Chennai Chronicles Part II - When Everything Goes to Hell

• What do you do when the nicest person in your life is not a person at all, but your laptop's Operating System that tells you that your wish is literally their command, and no, you don't even have to type anything, if you just tell her to send a text from the laptop, she will.
• It is probably peak loneliness, when seeing a mother-daughter enjoy their evening snack at the roadside eatery can make a lump appear in your throat. 
• Of course you still fight with your own mother over the phone. And don't attend her calls later because she has the knack of saying things you don't want to hear.
• There is nothing that will rid you of your tea addiction faster than having to boil the milk to make it.
• Performance pressure is when the office boy is standing over your head to take your lunch order and the only thing you can think of is idli-sambar from Saravana Bhawan.
• Remember forever that your mom and your sister are a tag team. Never tell one what you don't want the other to hear.
• ''Anna'' comes naturally now.
• I'm still hugely embarrassed about using any Tamil.
• Auto-wallahs of Chennai are certifiably worse than auto-wallahs of Delhi.
• No amount of moonlit beaches can compensate for the lack of company of people who care about you. Specially because the moonlit beach is far off and the city is alarmingly desolate as early as eight.
• I could summon enough fucks to go to the Bengali restaurant only once after my parents left. Now I have found a roadside stall on my way home that claims to sell Kolkata rolls. Maybe I will throw Bangla at the seller tomorrow.
• I can't believe that a month back I cared about gol-gappas enough to write about them.
• I stopped using the bus because I moved closer to my workplace. The share auto drivers are almost as terrible as the regular auto-wallahs.
• Nothing in Chennai feels like home. Specially not my place of residence.
• Life is like a box of Bertie's all flavoured beans that have been rigged so around 95% of them taste like boogers. 

Observations while Spring Cleaning

• If I am sent to prison in the near future for past crimes, be sure that it will be for unreturned library books.
• After resigning, my psychology teacher in school (who is now a rabble rousing comrade, but I digress) gave each of us a personalised good-bye card (even though it should have been the other way round). She seems to think I was a nerd.
• When I hunted for my photo in the school magazine, it didn’t appear in the sections where my friends were listed for having some kind of talent-singing, dancing, writing, public speaking, social service, membership of Africa/ Palestine/ UNESCO/ Elocution/ Environment etc. clubs but for being a top scorer. Which is sad because if you went to school, you were supposed to be studying anyway.
• In spite of the above I don’t think I was a nerd. In a diary entry, I had written that the Unit tests were beginning in two days from the day of the diary entry and that I hadn’t studied anything. My present self panicked a little at that but assumed that the kid-me was also feeling pangs of guilt and would presently start studying. Turns out she had to stop the entry after two lines because DDLJ was coming on Sony and she had to watch that. My present self prayed that the first Unit test was English.
• Did the fact that I was writing about Unit Tests at all, make me a nerd?
• I addressed my diary as ‘Cordelia’ (or ‘Cord’ or ‘Li’, as my mood permitted) since…I don’t know…’Kitty’ was too childish? I also seemed to think that the diary was a person. At the end of a very long entry, I wrote, “I will stop writing now. You must be tired.”
• During the post-Board exam break I took to writing an illustrated description of the IPL’s first edition. After giving out the basic facts of each team, I put in “My View”, possibly inspired by the Times of India’s then-new editorial practice. Under that section, for Rajasthan Royals, I wrote that I didn’t want them to win, because, and I quote, “I don’t like Shane Warne”. Yes, sounds like me.
• When anybody asked me who my favourite cricketer was, I always said Dhoni. But secretly, I had given my heart to Robin Uthappa.
• A card my colony friends had given me for my birthday described me as “Moti, Moti, Tu hai moti, fuvvare jaisi hai teri choti”. If you had known me as a child, you would know how accurate the second part was.
• My college friends gave me a ‘Welcome Back’ card when I joined them after skipping classes for more than a week during my sister’s wedding. Besides being the funniest and sweetest thing I have ever received, it is also proof that capitalism can make us happy. 

What I Learnt in the Month Gone By

The answer to the burning question of what I like better- mountains or the sea.

Bhutan-Relaxing after a morning walk

Maldives-Sneaking out for a mid afternoon break

Mountains FYI. Hands down.

A young person's love life is everybody's business.
I got asked by a thirty something globetrotting professional woman whether I wasn't getting too old for marriage. And whether my parents were not introducing me to suitable bachelors.

It's probably not love if a muffin can help get over heartbreak.

I don't hate dogs. Not a lot.

I shocked myself by going 'Awwww what a cute doggie' at a random stray in Bhutan. Also, fun fact: there are no dogs in the Maldives. Not one. (Maybe not such a fun fact for dogs).

I enjoy teaching.

Or having a captive audience, at any rate.

Adam-teasing is a thing.

A shop girl would break into a Hindi film song every time a male colleague would visit. One of those times, the song was 'Husn hai suhana, paas mere aana' (yes that forgotten gem from Coolie No. 1).

Unnecessary beautification is not just something CWG obsessed Indian administrators do.

Ghastly ornamentation in Bhutan

Still better than this:

Ghastly ornamentation in Delhi

Young lovers the world over desecrate public property.

See, just the names change

Indians are world famous for circumventing queues and bending rules. And being unapologetic about it. Even in the emergency ward of a government hospital named after a former Indian Prime Minister.

All the hoopla about 'Ghar ka Khana' is justified.

You can have all the fish maru, grilled tuna with salsa, Kerala style fish curry, Bengali restaurant style fish curry in the world. But your mom's homemade curry that spills from one end of the plate to another is still the best.(Now if only the moong ki daal and the daily bhindi could be avoided).

I am more Bengali than I get credit for.

It's not just about the food. I have rarely heard a Bengali say, 'Valentine's day is an import from the decadent West'. It's more common to hear them say that we have Saraswati Puja for that anyway.

A Uniform Civil Code is not a necessary (and certainly not a sufficient) condition for women's empowerment. The senior management of the Central Bank in Islamic Maldives is all-women.

There's a pleasure in the world called Kit Kat ice cream.

There can be no reasonable justification for this being denied to an average person in post-reform India.

They are not paying me for this, I swear

You Know You have a Masters Degree in Economics When...

• You haven’t bought a text book in three years-all three of which were spent as a student.
• You look at the contents of a textbook (the ones you bought the first time in three years), and disappointedly conclude, “Meh…undergraduate stuff”.
• You feel dissatisfied with your understanding of a concept (any concept) until you have worked out the math.
• You remember more about Keynes’ love life than his economics.
• You categorise fantasy fiction into two types- One, including the works of Tolkein and Rowling. The other, more whimsical type covering development models.
• You understand that for a lot people (not necessarily economists), “in fact” means roughly the same thing as “in my opinion”.
• You are the only person in social gatherings who does not feel outraged by how low the poverty line is. (It’s a only a measurement benchmark people, relax!)
• People who studied physics are more likely to have solutions to the country’s economic problems than you. 
• Your friend circle can be neatly classified into people who read the Hindu and those who read the Economics Times.
  
  (Secretly, you would rather just read the Times of India.) 
• You think sociologists/ political scientists/schoolteachers have glamourous jobs.

Born to Whine

Whining is cathartic.
Nothing matches the relief of vocalising your complaints about your life to someone. The listener should :

• Know you well enough to know that you whine. A lot. About everything. And nothing.
• Take you seriously enough to know that your complaints are genuine.
• Not take you seriously enough to start worrying about your future.
• Not be a parent.
• Not be a smug, content-with-life type.
• Preferably draw parallels between his/ her life and yours, letting you know that life is a b***h in general.

The problem with being a whiner is, that you aren't sure whether you are truly unhappy or if you are just whining out of habit. And you will probably never have the courage to do anything but the conventional. Because what if you risk everything for the unconventional and still want to whine?

PS: When I say you...
PPS: I meant bitch when I wrote b***h. The blog will not become subject to mental filters.