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

Gender Stereotype and me?!! Kabhi nahi

Megz tagged me, of all people for this one. And I'm not letting down the only person who feels I'm not extinct here :P.
Before you all let ur gray cells working on what the hell I'm rambling about let me help you save the energy of those poor cells on your first floor.
I have been tagged for ‘My Sins against Gender-Stereotypes.’ This tag says, list at least ten things you have ever wanted or done which your gender is not supposed to.

So I'm trying here to scratch and squeeze my own gray matter to help me find 10 of these. Well, to be frank I never looked at myself as a girl when I was doing something to think that since I'm a girl, I should not be doing this. Sigh! Still to do this tag, I should think of 10 such things. So here goes..

1. Umm.. Err.. I walk fast
2. I like to talk about cars and politics
3. I can board running buses with ease.
4. I love to trek and climb trees
5. I have no idea what is a mascara or err.. whatever.
6. I don't paint my toenails or my fingernails for that matter.
7. I HATE shopping. I hate it so much the very thought of T. Nagar makes me nauseous.
8. I can whistle well, and sometimes it is very involuntary.
9. I cannot stand soaps.
10. And I can cook. ( Given that more guys know cooking when compared to girls, I think this fits into this tag. :P)

Phewww.. With that I've completed this tag. YES!! YESSS!!!
And I hereby tag Himanshu and PSM errr.. Sow and Prabodh to carry on this tag. :D :D

This day :)

It is a weird thing. This day called your birthday!

It is just the same as any other day, but not really so. It is a day when anyone who really cares for you, knows you, likes you, does not know you, has just seen you, all of them, try to do that thing, however small it may be, in whichever way they possibly can, to make it a little more special for you. :) To make it a day you'll remember for sometime, and have a quiet laugh shaking your head at those memories of cheer and laughter you shared with all of them :)

And it is a heady feeling to know, that there are people out there, who care, who want to make it extra-special for you. Who are basically there for you.

Thanks a lot guys! :)

[55 Fiction] GULP

Another one for the same contest.

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“Whiskey, rum or vodka?” Sam asked.
“Vod-ka ille stupid. It is ‘Vaud-ka’” Prabhu corrected him.
“Oh!.. I got it. What ka?” Mokka-Venkat couldn’t resist passing the opportunity.
“Hmm… Avarekka!” quipped a voice from behind them. They turned in unison.
The class teacher was tapping her feet, eye glowering.
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[55 Fiction] The Other half

This was written for a contest in our internal blogging site. The total number of words is not supposed to go beyond 55 words, and must convey a story.So here goes..

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She was asking me to join her. She was so very near, but I couldn’t reach her. It seemed like she would go farther away, if I passed this opportunity. The distance would be too great.
“Come. We’ll be together again” She said, smiling as ever.
--
The wails began. Father was a great man.

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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! :)

Of Men that laugh and children who cry!

It was a tranquil night. The moon was silently whispering to the barren lands that swished pass by. A lone tree or few bushes,looked on serenely now and then. It was around 10.00 and I was on my way home. Almost all had retired to their berths and when the last light was put out, I had decided to take in the beauty of the countryside in the moonlight, sitting in the dark train. But then, there was this family, to the right of my compartment, with two small kids who found the idea of traveling in a train, a little discomforting. This hunch of mine was confirmed by the kid suffering from wailisirenotopia.( This is a syndrome when the afflicted keeps wailing like a siren every 4 mins and 53 secs.) This one was unique though, coz the wailing was in a different tune each time. And then, there were this group of men to the left of my compartment, who definitely were trying to prove Darwin right, in that we evolved from monkeys. From the time they had boarded the train, they were behaving like a bunch of excited teens out on a trip for the first time. Every 10 mins, it was like a bunch of Narakasuras from Om Namah Shivai had descended on the train, booming at the hapless devi who had fallen victim to them. It was like 10 gorillas roaring in pain (well, it really couldn't be counted in as laughter, you know, so I didn't want the good old hyenas somersaulting in their graves, if I used them as metaphors here)

Now this was not bothering me much, coz staying awake was my idea. I had to get down in an hour or so, and did not want to snore all the way to Trichy, missing my station. Now by around 10.15 or so, this kid with the wailisirenotopia had got into this pretty drab tune, which was certainly not music to the ears. But of course (no sarcasm here) everyone understands how difficult it is to manage kids, and so all patiently waited for the kids to go back to sleep. That was when one of the men from the gorilla gang, wearing his 10-yr old son's shorts, crossed my compartment to the next and kind of gave a look , that was surely meant to be a warning to the parents.

How insensitive could people get! At 10.30, those people never had the sense to pipe down a bit, but the man in shorts had the gall to remind others to quieten down, a kid at that! Appalled, I went back to the barren lands, wondering about the manufacturing defect that Lord Brahma had made while dishing out this particular specimen.

After about 15 mins, the kid had gone to sleep and the whole train was softly sighing in sleep when these men - on a apparently rib-tickling one, went into this ritual of slapping thighs and making sounds that was like 5 old Bajaj scooters + 8 gorillas + 7 Narakkasuras and 11 buffalos on a high!!! The compartment almost jerked, when some 60 (remember a sleeper has 72 berths and a good 8 were occupied by these ppl, one by me, and 3 were unoccupied yet - I'm good at my math, you see :P )people were jostled from their sleep. The ones sleeping in the middle and lower berths banged their heads on the top of their berths, when they were woken up with a start! And our child with the wailisirenotopia, poor thing, also seemed to find a new tune to kick off now!! :(

Now, I decided something had to be done. But what? Hmm... yeah.. there was one thing. But, I had my own doubts. What if they went into another of these thigh-slapping, and guffawing rituals, if I did that?? I couldn't even imagine me being the cause for another of those!!! :O

But well, given that I take approximately some 53.9 seconds to make up my mind, before these thoughts could even play out in my mind, I was already on the way to their cabin. (Remember it was dark everywhere except in their cabin)I went and stood at the entrance of their cabin, and gave them all a bewildered look. I looked at each of those specimens for a good length of time,especially the one in his 10-yr old's shorts, all the time not letting go of the blank expression. There was silence. The guffawing gorillas now closely resembled dumb buffalos basking in the sun, open mouthed. I returned back to my seat, with such of sense of satisfaction, I had never felt before. That had done the trick. Within seconds, the lights went out, and the train went back to it's sleeping mode. I had not actually expected such a quick response, so to say, I was actually scared, if they would start off on another laughing spree, seeing my dumb look. Phew! :D :D Luckily the child also seemed to get tired of wailing, and had quietened down.

The tranquility returned and I went back to the moonlight barren lands, and in all that silence, barely missed snoring all the way to Trichy!

Note: I know the title is grammatically wrong. But it is intentional, which I hope you understand better after reading this post. :)