Chennai Chronicles- Part 2

This post is especially for Anna. She claimed that bloggers ( and I'm using the word quite loosely to include me in it) who usually bravely publish a Part 1 never write the next part. Ha. So there. This is Part TWO . In all fairness though, if she hadn't challenged me I probably wouldn't have written this post. :)

So, where was I? yes, the magical watch.

6. After that , the gang headed to the Marina Beach, and as they were walking back, they saw a Merry-go-round. Most of them ,like excited li'l 6-year olds, wanted to ride it. Most of them, unlike excited li'l 6-year olds, weren't ready to pay Rs.10 per person to get on it. After quite a bit of bargaining, they managed to wear the poor man down, and got it down to 50 for 7 of them or something. The disgruntled, grumpy man brought a few of them stools to get on the horses and then started the thing. Was huge fun, all yelling their hearts out and all. Only soon, it wasn't so much fun. It started going faster and faster. Uncomfortably fast.N starting feeling slightly faint and had to hold on to the nearby horse to keep herself steady. And pretty soon, it got so fast that she started yelling to stop it. and so did a lot of others.But it kept spinning. It finally came to a stop. All of them got out, some looking quite green in the face (some did get sick later in the night). The man, N noticed, didn't look so disgruntled any more. N suspected foul play. She was (and still is) sure that the man was just getting back at them ( or he may have just wanted them to have a little excitement and thought they could handle the speed. but the other sounds more interesting, so let's just agree with N, shall we?)

7. They went on different autos to City Centre after that, and N and a few others popped into the washroom. And as she was leaving, a girl who looked very familiar entered. She just couldn't place her though, and not wanting to be called rude, was about to say hi ( hoping to figure the name out as the convo proceeded, as she sometimes does) when she stopped herself. She had suddenly remembered where she had seen her. but just couldn't believe it. She had seen her, on several occasions - On Orkut. On her friend's friend list and in photo albums. Obviously, she was completely unaware of N's existence.

8. It was late , City Centre was closing for the day and after they switched like almost all the lights off, the gang decided it was time to leave. Everyone was in high spirits after a good meal from KFC, and was laughing and talking loudly. And while it was nice singing songs and stuff in the middle of the road which was pretty empty by then, it also meant most buses had stopped running. But that didn't stop them from doing all the aforementioned.So they heartily(well, most anyway) decided to walk to the local train station. which had also shut down for the day. After a few more spontaneous songs , some why don't we spent the night here then! Yes, Let's ! Woohoo!'s and some Oooh, let's walk back to IITM! Yes, Let's! Woohoo! 's later, they started walking again until they met a couple of policemen, who suggested they take autos.Finally,all of them squeezed into two super-huge autos and made it back to iitm.

9. N got to attend the salsa/jive workshop! ( To the uninitiated: The Gods of Thoushaltnotlearnsalsa had cast a terrible curse on N, preventing her from ever attending a salsa workshop however much her heart yearned for it. The scheming gods went so far as to get the salsa workshop for Ragam '08 canceled and extended the duration of the Lindy Hop Swing classes back home to a month just when her winter vacation was cut short to less than 3 weeks. Aye, The Fates play such cruel games.) Anyways, 'twas quite fun, although she did find the whole dancing salsa in a circle quite strange and funny.

10. N fell off the local train, as mentioned before. It was time to leave. One by one, they clambered on to the train to reach Chennai Central Station. When just M, N and S were left to get on, the train started moving. M managed to get on, but as N was attempting to do so, the train picked up more speed and she couldn't hold onto the pole. She remembers hitting something and falling flat on the platform and thinking ' Now S and I will have to come in the next train' while hearing a bloodcurdling scream by M and a tall, lean figure which looked like P jumping off the train onto the platform. And sometime during this incident, S pulled N away from the train. Someone, hearing M's scream pulled the chain and the train came to a stop. Apparently, from where M and P were standing, it looked like N was disappearing into the gap between the train and the platform, although there was really no such gap, because the local train sorta bulges outwards. which explains their action-movie style responses.Once everyone got back on the train, there was lot of sympathetic ruffling of N's hair. Some It's alright,k? Are you okay? Sit down for a while's and a lot of looking at N and shaking of the head's. S after a while, began to demonstrate the entire sequence of events to those who weren't present, though P didn't seem too amused at the idea. P and S still occasionally throws in ' I jumped off a moving train to save you.' and ' I saved your life!'. Note to S and P: See now, unless there's some internet recession, and they delete the Least Read Blogs or something, your acts of heroism are recorded in the WWWeb for posterity. You're Welcome. :)

11. S was mistaken again.for a beggar this time. By one of the our own (nitcians). Before you start wondering about his clothes ( and before he tries to hunt me down), the reason for the misunderstanding was his..ahem...flute playing abilty. Basically, he and M were trying on different tunes on the Rs.10 flute someone purchased on the train journey back. As S was playing , S ( Another Guy.Hmm..Strangely,Gossip girl never had the Two-people-with-the-same-initial issue.) who was in another compartment stuck his head in.
'Oh, it was you! We kept waiting for a beggar playing the flute to come and ask for money. was wondering why he was taking so long to reach.' On the upside, the real beggars do play the flute well.

12. This is an All-things-Animal point. There were deer in iitm. And a whole clan of monkeys well-adapted to their habitat. These wonder monkeys know how to eat from unopened chips packets, shamelessly enter the bathrooms in the Ladies hostels to raid the garbage bins and a few of the gang even spotted a monkey making a hole in an unopened coke bottle and coolly drinking it afterwards.The hostel the girls stayed in had a mascot dog with a blue collar who was always sleeping all stretched out in front of it ( until it seemingly couldn't stand M's repeated, almost envious 'This dog is always sleeping! Doesn't it ever wake up?' anymore and moved to the nearby hostel on the last day).

It's 'That's all, folks!' then from me for now. Whew! Thanks again Anna.:)

Chennai Chronicles - Part 1

WARNING: This post , as well as the previous two, are part of my WUPs ( Warm-Up Posts) to get me to start blogging consistently, which in turn is part of my NLP (Neethi learns to be patient) Program, so my apologies for the possibly ill-attempted humour , lack of originality, creativity etc.

So, we went for Saarang (IIT Madras Cult Fest) as part of the whole we-are-final-years-we-are-gonna-have-some-fun idea(my friend and I also had a secret agenda which cannot be disclosed here for obvious reasons. Suppose the whole 3 people who read my blog came to know about it?). Anyways, so here are some of the interesting (to me) stuff which happened while in Chennai (in chronological order) :

1. On the train: S was mistaken for the ticket collector. S was well, in his words, conned, into taking care of the ticket-booking and stuff and also ended up paying for half the tickets so basically, on the train, he was walking around with a long sheet of paper with everyone's (we were 40 odd people) seat numbers which he carried on a rectangular 2 fold pad-like thingy (whose one hinge I managed to break when I fell off a train, but more about that later). S then had to sit down to settle a li'l tiff with a family with three kids claiming( the dad, not the kids) that these were their seats. After that was resolved, S was still poring over the paper intently when this appoopan( old man) in the corner, who was looking all the while at S, takes out his ticket hesitantly and shows it to S. I can't for the life of me remember how S reacted to that ( or whether he noticed it at all ) but N(yup, that's how I'm going to call myself. been watching way too much Gossip Girl these days, sigh) and a few other alphabets had a good laugh over it.

2. On the 'local' train: A few wanted to have an Alaipayuthe experience ( the tamil movie with madhavan and shalini where he first sees her on a local train moving in the opposite direction as his) and hence decided to take one to iitm. We clambered onto it and grabbed on those hanging handles ( You know ones that remind you of those miniature adventure sports zones in the park where you had many of them in a row. You climb up , grab one of them and swing from one to the next till you reach the other end(not that I was ever able to make it that far). I'd be (and so would the others reading this) really grateful if someone could tell me what they are officially called.) M and N wanted to do some sight-seeing so they grabbed the ones near the exit. After a while, a man standing next to them ( a darkish man with 3 strips of chandan across his forehead with a red mark at the centre) started pointing out places and buildings for us. They nodded politely and tried to follow his hands. That's quite nice of him. Then N noticed another guy (younger, dressed in a loose t-shirt and jeans) across him rolling his eyes from time to time. Guy 1 got off the train after a while after which Guy 2 took a step forward. Woah there, have people here taken it upon themselves to show new people around or something ? ' Excuse me, but just thought ill let you know. That guy had no idea what he was saying. I'm afraid he was randomly pointing at prominent buildings and blurting out random names.'

3. So M and N were the unfortunate ones who couldn't get tickets to the Sonu Nigam Show. While they were dejected ( M not so much. N reportedly made quite 'ridiculous' noises and faces whenever SN's voice reached her ears as they wandered about outside the Open Air Theatre ) , they did get to see Monty Python sketches play put up by evam ( a chennai-based theatre group) , generally had a good time just hanging about and got to spend the night at Nut's ( a colg friend in chennai who took pity on us; one letter alphabets are strictly for the group that came along with us, others will be referred to by nicknames or anything else I feel like using to describe them..Muhahaha). They went yeaarly morning to Besant Nagar beach which was pretty cool. Most of the residents had apparently all risen and shone and were playing badminton, jogging or walking along the beach. After that, they had the most amazing melt-in-the-mouth milk pedas and badam kathali from Grand Sweets which Nut said was the best sweet shop in Chennai ( N could smell the ghee from the end of the street. No kidding.)

4. Jam prelims were fun . After which the group decided to explore Chennai, starting with Adayar Film City which according to A, was right around the corner. After walking for like forever ( the sidewalk was nice though. Neat and a nice row of trees planted along the way with a rail separating the road in places, some interesting mosaic artwork along the walls ) and posing every 30 seconds for a pic , they finally reached around the aforementioned corner to find out that Adayar Film City was closed. For almost a year now. They did meet an interesting off-his-rocker beggar who generously posed for the camera unasked with the rest of them , cursed almost everyone that went by and left his scraps and bottles to be run over by a car. As they were walking back , someone turned around to take one last pic of our beggar when he saw him trying to stop a scooter on the main road. As everyone turned to look , the man (middle-aged, in formal work clothes) stopped the scooter, got down, took a fallen twig ( quite long) , plucked off the leaves and began chasing the beggar managing to hit him often. Which needless to say, left everyone shocked.

5. M, S , P and N were arguing over whether the floor was marble or white granite at the M.G.R Memorial at Marina Beach when P saw a couple of people pressing their ear against the top of a tomb. Curious P followed suit. She heard a soft tapping noise and it took her few seconds to realize that a couple of local guys were tapping on the tomb to fool her. P quickly decided to try the trick on M, N and S. While they were arguing (yeah, they tend to do that a lot) with P whether they really fell for it or not, a couple of others from the crowd who were standing nearby went to the tomb, pressed their ear against it , began tapping on it with their fingers and stood there for sometime as if waiting to hear something back! M, N,P and S were elated !They just managed to start a new tradition ! But the Mystery of the Pressing-ear-sans-knocking still remained. They then reached the tomb of MGR himself where they found people performing the same ritual. N mustered up the courage to ask some of the locals, but all she could pick out from what they said was 'Motor. Sound' which led them nowhere (save for a few wisecracks from S). Now others may give up and decide to leave matters unsolved but not our M, N, S and P. 'Twas hard but they finally uncovered the reason - MGR's watch. It was believed to be still umm..ticking and if one strained one's ears enough one might be fortunate enough to hear it. MGR died in 1987.Wonder what make the watch was.

To be continued….:)

Go play with someone your own size!

Life has got to be kidding me. Everything and i mean, everything in life seems to be playing hard to get. not people though. Things. that i want. It's like this. You know the whole carrot on a stick thing. Imagine Life's the guy (or girl) holding it. and I'm the girl trying to grab the carrot bobbing up and down in front of me, always just out of my reach ( it doesn't help that I'm 5 feet 1 and a half inches.). And just when I reach the point I say 'know what? whatever. You can keep the carrot. I'm going to have this delicious scrunch..scrunch...gulp spinach instead.' Lo and behold! a carrot's lowered and lands right on my lap. Since most of the time, the carrot I get in the end is plumper and juicier than the one i was chasing , I let Life off the hook and don't complain much. But every once in a while, i really wish i could get the carrot right in the beginning itself , u know, and on a silver platter and stuff. It'd be nice.and while you're at it Life , make that a nice slice of chocolate fantasy instead (of the carrot).

The Pink Chaddi Revolution Thingy

I support it. I may or may not go to a pub but I sure as hell don't want anyone else to make that decision for me. and definitely not in such a crass and crude manner.