Everybody else's got talent...

From 'X factor' and 'Indian Idol' to 'Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega', every Tom, Dick and Narayanasamy has got talent. From a 5 year old little girl twirling hula hoops around her waist, limbs or neck to a 50 year old lady performing classical dance on a block of ice, everybody is performing on stage these days.

As I watch them from the idle comforts of my sofa cushions, a wave of frustration sweeps over my entire body. A frustration derived from the fact that I cannot absolutely do anything the people on these talent shows seem to do! I mean have you ever seen the creativity and freshness these people bring to the talent shows? I know for a fact that if I were ever to try any of that stuff, I'd be in Apollo Hospital or Narayana Hrudayalaya with multiple fractures or dislocations with the doctor hovering over me and saying 'Oh dear, Oh God'.

For several years now, I have been searching for one talent to call my own. First I tried my hands at some vocal acrobatics ;-) I fancied my voice quite a lot, more so when I was a kid. My mother used to say that I had a good grasp of  'sa re ga ma' which only meant that I would not have a problem grasping the western music. So, I started belting out Bryan Adam's "Summer of '69" time and again whenever I felt like it, more in the bathroom. But these experiments with vocal acrobatics were soon shown their early grave when my brother threatened to throw me out if I didn't stop :-)

Soon after that, I became 99.99% sure about my true talent when I started doodling cartoons in my engineering notebooks and textbooks. Soon my 'Discrete Graph Theory' and 'Software Engineering' was dotted with several scribbles of my own design. This budding artist in me was soon shot down when one of my lecturers caught me with a funny sketch of himself in the assignment that I had submitted on his desk the day before!

It was after this that I realized that my talent lie not in art but in sports and tried my hand at 'throwball' during my engineering days. After a couple of months of playing for the team, I decided not to stun the audience with my stupidity and quit.


By then, I firmly resolved to abandon my search for a talent in me and accepted the fact that I probably had none. Today I see those talent shows on TV and look back to the days when I tried to find a talent and still despair at not being able to find even one. I’m sure that it’s out there hidden somewhere and that I will trip onto it accidentally.


So until I find it, I remain a jealous hunter :-)

Lost!!

Feeling a little overwhelmed, lost and like I'm being pulled in way too many directions. Is it just me?? I hate this feeling. Neither my favorite music nor writing this post seem to help!! Wish someone had some medicine for this :-(

Kids and their hilarious answers ;-)

The following were some real answers given by kids in their exams. The answers are so hilarious that I decided to share it here :-)

1. Name the four seasons?  Salt, Pepper, Mustard, Vinegar
2. How is dew formed? The sun shines on the leaves and makes them perspire
3. How can you delay milk turning sour?  Keep it in the cow
4. What causes the tides in the ocean? The tides are a fight between the Moon and the Earth. All water tends to flow towards the Moon since there is no water there. And the nature hates vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight
5. Name a major disease associated with cigarettes?  Premature death
6. What does 'varicose' mean?  It means 'nearby'
7. What is the meaning of 'Cesarean section'?  It is the name of a district in Rome
8. What is the meaning of the word 'benign'? It is what you will be after you become eight
9. What happens to your body as you age? You become very old and so do your bowels. That's how you become intercontinental
10. What is artificial insemination?  When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Apple vs Kid

The other day I was talking to a friend about Apple Ipads when the kid nearby became all excited.

Kid - Apple? Oh yeah I know Apple!
Me - You do? Really?
Kid - Yeah, two weeks ago for my birthday, this aunty gifted a shirt to me from them.
Me - Huh? They don't make shirts!!
Kid - Ofcourse they do. Wait, I will show you the shirt and the label's right there on the collar.

The kid rushed inside and came out with the shirt and showed it to me....

Kid - Ohhh, its Tomato....anyway, what difference does it make aunty?? So what about Apple??

Me - ****speechless ****

Can you miss and forget someone at the same time?

Sometimes my life seems so crazy but at other times its just plain normal, boring and monotonous! Most times I am busy with life itself :-) I keep in touch with most friends either through calls/text messages/ email/chat/other social networking media. But sometimes it so happens that we tend to keep in touch with friends who are far away more than the ones who are right there in the same city as we live :-(

When I text friends to know if they are alright, I get responses sometimes. Sometimes I don't. I wonder if those text messages for which I don't get a response get lost in some sort of black hole! 

The question which often puzzles me is - how can people claim to miss you yet forget to be in touch with you? Can you be missed and forgotten at the same time?

I guess most people are guilty of this. I have to admit though that it feels really nice to be missed by friends. It is even more better if we don't forget why we are friends, isn't it? 

An Iyer girl's musings!

Looks like I am on a writing spree here...three posts in three days....which is good I suppose. I was watching this bollywood flick yesterday night and the central theme of the movie was "pyar soch samajhkar nahi kiya jaata, bus ho jaata hai" (You never think before falling in love. Love just happens). A friend of mine fell in love and got married after a huge "Mahabharat battle" with her folks. So I was musing over it for a while in the night and decided to type down my thoughts.


A majority of the Indian middle class youngsters stick to arranged marriage for various reasons. And most of them I guess would have given up on their love just because of the pressure from their parents. No, this is not the age-old debate of  "arranged marriage vs love marriage". These are just some musings of a middle class Iyer girl. Relax Mom! I am not trying to tell you something through this :-)


The fact is that most parents are very conservative when it comes to marrying their child off to a guy/girl of a different caste (forget religion). We all know very well that when cupid strikes it is really tough and sometimes futile to resist. You come up with very lame reasons like "I can't live without looking at his/her eyes" or "he is so caring and sensitive" or "both of us like the movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, how cute is that?" etc etc. I heard that love is something which drives people crazy, so much so that they would go to any extremes for the person they are in love with. Thanks to our movies that give a million ways in which love unfolds that we are never short of examples of love stories. So, when you realize that you are in love with someone, would you be able to resist? 


Every individual has a right to shape their lives and a life partner is the most important part of ones life. But in our society where many parents are still not open minded about such love stories, can we take a risk? I call it a risk because many a times you might be able to convince them that your decision is not erratic and that it is something which was taken after a lot of careful thought (If you can narrate to your parents your love story and convince them for an arranged 'love' marriage, then you have a very good business potential ;-)). And the battle starts when they do not approve of it.  Elope, register your marriage, come with a baby in one year’s time and ask your parents to forget everything :-) I sometimes think - is it really worth this fight? Should you hurt your parents's sentiments? After all, they lived their life for you!! All this said, the struggle starts now to find someone of your same clan and then fall in love :-) Doesn't it all sound stupid sometimes?? I mean, can you go to a guy/girl and say, “Hey, you know what? I love You. Would you like to spend the rest of your life with me? Er, Um … by the way you are an Iyer right??!!” :-P


Like love in itself is not complicated enough, there comes the problem of meeting the parents! Probably people who have been there and done that would be able to explain the intricacies of the whole thing.


Is it really possible to step aside and defend ourselves from the cupid strike when you meet someone who is so meant for you, someone with whom you'll be happy to spend the rest of your life with? Or should you just go into a shell and be narrow-minded?


I guess this confusion would occur only to a certain set of people. Some wouldn’t even understand what I am talking about. People from the west would really laugh out loud at this. Sometimes I wonder if their approach to life is much more simpler - A son/daughter would go to their parents and say “Mom, Dad, I am getting married” and the mother would jump, hug her baby and say “Oh honey, I am so happy for you!” :-)


But since I am in that part of the world where many people are not that broad minded (but I would say that they are more sensible), I would think a million times before venturing into something like this. And in the end, I guess I would decide to kick away the cupid.


What about you??

In the pursuit of craziness...

Do you ever get this urge to stand up from your cubicle, may be on top of your desk, and start singing on top of your voice or start dancing? Most of us do, don't we? :-) Blame it on the music industry! This thought first struck me when I was working at the Kochi office back in July 2009 and a colleague was playing this song called "Dhan Te Nan" from the movie "Kaminey" whose audio got released somewhere during that time. Now, you really cannot blame me for feeling so? Can you?

If you can, then you belong to the "mango people"(aam aadmi) category. You know, the "do engineering – get a job – get married – buy a house – have a kid – get him/her into school – finish the loans – retire – regret about your life – wait for the eventuality" types. Well sadly, I also belong to this category and I am almost quarter way through :-(

Life has become so monotonous that I feel just like Hrithik Roshan in the song "Main Aisa Kyun Hun". I know, I know...this is the introspection time in my life. And what do I figure out? I figure out that my life outside the workplace (sometimes even at the workplace :-P) is contained to a fixed set of websites:

1. Gmail 
2. The Naukri website
3. The FB & G+
4. The Youtube videos
5. The Chat windows – The same people, the same conversations(mostly)
6. The Property websites
7. The food websites
8. The Car websites
9. Blogger etc.

But it's just not me. Everyone around me is doing the same!! It is like one of those computer games with different levels. The moment you conquer one of these levels, you ought to start giving tips to the others on how to finish the task. For example, the moment you are engaged/married you start giving advise to the singletons asking them how one should start, how a delay might harm your chances of finding 'someone' ever, how you should get tied down soon etc etc., very subtly saying that I have finished the level, and you are kind of lagging behind. 

I ask someone for an explanation as to why I should buy a property now or why I should get married and I get the trademark standard answer – 'That's life'!!! Well, it is life I agree. But are you living it? I am kind of bored asking myself this question time and again. I've had enough of reading "Oh God, its Monday again" status messages or with "What am I doing in this job" statements or the whole lot of jokes revolving around peanuts (salaries) or last but never the least, the "I am bored" statements. 

So what can we do about this situation of mass depression amongst the late twenties people?

Pata nahi.. Pata chalte hi aapko hi pehle bataungi (You'd be the first one to know when I know it myself).....

But we can make a start, can't we? I am not going to say something like quit your job and do what you are passionate about. I am not a hypocrite. Neither a hippopotamus (well, let's discuss this in another post, shall we? :-)). 

Go ahead and do things that you want. Even if you don't get to do the job you like, it will pay you enough to do things that you like. Take a road trip. Just abscond for a couple of weeks, live under a different name in some island (lol, cant imagine myself doing this anytime but still typing it here just because it sounds great). Learn at least one musical instrument. Explore at least 2 states in the country per year. And keep one of them an unplanned trip. Start cycling. Go swim. And do adventure sports once in every 3 months. Play the games you like. Make a maximum number of movies watching record every month (yeah, I did this and felt great). And try and beat it every next month (yet to do this). 

Go on and add to this list! 

What the eff happened to DD?

Normally while surfing through channels, I NEVER stop at Doordarshan, NEVER. Mostly, there will be either strange-looking aunties talking about dead, boring subjects or some gareeb version of the saas-bahu serials. 


But THAT night, DD was something else. It was playing this 1985 movie - Adventures of Tarzan where Hemant Birje was the beefy Tarzan and Kimi Katkar, the desi Jane.


Let me tell you that I was never surprised by skin show on TV even when when the cable TV came into limelight and channel V and MTV showcased lot of "budding talent" when they started airing programs. But THIS was DD for heavens sake! A few scenes of Kimi Katkar left nothing to imagination, but the fact that those scenes went unedited on Doordarshan surprised me even after all these years. 

What happened to my Duck Tales, Tale spin and The Jungle Book?? What!?