My quarter life crisis…

I turned 29 today… my orkut scrap book whose count accelerated up a few numbers today stand proof to the significance of 2 things – one that happened 29 years back and I had no control over and the other that happened maybe 5 years ago and in a moment of euphoric madness at being among the first to receive a privileged invite to join this social networking site… ever since I have not deleted any scraps on this site and have been trying my best to at least achieve a respectable scrap count… needless to say I have hopelessly failed due to many reasons (definitely not my vibrant social life) and which is not the reason I started this post so I stop the discussion right here right now…

Yeah I am 29… that is what I would say whenever anyone asked me for my age… well it is simple no… I just have to add up the number of years to 1980 and it is very easy to add something to a number that ends in zero… or subtract a number that ends in zero… whichever way you follow to calculate your age. Anyways, though I am proud of my arithmetic abilities, I am not going to give you a 101 ways to calculate your age – what I am merely trying to point out here is that I am 29 – and it is so easy to calculate that I have not made a mistake… so the next time you put your hand to your mouth and say “what… you are 29???”, I can at least understand that you are not doubting the accuracy of the number.

But yeah there is one person, or rather personified person, who lives inside me screaming at the top of his voice that my age is only 25… 25 – can you believe it? There are only two other persons in who achieved this not growing up thingee – Markandeya at sweet sixteen and probably Peter Pan – the boy who refused to grow up… though I lost the chance to achieve the world record of being the youngest to achieve this feat, maybe I could have tried for the oldest 25year old alive… had I not gotten jolted out of this a few days back…

Now don’t ask me why 25 in particular and why not 20 or 15 or even 30… maybe it was at 25 that I went back to school again or maybe 25 was the time I lost touch with reality or maybe just plain lost it… the point is the magic number was 25… or it could have just been an arbitrary number cloud around the number 25 which makes it into a hazy and maybe even an irrational number – but we all know that we cannot age irrationally – aren’t we all rational?

So there I was happily oblivious to my ageing process living a life without any major burdens, enjoying the in-between period from restrained childhood to a responsible adulthood… partying on weekends and partying on weekdays… spending without a worry whatever little I was paid at the end of the month… when there was no water available, we drank beer instead, taking a leaf out of the wise lady Marie Antoinette’s life… all my friends were quite like me living a life of reckless irresponsibility.

The group got constantly modified – people kept moving out and others came in to replace them. But I didn’t notice… they were all still 25 year olds like me. Until suddenly one day I sat up and took notice, I realized that others around me had been ageing all this while… suddenly my friends and cousins became uncles and aunts… the cute girls fresh from college or working in BPOs seemed like the ones to ogle at and I used to wonder that how women these days were getting pretty silly… while the ones I was used to ogling suddenly became the aunties with the constantly crying misbehaving kids… while the guys with whom I used to drink beer and hung out until pretty late into the night, were suddenly very serious about getting home early…

The telling blows came when these aunties and uncles introduced me to their kids as an uncle and the kids shamelessly called me uncle – far from the anna or bhaiyya which I was used to. And I started looking at the mirror more often to check whether I had any grays poking out of my head… but then after a couple of such false alarms, my brain kicked in dismissing the claims by the adults introducing me to their kids as “uncle” as a mere indication of the jealousy that comes up when older people see younger people having more fun… but by now i was confused on what to call them... i guess definitely not "aunties" as the "uncles" would insist on an explanation...

The final blows came from my mom – her favorite phrases being – “erumai/kazhudhai vayasu achu” (an old tam saying that compares you to a buffalo or donkey’s age - duh) whenever I am having fun… an admonishment which I never understood because I was acting my age… 25… the best part was when she used to say that I was irresponsible and that my dad was married (which is usually associated with being responsible – refer the example above where guys want to go home early) when he was 27… now though marriage seemed like a necessary evil, I was still ok with my present single state because I still had 2 more years to attain that maturity… no?

But, all good things must come to an end and so does my 25^th year… after running successfully for the last 4 years, I decided that I can accept the fact that I am actually older… though my alter ego who sits inside my head still might poke out and claim that I am only 25, I am slowly feeding him the shocking news of his age so that it does not come as a great shock to him...

PS. My luck seems to be changing on my 29^th birthday though. Something good happened – mclaren is back on top.

PPS. Throughout the post I was reminded of koundamani’s famous “take the 25” comedy… here it is on youtube…

The Chronicles of Varuna: The Line, The Ditch and The Downpour…

It is that time of the year again – where the sun the gets blotted out by shades of grey, and smell of wet earth hits you into a knock out sense of euphoria, the cold air makes you want to curl up under a thick woolen blanket, with the noise of the water pouring in the backdrop sipping noisily on a cup of hot ginger tea… no wait I am dreaming… I don’t have the tea or the woolen blanket… cut to reality – this is the time of the year I get to play cat and mouse with the rain gods…

Today, after so many days of careful meteorological planning and evasion tactics and having upgraded my arsenal with a car, I was exposed vulnerably to the wrath of the rain gods… I had to travel some 10kms through the evening peak hour traffic to get back home without a mobile roof over my head (if you don’t count the helmet as one that is) after I picked up my trusty companion on such missions – my pulsar 150…

And of course Murphy was waiting for one such opportunity… with the patience of a hungry wolf (please note Mr. Murphy that I am using the comparison in a complimentary way). Of course no points for guessing whether I got drenched or not today… but the bone chilling dunking I got through reminded me of the events of last year and the different strategies we played against each other… and I hope I will find time to put them all down here so that maybe some day in the future, i would have gotten into a better mood to have a good laugh…

One particular day's strategy went something like this –

There is this route through the main roads that I used to take to get home – a pretty long route, almost an unbroken but not so straight line, about 20kms one way interspersed with traffic signals to slow you down to give you the time to stop and smell the flowers – only they will be dripping wet like me and I already had enough water in my nose… but then it was usually safer to go this way because this particular route had something that the other routes did not – a road.

As usual the game began as soon as I left office, and the rain started pouring consistently… whenever I tried to race against it, Murphy stepped on the pedal too increasing the quantity of the water pouring from the heavens above… and slowing down back to the old rhythm as my speed fell in tune with the slow moving traffic… following me throughout the path I took…

That day I suddenly decided to experiment – I broke off at a signal, took a detour through another road perpendicular to the direction I was traveling and lo behold – a totally dry patch of land lay in front of me… really – not even the smell of wet earth… it was as if some water tanker lorry was spilling its way along my usual path and it did not turn in this new direction…

I was astounded to say the least at the availability of a non slippery dry road… but at the same time I got a new found elation pumping up my adrenalin giving me hope that today I might end up at my home less wetter than the previous days… I revved the engine only to realize that I can’t make speedy progress because of the enormous number of ditches all along the way… still I tried my best to make it home as fast as possible before Murphy realized I was not getting the water any longer…

But my euphoria was short lived, and as I turned the next corner to catch the general direction to my house, Murphy had finally caught up… he had realized that I was not on my original path any longer and he definitely was not a novice to the streets of this city… in a fury at being outsmarted by a mere mortal he sent forth a gushing torrential cascade that started filling up the ditches on my road… the downpour was not only making my visibility poor, but was also filling up the depressions in the road, disguising them to merge into an evenly flat surface smooth road… in order to avoid causing damage to my trusty steed I had to leave the path less taken and get back on to the main roads as soon as possible…

I did just that, rejoining my older path a few kilometers from where I had taken the diversion, only to realize that I was not exaggerating when I said I was being singled out and chased by Murphy… the road was dry as a new huggies diaper… and since Murphy’s GPS was maybe guiding him along the other path, I had a few seconds of dry and good roads to make my escape.

But yeah the traffic signals who were the good old friends of my enemy simultaneously slowed down my progress and sort of seemed to send a signal to the rain clouds to change their direction. So a short distance from my home, the rain had caught up… and this time in all out fury seemingly to compensate for the short dry patches in my journey trying to get me as wet as possible before I made it to safety…

Of course, once I got under the roof of my house, the game ends and both of us retire for the day to restart a new game the next day… I guess by now Murphy must have realized that his adversary will not give up without a fight…

written sometime back… forgot to post... now i can't remember it well enough to think of a good title... sorry for the period post…

(awesome... probably the first time anybody puts a disclaimer in the title)

For those who dinno yet – santro it is… the sunshine car reflecting pure white light…

Somewhere I read that a transaction happens when the buyer and seller feel that they got the best deal… to me it happened sometime in December, in the heart of the recession when heads of auto companies were trying to offload their stock and quickly bundle the cash into a clean white dhoti and run away to some obscure place before their line employees come back after their sudden pay-now-claim-later vacation that their usually tyrant boss had so benevolently insisted on them recharging their batteries…

Ok to cut a long story short… Hyundai offered a price cut and the government offered to reduce some of the tax burden… overall it seemed like a good deal to me… and for the dealer it seemed like a good deal too as apparently the discount was borne by the manufacturer (at least the papers said so) and he thanked god for sending in a dumb customer who was not bargaining for discounted accessories – not even the free ganesha idol he normally gave away in happier innocent times… the customer in turn thanked god for granting him the power to resist swiping the evil plastic to revel in some cheap thrills of pirated music and button press power windows…

So there it was, occupying the unused space I had being paying the rent and the maintenance for over 6 months… thanks to spiderman and yuppie-da for getting it home safely… yes I didn’t drive it home… in fact for the next few days I would be re-living those pre licecnse driving class days with a guy sitting to my left shouting instructions aloud to hide his panic, while I through clenched teeth and sweaty palms drove to office in the slowest speeds possible that tested the patience of my followers…

But yes… here I am… come a long way from that scared L-boarder to a scary L-boarder (yes I still retain the big red L – my dad, an ex law student, advised me against removing it so that I could have an upper hand in a situation if required) – 3123 kms to be exact… that too with a trip to Chennai (350kms one way) and one to Sivasamudram (about 150 kms from Bangalore) about which I hope to write some day too…

But, the new arrival in the family has not been accepted without friction. In fact barely had the one month deadline arrived for the first servicing, that I felt like a guy with two wives… after a month of aggressive driving around Bangalore and nearby, I just managed to cross the required run-in kilometers… a satisfied owner, I took it to the nearby service center for the regular servicing, again resisting offers of extended warranty which did not include parts I did not even know existed, got the “free service only” words out of my mouth and came back home to go to the office on my trusty bike…

Only he was not any more… yeah – the definitely male “HE”… but he did not hide his jealousy at being neglected all this while… refused to start till I kicked the s*** out of me… then within a few meters I felt a loss in the rear wheel stability… puncture… with that I felt my cheerfulness draining out with the air… had to please him with some new pretty expensive accessories to get him to behave…

But yeah… back to focus on the star of this post… after the first service, she was much more smoother… that is when we took her to Chennai… I was a bit apprehensive – all those nasty trucks and mean speeding vehicles on those highways… how would I cope with it all… in fact it was such an overwhelming fear, that I took a detour in between to visit a temple… haha gotcha… I did not go to the temple out of fear… I just wanted to soothe my nerves fill my tummy – heard their puliyogare and curd rice were very good… after this and a couple of drive arounds in chennai’s jammed roads (after which I patted myself on the back for living in the outskirts in Bangalore), I realized that I actually enjoyed the freedom of the wonderful highway from Chennai to Bangalore… so much so that I actually drove back in 4hrs straight… all those nfs trainings during the mba seems to have helped…

After this, there was no going back… huh… I mean… I love biking, but then I have to spend some time with the car too… a good amount of money has been invested… what is the point if I don’t use it… (s*** I have to now worry about diplomacy with my bike !!!)

Anyways, there are some side-effects of getting the car… the rain god thinks I played spoil sport… so he has roped in his friend the sun god to cook me inside the glorified solar cooker… But yeah… another way to show the finger to the autowallas in bangalore…