Directionally Handicapped!

"Right a left a ma?" asked the auto driver
Uh oh! Now which is right? Eeeeks.. I was almost hyper ventilating!
"Enna ma.. right-a left-a?"
"umm.. err.. adu.. adu.."I stammered, while the auto driver tried to slow down in a extremely busy Anna street in Thiruvanmiyur. If I didn't come up with the right way soon, we were going to be hit, either physically or verbally. Twenty pairs of eyes were trained on the auto, framing the choicest abuses in the worst possible way, while the auto-driver himself was glaring at me, a little baffled. He might be thinking what happened to me, since I looked perfectly normal when I got into it. Little does he know my problem! Sigh!
Tension rising every minute, I quickly kept the bags in the auto seat, and took out my hands, identified the right, right hand and pointed to the driver.
"Idu anna. Right" Phewwwwwww! At last!

Yeah.. that is me! I'm the most directionally handicapped person you can ever meet in your lifetime. (Pray to god, he never produces any more specimens like me, even after your lifetime). I've always found it difficult to point out right / left when someone asks me. I have to use my hands all the time. I take out my hands, look at them, mentally figure out the one used mostly, the right one, then take the other one, which obviously has to the left one,(How lucky, we have only two hands!!) and then point out to the person who asked me the fated question, only to find them in a half-slumber already. So I simply wake them up, and tell them the right way. :D
Thats why I call myself directionally handicapped, coz without my hands I'm lost! :P

Now, not only this. I have another problem. I cannot remember any routes, even if I've been through that route 100 times. Say, even if it is a simple, straight, then this way and that way and again this way(Oops, I was again using my hands to point out.. Wait, till I figure out which way...2 mins later.. yeah, so where we we..) So even if it is a simple straight, then right, and left and again right, I need to ask at least three people, keep track of their hands, and memorize the way they move pointing directions, to find my way there. It is such a sorry state of affairs, that my friends know I can get lost soon. :|


I'll tell you one such incident that happened. I and my friend were off to Ega theatre to watch 'Jab we met' and were on our way back at around 9 or so in the night. Now we had to reach our hostel before 10, else had to be ready to face a 2-hr long torture from our hostel-owner who was always on the lookout to murder people with his supposedly 'intelligent lectures'. (Rumour was that he used to be a favorite of the torture chamber wardens in some unknown country until he killed one of their own with his favorite topic.. Brrr. Scary na! I know!)So coming back to the story, we were trying hard to find our way through the traffic and reach on time. Suddenly my friend remembered another way (she still says it is the same route we used while going to the theatre, though I'm not so sure), and we raced towards it. We reached a junction pretty soon, and my friend asked me, which way we had to take now. (Blunder! I tell ya, the worst she could make.. err.. she knows that now though). In the hurry and tension, I blurted out something, and she took it for 'Right'. She again asked me if she was sure, and I was!! I was soo sure it was 'Right'. But after a few more turns, at around 9.40, we were back at the same junction. And then we realized, we were wrong. (I was obviously wrong, and she was wrong, coz she trusted me with such an important info :P). Now, this time she took the decision, and in no time, we reached another junction, and then she said.'From here only, we took right, not that one. Guess, you were confused"
To which I replied. "Oh.. so this is not the same one? It is another junction?"
Her eyes popped out to such a worst extent, that I had already trained my glasses to check the roads if they had popped out of the eyeballs. Recovering from the shock, she raced to our hostel, and we reached in record time, barely missing the torture chamber. Pheww!

And after that day, never has anyone trusted me to know any way or any direction.
I'm pretty sure this is no silly thing, and is a very rare disease that only the best minds get, but still my friends do not seem to believe me. So, this is my request to you all, if you find any information about this disease, please feel free to contact me.

Note: Nami you are a dudette! :D :D

One unforgettable evening!

Innocence is one thing you can never ignore. It is like that wild flower in a desert. You see it, and a smile flashes across your face! :D

So it was one lovely evening when I went up to the Pantaloons to get a shirt for my dad. (I know, I know, I know as much about shirts as Thala Vijay does about acting.. just read on.. plz) I had my brother along with me, who helped me find the right shirt. Whenever he felt like throwing up, I knew the shirt in my hands was a disaster. So well, after quite a bit of almost-throwing-up-stashing-the-disater-away, my bro took up the job on himself, while I,... err.. like any other species of my kind went up to the ladies department. While I was there I spotted this bright kid. (Pssst..Now I'll let u on a secret of mine. I can do that Kathakali thing with my eyebrows, where they just keep dancing their eyebrows up and down). Now like most involuntary reactions, as soon as I see a kid, my eyebrows start dancing right away, and I must tell you, they love it! Or so I thought!

This kid promptly turned to his father, who was waiting for his wife to come out of the trail room, and started pointing at me.Yikes! I knew I was in trouble! I quickly ducked under some clothes rack, and was pretending to be absorbed in a plain gray t-shirt, when I felt a tug. It was the same kid!
"Ello, Ow-er-u" [hello, how are you]
"Oh.. I'm fine.. how are you?"
"You go to play-shhcool a?"
Now when a cute little 3 yr old, dressed in those over-sized shorts, sneakers and shirts with all big designs asks you some buzzer round questions in a kiddo voice that went 'shhhcool', you get all tongue-tied. Well, I did. Err.. you see that last question was a real bumper!!
"Err.. no-"
"I go to one. Ajay can jump like this only thee tiimes. I jump fiiiive times. And my shhhcool is there only..."
So on.. and on.. for another 15 mins it was like a new language that I learnt from him. Since I'm quite a fast learner, I was somehow able to reply back. Sample this.
"you terra kitnera?"
"ya..terri ponsalaa"
Well, he was satisfied with that answer. Right then, I got a call from my bro, asking me to get going as he had found a good shirt at last. Sadly when I turned to my new friend to bid goodbye, he went "You going? ok Shee you" with a resounding kick aimed right at my ahem-ahem.
His father's "No fighting or beating" apparently didn't include kicking. Owww!

We were at the billing counter though, when we discovered that that shirt was apparently a defective piece, and my bro has to resume his 'search-for-the-right-shirt'. But there was somebody right there to give me company.
"Hey.. nee polaya? Inge vaa" (Hey.. you didn't go yet? Come here]
(Apparently he had included me into his friends list, since we started conversing in Tamil and English there on. :hude-grin-plastered-on-my-face-now:)

We played hide and seek, among the clothes racks, looked at each mannequin there in detail, as to what each was wearing, and why there were no shoes on. There was another insight too from my little friend, as to how tall those mannequins really were! Brilliant I tell ya, my buddy was going places. Well, but by this time, since all the store-assistants had become his thick friends, anywhere I hid, the little sonny found me out in no time, with this HUGE grin that just lit up my day.

But you know what? Even these little fellas fall for a girl. Guess what happened? At the billing section this guy met a new kid (girl), and forgot all about our hide-and-seek. He was so overjoyed. He introduced her to me, and showed her all those mannequins we had so sincerely studied. But well, he tried this big fighter hug thing, and ended up falling over her and hitting their heads. Well, being the superman my little buddy was, he moved on like the Rajdhani and we were back to our little games.

After a while, his parents found us, informing that it was time to leave. My buddy, was perched up at the billing counter, lest he ran off somewhere. We kept signaling to each other, since I was standing just 2 places behind them.
"Bye bye"
"Bye bye"
"Shee you"
"See you"
"Shvuit deems"
Eh?
Oh
"Sweet dreams :D"
And then the best part.. he blew me a flying kiss!!! :D :D. (I so resembled my profile pic then. :P :P)

That little kid's innonence had spread its warmth all over. It was the best evening I had in a long time, and I'll never forget that little bugger! :)

A New Beginning

A new year, a new place, and a new blog!

I must say this is the first time so many news things are happening to me. Well.. so what was I going to write about? Ah.. yes! Nope! This is not about the philosophy of the newness of a new year or if a new thing is really new or just a perception. Just read on.. if you are really patient or really jobless.

Well, on the first day of the new year I shifted into a house, after some 8 odd years of hostel life!
And I already feel as though I'm free, free of cramped spaces in hostels, free from looking at 10-50 odd faces ( depending on the hostel) which keep changing when those faces find new places or new faces find this hostel; free from having to get up early for a glass of milk ( Now if you have completely perforated finger-nails, and teeth that seem to get washed away even as u drink water, you really need that source of calcium); free from eating the same idly-dosa-pongal-idly-dosa routine; free from having to put up with noisy roommates, free, free... free!

Now I know you must be thinking, this girl acts as though she just ran away from a jail! Hostel can be fun too! I agree with you completely on that. But on one point I hate to differ. It is no fun at all, if you have to stay in hostel for 8 odd years of your life. And if by fate all the hostels were not so much fun, if all the hostel wardens you encountered had just been reincarnated from the Jurassic Park, if the TVs in all these hostels were junk where you'd just get the same sun TV-Jaya TV-Kalaignar TV and the like and nothing more. (Till when can you watch the same song or movie again and again?).

One thing that I really missed all these years in a hostel was solitude! There are times when you want to stay away from all the hubbub and have some time alone with you and your thoughts. But in hostels in exactly those times, there will always be a gaggle of girls ( yeah, I meant 'gaggle') bursting in , chatting (more like shouting) about some crap which means a lot only for them. There goes that great effort to find some peace of mind!

So after all these long years in hostels, now that i've moved into a house, I hope I enjoy this change for the better (I hope)!

For those of you who are still here to read this line! Thankee! :D