His grand parents fondly named him Sivaramakrishna, practical folks - they didn't want to take any chances. If one of the gods failed him, the other two could pitch in :) Aside - Think kids ought to have a say in their names, c'mon you don't want to go through life with a moniker like Valmiki (I have a friend by that name and he has a tough time living upto his namesake's reputation). Which reminds me, bro has vowed to name his son Olonga. Sigh, insanity surely is hereditary. Coming back to the main thread, the suffix Ramakrishna dropped out of his name somewhere along the way, and Siva morphed into Shiv. I call him SRK, love TLAs :)
He's kinda my partner in crime - expect no confessions on a public domain :) (anything I say can and will be used against me) Our fav. pass-time is playing with remote controlled cars and looking longingly at high rises - I have visions of all the managers I ever interacted with, plunging down at varying speeds, depending on the number of calls I attended during the day; and Shiv dreams of his weird jetix superheroes jumping off rooftops and saving the world. Thankfully, the kid's stunts are limited to jumping off the refrigerator wearing a superman mask and a cape, and discovering that gravity rules as he goes tumbling down, but that doesn't deter him, he climbs back and repeats the exercise. That's the best way to learn the laws of physics, me thinks.
And when he's not breaking his limbs, he's plonked in front of my PC - my is a misnomer, I own it, Shiv rents it. I am allowed half an hour of browsing per day as per an unstated deal - the duration varies, depending on the imp's mood, and the size of the dairymilk I get him. Scoundrel! There have been days when he's played pacman for 4 straight hours, now he's graduated to Battlefield Mars or some such jazz. Its a daily ritual - he guns down somebody, does a small war dance around the room and progresses to the next level. My poor mom is convinced she's sheltering a future terrorist, the kid has no such grandoise plans, his Geography teacher is the only living person he wants to annihilate for now.
Had been on short term trip to UK recently, lugged back 10 kg worth of chocolates. No kidding, am a confirmed chocoholic (if there's such a word). Cadburys would do well to appoint me as a brand ambassador - one per day and 2 on Sundays is par for the course. Shiv shares my passion for chocs, so Sunday morn found us sprawled in front of the idiot box, watching Jetix, with wrappers flying all over the place. His mom was clearing up the place and inspected a wrapper idly. Heard a muted oath followed by a shreik - Shiv, did u eat this? The li'l imp recognized the tone which signalled danger and promptly pointed a finger at me. Err, auntie, chill, we only had about 10 between the two of us, honest, he won't fall ill. By now, his dad and grandpa had come running out, hearing the commotion. Bala, what's the matter. Our Shiv, our poor Shiv, she mumbles.
Now wait - I am confused. Where's this leading to? All we did was eat a few extra chocolates? But that I have done something not quite right is evident from Shiv's mom's reaction, I'll be dashed if I know what it is. Uncle looks confused, I am maha confused, Shiv is the only person lapping up all the attention. Auntie, what? I mean, the suspense is killing. She offers the wrapper to me - Oh hell, the chocs were the kind laced with rum and whisky. Shiv is a Tam Brahm, and his family are the ultra conservative kind. Hell, hell, hell! Damn, auntie didn't know, honest, but 3 pairs are eyes are burning through me, am summarily dismissed. Auntie invokes her fav. dieties and promises to feed a Brahmin, if her kid is absolved of his sins.
Feel terrible, but the dark deed's done. Meet Shiv's dad and grandpa in the evening - Uncle, it was a mistake, anything I can do to make auntie feel better. The sandbox is turning, its thatha who comes up with an idea - Rema, Bala is looking for a tuition teacher for Shiv, his exams are round the corner and he's flunked in Geography. You are the only person he listens to, so why don't u teach him. Sacrilege - teach Shiv, he's driven 3 teachers insane with his antics, only a fool would volunteer. There's a 2-minute silence, the kind u maintain for a dear departed - grandpa looks imploringly, uncle's smiling - he knows my guilt will not let me refuse. Oh, alright, but only till the exams. And even as I speak, I know I am screwed.
And so, its come to pass. Bright sunny Sunday morning, blue cloudless sky, the squirrel is back to his daredevil acts on the cable wire, in short, the 'feels good to be alive kinda' day. And me cooped indoors poring over a Geography school book, wondering if learning by rote the names of plateaus in Maharashtra would help him in life. Shiva in the meantime, has nuked another guy and is onto his nth war dance. Feeling homicidal :(
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
RIP - DFW
My first thought was Why? But I think, if you have read DFW, you know the answer.
To quote
The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor to its essential horror.
Think of the old cliche about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many cliches, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master
Harper's have collated his essays on http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557. Thanks to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/17/notes091708.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford
To quote
The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor to its essential horror.
Think of the old cliche about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many cliches, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master
Harper's have collated his essays on http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557. Thanks to http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/17/notes091708.DTL&feed=rss.mmorford
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Relationships
This is gonna be one confused post.
Its a train of thought, of which I have one end, but cannot quite comprehend where its leading me to.
The point was about relationships - the myriad relationships a person goes through in his/her lifetime. Was trying to list out the ppl who have touched my life - yeah kinda jobless, so can indulge in these mind games. But how do you model a relationship, digressing maybe, but its like - If it were a db, it would be an E-R diag, list out all the participants aka tables, define the foreign key constraints and viola, u have the map. If it were a design and u were charting class dependencies maybe, a UML diag - the relationship would be a generalization, dependency or association with annotations / stereotypes / tags adding the exact nature of the relationship.
But in life, how would I model it? I tried to picture myself standing alone and a jumbled up assortment walking in and out of my life : friends - some whose faces I struggle to recollect (won't even bother with names); teachers - some who moulded me, the others for whom teaching was just a job; my family - parents, cousins, aunts, uncles; colleagues - some of whom doubled up as friends; total strangers with whom I've shared some good moments. Some lingered, some stayed longer, but everybody moved on at some point. Which translates to the ephemeral nature of relationships.
Of these - and I'll leave family out of the equation for now - the ones I really cared about would be a single digit number. Relationships which I nurtured and hoped would endure. That's kind of a naive belief and its the death, no that's too harsh a word, its the drifting away of these relationships which have caused the most turbulent upheavels in my life. Though, whether it affected me for good or bad is up for argument.
And I've noticed that the effect varies as you grow older. When I was in the fifth grade, my best friend had to relocate to Madras, I cried the whole day, fought with her dad and told him he was a beast to separate us. But life continued - we stayed in touch for a while thru' letters, but gradually moved onto other things in life. The point is, I got past that pain very soon. The parting of a best friend in school was a little more tougher, but even that was a phase I got over.
It was the parting of friends, with whom I chose to share my life in the real sense of the word, which caused the maximum pain.
The time my friend relocated to the US was killing - every moment I spent shopping with her till we parted at the airport, I kept preparing myself for the pain to hit me. It didn't, and as I was waiting in the lounge for the plane to take off a good 2 hours later, I dissolved into tears... Don't get me wrong, we stayed in touch, still do, but things kinda change. Helped that the airport is home to such scenes, maybe that is the reason I hate airports. But the long and short of it is, each parting affected me mentally.
I've spent nights thinking why the loss of a relationship weighs down so heavily - is it the loss of a person who shared some real good times with you, is it the feeling that there was something u could have or should have done to set things right, is it the thought of having lost out on a real good person you could share your thoughts with, what is it?
And it kinda draws me back from forming the next relationship, been there done that.
Its a jumbled post alright, and I don't have answers.
Its a train of thought, of which I have one end, but cannot quite comprehend where its leading me to.
The point was about relationships - the myriad relationships a person goes through in his/her lifetime. Was trying to list out the ppl who have touched my life - yeah kinda jobless, so can indulge in these mind games. But how do you model a relationship, digressing maybe, but its like - If it were a db, it would be an E-R diag, list out all the participants aka tables, define the foreign key constraints and viola, u have the map. If it were a design and u were charting class dependencies maybe, a UML diag - the relationship would be a generalization, dependency or association with annotations / stereotypes / tags adding the exact nature of the relationship.
But in life, how would I model it? I tried to picture myself standing alone and a jumbled up assortment walking in and out of my life : friends - some whose faces I struggle to recollect (won't even bother with names); teachers - some who moulded me, the others for whom teaching was just a job; my family - parents, cousins, aunts, uncles; colleagues - some of whom doubled up as friends; total strangers with whom I've shared some good moments. Some lingered, some stayed longer, but everybody moved on at some point. Which translates to the ephemeral nature of relationships.
Of these - and I'll leave family out of the equation for now - the ones I really cared about would be a single digit number. Relationships which I nurtured and hoped would endure. That's kind of a naive belief and its the death, no that's too harsh a word, its the drifting away of these relationships which have caused the most turbulent upheavels in my life. Though, whether it affected me for good or bad is up for argument.
And I've noticed that the effect varies as you grow older. When I was in the fifth grade, my best friend had to relocate to Madras, I cried the whole day, fought with her dad and told him he was a beast to separate us. But life continued - we stayed in touch for a while thru' letters, but gradually moved onto other things in life. The point is, I got past that pain very soon. The parting of a best friend in school was a little more tougher, but even that was a phase I got over.
It was the parting of friends, with whom I chose to share my life in the real sense of the word, which caused the maximum pain.
The time my friend relocated to the US was killing - every moment I spent shopping with her till we parted at the airport, I kept preparing myself for the pain to hit me. It didn't, and as I was waiting in the lounge for the plane to take off a good 2 hours later, I dissolved into tears... Don't get me wrong, we stayed in touch, still do, but things kinda change. Helped that the airport is home to such scenes, maybe that is the reason I hate airports. But the long and short of it is, each parting affected me mentally.
I've spent nights thinking why the loss of a relationship weighs down so heavily - is it the loss of a person who shared some real good times with you, is it the feeling that there was something u could have or should have done to set things right, is it the thought of having lost out on a real good person you could share your thoughts with, what is it?
And it kinda draws me back from forming the next relationship, been there done that.
Its a jumbled post alright, and I don't have answers.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Anatomy of a slasher
Dash it, can't think of a neat line to start off, you know the kind which will grab the eyeballs and ensure the reader stays hooked. Heck whatever.
A confession to start with - I am not much of a TV person, it just doesn't interest me enough - unless there's a football match on, then wild horses wouldn't drag me away from my fav spot in front of the idiot box. Turn my nose up on reality shows, soaps, movies with ads interspersed or is it the other way around, the interminable song and dance channels including MTV (those guys used to air some real songs eons ago, remember), oh and news - the sods need to redefine the term 'breaking news' - what passes off as breaking news is awfully passe, but that's another blog.
So last week was a landmark kinda day for me. A lazy Sunday afternoon and decided to catch up on some slasher movies - hey, its not a crime to watch them - agree they are not classics - anything but, but I still enjoy them. Hate the romantic mushy kinda movies - I mean Tom Hanks is good in Sleepless in Seattle (that's to ensure I don't lose the few friends I have), but his classics are still Forest Gump and Saving Private Ryan - you get the picture.
Where was I? Yeah, so yours faithfully dug out the worst slasher movies put together in the last couple of decades and ran through them in no particular order. I was midway through the Texas chainsaw massacre when I heard a scream which couldn't be attributed to any of the lead characters. Oh hell, Mom. And she had that absolutely horrified look which I knew meant trouble (read that with capslock on, fontsize 32 and span colour=red). I try pacifying her - Mom its ok, its just a movie.
She goes - Why can't you watch normal movies like the others do.
Mom those are for sissies (heck apologies guys but I had to save my skin)
Mom continues - Its precisely after watching these kind of movies that girls cut their BFs into 300 pieces and burn them without a touch of remorse.
Hell, hell, hell, this is hitting below the belt. Wait, I can still salvage the day - Mom, I don't have a BF. A mistake and I realized it the moment I blurted it out.
Mom - Exactly my point. You are so busy watching this junk that you don't mingle (wazzat) with people your age.
I try the normal excuses - I was just researching on the violent tendencies prevalent in the US during the 1980s, trying to understand the psyche behind murder, no go, give up
Mom - As parents its our duty to get you to the right track. If we let you go astray, you will end up as another Maria.
Game, set and match my mom.
I spend the rest of the day pacifying her. Cuts no ice, she's shrewd. Damn why didn't I get those genes. She relents on condition that I throw away the DVDs - hah, have loaned them to a friend, and hope to God her kid bro doesn't watch it
And in the meantime, she's taken to locking away the knives at night. Whatever happended to good old trust.
A confession to start with - I am not much of a TV person, it just doesn't interest me enough - unless there's a football match on, then wild horses wouldn't drag me away from my fav spot in front of the idiot box. Turn my nose up on reality shows, soaps, movies with ads interspersed or is it the other way around, the interminable song and dance channels including MTV (those guys used to air some real songs eons ago, remember), oh and news - the sods need to redefine the term 'breaking news' - what passes off as breaking news is awfully passe, but that's another blog.
So last week was a landmark kinda day for me. A lazy Sunday afternoon and decided to catch up on some slasher movies - hey, its not a crime to watch them - agree they are not classics - anything but, but I still enjoy them. Hate the romantic mushy kinda movies - I mean Tom Hanks is good in Sleepless in Seattle (that's to ensure I don't lose the few friends I have), but his classics are still Forest Gump and Saving Private Ryan - you get the picture.
Where was I? Yeah, so yours faithfully dug out the worst slasher movies put together in the last couple of decades and ran through them in no particular order. I was midway through the Texas chainsaw massacre when I heard a scream which couldn't be attributed to any of the lead characters. Oh hell, Mom. And she had that absolutely horrified look which I knew meant trouble (read that with capslock on, fontsize 32 and span colour=red). I try pacifying her - Mom its ok, its just a movie.
She goes - Why can't you watch normal movies like the others do.
Mom those are for sissies (heck apologies guys but I had to save my skin)
Mom continues - Its precisely after watching these kind of movies that girls cut their BFs into 300 pieces and burn them without a touch of remorse.
Hell, hell, hell, this is hitting below the belt. Wait, I can still salvage the day - Mom, I don't have a BF. A mistake and I realized it the moment I blurted it out.
Mom - Exactly my point. You are so busy watching this junk that you don't mingle (wazzat) with people your age.
I try the normal excuses - I was just researching on the violent tendencies prevalent in the US during the 1980s, trying to understand the psyche behind murder, no go, give up
Mom - As parents its our duty to get you to the right track. If we let you go astray, you will end up as another Maria.
Game, set and match my mom.
I spend the rest of the day pacifying her. Cuts no ice, she's shrewd. Damn why didn't I get those genes. She relents on condition that I throw away the DVDs - hah, have loaned them to a friend, and hope to God her kid bro doesn't watch it
And in the meantime, she's taken to locking away the knives at night. Whatever happended to good old trust.
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