Bug

As a child my idea of a bug was some kind of dark, creepy crawly organism in the animal kingdom that shelters in the creeves of seats in cinema theatres or shabby sofa sets at home.  These beings I believe actually pioneered the guerrilla warfare or at least brought the thought to market. Bug bites don’t bring causalities but just alarm bells for the theatres to renovate and the houses to vacuum clean their sofas! By some luck I evaded the bug settlements all through my childhood, thanks to the infant instincts of bouncing around every where not settling down anywhere and watched all the movies I wanted on the TV lying on the floor!

As time went on and academics took its toll, the bugs followed me with more scary and gory details into our science studies. For the generations it’s been etched into fat diagrams and miles long essays among the Pests and infestations heads. Well, one cannot keep oneself from being surprised at knowing how much damage can come from such a silly and funny little thing… one bug, enough for all the chaos when all you need to do is trap it between your fingers and squish the juice out of it. I know that yuck feeling you might all have felt , Well all I can say is people are excused to do all such sorts of stuffs when it comes down to saving their butts !

As the pages of time turned in the book of life, the bugs took more of a metaphorical form. The one you call your sibling at home, or the one who is a rank right above or below you in exams for just a .75 marks or so, the one who keeps humming around you to fall in love and so goes on and on the bug list. The effect eventually was a pain in the a**

I grew out of all of it to meet a life both adventurous and promising. Science and technology had wonders for the new generations. But the bugs never stopped haunting me. It lived through time and caught up with me in a much fascinating and intriguing manner; only this was a pretty interesting avatar than all the ones so far. The tiny devices the FBI and Scotland Yard hide around in the hotel suites and phones of suspects. In simpler words, it’s just an easier and stylish eaves dropping without taking the pain of actually being up there. Well the discovery of the new bug was pretty astonishing and I almost became a fan, watching the movie “My Mom’s New- Boyfriend”. It was kind of funny watching Meg Ryan (Mom) singing the itsy bitsy spider caught up on a web to Antonio Bandaras (suspect) and her son (FBI) “bug”ged their suite.

After taking over half a world with its sci-fi avatar, I thought that was it … now this is the extent to which any one can sink. As per Maslow the next ruddy step everyone assumed the bugs would go for was self actualization. On the contrary the bugs threw away every goddamn speculation about them into gutters and went on .Well it’s been almost a year since my foot stepped into the IT industry… where I was enjoying my bug free life in a full swing. It was then that I started hearing the nightmarish word again! Guess what is back in town!! A new bug and the worst so far!!! Only this was the one I actually had the most unexpected and personal encounter with.

After ages of futile attempts the bugs had the audacity to show up during one of my client demo. Yea, they can give themselves a pat for it coz it was the day they almost got me. Failing to have any sort of a technical background on the IT platform, I was least expecting to meet and recognize one that too during the presentation!!!! I literally sat looking into the face of terror when the client asked me why there were two values for the same head…for the first time in life I knew the answer perfectly and 100 % right but had absolutely no time to evolve a fake theory. The moment stood as the perfect irony of my life. I blurted out some nonsense and raced out of the screen consoling myself that I would treat myself with a “Chocó lava” if I don’t break down out of the shock.

The damage could have been as fatal as public humiliation, confidence level dropping down that well in the movie 300 and even termination or life ban to the so called profession on lower side, and on the upper side, a business loss of a couple of lacks and negative words of mouth worth a couple of crores. Not that I have encountered earth quaking and sky falling experiences in my life before, but this time the bugs had it. It was my pure and timely guts that saved my skin. Had it been in Hogwarts, I alone would have won the House Champion ship for Gryffindor this time. Well as a functional consultant I needn’t be bothered about fixing one. All I have to do is identify and hide before my audience does!!! 

“Frogs have it easy; they can eat what bugs them”….(Unknown Source)

A Monsoon Diary

Its monsoon in my home state! Or, that’s what we call it out of habit. The spirit of monsoon now, is nothing like the fortunate beings of Kerala once enjoyed. Monsoons these days have become simply lousy and unpredictable. Well, considering its predictability elsewhere, Keralites can still call themselves fortunate. I believe every single being, who had spent a few monsoons in this Gods Own Country, has a say or two of their monsoon tales. 

 

Driving back home after an unusual head cracking day of work and worries, with chores awaiting me back at home, a drop of rain falls splat on my wind shield, its stayed staring at me for a second and then slowly slid down and disappeared among the other splatters that followed. Soon, so many of them joined the slide making it hard for me to guess where they got lost in the down pour. Lost in the tracks of the drizzling rain drops, falling hard on my windshield, I remembered how, once on a rainy day, my precious collection of pearls “conserved” in an empty face cream tin broke open in a fight with my cousin, scattering the pearls all around. My poor cousin ended up having a gorgeous imprint of all my incisors and canines on her skin, with a complementary injection for TT. I assure you I have absolutely no memory of any royal treatments I received on that. The cars outside were lined up in the inevitable traffic jams of late evenings in the techno park city. Their honking and swishing, past the potholes splashing muddy waters at the wayfarers broke my reverie and along with that the bubble of guilt that shows up every time I think about the pearl war. I was just six then, an age when reason and emotion were not such good friends.

Caught up in the evening traffic of office –leavers in the city of Kazhakootam, I was distracted by a crowd of school kids making their way through the rain, holding umbrellas but still drenched in the rain. It is June, the time when our schools reopen. It always used to be the 2^nd of June till high-school and the 2^nd of May since high school. My memories flashed back to the days when, in threes and fours we would cram under one umbrella. In one tight hug we would walk through the momentary streams on the roads that came in as bonus with the rain.

Reaching home from work, amongst the plans and preparations for the rest of the day and the days after, I watched the heavy down pour outside, flooding the craters and potholes on our pathetic, traffic- ridden NH and the by-routes in Kazhakootam. Here people turn hydrophobic during monsoon and prefer not to wet their feet in the rain streams (but in vain). For this, we owe special thanks to the “expertise” of the natives and the authorities in maintaining the garbage and sewage disposals.

Back at home, in my village, when it rains, the cool breeze and captivating aroma of wet mud would mark the start of endless days of shower. The coconut pits get filled with muddy rain water. As kids, we would do the ring-a- ring-a roses around the pits of coconut saplings and in the final lapse of it, plunge in to the pool. Unlike the identically aligned, clear-cut plots of houses we see in the city, where nobody bothers anybody else and everyone minds their own businesses, my homes in the village stood on enormous plots, with large front and back yards, with cultivations of all types of crops and trees. We had lots of space for our monsoon adventures. We used to make paper boats, load it with flowers and gravels and sail it across the rain streams. After the rain, shaking the goose berry and the drumstick trees with its fern like leaves for gentle showers of drain drops and watching the most beautiful phenomenon of nature, in the forms of rain bows were the fascinations of my childhood monsoons. We roamed in the rain free of illnesses of any sorts and absolutely no restriction from our parents. As a teenager, I best enjoyed my monsoons, lazy and cozy indoors reading fiction. In the evenings, I kept myself engaged with something hot to peck at, a cup of coffee/ tea and a melody in the back ground. At nights, if the rain had not wrecked the power supply, a charming romantic or a blood curdling horror movie to watch. Exam eves and nights or a “restricted weekend”, (weekends we were not allowed to go home) at hostels, when it used to rain I and my roomies used to sit cuddled inside our blankets sharing sweet and sour gossips about everything above the graves and under the stars, share the nostalgic memories at home, especially the cuisines each of our moms were experts in, and how we all used to have so much fun with our folks even with the shouting matches and raging wars at home with our sibs. Awesome days of life!

It is sad that we don’t get to see or enjoy many of the things that brought mirth and merry to our souls once. The office wall never lets in even a whisper of the rain outside. It is always the refrigerated cubicle climate we have inside. It is strange, just to sit there and watch the rain with no adventures or the enchanting smell of mud. What we get to see around is that the umbrella companies are doing good business. After all, it’s not just the old archetypal black umbrellas alone in the run for the “rain shields”. They umbrella fantasies have out grown the tradition and purpose and have become more of a part of the accessory list. They now come out in different colors and patterns along with convenient sizes, two and three folds and even capsule sizes. The old, grand dad stuff is in trend too, these days. For those who can’t carry an umbrella around can wrap themselves up from head to toe in rain suits of, again, any color and convenient sizes. I guess all these are part of being in a matured, more serious professional world. Or may be its just my perceptions of having entered an entirely different stage of life and I hope that the children still do enjoy the rains. The regret is when being in this world make us miss another one out there so badly. Even though the nature of seasons towards us and ours towards the seasons have derailed a lot, I wish we catch up with all that is left and find some time for the seasons, especially the rains, so that we have ample share of these sweet and pleasing experiences for the generations to come. 

 

Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won't feel like watching. - Fran Lebowitz

First- day- at- new- school! Again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The extent of my academics in a school never lasted for more than 2 years. Series of unfortunate events kept me and my bro shifting schools and places. We made as many friends as sands in the sea and salts in the desert; the upshot was that I completed my entire schooling in six different institutions; in the final lapse of which, I got to stay over in St John’s for four remarkable years.

St John’s Residential! This was where I lingered a bit longer than the rest of my schools. Lingered, long enough to make a few good relations, relations as good as blood or even better. I had absolutely no heart to leave my previous school and friends. So naturally, the first day at the new school was very glum. Unlike the neat and tidy, less populated class rooms of Shabarigiri, all of Johns’ classes were packs of 60s. By noon, cleanliness and godliness could be found only in pages of our moral science books.

I sat at the last bench on the girls’ row, along with the taller girls in the class. By less than five minutes I realized that I was the only new girl to the class that year, majority in the class were there for more than five years, some right from the kindergarten. Something I found so hard not to be jealous about.

Besides, there were a lot of other things that was hard to behold. To start off, the uniform theme of St. Johns’, then, was proposed by some primordial being. Boys wore white and navy blue and girls wore white and maroon. We also had navy blue socks and black shoes, maroon shaded ties and black belts with the school emblem engraved on a metal at the place of the knot. For the first time in life I thanked God that I came from a society which had no much appreciation for a perfect color combination or even could make out if there is any sense or nonsense in matching colors. All they believed in was, wearing "proper" clothes. Like, if they were supposed to have knee length skirts, they would stitch it till ankle level so that the resulting costume could be worn till it degenerates; which they propose was, "economical and wise".

Inspite of all these dramas, once I started off, it was an easy run. The girls were friendly and we had fun. Despite the change in syllabus, the subjects were easy on me and the teachers were fine too. The classes were co-ed. Unlike in Sabarigiri, where the girls and boys sat together; here the boys and girls sat in separate sets of rows and kept a remarkable physical distance from each other. The weirdness in all these, melted off in a few days and I gelled well as one among them.

In high school they shuffle the different sections of classes and take the creams in the ICSE and moved the rest to SSLC. We had two batches for the seventh, A and the B. I was in A and there were only a few gals from my section to eighth grade. We all cramped up in the last two benches of the new class. The rest of the class was already occupied by our B batch. The only notion both the A and B sections had of each other was their preconceived notions, which wasn’t very good. The prejudices acted tough for a few days at start, but then again we all ended up like the perfect butter for the even perfect bread.

We had our wonderful Jayasree ma’m, who was our class teacher and also taught us Chemistry, days when chem. and bio used to be my favorite subjects. For English we had Mrs. Sulekha Premnath, I was a huge fan of her accent and perfected teaching skills. Like what happens to all the good teachers in low paid schools, they left for better opportunities. Our class went mismanaged and unattended. This would have been otherwise the best class in the school, turned out to be the most notorious one. Extra thanks to a female who had celluloid for brains.

Our PT made regular visits to our classes leaving the terror of a rampaging scout all the time he left. But our class glued up so well. We were like 44 sticks tied up together and so unbreakable no matter what. God showed us some mercy by bringing Prof. JP and Anil Kumar as substitutes for Sulekha ma’m and Jayasree Ma’m. Our class excelled in studies and extra curriculums. A visiting guest lecturer promised our principal that our batch was extremely talented and would bring out outstanding scores for the public exams. Well…

Exams came and went. There weren’t any miraculous results as prophesied. Our entire batch dispersed in tenth. A couple of us stuck together …still together after all these years…still the proud old batch of St John’s. It’s been 13 long years since we all parted our ways. Many of us crossed paths and met up and rejoiced the good old days. Just mates became close friends, close ones good friends, good friends became better and better became the best.

I have come a long way through troubles and hard times like any one. Where I had difficulty of choices, problem of opinions, sorting out priorities, I never had to think twice but to call up any of my johns’ pals. I bet it was the same for the rest as well.

I would specially like to mention our dearest and beloved Anu, who is no more with us but in spirit, who is the motivation behind me writing up this piece, who had been a friend in need and deed for all of us, to take up the example of his friend ship and be there for each other till the day we die.

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose we know not, though sometimes sense it. But we know from daily life that we exist for other people, first of all for whose smiles and well- being our own happiness depends. - Albert Einstein

My Toshi!!!!!!!

                I have noticed that my previous compositions have all been history lessons… I’m sorry! As faithful readers of mine, and being so less in number, I mustn’t keep you so tied up in my nostalgia. So this is what I propose; I will try and make this the last one …

              Toshi… that’s what I call him, this name has been a part and parcel of my life since my PGDM days and it still continues to be so. Not everyone would want to discuss these things on a web page, considering the personal nature of it. But I have kind of decided to ignore the frowns and scowls that could be invited on this. I guess you might have by now pictured a tall, handsome, athletic and fair looking guy with glossy skin, sparkling eyes, lazy hair and stubbles, kind of Mike St. John make!! Well I wouldn’t mind discussing that as well, just that my guts are not yet geared up to be that juicy! To further disappoint you, it’s my laptop I was mentioning…Toshi, that’s what I call him.

             When I joined for my PGDM, it was a requirement that we all owned a laptop. During those days your laptop is the most serious relation you have. All those who have had experienced laptop- less days, owing to casualties like viral attacks, breakages and leakages might understand what sort of an inseparable, illicit relation we have towards them. Yea, that’s right, illicit! You should see those nutcases who wipes and cleans and cover up their lapz just like how a first- time- mom dresses up her baby!

           When I bought Toshi two years back, I had practically no idea of laptops or their configurations or the kind of hair spiking expenses they could incur. Even then, the first time I laid my eyes on him, I felt the pride welling up inside… I was the proud owner of a Toshiba L310, silver complexioned! The color distinguished him from the mass of other black lapz. I too was not less than a first time mom to my Toshi then.

          Well, gradually in the course of time, as the schedules of academics tightened its grip on our throats and the pathogen enriched hostel cuisine grazed on our alimentary canal, the novelty started wearing off, like all my other electronic gadgets Toshi too fall prey to disabilities. His OS crashed twice. Inspite of having an up to date antivirus he once had a fatal viral attack. Well, no matter how strong or protective your antivirus is, your pen-drives, (I call mine Flash), travel through hands and lapz and finally show up like those kids in Surf excel ads- mucked up with viruses. Being a movie freak, I didn’t mind Flash much at first, and Toshi silently stomached all the sufferings! It took me a year to actually heed to the misery of Toshi (the warranty expired in 1 year).  To be exact, it was on the day I accidently closed the lap with the handset on the key board. Since I was a regular and loyal customer and brought them a few other customers, the workshop boy, Arun negotiated my expenses on replacing the screen to 9500/-. Still, I could literally feel my nerve impulses mutating into electric impulses, my hair spiking up and my body petrifying. Arun promised to repair and deliver within a week. Those were the emptiest days of my life.

           Flash and I started showing Toshi some respect thereafter. I formatted flash straight away every time he returned after loitering. I resolved to keep away from other perverted laptops and pen drives those were breeding Trojans and worms. To the benevolence of my systems- and -operation friends, Toshi had a few free of expense formatting. Things were going on well until one fine day the charger stopped working. I forgot to mention, it was already replaced once, but that was before the warranty expired. The second time, that too without warranty, blacked me out. I couldn’t even think of asking my mom money for another repair because she had literally begged me to stop torturing the laptop with these repairs, and her with the bills. (As if I was doing it on purpose). This time I decided to any way consult Arun. I had by then became one of their elite customers and contributed a lump sum amount to their business. He was very happy to see me, again!  I placed the handicapped charger on the counter and told him, it’s not working, probably needs to be replaced and how much is it gonna cost? We both looked at each other for a sec; he then took away the charger and went inside. Five minutes later he returned and told me, it might not need a replacement if I could just fix the edge that connects to the laptop. I lightened up and gave him one of my 220 V smiles of gratitude! After all I was their most loyal customer. I winded up the business for just 100/- which could have otherwise cost me a few thousands.

          I graduated and left college a few months later, Toshi never had a repair ever since. His gorgeous silver color has turned shabby and blackened at places out of over use. Inspite of his physical challenges he still performs exceptionally well. Toshi and Flash are currently enjoying a post retirement life in the capital city; just like the War heroes left with scars, blotches and awe- inspiring memories, settling down quietly and peacefully in the later years of their life having fought and won many a war. As for me I am still the proud owner of a Toshiba L310.