And by public demand ....

This is one of my longest blogs .. also one of the first .. written about a year and a half back ... it isnt great . But it really is an experience I'll never forget.
This one's for Ms. Ayesha Beryl Dsouza who sticks by how it the funniest i've written ..
I miss the PSA and the Union . Thanks for all the attendance and the great times .. Cheers .....


This particular incident happened on the way to the station when we were going to Hampi about a month back. My good first male cousin on my good mothers side Prashant was visiting from Australia. We hired three autos to get to city station, one with the elders, one with my good parents and good sister and in the third auto (the most fun one!!) my good self my good cousin Neeru .
Now good cousin 'Shant had a bit of a wierd habit. He would ask anyone who made eye contact with him ' how it was going' This would happen with strangers on the road, waiters, salespeople and even beggars. When beggars approached him to ask for money, good cousin 'shant would smile and say 'hey! hows it goin ?' now im sure if the beggars understood they'd prolly say 'how do you think its going dumbass? I have four kids, a drunk husband who comes home everynight and beats me up, ive been knocked up again and with absolutely no self dignity i'm asking misers like you for money' ... anyway .. coming back to why i started writing this story.

On our way to the station, 'shant started conversation with the auto driver. Much to our luck he was a drunken maniac.
Conversation went like this:
'Shant('s) : Driving autos must be fun huh ? this thing gearless?
D : naah .. five gears
's: youre kidding ..
auto : correct five gears.
Crazy cousin from australia took this as an opportunity
's: Is it easy to drive an auto?
auto: english dont know's : translate that into tamil
D (in retarded tamil): auto driving kashtama? (is it difficult to drive an auto?)
auto: no no very easy
's: cool .. i want to drive an auto ... will you teach me?
auto (with a sudden mastery over the english language): yes. i teach you , if you teach me english. you give me telephone number.. i will come to house and teach
D and Neeru tried to make 'Shant understand not to make conversation with crazy auto driver type fellow.
Inane conversation went on despite efforts to stop them from talking.
auto : ande 'fucking' na yenna (what does fucking mean?) at which point good cousin Neeru tried very hard to jump out of the auto.
D (bravely) : ade rombe kette varthon (thats a very bad word)
auto : apadiya , ore naal ore ponne cholite 'listen' , naa chonne ' you fucking'.. ( one day a girl said listen and i said you fucking (fucking what ? ) .. )mauto (continuing) : na nanchen listen na kette varthon, naan chonne you fuckin ( i thought listen was a heaps bad word , so i said you fucking)and the idiot kept screaming the four letter word its continous tense .. i'm dreading to think what people on the road woulda thought...
D and Neeru had to fight urges to throw 'shant out for starting this..
'shant(whispering) : this is freaky man... finally it seemed like God was trying to help us.
The auto guy pulled into cantt. station, at which point i'm-suffering-from-foot-in-mouth-disease D says : hey . arent we supposed to go to city station
's: shut up! lets get out and get another auto .. ( apparently not too happy with 'how it was going')too late .
D took the divine opportunity and shoved it back in God's face. Thank you very much good sir .. but id rather ride with the drunk fool for another half hour and hold on to dear life...
auto guy heard this and said : no problem , i go to city station.(at this point Neeru resigned to her fate , started writing her will and began cursing that she would die a virgin )
Good mother rajashree decided to call on D's phone (voice cracking and connection breaking up ) : Kanna , Our auto's run out of gas, we've stopped near canttl, it'll take sometime , dont worrt if were late...
D (I'm-still-suffering-from-foot-in-mouth-disease) : WHAT ?? YOURE AT CANTT ??? MOM ? I CANT HEAR YOU ? THE AUTO ? STOPPED ?? YOULL BE LATE ?? YOURE BREAKING UP !!
auto ( never missing an opportunity to use profainity) : kya chuth (what a cunt).. no gas ? kya ? kahaan hai ? cantonment mein ? maine bola mujhe malum .. me follow i said.. me follow to station ... quite convieniently forgetting that he took us to the wrong station.fortunately .
good cousin 'shant kept mum all the way to the station. When we got there, D , Neeru and Shant did a little song and dance routine thanking all the Gods they could name for safely getting them to the station ..
The auto driver though hadnt forgotten about the you teach english, i teach auto deal .. m.a.d : i give you 400 rupees .. you give number .,,. i teach auto .
'shant: no im not from here ....
Luckily at that time the other good autos (carrying the rest of the extended family that was visiting Hampi )also reached their destination (which happened to be the same as ours! ..)
The other autos charged rs.80 while yours truly asked for a hundred and insisted on asking for phone numbers.... my granmother argued with the man about 20 rupees .. at which point to avoid spending anytime in the general viscinity of the idiot, D said .. just give him the money and lets go!and hence we made it to Hampi with no furthur hiccups .. but good cousin prashant couldnt stop about how India sure was a wierd place ..

Whats up ? I'll tell you....

First.. Ms. Easwar ? You're very welcome...

I am one of the funniest people i know as well.

Haha ....

Started work yesterday . Am working with an event management company .. in the marketing department .. but work i do that involves a lot of things.

Dis organised bunch of people .. but everybody's full fun .. and i'm having a good time here.

When it comes to what was up ?
Was my lunch.. got car sick and threw up all over my boss's front seat .. twice.. fun story ? i think not.

The man was really cool about it.. really .. actually called me back for work the next day .
Made mental note not to regurgitate in the boss's car the today ..

Am writing this post from work .. so i'll go make myself useful ... if such a thing is possible ..

later.

Dreams are Made of These.

I am one of those people who believes that I suffer from every psychological condition that exists. But I am now convinced that there is one condition that doesn’t plague my cerebral hemispheres .
Claustrophobia .
Strike it off that list , Vorkady.
Discovered this about 11:30 a.m this morning on my way out to meet Homieboy for brunch.
‘Might be late , I’m stuck in my lift’.
‘Just be patient and breathe’ was the reply.
Was breathing , was being patient. Didn’t bother me , honest. Was just hungry as hell and needed to get to Koshy’s soon ..
So there.. now that we’ve established that.

The past few days have been really crazy for me . (doesn’t explain why I haven’t written in over 4 months) . My dad’s in a hospital in Tanzania ,after suffering from a stroke and a nine hour surgery that followed.
He’s there with my mom , aunt and an I.V drip for company.Recovering.

Please keep the faith and don’t stop praying . Its all that positive energy that’s giving him and the family strength to get through this. I really believe that. Things are better now and he’s in a stable condition.

Many of the good people of Bangalore have been taking me out to help me keep the spirits up.

Ashwin (green eyes) , Daddoo , Ranjana and I went to a West Indian restaurant. When Ashwin first said it was a West Indian restaurant, word association went like this.

West Indian- West India – West Bengal – Bengali food ? – Good fish – wait- West Bengal is actually East India – West - Maharashtrian – Goan ? – Also good fish.

Its only when I opened the menu and read Trinidad special is when I discovered it was actually food from The WEST INDIES ….
Yes.. Enlightenment finally hit me .
Must thank Selvin ( Selvam? ) and his family who offered many an instance for me to laugh like a woman possessed. Also equally entertaining was a Jamaican song titled Oye Bebe.
An interesting evening - interspersed with threats from Ashwin ( I’ll throw this knife at you) , and interruptions from Selvin who convinced Ashwin that he was ‘discharged’ from prison . If such a thing is possible.
Thank you Cuteness , I owe you.

Thank you Homieboy for brunch and interesting conversation .

Thank you Cowie Tubby for ice cream , apple cake and good music.

Hande- Just for being there. I might yell at you heaps .. but its because of all the love (teehee) …

Went to Infinitea with Vorkady . Had one of the most mind – buggering conversations I’ve had with anyone in a long time .
Had tea which had a hint of spearmint flavour which we gathered with the help of a phenomenon we call olfaction. Otherwise it tasted like hot water.
Thank you Vorkady for dinner and ‘intellectual’ conversation. We only used the word ‘paroxysm’ 528 times.

There are so many people I need to thank for helping me get though this. You all can’t even begin to imagine how much I needed and appreciated all your emotional support.

Family – the whole bunch of you . Thank you for the emails , the phone calls and the messages. Shant , Roopa , Ashwin , the whole of Dad’s side , all the chittis , perimas , peripas , mamas , chittappas and mamis. Jayanti aunty and Prakash uncle ..
There are too many of you to name. I love you .

Big shout out to K K Raja , cant describe how much you mean to me .. although this doesn’t make all the mental notes go away. Haha …

And all my homies in da hood (teehee) …
Thank you for all the patience and freebies ! ( Im still on a caffeine trip from all the diet coke , Zauj ! ) .
Cowie Tubby , Zauj , Bubbly , Cuteness , Hande, Vorkady, Bunchy (Kanishka’s mom!), Fatty G , nj, Ms. Van Horn , Ppd ,Tanvi , Dub, Ya sister …. And so many more of you … I’m sorry if I haven’t mentioned your names here but thank you all the same.

And finally -- to Goblin and the Lipton Ice tea sales man who gave me a carton of Ice tea for free ( to protect me from an evil I affectionately call Diet coke).They know who they are and they don’t know how much they mean to me .
I love them immensely .
I dedicate this post to the both of them . For all the wisdom and love. God bless you.

On a lighter note , has anybody noticed the crazy butterfly phenomenon that’s been going on ? So many of them , all over the place , all sizes , pretty colours . Sometimes you can see more than 50 of them in one place... So beautiful that its mind blowing.

Like a wise man once said (!) – Dreams are made of these. They are you know. Really.

Everytime I see them , they make me smile .
They remind me of all the good things to come. All the things to look forward to . All the things that make life so colourful . All the things that make life worth living.