Reboot - 1/52

As any IT support guy worth his hardware will tell you, if something is inexplicably wrong with the way things are now, just reboot the entire system. More often than not, things will start writing again.

So, yeah. We are trying to restart this conversation again.

***

It has been over a decade since I first blogged. Thankfully, I was blessed with the power of hindsight to delete them. The rest of the wrecks from that era are lodged in the drafts sections, serving as reminders of what not to write.

I will confess. I've had multiple blogs - trying to crave a niche. There was one in which I decided to document my daily life. It didn't click, but I find that it is working for some people now.

Then there's this blog - where I experimented a lot, and found a lot of joy and acknowledgement. I wrote continously, once a week, for over two years. And it was well received. I was evergreen blessed with regular readers.

This challenged me to make every blog interesting for them. And one of the most interesting blogs I wrote was one in which all sentences were questions. I liked having that challenge over the two years.

*Enter stage right - The year 2015.*

*Exit stage left - Time.*

So, in the first quarter of the year 2015, two monumental things happened - I joined the banking sector, and I got married. Now, people will tell you that working in Banks is hard. Others will tell you that getting married is hard. And I had to work through both.

Now, Ammu is a darling. The only problem I had with marriage is that everyone expected me to be this different person overnight. I was (still am to a large extent) this kid in a guy's body. I was inquisitive but withdrawn; playful but respectful; and always strived to keep maturity at an arm's length, because I thought it didn't suit me.

I chose to believe that I handle situations with a particular charm with these characteristics of mine. But, to be a functional member of this society, I had to make compromises over the last three years, and I'm glad to let you know that a sweet spot has been arrived at.

So the two changes that I went through in 2015 heaped on me enough challenges, to make the thought of being creative on this online platform a chore. That's why I consciously chose to withdraw from my blogging spree.

***

Today is the Eighteenth of August, 2018. My Ammu's age is technically being incremented by one today. So, I started off writing this blog as a gift to her. She loves reading what I write and I love to write for her.

But that's when a grander idea hit me. This will be the first part of a 52 part gift that I will give her for next year.

***

Obviously this blog was supposed to be uploaded one week before. But I chose not to do so, as unrelenting rain led to floods throughout Kerala.

When I was in Delhi - Week 6

 "When I was in..." is a danger sign in most conversations. By the time these words roll out you know you are in for a treat. And by treat, I mean a monologue of the ego-pic proportions. Usually associated with people who were in the armed forces, this cliche is currently being used by all and many - including yours truly.

And, as the title suggests, my dialogues are based on the 40 odd months I spent in Delhi. Let's have some samples then.

***

1. When I was in Delhi, I talked to a dog in Hindi.

This happened just a week after joining at the company in Gurgaon. After a day's work, we were all sitting in the auto meant to take us back to our place. And suddenly a dog came sniffing around the auto. Fresh mallu flesh smell was the first for him I guess. He tried to progress into the auto, which was occupied by myself, my friend from Kerala and two others. Seeing this, I waved off the dog saying "Jaa Jaa". This amused my friend. "You were saying 'Po Po' till yesterday. Why Hindi now?". My reply is legendary now - "This is a North Indian dog. He can't understand Malayalam."

2. When I was in Delhi and we served the visitor raw atta and he had to fetch water from the fridge by himself.

The summers in Delhi are notorious for the heat. As the Celsius climbs up, monkey's climb down and enter our flats. And when the three brave bachelors tried to drive him away, the monkey snarled and tried to bite, which drove the said bachelors to their rooms. This gave free access of the house to the monkey, who spent some time eating the atta, which we had brought an year ago. Then, he coolly walked up to the refrigerator, opened it, took a bottle of water, opened the bottle and drank from it. Once he had his fun, he left. We had it all on camera, have lost that since.

3. When I was in Delhi and nobody would take my seat.

This happened on the metro, and was discussed on an earlier blog. Us friends were on our way to Dwaraka for a bite at the Malayali Restaurant there. When a space opened up, I nicked in front of my friend to grab it, and jeered him about the same to make the most of it. A beautiful girl walked in the next stop. As was the wont in that age, I tried to get a second look, but was unable to do so because of my seated position. I kept asking my friends, "Ne irrikyada, njn ninnottae" - "Please sit man. I want to stand". This was repeatedly quoted in Malayalam, in a fairly loud voice. The girl got down at the next stop, and I still haven't got that second look.

The next stop came. As he was getting down, a guy who was watching all this said to my friend "Ninnaku avidae irrikyayirunnu. Avan itreyum chothichathu allae" - "You could have sat there. He was pleading na". MALAYALIs are everywhere.

 

***

At the pace I'm going, I'll soon skip a week. :D ;)

Until next week then.

Words of Wisdom - Week 5

The moment I wrote "hopefully by Sunday" in the last post, I knew it was doomed. It's Thursday today - Friday in another two hours - and it's only now that I'm starting this. And the reason for the delay this time is the words of wisdom I received once from a senior, who's name escapes me now.

What doesn't escape my memory's ken are the following five words of wisdom that were shared with me by some great minds. Let's start with the reason for this week's delay.

1. "Your ability to produce coherent sentences is dependent on your creative juices. And like all juices, this needs time to refill."
I had a meeting to attend this Tuesday. Remembering the above words, I chose not to write the blog over the weekend, as that would have left my creative juices dry for the meeting.

2. "The speed of the fan, the amount of sugar in your tea - all these are prospective problems."
Said with respect to Marriages, by my dear friend Gulf's co-brother.

3. "If you've ten problems now, you know all your problems. You don't know how many, or what problems you're going to have in an year."
When Anoop said this to Vivek four years back in that old room in Delhi, he wouldn't have realised how many lives he was re-routing. When Vivek was torn between choosing to stay at DMRC (this being safe) or going to Germany on a scholarship (this being his dream), these words drove him to his dreams. And one by one, the rest of us took the leap of faith.

4. "Make sure the girl is the last one to send the message in a chat."
I still don't understand the concept or advantage behind this one, but I followed it for the better part of a decade. Thank you Chaithin for that.

5. "You're six foot tall right. Then why do you stoop? Stand straight and walk proud with your head held high."
This advice was given to me when I was returning home from school one day. And the source was some old man painting the wall of a random house.

***

Until next week.

Self appraisal - Week 4

So, we finally arrive at the fourth week of the journey - at least by the standards here. This post was supposed to go up by Sunday night, but it got delayed cos of the fact that I started writing it only today. Silly reason I believe.

So, it's April, and it's the time of the year where everyone looks forward to - cos the INCREMENT is coming. Not for me though. This annual roller coaster I had experienced for three years in the private sector has been replaced by a more continual, sedate stream. Despite this, the process of self appraisal has not been done with.

But I'm not here to disclose my achievements for the past year. I'm trying to tie this post back to the first one in this series which was posted one month back. In that, I had mentioned that to force me to change, I am going to keep track of my reading and writing schedule by means of papers stuck to my front door - so that it can always remind me of my (lack of) progress.

Let's review shall we. In the writing panel, there are after this one, four entries. So it fits the once a week criteria - though last two weeks posts were two days late and last week's post was really written in 2014, and left in the drafts. The only reason why I'm writing this is cos I couldn't find anything coherent in the drafts.

In the reading panel, there are three entries - the last of which is 23rd March. Which means I've not only failed to meet my target of reading every other day, but also failed to read anything over the past three weeks.

In another panel, I had written all the major chores I had to complete as on 20th March - 7 in number. 3 have been completed and one has become obsolete now. So not that good of a showing again.

If you were to read the last three paragraphs, and to rate me, I'm not highly confident of achieving a high rating. But therein lies the issue with our system - terming a period as different shades of good, bad or average with respect to preconceived notions.

As far as I see, my self appraisal would term this period as "significant improvement". While in the four week prior to this, I had read nothing, written nothing and all 7 of those chores were still pending, by starting this habit, I was indeed able to register significant progress.

It depends on the apt choice of the reference. If I had chosen a four week period from my teenage, then I would have fared really bad in reading. If I had chosen a four week period from two years back, I would have had bombed in writing. If I had chosen a four week period from... wait.. I was always this bad with chores.

***

Until next week.

Hopefully Sunday. ;)

What's your number?? - Week 2

The most imaginative thing that any writer can come up with has already been done. It was by the genius who came up with the notion of a writer's block. There is nothing more fictitious than that.

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What do you do, when you've nothing to do? These days this question's answer will be mostly centred around the usage of our smartphones. Our incessant craving for company is satisfied by this gadget. Please remember that I'm accepting that I'm myself indulging in this timepass.

But before our phones became smarter than us, before we had everything at our fingertips, how did you spend time when you were alone? If you can't imagine a scenario, think how you had spent your time on a journey some ten years back.

Reading of books - novels, comics and otherwise - and listening to music would be the more popular answers now. I had two peculiar pass times​ of my own. Ever since my father taught me that I could decipher the location of my presence by reading shop boards, I used to spend my time on the window seat to do just that. Almost all the nameboards of the shops have the name of the place towards the bottom left corner. It's really helpful when you're traveling to a new place.

My other hobby is to read vehicle registration numbers. The inspiration for this one comes from a quest to find out other vehicles with the same number as the one under my possession. And if you've tried doing this, you would know how hard it is.

In spite of the hundreds of vehicle registrations happening daily at the thousands of RTOs in all the states of this country throughout the year; in spite of all these vehicles moving from one point on India's map to another; in spite of all these vehicles only getting a number from 1 to 9999; you would be hard pressed to find another vehicle with the same registration number as yours. True story.

***

Now, if you would allow me to use my writers liberty, I would like you to replace in the previous paragraph - vehicle registrations by childbirth, vehicles by people, registration numbers by their personalities; and many other such nuanced substitutions - at the end of which that paragraph would be the perfect analogy for a person finding another person who is just like them. That's also really hard to do and extremely tough to realize.

***

And as we celebrate the second year of our marriage, and the third year of our realization that both of us have the same "registration number", I would like to thank God - for he had put me in the right place at the right time to meet the right person.

***

Until next week.