The Great Divide

Dear Open letter writers (this seems to be the season of them, really!),

It is not a South Indian Vs. North Indian thing. I am sick of stereotypes. Really. There is no point in sugar coating this or being venomous about it. We ARE different, all we need to do is be aware of that and live with it.

Though I did have a good laugh over this, I am fairly certain (knowing me and my rage issues), that I would have been hopping mad if anybody had tried describing what a typical South Indian is like and how yevarybody eats curd rice and is covered in coconut oil.
I detest being called a Madrasi, thought I often wonder, not without a little guilt, when I will stop rolling my eyes and saying 'You're SO Delhi'.
I am tired of hearing Rajnikant jokes. I guess I should probably stop making Shah Rukh like blubbery noises in the middle of the movie then.
For every one of the guys who rev up their engine and flex their muscles in Delhi, there is one wonderful south Indian guy who says 'Super figure, machi!'(For the benefit of those unaware of Tamil slang, translated roughly to "What a babe, yaar")
I have minor palpitations when someone tells me I have to go to bed without eating curd rice, who am I really to pass judgement on a rajma fetish?
Everybody has to deal with the fact that I have difficulty speaking Hindi since the two languages most familiar to me-Tamil and English have none of those sounds or gender (How on earth is a train feminine anyway?), just like I will deal with the fact that the people who don't know Tamil or Malayalam can never say 'Mazhai pozhigiradhu' or that some people call a door a gate.
Please never resent the fact that when two south indians meet each other they talk in their native language, just like how I went through two months of barely understanding any conversation since it was all in Hindi. It IS exactly the same.
I admire some of the delhi boys who are more chivalrous than anyone I have ever met and I love Saranath who can talk to me about just about anything under the sun from a beautiful tamil lyric to psychoanalysis and uses words like 'Staccato' in everyday conversation.
I am in awe of the effort that Pups and K take in dressing up before we head out and I totally identify with Thoppi and Priyams when we don't mind going for dinner in a crumpled t-shirt and old jeans.
I love the chapathi and paneer binges in Ashirwad and yearn for the 'Eat dosa till you burst' moments at Dosa King.
That is exactly what I love about all of us. Snegama and me can make fun of a rajnikanth movie and still defend it in indignation when somebody who saw ROBOT made fun of it. Puppy and Joop can call me madrasi but still use 'Aiyo' and 'Da' just as much as all of us. I could say a 'Bas Bahut ho gaya' and mean it and could also hear choruses of 'Polaama?' before we went anywhere.
They now love rasam and I now wear colours other than dark blue, black and brown.
That, I believe, sums up the situation in a nutshell.

From,
A south indian girl who went from the very south to the very Jharkand and now eats Roti with Rasam much to the disgust of her fellow diners

The top 10 invaluable life lessons I learnt as a child

• Be a little more caring and loving towards your grandmother lest one day a wolf impersonates her and you don’t even notice.
• If you think you are likely to get lost, put more reliable markers along the way apart from food in a forest full of hungry birds.
• When you plan on breaking into a bear’s house, be a little careful with the evidence. Half eaten bowls of porridge, broken furniture and sleeping on their beds after a heavy meal is a strict no-no.
• If your head is an egg then it is highly suggested that you do not sit on precarious walls.
• When you have seven dwarfs as friends, it is advisable to keep one or two at home as body guards, especially when you have evil step mothers with poisoned apples lurking about.
• When your fairy godmother appears in front of you, ask to marry the prince himself rather than asking for shiny shoes and a carriage and then wait for the prince to find your feet.
• Never, ever, put a baby in a cradle on a tree top.
• If you have been cursed and find yourself trapped in a castle, either grow your hair long enough or sleep till your Prince charming comes along.
• A pea under ten mattresses can be very uncomfortable to sleep on.
• No matter how regal an emperor you are, be smart enough to realise the difference between wearing good clothes and no clothes at all.

Muse: Finani

10 easy steps to completing an assignment in corporate finance

Step 1:
Receive mail about assignment. Look around for more people to crib to about the incessant workload. Mark it as starred and promise yourself to look at it soon.

Step 2:
Morning of the day before the assignment is due, talk to people and nod along when they say 'It is going to be a long night today. It is quite difficult'. Promise to start by afternoon itself so you can sleep early in the night.

Step 3:
Wake up from your long afternoon nap and tell yourself that you needed the sleep to be alert and work on the assignment all night.Get yourself some snacks. Afterall, you need the energy to work all night. Chat for a while over coffee.

Step 4:
Read the assignment once and exclaim loudly to no one in particular that the analysis needs to be done for your peer company too. Feel free to add expletives of your choice to this step.

Step 5:
Read class notes furiously and try to see if any familiar words correspond between yours and his.
Try to interpret your sleepy handwriting to figure out what exactly you meant when you wrote those words.

Step 6:
Officially give up on figuring out the assignment on your own and start pinging everyone on your gtalk furiously to figure out if they have figured out what to do. Ideally in this step, there will always be a few souls who have figured it out and will tell you what to do.

Step 7:
Start the assignment with all intentions of doing it properly and pore over annual reports hoping that the necessary question is irrelevant to your company

Step 8:
When sick of Step 7 [hint: words will start blurring in front of you and Microsoft word will be a distant white haze], start writing random answers and somehow aim to complete the assignment.

Step 9:
Send shoddily done assignment and hope your roll number is not picked by the random number generator. As you go to sleep, Promise to start early next time and do full justice to the assignment.

Step 10:
Next assignment arrives in your mailbox. Repeat Steps 1 through 9.

Anything but blue on a saturday night

The best part of any week is a Saturday night. You have the whole emptiness of Saturday to look back on and the whole emptiness of Sunday to look forward to. Ever since I came to XL, weekends have lost the significance they used to have in my life. It is merely days which pass here with no clear distinction between the days of the week.
Saturdays in Bangalore used to go along the predictable lines- wake up late, eat a heavy lunch while watching mindless television, read a nice book while lying down and fall asleep with the book on my face, wake up to have tea and then finally venture out for some unplanned shopping or a drive followed by dinner at one of our usual places. The night inevitably used to end with us having Kulfi at Bowring and a maghai paan while we lazily drove back home discussing whether our Sunday morning breakfast plans would culminate at Koshys or Adigas.
They say change is the only constant and change did come to our saturday night routine at XL. :)
It was the alumni homecoming week so the atmosphere in college was a lot lighter than usual. The college was decked up and we had a cultural program and a bodhi tree performance to look forward to that evening. I had gone to Brindha athai's house to spend the evening there and came back to college around 10 very well-fed and content.
We stormed up to the empty common room while the whole batch was listening to Bodhi Tree and got the whole TT table to ourselves where we let Pandey fool us into thinking that he was a loser when it came to Table Tennis. Very soon, we discovered that he was just about smashing everything in our face and that Priya could play table tennis on a 'whole new level' :P
As Bodhi Tree wrapped up, we decided that change of game was 'on the cards' and slowly moved to my warm room to play Uno.

"Reverse"
"Draw 4. Red"
"Damn you, Pandey!"
"Uno"
"You forgot to say Uno. Draw one now."
"Actually the rule is: you draw 5 if you forget to say Uno"
"Shut up, Dixie"

Then began a session of Taboo. After briefing Priya and Sumesha with the rules we began the game.

"Where do babies come from?"
"Eh?"
"Things that are in the aquarium"
"Fish?"
"Yeah. Those babies"
"Fish babies?"
"Yeah!!"
"Eggs?"
"Really expensive!"
"Really expensive eggs? What? I don't get it!"
"Argh!! Never mind"

"What am I?"
"Loser" "Stud" "Monitor" "Class representative"
"What am I to all the girls in class?"
"Brother?"
"Aaaa! Never mind! Give me the next card"

Through all this madness, poor Astha was curled up quietly on her bed with the headphones on watching a movie amidst all the crazy loons gesticulating wildly. Finally at 4 we decided to call it a night.

For the first time in all these months, I went to bed on a Saturday night not missing Bangalore. Difficult achievement that! :)

Surprise!

Yes, we were aware that he said that there would be a quiz in the 6th or 7th session.
And yes, we knew that we had no classes all morning and we could've read those chapters.
And yes, we still woke up at 10 after our thumbs started hurting from pressing Snooze.
And no, we were undettered by the number of people studying around us. 'Paranoid' ,we told them, 'He said only after he completes the 3rd chapter'

I am sorry I saw Diwakar sleeping in class and decided to do some social service by keeping him awake with an exciting game of Hollywood ergo not listening to a word of what was said in class thereby ensuring that both of us missed out on atleast 3 questions.
I am sorry Priya and I avoided studying all night with lame promises of getting up 'really early' in the morning.
I am even sorrier that we didn't open the pretty green book and took the shortcut thanks to Microsoft powerpoint.

I am happy I could atleast pretend to write answers for 25 out of 30 questions.
I am happy that the faces around me had the same expression as me.

Ah. The element of surprise.

XLing in everything

I miss…

• Amma’s shoulder in the night
• Lazing around on the brown couch with dish tv
• Fighting with Appa to watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S despite seeing that episode a million times
• Playing every game in Amoeba with S
• Vathakuzhambu and Keera mulagootal
• Signing into google talk and connecting
• Blossom browsing trips with Teletubby and Medusa
• Waking up in the night without realising your t-shirt is soaked in sweat
• Arguing with Pras about everything from deployments to food.
• My Saturday night dinner outings with Amma and Appa
• Discussing arbit facebook gossip with Kiks
• Conversations about everything under the sun with D
• My balcony when the rains arrive
• Bangalore
• You-tube-ing random rubbish with Nav.
• My Blanket, book shelf & bean bag

I’ve learnt to…

• Share a bathroom with 16 other girls
• Loosen up a little and enjoy everything around me
• Make my own bed
• Operate a washing machine
• Eat chapathi for two meals in a day
• Live without internet access 24 hours of the day
• Sleep for 3 hours and still function normally the next day
• Not suffer Ver Se withdrawal symptoms
• Manage Dhobi and Maid schedules

I love…

• The pampering I get from everyone because I am away from home
• Our girl talk sessions in the room at 1 in the morning
• The dosa guy who stands right outside the building
• Waking up hoping for rain every single day
• Random conversations with S at 2 30 in the morning
• The blast of air conditioner when I walk into the class from the heat
• Having a power nap and waking up all refreshed
• Going to the mailing office and seeing Amma’s handwriting on the courier
• Astha adjusting my fan right after I lie down such that I don’t feel hot
• Being singled out in class for being a psychology student
• How project discussions suddenly turn into pictionary games
• The Nimboo Paani at Dadus.
  

Looking ahead. Behind. All at the same time.