I understand that this post could probably draw more flak than any other I have penned. I could be misinterpreted and come across as being unreasonably selfish. It could piss off some friends and things could get even worse with some others. After all, my opinions needn't always be right. Infact, it seldom is. But what the hell. This is my space. I am gonna take a chance and be honest about what I feel.
Earlier this week saw me getting a year older. What does a birthday mean? Blowing candles and cutting the cake? Kicking the crap out of the guy's ass? Wishing the person at midnight? Birthday gifts? A grand treat at Residency Towers?
NO. (Though I wish it did mean the dinner buffet at Residency Towers.)
To me, a birthday is a reason for friends to get together, hang out and have fun. More than anything else, I was happy that I was going to be the reason this time around. My anticipation being accentuated by the fact that it had been quite a while since the whole gang had met up. For weeks, I had been looking forward to, not the occasion, but the gathering. I looked forward to, not the birthday wishes, but the laccha session. I looked forward to, not the gifts, but all the laughter. To put it in simple words, I looked forward to enjoying the company of my friends, of all the people who were near and dear to me.
But that was not to be. At 11 pm, the house was empty. There were just three roomies out of the eight of us. Two of them, because it was their cooking turn, of which one wasn't aware. The third, well, because he's always at home on the couch. :) My cousin was running around in the last hour looking for gifts, though she knew more than anyone else how I felt about this. Two other roomies and another friend turned up at 11.30. Two more of the gang walked in at ten minutes to midnight with baked cakes. (Another roomie never turned up till much later into the night.) The rest streamed in at midnight. Before I knew it, the entire affair was over in a flash, and the house was empty again.
I am not heartless. I can't thank my cousin enough for having organised all this. I was touched by the gifts, by the fact that pals took pains to bake cakes. But frankly, the gifts and the cakes don't mean a fraction of what the people being there does. Spending quality time with my friends is the best gift I could ever have on my birthday. I really can't expect everyone to drop in much earlier. But the presence of the gang, or atleast my roomies, yes. I did expect something more than walking in a few minutes before, kicking my butt (pretty damn hard too), eating the cake and calling it a day. That half an hour was fun no doubt, but I hoped for it to be more than just that. If not on the eve, at some point over the rest of the day, we could have got together, and more importantly, *stayed* together for longer than just a blink of the eye.
And then there was something else. That single call or card or message or scrap, which I eagerly awaited for the entire day. Happy Birthday. Two words and nothing more from that someone, through any medium, could make all the difference in the world. With every passing hour, I convinced myself that it would surely come before the end of the day. It never did. Nor the next day. Nor the next. It's amazing how one thing that didn't happen can overshadow everything that did happen and leave you utterly disappointed. It's amazing how much it hurts when just one person fails to remember your birthday among all the people who did.
Well, let me change the topic. From my birthday to my blogging birthday. The day before yesterday marked the completion of two years of my blogging, though what I have been doing offlate could hardly be termed as that. The sorry state of this blog for some months now, is certainly not what it was intended to be. There as much life left in it as the clothes I would want to see on Angelina Jolie. Clearly it's been too hard too long a struggle to hang on to a losing cause in vain. The cerebrum is blank. The fingers are tired. And the frustration just can't be put down in words.
I have been repeatedly implored by my friends on one count. To learn that when it boils down to that, I should be able to let go of things dear. I really don't know if that's ever gonna happen, but I guess the least I can do is to give it a shot. And as the first step, I am gonna try to let go of my blog.
This is just another one of those innumerable forwards I get everyday. But read on.
A ship sank in the high seas and the following people got stranded on a beautiful deserted island in the middle of nowhere.
A. 2 Italian men and 1 Italian woman
B. 2 French men and 1 French woman
C. 2 German men and 1 German woman
D. 2 Greek men and 1 Greek woman
E. 2 Polish men and 1 Polish woman
F. 2 Mexican men and 1 Mexican woman
G. 2 American men and 1 American woman
H. 2 Indian men and 1 Indian woman
A month later, on various parts of the island, the following was observed.
A. One Italian man killed the other Italian man for the Italian woman.
B. The two French men and the French woman are living happily together.
C. The two German men have a strict weekly schedule of when they alternate with the German woman.
D. The two Greek men are sleeping together, and the Greek woman is cooking and cleaning for them.
E. The two Polish men took a long look at the endless ocean and a long look at the Polish woman, and they started swimming.
F. The two Mexican men are talking to all the other men on the island trying to sell them the Mexican woman.
G. The American woman is lecturing on the true nature of feminism, how her last boyfriend respected her opinion and treated her much better, and how her relationship with her mother is improving. The two American men are contemplating suicide.
H. The 2 Indian men are still waiting for someone to introduce them to the Indian woman.
I don't know about the rest, but living in a multi-cultural environment, I can say with a fair amount of conviction that nothing can be farther from the unfortunate truth about us desis.
PS : To everyone of my common friends with sooper-hawt babes this hopeless bugger never had the courage to talk to, d'ya all hear me loud and clear?
1. I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.
Female would have been utmost charming. I am confident that I can atleast seduce myself to have sex with me (which is not far from the truth at the moment by the way). Then I could travel back in time, screw the brains out of my old self, give birth to myself and be my own father and mother. Then my happy family of me, me and me, could zap back to the present. While transiting through the wormhole, I would get frisky again, and bang myself after having blindfolded me 'cos I was too young to watch.
Overcome by guilt of what I have done to myself, I would want to peek into the future to have a glimpse of my fate. I gather my family of me, pregnant me and mini-me, and step back into the cursed time machine. During the travel, I would go into labor. I would help myself give birth to myself while little me watches the proceedings with a sudden curiosity about birds and bees. By this time, my not-so-happy family of me, me and me lamenting in an old age home in the future would finally realize that something is fishy, and decide to go back in time to trace my roots.
At that very unfortunate moment when I am still born, my family from the future would pass by. And the very same moment, having witnessed the tragedy, while I am crying, I would exclaim to I that I gave birth to a dead I fathered by I during timetravel.
Up yours, Dr. Dan Streetmentioner. Let's see you work out the tenses for that.
2. You were born somewhere in the territory of modern Hungary around the year 1375.
As a result of a minute data entry error this time around, I was born hungry.
3. Your profession was that of a preacher, publisher or writer of ancient inscriptions.
You see, blogging runs in my blood. Just that it has got too tired now having run all this while.
4. You had creative talents, which waited until this life to be liberated.
The next life is here goddammit! What the hell you still waiting for? Liberate yourself you lazy piece of shit!
5. Sometimes your environment considered you strange.
Only sometimes? That's it? Boy oh boy! I so envy my previous birth.
6. The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation is to develop magnanimity and a feeling of brotherhood.
I tried to do two things at the same time and ended up developing the (in)famous M.A.G!
7. Try to become less adhered to material property and learn to take only as much, as you can give back.
Dumbass! Everyone take only as much as they can give back. Obviously they can give it all back, but the point is they won't.
Do you remember now?
Why ofcourse! I'll very well remember never to click on this link again.
Viktor Navorski is a visitor to New York from an Eastern European country. But after he left his country, it erupts in a fiery coup while he was flying. Now Viktor is a man without a country that the U.S. can recognize, and is thus, denied entrance to the U.S. However, he also can't be deported back till the war is over. He is left stranded at the airport with a passport from nowhere. Viktor also has problem communicating with people as he doesn't speak English well. He must improvise his days and nights at the international transit lounge until his status can be fixed. But he has outrun his welcome with airport official Frank Dixon, who considers him a problem he cannot control, but desperately wants to erase.
Sorry to break the series, but this was just too hilarious to ignore. Even more so as I can very well imagine the situation described in the second para. BluePussy and Muttock having a heated discussion, putting some majorly deep philosphical crap on life, universe and everything. Enter Babe and Hawkee, and get totally pained. "Wurscht! What givvup-level fart are you guys putting mucha! Basically the funda is..."
Errata : My sincere apologies to the concerned person who was very concerned that I had misquoted her in the first slice. I stand corrected. The correct spelling of the spirited shout, as defined in her very own patented copyrights, is
AAWESOME!!
Hmmm...now have I got the number of exclamation marks right? These are the times I wish I had the enthu make use of audioblogger to settle all uncertainities. But even if I did magically end up having the enthu, I doubt if I can get her to render a flawless performance of the piece for these purposes.
All said and nothing done, what IS certain is that I am a dead man.
Fittings was the first one to split ways in NY. The three of us filled up every bit of paper we could find in our wallets with the thousand odd contact numbers we exchanged. It goes without saying that they were never put to use, much the same way all good numbers written in my little black book are not. (It's not like there are many in the first place.) The next time we found ourselves staring at each other's faces was when we met at the same spot three days later to board the return bus. (I know I jumped ahead of time and revealed a suspense climax of sorts. A thousand apologies for my lame script writing skills.) We might as well have scribbled those numbers on the dirty subway walls around us and left.
Me and IndusMap proceeded to Penn Station. Only to find that he had missed his train by 10 minutes or so. (Blame it on those goddamn numbers again.) Having nothing worthwhile to do myself the next 40 minutes till BluePussy and ZuluBoy arrived on the scene, I showed him the sights around Penn. Before you say it, no, I wasn't born and brought up in NYC. It's just that I had been there a month ago, and thus, among the two of us, the more enlightened at the moment. Who was more hungry at the moment, however, would not be that simple to decide. So first things first, we grabbed these AAWESOME!! hotdogs for less than a dollar each. Ah! The taste. It was the equivalent of our desi babe in my food dreams category. We walked a couple of blocks down to the Empire State. They say first impression is the best impression. It could also be the worst impression. Honestly, we didn't find it as imposing as we thought it would be. Tall? Yes. The statistics say that it is the tallest building around. But awe inspiring? No. It's like you know that diamond studded 24 carat gold watch in the showroom costs a fortune, but yet the rugged sports watch with 6 buttons, a chronograph and night-light looks so much more cooler. (Speaks volumes about how mature I am, doesn't it?)
IndusMap caught his train sometime later, and I was left alone to wait for BluePussy and ZuluBoy on the corner of 34th and 7th as had been decided. What had also been decided was that they would come there an hour earlier, but what can I expect of my friends? Quite suddenly, it struck me that there were four corners to 34th and 7th, and I might be wrong in assuming that the chosen one was the one which offered the pretty mid-eastern babe as a co-waiter. With a new hope filling me, I took one final glance (at my watch), and skipped across the street towards the other corner. They were not there. I marched to the third corner. They were not there. I ran to the fourth corner. They were not there. I limped back to corner one. The pretty mid-eastern babe was still there. I didn't budge again.
Come they did finally, and shocked they were. BluePussy's laughter was as wild as their source of amusement - my hair. I cursed them in choicest Tamil with a term meaning the same. Also accompanying these guys was ZuluBoy's friend Ganja. We proceeded towards Wall Street, where we were supposed to meet Ash, Kooth and Lad. Ash was fuming that we were late already, but that ofcourse didn't stop us from wasting some more time at Times Square on the way. Kooth was a big let-down when I met him. Ofcourse, letdown or not, he was still big. But what I mean is I really thought I would have some company hair-wise from his photos and all, but the moron had succumbed to a cut.
The looks of Wall Street completely belies its significance. Even Ranganathan Theru would look more impressive than that narrow lane that it was. We walked a couple of blocks to the WTC site from there. Honestly, I didn't feel a thing when I saw the emptiness through the mesh fence that runs all around it. I don' t think I would have even if I had seen the twin towers before when they had stood. Not even if I had actually seen them crumble to their death in front of me, taking with them the thousands stuck inside. I would have only been marvelling at the sheer ingenuity of the execution that those cavemen came up with. That's me. But as of now, the only thing I was marvelling at were those mouth-watering sheek kababs of the vendor across the street. That's me again. Classic me. ZuluBoy and I made a beeline for it. The guy's vocabulary was limited to the words meat, beef and chicken. For the moment, so was our's. And ofcourse, hot sauce (yummy yum!). And once I had sunk my teeth into it, I lost all abilities of speech. Nothing beats the flavor of street food.
We headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, only to find that it was to remain open only for half an hour more. As we stood outside pondering over what to do next, the idea of ice-skating, or atleast trying to, came up. So we headed to the nearby rink in Central Park. They were preparing the surface. We loitered around for quite sometime, and just when it was almost done, we promptly got fed up of waiting and left to the Rockefeller Centre, which has a skating rink. They were preparing the surface. We consoled ourselves that the rink was way too small to be worthy of our skating talents, and stepped inside the NBC store next door. A photo on the FRIENDS couch and an hour later, we stepped out feeling as ravenous as a vaccum cleaner.
quill