me to Kapaleeshwarar temple too and the two maadaveedhi in the temples were quite contrasting. Can anyone guess what that is?

F********

Disclaimer: Please don't kill me!

A tag I took from ArtNavy.

I have had very strong feelings about feminism throughout my life. I was born and brought up in urban Madras and to my knowledge my parents have instilled a sense of male pride along with a due respect for the female gender. But my opinion is far from what you think it is...

Feminism has just been bad for me. I am a guy but I tell you it has very serious implications in this young and very attractive man's life. It has been confusing at best. You see, in my house, my father always tells me that I should be nice to girls... and my mom says they should be respected and all. I have been doing all that and more. Well, what the hell do you want me to do?

Well, I met a girl once.. a sorta cute one at that. Not really super attractive and all, but I kinda liked her. We were exiting a store, and I was leading the line to the door, when my super-duper mind starts racing... Should I open the door and give way to the girl? because, my father always says "ladies first!"... I pull the door and half way through, I realize that she might be a fire-breathing feminist and might consider my chivalrous gesture to be condescending... you know they want to be considered equal and all... so they would choose to follow my stinky butt than to accept a nice fella's gentlemanly gesture.

While I was busy processing all these complex moderate feminist concepts in my mind and tried to act all modern, she had come from behind me and tried to squeeze herself through the half open door and her shirt had got stuck in some protrusion in the door. Now, she was looking at me very sweetly, and I had forgot all the second degree feminist stuff... and I thought we were looking into each other's eyes and were really communicating. Even though I got the message through her eyes, she also happened to orally re-iterate it, "Can you please open the door a little bit more? I am getting crushed here!" That was my first experience with feminism. I tell you, that was hardcore!

Then there was this other girl, she had really huge eyes and was cuter than the previous one. I liked her too. This time we are in a coffee shop and she was talking about her cousin who was a jerk or something to that effect. It was an interesting session of "really?", "I am so sorry", "Wow!" between her very many stories with this really relevant cousin of hers. Then it struck me! What if she was a feminist? or not! Since there was no way to infer it, I asked her.

Me: Are you a feminist.
Girl: What do you mean?
Me: Are you a feminist?
Girl: why are you suddenly being rude?

Oh crap! I had forgotten that branding somebody as a feminist is rude. But wait, feminism is not like "are you a robber?" or "are you an ass?" kinda like question. I got confused. Does it mean that she is a feminist? or not? How am I supposed to answer her question?

Me: I will tell you why I am rude later, but I asked a question first, "are you a feminist?"
Girl: Well, I do believe that men and women are equal and, women should not be restrained to the traditional roles.

First of all, I did not ask her to make a political speech on feminism. A simple question with a simple "yes" or "no" would have sufficed. This was getting too complicated. Now I have to wade through her politically correct opinion on gender bias and learn what the hell she is. Man, what a crappy situation. Then I pulled my own politically correct rebuttal...

Me: Well, with the urban population of our generation both boys and girls are given equal opportunity and the gender bias is slowly decreasing. I mean, in my class, the topper was always a girl, and I used to copy notes from her.... Ok, I am digressing, but what exactly did you mean by feminism ?

Girl: I already told you that. Gosh! Now, why did you call me a feminist? You know, asking a girl if she is a feminist is rude.

Me: What the hell!

That was a messed up conversation to start with. Trust me. Don't talk about feminism, to a girl directly... you could either end up being rude or condescending or a MCP or in the gutters!

My DNA

I got tagged by Vishesh! Here is my DNA! Btw, Aarti was sad that you left her out!

Read my VisualDNA™

Krishna - Part 1

Disclaimer: If you think your God is unassailable, just because he is Supreme, please get out of my blog.

I am from TamLand, and we have a saying, "Netrikkannai thirappinum, kuttram kuttramae". Which translates to, "You might have an awesome cool third eye, (referring to Lord Shiva) but dude, you still made a retarded statement". This was said by a Tamil poet directly to the Lord, having found a flaw in his poem. Such is our ethical system. We stand up to injustice, anywhere. The poet was in turn burned to ashes by Shiva's wrath, but that is just a minor technical detail. We don't take bullshit just because Lord Shiva said it.

My mom used to tell tales about Krishna, and how cute he was. But, Ramanand Sagar who directed that Sri Krishna series in Doordarshan, killed my imagination of "cuteness". Jokes apart, Krishna might be Vishnu's avatar, but he is not great. Simply put, the dude was born with some awesome cool powers, like kicking his evil uncle's ass, and eating a lot of butter and dirt. But a lot of people before and since then have done this. Actually I have both kicked my uncle's ass, and had a lot of butter and dirt when I was a kid. I am cute as hell (they should have cast me as cute Krishna, damn it!). Anyways, where was I?

I think Krishna is arguably the most popular God among hindus. An important factor in the last century was ISKCON, which popularized Krishna outside India. Krishna is know for his, "leela", pranks which mostly involves a lot of trickery and deception and very funny too. Krishna's mostly associated spouse is his girlfriend, Ms. Radha. His life history is by itself quite interesting, his association and involvement in the Mahabharata is at best confusing. "Bhagvat Geeta" is the only text in human history presented by a God to a devotee which explains "way of life" including God's glory.

I think it would be really funny to talk about this dude. I am sure I will not offend Vishnu (Krishna's original and more boring version) in anyway, because I am using only documented and well accepted acts of Krishna. Importantly, he uses a lot of magic (something like David Copperfield) in most of the situations, so I will skip most of the "magic" part. Here is a brief history of our dear Krishna.

Even before he was born, his evil ass uncle knew about nephew and decided to kill the newborn child. Somehow Krishna escapes, and gets to be brought up in a village. The village is known for its dairy products, and guess what our Krishna's fav snack is? Butter. He eats butter from his house and because he eats too much, his family becomes poor and so he decides to steal and eat. He gets caught red handed a couple of times and so becomes a disgrace to his family. His foster mom punishes him severely for such delinquent acts, but since our hero has divine immunity goes scot-free after doing some theatrics.

During his developmental years in Brindavan (name of the village), he also shows signs of extreme pervertedness. He goes to the nearest water body and while young, attractive sexy women take bath, he steals their clothes, hides them and makes them beg for clothes. This is somehow supposed to be funny, but I am sure my mom will immediately disown me if I did something like this. If this is not heights of pervertedness, what is? I think the blanknoiseproject people also would be behind Krishna's ass.

Next comes the girlfriend. The dude becomes adolescent and gets the most popular chick in Brindavan. I will not badmouth her, because she represents MahaLaksmi and never harms anyone. But the poor damsel falls for the MayaKrishna, and in their first love do all kinds of things. Ok, maybe there are no documents for what they did, but I assume they did more than just run around trees like what Ramanand Sagar showed. The best part is, when Krishna decides to leave for a glorious career, he jilts Radha and never returns. Ms. Radha is never talked about in any of his stories after that. What crap is this? This kinda behaviour is unheard of in Tam literature. There have been no documented case of jilts by honorable people, in the entire Hindu literature. Except of course by Krishna.

The dude, then goes on and marries two other women, Bama and Rukmini (dual-marriage is a standard with Hindu divinity package, just like 401k and stock options). Ms. Radha never gets married or nothing is known about her life after Krishna leaves. But Krishna is always associated with Radha... Even today there is a very popular ceremony that devotees celebrate, called "Radha Kalyanam" (Radha's marriage), where they place Radha's idol and Krishna's idol and get them married to each other. I am not sure why people do this, the dude clearly got over her, and never wanted to see her again. Devotee's Denial? or maybe people feel sorry for Radha and pray that their daughters never meet a guy like Krishna!

I am sure people have a lot of things to say about Krishna and want to badmouth me. Bring it on.

This feels weird

I am back from my operation and looks like I might live for a while now :) Btw, Appendicitis is quite painful. That is taken care of now. I am back to blogging which I left without a trace.

I should have probably asked Pratap before I wrote this, but since he gave me complete freedom to write about anything under the sun, here are my two cents. I thought of a million things to write... writing is not a problem for me. The problem was the place. Whatever I could think of was out of place. Maybe it was just me, but if you were me, you would understand.

It is as simple as this "I do not understand this blog." Pratap has been writing this blog for about 3 years now. I did not know him when he started this blog, but I have seen some of his earlier posts which have been long deleted.

They were short, simple to understand. He was almost always angry at somebody. They were cute white pure truths, though. Then there was a shift, which is when I came to know him. His blog suddenly became cryptic. I thought he was needlessly nervous. He developed a strong sense of privacy. He kept reminding me of a private sphere and a public sphere. He stripped every new blog idea of his identity, but struggled to keep the individuality and creativity. His struggle could be seen here. Later he himself wrote in his post, "life's experiences will not become a blog-side accident to be rubbernecked".

Then suddenly, he chose to be funny, and dropped his arrogant style. His English had improved overnight! At once, he had many readers. It looked as though he was waiting for something to happen, and then decided to become funny. He had found a way to write, without giving himself away. Due to this, his blog is completely different from what he is. And, now I too believe in separating the personal sphere from the public. But, I do not know how to write like that. It is hard.

While I am still thinking about my dilemma, here is another thing that I do not understand: Someone sent me lots of roses, for the Valentine's Day without the name! Yay! I would love to know who sent me the flowers!

Tell Tale 14

Following Ammani's lead, I wrote this Tell Tale. Here is my contribution.

First it was red. Then yellow. Now it's red again. Why can't Shailu make up her mind?

In her 30 years of service as lead of the elite bomb disposal squad, Shailu had never been in an accident. Somehow, she has always escaped the grim explosion that takes away life or limb. But today was different, she was not diffusing some RDX. Shailu had been assigned to diffuse the primary charges in an armed thermonuclear device.

Earlier the police had got a phone call about a bomb and they had located the device. The device had been moved it to a ship on the Bay of Bengal to minimize impact on the population. Now she had 5 minutes and a nuke to diffuse.

It is not everyday that you get to neutralize a nuke. The thermonuclear device was not state of the art. It is a 2 stage fusion reaction. First the conventional explosives detonates and creates an implosion, and compresses the Uranium 235 to a critical mass. The U235 fission is the primary. The x-ray emission from this primary fission is then focussed on to the fusion fuel, (typically deuterium) which then fuses to release huge amount of energy. Shailu, a conventional UXO (Unxploded Ordnanace) expert, was asked to diffuse the explosives that start the primary fission.

She removed most of the sheath and metal and was looking at the wiring. She deciphered the circuit board and all she needed to was figure out which wire she had to cut. The Red or the Blue. Shailu smiled. If it had been a movie, the audience would be sitting on the edge of their seats waiting in suspense to know about the wild guess the actor makes. It took her 30 seconds to find out that she will need to cut the Red wire and short a transistor to diffuse it. But Did Shailu want to diffuse it?

She had a 30 year itch. She had not seen an atomic explosion. The world had not seen a terrestrial detonation of deployment capacity fusion bomb. She had not even been in the vicinity of any explosion herself. Obviously she could not see this explosion if it detonates. She would die from the initial gamma ray burst, even before she could see a single spark. Red or blue?

Shailu felt very very naughty that day.

Tell Tale 13

I was bored one afternoon and was going through our almirah, the store room for something old, something with a long forgotten history, some amulet which was the pride of my paati. Other than the sneezes I got from the dust allergy I also found an old photo album. The album itself was not too old, but the photos looked much older, in contrast to the people in the pictures.

Most were wedding pictures of my maternal grandparents. I hear my great grand parents were very affluent and had grand weddings. I had seen the pictures before, but I could not recognize any of them in the pictures. The pictures mostly were of the kanyadhanam, Oonjal and nalangu. Typical of a tamil brahmin family. My grand parents were iyer, vathima (that is like sub-sub sect) to be precise. In case you were wondering, I am half black.

I was generally browsing through the pictures when I saw a particular striking picture. There was one young girl in the picture, just her near a tree. She must have been the bride. This girl had no resemblance to my grand mother and I guessed that it must be somebody else's marriage.

The more I looked at the picture, the more beautiful she was. She was laughing with with her hand on her chest, over her new thaali (mangalsutra) hanging from her bright yellow cotton thread still stiff with the starch. Her huge eyes gleaming in the sun, her mouth open wide, flashing her teeth in her laughter. She was looking at something in the sky. It was her marriage and she was glowing like a princess.

The girl must have been 18 years old. You would think she was too young to be married, but she looked very happy that day. She was not skinny at all and her cheeks looked chubby enough for me to want to give her a gentle pinch. The vangi (armlet) that was slipping down from her blouse sleeve was squeezing her bicep.

The short sleeved shirt or sattai of which only the sleeves were visible had a wide jarigai (zari). Her blouse colour was the same as her saree, which was ofcourse worn as a madisaar. Her umbodhu gajam (9 yards) or padinettu mozam saree was worn perfectly, in the proper "Vaathima" way. Her thalappu (pallu) was hanging for just about a foot from her tummy. It was very tempting to look at her waist where a small triangle of previously unexposed pale skin contrasted very very well with the thaali koorai colour (a dark maroon like a wet terra-cotta brick) of her saree.

She was standing bare foot and the heavy silver golusu (anklet) was almost touching the grass. I am sure her man kissed her shiny new metti (toe ring) over her red marudhaani (henna) tainted toe. Her right leg was actually behind her left, and her kosuvam (pleats) hanging between her legs was gently blown by the wind, revealing cute cupped calf muscles. She had her other hand on her hip which is when I realized her figure was stunning. It must be because of the "Vathima" style madisaar, which is to be worn "kreech" (chik), where you would not believe there was 9 yards of silk around the body. I could actually see her figure through the thick yardage. She was the sexiest girl I have ever seen and she did not even have lipstick.

Just then my mom interupted me from behind "She is my periyamma (mom's elder sister), and you should not be looking at elders like that."

My explanation was more embarrassing than my gawp, "I was just wondering what she was looking at , amma."

Tell Tale 12

Have you ever just thought about something and you wanted to run ? Well I do. There are times when I want things around me to move back. I would sometimes want drain the energy in my whole body so that the thing in my head would magically go away. It would feel lame for the first 10 minutes because warming has never been exciting! But then, when the song in my Ipod goes bum-pum-bum in a regular beat like "Dil Se" or "Mortal Kombat", you would want to step on the speed a little bit. But a single step out of tune would feel like a bad note. Every song I added in my ipod has had a different feel when I am running. This has made me listen to every song with a completely different ear. I guess running is the closest I could ever come close to dancing.

But, why did I run? All this beauty about running comes only after I have taken a voluntary decision to make a move. Is there any philosophical reason to it? I am not going to use obscure arguments or a foreign philosophy. What could possibly make an organism, bring down her energy level to a bare minimum for absolutely no reason. I ran around a ground twice accounting for about 6 kilometers. Would have taken half a litre of petrol to drive a car.

Maybe it was power, a sense of self gratification about my health, my fitness, my ability to be at my physical optimum. But, why O why did I try to race a bicycle for a full half kilometer? Maybe it a masochistic pleasure, that I get when my abdominal muscles pull and my thigh muscles hurt.

It is obvious to me why run. Just for fun!

Tell Tale 11

A little background will help you understand better. Ammani writ0es a blog, which is one of my favorite ones. One fine day it says "this blog has gone to sleep" and all the archives had vanished. Now read on.

I laugh at you, Mr. Death!

Mr. James Smith had rheumatic arthritis and his condition was chronic and extremely painful. He could not walk properly without having to bite his teeth till it hurted, in order to distract himself from him crippling pain. He should have been happy to be alive at his age now and after his stints in both the world wars. He should have been long dead and gone... but he just did not give up. Jim was the man what people called Man-of-steel. He hated anyone who gives up at anytime in their puny lives. He simply did not understand why people gave up looking at tiny hurdles. But now it looked like he was in real bad pain.

But, there was hope for him. He had found his peace in someone. He had found a blog so full of energy and breathing with reality that it had its own life. He visited that blog once a day, every day. It was writen by a women who called herself Ammani. Her blog's name is jikku. The blog usually has a new Quick Tale almost everyday.

One day, he connected his computer through his dial-up. It flashed up in his screen the words "this blog has gone to sleep". He did not understand this Quick-Tale, because it did not have the Quick Tale number 151 on it.

It finally dawned on him. Ammani had done with her job. She probably was bored of her blog, tired of writing stories for people. It shook Mr. James Smith because with benumbing regularity everybody in his life had given-up in their lives. But even Jikku! Could it be some hacker who deleted all the stuff? Was something wrong with Ammani? Was she sick or something ?

Whatever it was, Mr. Smith decided that nobody, not even Ammani had the hand to kill Jikku. And so, like the thousand other times, Mr. Smith brought Jikku back to life... or what was left of it.

"Once again, I laugh at you, Mr. Death", he would say,

"Ha ha ha!"

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Update: Following this post, jikku.blogspot.com is back online. I am not sure if this story did anything to change her mind, but all is well now!

Tell Tale 10

The princess

I write this blog with a faint prayer that she might read it. This is all there is now, this blog. I carefully choose my words, because she might read it. I don't lose context a bit for art's sake. Every word a carefully chosen pearl; the sentences forming beautiful pictures that I hope bobbles up in the ocean of blogs to tell tales. I don't even use the "f" word, "s" word or even the "x" word like I promised once.

I dont miss a single opportunity to quote her. She comes in most of my stories. My darling angel always keeps away from me, always keeps getting angry even if she is just a character in a Tell-Tale. It was supposed to be a joke; I did not mean to say that, OK?

Sometimes I dream about her browsing through my blog in a shiny white Apple-Mac, gasping at the million sparkling mentions of her. I even dream of her smiling at the stories, her huge eyes gleaming with pride, cheeks blushing and tempted ever so subtly to comment, at least anonymously. The dream haunts me; I wake up with a jolt and check my blog for some girly comment with a faint trace of acknowledgment, but never saw any. Irony as it appears, is not without a sense of beauty.

My blog layout is simple. It is wide enough to fill the full breadth of the screen, so that the lengthy stories are easy to read and the short ones fit in a few lines. My font size is big enough to not let my blog look like a swarm of bees buzzing on the monitor. My blog does not have a counter because I know that any http redirection takes extra time. No hit-counter, no fancy blinkies, no weather forecast, no international clocks, no pictures or even a background image. The page loads in the fastest time possible, optimized to run like a jaguar.

Like the 17 year old princess, all dressed up and waiting to be rescued. Only her prince never turns up.

Tell Tale 8

The lost interesting cell in the body

There were 3 people in the car on the freeway to California. The road was not too much trouble but winding just enough for the driver to enjoy the pulls of G-forces. The one in the back was almost sleepy or almost asleep and nobody knew. The songs being played in the car were getting boring after being played over and over again, which subsequently led to FM being unanimously preferred, which was also boring and again subsequently unanimously decided to be turned off. One of the people was driving, the other one almost asleep and one guy who could not sleep nor enjoy the grip of the wheel was getting nervous with boredom. That was me.

I wanted to start some conversation that would be interesting enough to wake the sleepy guy and distract the driver who's enjoyment I had come to envy by now. I was searching really bad through the many many conversational topics I had used before. Here comes the catch. Not all topics are readily acceptable because the driver was a girl. So, no "A" jokes, no topics involving mud, blood or beer. And that was most of my conversational arsenal. It had become a challenge now which was actually sad.

Now, I remembered reading a medical magazine which had once started a huge debate among my other bunch of guys. The magazine had quizzed about "the most interesting cell in the human body." Well, my answer was obviously the sperm as it is the only cell that gets to have a fat girl friend. The answer was as lame as it could get because the probability that one sperm out of the million other people could get one was almost negligible and considering all the hardship our poor guy has to go through to get to her, it really was not worth the effort. And thus started the debate. And I decided that it would be a good starter to spur a banter.

I ask, "So, what do you guys think is the most interesting cell in the human body?"

The girl goes, "I know what you have in mind, now look at the map and see how far away is the next exit."

Tell Tale 7

The sticker

We were three guys sitting on a clean and well postered wall, which was not more than four feet in height (a kutti chevaru!). The wall was very comfortable to sit on because it was wide enough to not hurt our bottoms and the place had good supply of cool breeze and girls in the otherwise parched Madras. This was our usual hang out place. We don't indulge in smoking or drinking because our pocket money was not much. I love samosas and vegetable puffs. We pretty much sit there, with our legs hanging loose and our sandals dangling loose on our feet munching on anything edible in an arms reach.

We were the king of the roads because it was "our area". It is not a very busy street but busy enough to interest a bunch of bored 17 year old kings.

Oh yeah, did I tell about girls? That road never fails to deliver. It must have been the busy bus terminus nearby or something that we used to see a lot of "out of area" girls. We were not perverts or anything, but I would not hesitate to appreciate beauty walking on our road.

That day, there were fewer people that usual, maybe because of the football match between Brazil and Germany. Then as were talking about the soccer world cup and how USA lost to Ghana, I saw this girl walking on the other side of the road.

She was really beautiful by any standards. She had the walk, the fitness, the hair. But the best was her attitude. It was nice to see a girl walk with such confidence, on a road with a bunch of guys brandishing adolescent mustaches. I think she caught my eye. I smiled at her. Then I saw that she was wearing a shirt in the most beautiful of greens. She wore it well and it was a really good fit on her. I happened to notice that and tried to tell my other wall-mates, about how good the shirt looked on her. But the other boys were least interested and were annoyed at my irrelevant intervention in their now supposedly "scientific" reasons behind the patches on the soccer ball.

Funnily, she looked at me again and this time since I was slightly indignant at her refusal to reciprocate my previous smile, I smiled again in defiance. I was not really doing anything bad, was I? and it was my area. She walked past us, on the other side of the road and I promptly joined the next interesting thing on that road (the guys), but now they were in agreement and there was nothing to argue about.

Suddenly, the girl in the green shirt was standing before me and was handing me a sticker. It was the "UNWANTED" sticker from Blank Noise Project (I had read it in one of the newspapers). And she walked away. It was better that there were not a lot of people around because, it was very embarrassing. But it did not make a lot of sense. I was not eve-teasing, was I? I probably should not have directly looked at her shirt. There was an unusual silence for about 30 seconds.

But then, as my friend was trying to flinch away from me, I noticed I was getting goosebumps.

Tell Tale 6

How do I tell her?

I wanted to say something to her. Nothing fancy, but just that I really liked her blog. Just that. But how do I say that without giving away my name ? There is nothing wrong in saying my name, is it? Why am I so shy ? There is no need to be shy. I can always leave an anonymous comment. Oh no! That would be washed away in the million other adulatory comments that she gets. I should be bold and tell her.

I want to leave a neat comment. It should be crisp and sharp. Something that should make her smile. How I wish to be the source of her few seconds of happiness? But, then that would attract everyone to my blog and she would see why I don't have any comments in my whole blog. What if she thinks I am just pimping my blog ? She is nice. She probably won't. But then I don't even have a counter. She will understand. I will hold my breath and say it in one go.

I really like your blog, Ammani. I just wanted to say that.

Tell Tale 5

The family story

When I was 3 I did not understand how fast time flew. When I was 10 I was hoping time would fly faster so that I would get to grow a mushtache like my father. When I was 15 I started worrying about future issues like my career, my wife and the kinds. I am married now, to the most wonderful woman in the world and I have a very beautiful 2 year old daughter(She is very naughty). I woke early today and saw my wife breathing slowly and snoring very slightly, sleeping like a baby and my actual angelic baby sleeping between us sucking her thumb. I did not have anything to think about.

How long is this going to last? 60 years till I die? Of course not. We will probably become grumpy old people way before that. 40 years? My daughter is not going to stay with me till she is 42, is she? 20 years? I probably will not be in the best of my health then, my daughter might be away in her college somewhere, probably even married. 10 years? Me and my wife are going to be around, but will my daughter still going to suck her thumb? That moment was not going to last for more than 2 hours. That was the peak 2 hours of my life and I will never be happier. Just way down from here.

But, I did not think of all that then, because I was too sleepy and slept. Maybe tomorrow I will try to wake up again to glow at all that.

An excerpt from:
As I walked out one Evening
- W. H. Auden

In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.