To kill boredom

Early bird catches the worm - Unknown wise men long time ago Sounds like none of these wise men had foresight of the sleep routines of this generation... My tweety-weety eyes hardly can see the light out of my bedroom window...with great difficulty 7:00 AM on my mobile which is generally next to me the whole night. I convince myself to lie-down for exactly 5 min to start my bright new day...I check my mobile once again to see  if I have a min left... OMG!!!!!!!!!!! The mobile displayed 7:30 AM. I have exactly 45 min to get to my bus which includes a 10 min walk from home. I jump out of my bed...quickly turn on my TV, browsed to find Channel [V]...increase the volume and its 7:35 AM already.... From blowing my nose to picking up my ID, I have exactly half an hour. Well did I forget the news paper, couple of stretches to flex my muscles and a look at my tummy to make sure it has not grown a little more...I open my door to fetch a bunch out of the grill. For some reason every h

My school diary had the above words in it, which was written by my English teacher in UKG. My Mom checks the school diary every day and makes sure I complete all my home work before going to school the next day. It is expected that, on a daily basis, every set of homework carries my Mom’s signature. Promptly my Mom does the same and places the school diary in my bag. By the time I completed KG I knew all the alphabets in English…in fact the class started writing English words in the four line hand writing notebook. Subsequently, in First grade we had to construct small sentences. Mrs. Gamble, my ‘First grade‘ teacher wanted us to get into the habit of letter writing and in fact in one of the parents- teachers meeting she wanted the parents to inculcate the habit of diary writing to their kids. She also encouraged kids to write letters to each other or to her…during the winter and summer holidays. Great initiative isn’t it?… My Mom a big fan of “Gamble Miss” and with her ki

For the past couple of weeks the beautiful Niligri hills experienced rains like never before. Landslides, uprooted trees and floods affected normalcy in all part of the district. Particularly, second week of November saw nature’s fury in a small village near the Kothagiri Township. I happen to hail from the same village and with lot of concern called up my parents, relatives and friends…I heard that my granny missed the fury by quite literally a whisker. My village happens to be in a valley… surrounded by mountains and on that particular night…2 am to be precise, one side of the mountain gave way and smashed a couple of houses and water seeped into half the houses in the village. The landslide spared nothing on the way…trees, rocks, tea gardens. I heard from my friends, that cries of help loud on the air…the whole village panicked…most of them ran around with torches and candles to help each other…and pulled people out of the bog. Apart from the property the land slide took one lif

My Mom still recalls all the naughty things I did as a kid and laughs over it. It seems, I hated people carrying me or holding my hands. Probably this character in me triggered the “Soapy Innovation”. If I hated being carried…its obvious that I will not let some one bathe me. So the story begins with the soap that we use at home…”Pears”, a sightly transparent soap…I could see my hand through it, and lathers really well. But my innovation had nothing to do with the looks or the quality…it was with the quantity. The problem I faced was…my tiny hands could not hold them. The Grey matter I had never bothered about the cost (probably at that age I did not even bother picking a 100 bucks to a 10 piece “balli muttai”), instead thought about reducing the size of it. How did I do that? I found out that Pears easily dissolves in water…so I started doing that. I dissolved it to make sure the soap was small enough for me to hold. The soap withstood a few more rounds and my Mom replaced it

I screamed as soon as I was born I walked when I was 8 months old I ate guavas and custard apples right from the tree I have slept on trees I have driven an imaginary bus I have been topper in class I have come down the slide-a-board a million times I won my 1st ever prize for rabbit race in Kindergarten I have had stitches on my knees I did not shed a tear when I fell I have cried for losing a pencil I have forgotten my lunch box a hundred times I played my first ever cricket match with the leather ball in my fourth grade I won my 1st ever medal in my sixth grade I represented my school in Interschool sports I have forgotten to get my report card signed when I flunked in exams I have knelt outside my classroom I have played football with a tennis ball I played for my village football team when I was fourteen I missed to score centum in tenth grade mathematics I did not have a clue of what my favorite subject was I have flunked in all my subjects I have bunked school I tried to run awa

I was on a hunt for a "Maruthi 800", reason being...it was cheap (I had only 40 and odd K to spend for a car) and easy to maneuver in a place like Chennai. Few of my friends from my previous company were willing to help me out with my hunt for "Maruthi 800" and one of them suggested a car owned by his friend and we finalized a date for me to check the car. First impression The car was not used for a couple of days and had a layer of dust settled on it. The owner quickly took a "dirty" piece of cloth ( grin on my face, thought " the cloth would make the car look worse" ) to wipe the dust on the car. My cousin, the so called expert came along with me and both of us drove the car around to find if it had any issues ( he drove the car and I sat beside him as I was not good at it ). "Ettha paravalaya?" which means "is it ok?" in my mother tongue ( badaga ) "Nalavathu saviraka...paravala" was his reply... "for

"I wanted a cycle" was my cry 2 decades ago, unfortunately it turned out to be only a dream and I never got one for myself.Reason...I never got to know till date. But I learned riding on my cousin's bicycle.And approximately 2 years later, I had my first opportunity to ride a motorbike. It was a thrill to ride a bike in the chill evening of the Nilgris. Drove the motor bike for about 20 Km with my Uncle sitting behind and tapping my head every time I made a mistake. I did get an awe-full lot of taps...one of those mistake was a little costly and by the time I could realize both of us were on the ground. My liking for motorbikes I slowly learned to ride on my own...but my liking for motorbike started to fade for an incident when I almost landed in the front wheels of a truck in the treacherous curves of the mountain road. The second reason,an incident in college...a chat with our football coach and back to my room for a good days rest and dreams of performing in a prestigi

The economic down turn and "layoffs" the order of the day...I am lucky to be in an organization which is not affected by the turmoil.But never the less IT service industry is not the safest place to live in. With monotony setting in...I am getting restless and seriously wanted a break, probably a couple of days off… Unfortunately for me, these high profile meeting and discussions happening every other day, I don’t really want to be left out...I had to know what was happening around. With options of a couple of days off completely ruled out, I sat starring at my desktop and expected a miracle to happen. I turn around on a lookout for my colleagues to pass few comments, and in return I get a few business jargons (ohhhhhh no!!!!!!). I hate it but unfortunately or fortunately this is something very common in my team, associates and managers keep relating every single activity they see with some business strategy or the other. Can you believe..one of my manager compared the "