When being an idiot became a fancy...

Let me clear the air - as of now, I am sane, no doubt. I am talking about 3 idiots the movie here. I'm not a big movie buff really. I don't know movies and their nuances as much as i know all the add-ons and the flings, the off-screen romances and every other useless gossip. Frankly, i haven't really seen so many movies as to start reviewing them. But, this one was pretty good, good enough to write about it, though this post is coming really late. Infact, I was a person who had an aversion to full-length movies as a kid, someone who wouldn't let mom watch a movie when I was around, and indeed, old habits die hard. It is still a very passive thing to do for me, a movie is the last thing i would do if i want some positive energy or i would want to have fun with people i meet after quite a long interval of time.

Now coming to my fate with films - the ones i want to badly watch, go mad over the music, somehow manage to smell the story from every little bit leaked to the media, go around saying i would watch it the first day, NEVER happen. Recent examples being avatar, ajab prem ki ghazab kahani, and the biggest - 3 idiots. I watched them so late, and repented for not having watched them earlier.

Well, the first thing that attracted me towards 3 idiots was, no prizes for guessing, Aamir Khan. Then there was this 5-point someone take-off connection to it, then there was Madhavan and then the most important one - Aamir's disguised India-wide odyssey as part of the promotion. This man is simply great with incredible ideas, no wonder IIMs have made his Ghajini promotion techniques part of their curriculum.

Then there was the music release, I absolutely loved it. Especially when Shaan goes 'Behti Hawa Sa Tha', I went insane. I knew the basic plot, I knew that it was being shot in Ladakh, i started imagining how it would be picturised and all. With a terrible hindi, all i could do was get some help from translations on the web for this song especially. Then there was Aal izz well, and Gimme some sunshine that were absolutely amazing too. Jaane Nahin comes next, love it in bits and pieces, only for Sonu Nigam and his mesmerising voice. Zoobi would be the last one, don't know why i didnt like it.

Then the not-so-in-your-face subtle comedy in the film - Comedy is the only genre i would safely say i would definitely like, romance and spoof following very closely. Action and graphics don't really work for me everytime. Now and then ,yes. But comedy is a definite winner. So yea, that's the first thing i liked about it.

And then the character of Rancho. This is why i started this post actually. Maybe i think i've always liked such a character - sometime back, I joined this community in fb called "i am sexually attracted to intelligence" and my "ideal match" column on orkut reads "sixth sense preferred over six packs". Well, that's one thing that's true, though this comes from a self-proclaimed die-hard mushy romantic! (atleast for now, this point in time, in which i'm single!) To pull off an intelligent conversation, an interesting one, makes a candle light dinner more worthwhile, doesn't it? Romance is definitely better with some intelligence and wit peppered over it! Coming back to 3 idiots, naturally, I absolutely loved the way Aamir had portrayed it! The fact that he didn't go overboard showing off his intelligence boisterously is the key here. That subtle curiosity is far better than "I-know-everything, what are u doing here?" attitude! Oh I absolutely love the expression on his face when he says " sir why not a pencil?"

Have any of you come across such people, the Ranchordas tribe, in real life? Those kinda people who make you go weak in the knees with a single intelligent word, when you had been contemplating on an issue for hours on end? Those kinda intelligent folks who solve seemingly big issues with a small master stroke of theirs? Those rare people who look at the larger picture and inspire you to do the same? Those made of something extra looking like they have a knack for success? Those who are beautiful/handsome in a weird way that you couldn't figure out for so long? Those who lighten up your day with a witty word? No the setting doesn't have to be very serious or a high-impact issue involving incredible amount of money and definitely, they needn't be that charming as Aamir. Infact, smaller the issue and the more you are stuck up with it, the better is the imprint such people leave on you.

For me, i have been really fortunate to have been close with/seen/met/heard of such people, with different degrees of acquaintance, atleast half a dozen of them! They have this amazingly inspiring air around and that's something I love. And definitely, not all of them are supremely educated or whatever, they are just great in their own chosen fields, big fish in their own small ponds. Maybe, the ponds would grow to be bigger one day. No, I am not going to name any of them here and i agree, they are not Ranchos in entirety. They make up a Rancho in bits and pieces, maybe close to the deglamorised Ryan of Five point someone. Love you all folks and more power to you!

So, how do i finish? I just wish I get closer to that league of idiots. Yes, I wish to chase excellence and let success follow me! And I sincerely hope that I get to meet more such people in life, and I get to stay in better touch with such people I already know. I earnestly hope you, the readers, get such inspirations in real life more often too! Let inspiration flow, let the positive energy take over! Time to walk around with an aura around our heads and spread the cheer! Go watch out for the Ranchos out there!

Long time no blog!

Well, yes. It has been quite a while since I put myself into writing a good piece. To be honest, I did write three posts, very very intense and quite personal ones. Somehow when it was shaping up, it gave me such a feeling of comfort, of having poured out and explored all my feelings, I thought I would treasure it all to myself. A strict no-no for public reading! Lets keep it precious, for atleast sometime now, until my mind and heart say otherwise.

This new year's didn't actually ring in on a very high note, not even a reasonably high one, coz of the really saddening Ramesh mama's sudden death. It gripped me and I find myself going into an unknown thought process once in a while even now. I am probably the least directly affected because of his sudden demise, but it did have such a huge inexplicable impact on me and my thought processes. Given the way i still feel, I can't even think how my folks are going to get out of it and if at all they would, being directly affected by his untimely demise. The world suddenly shrinks into an emptiness and somehow you go on a questioning mode, that infact adds to the worries, than mitigating it.

Maybe a good happening during this period would have changed the gloom, but what followed mama's demise was a cold spring harbor reject and heartbreakingly on pongal - my dream - UT health sci center at Houston reject. Something I assumed that would have a probability of 1 - I was so sure of getting it. Infact that was the first university I shortlisted. Happy place, wonderful university, a senior there to help me through practical issues, an interdisciplinary course, a considerable Indian population in the city, (translating into good food, obviously) affordable cost of living - just what the doctor ordered! I went to the extent of discovering more about life in Houston and the Meenakshi temple there! But alas, some things are just not meant to be! As usual, I hope something better awaits me.

Moving on, for a person like me, don't know if being wired like this is good or bad, a bliss or bane. I get interested in things I thought I would never give a darn about. Blogging, Tweeting are classical examples. Infact, that makes career choices all the more tough for me. I get drawn into things, varied and sometimes weird for someone of my age and nature, so much, and surprisingly, the interest is sustained very well. The most recent example being some philosophical issues. Indeed, they do have a point. All that we have known all along, seem to assume a whole new meaning sometimes. Exploring this is fun, really, and I never thought it could be the slightest of fun before actually reading up and listening to such stuff. I do notice a change in me, don't know why. My choices and priorities are different from what they used to be, and the world appears in a totally new perspective. Don't know if this change is transient, don't know if really something about me has changed, don't know if i am right or wrong, still, there has been a change is all that I can feel.

So, coming back to mundane talk, life is in a standstill now. Bored beyond description doing non-descript things that seem the least productive. And the to-do list i have would never shorten anytime soon I guess, though I did watch a couple of movies from that list. It's a strange feeling - you want to and you have a million things to be done, you do none of them and feel bored for having nothing to do and guilty for not having done anything. Maybe that's what people call with that four-lettered word - l-a-z-y.! The bioinformatics project, is running, not gaining momentum. Maybe the only reason for this lull might be that I miss a few friends when I need them the most, or maybe, the change that has happened in me is doing bad things to me?? Can't really say if it is good or bad, because the change wasn't a conscious one after all. Let's stop at that.

Right now, hoping, praying and wishing for admits to come my way, to steer clear of all the confusions surrounding me and see a clear picture emerge of what I am doing, sans any confusion or more issues. As usual, In God I Trust. The burden is off your shoulders this way and it is truly amazing! Pray for me brother! Pray for me sister!

Why should boys have all the fun?? - BIKES!!!!!!!!! <3 <3

Life would indeed be good and safe with just teddy bears, barbie dolls and pink nailpolishes around. But there's something about me that gets super excited about travel and modes of travel - the wanderlust inside me manifests in different forms! This conclusion has come upon some real careful observation. I wouldn't say nothing excites me better. Just that this is something that gives some exhilarating experience. So, now you know what the post is going to be about - bikes, my love for them.

I don't know when this love for bikes developed. When I grew up, my mode of travel everywhere was bikes - dad and uncle's, atleast then. Rajapalayam has a bad public transport system and it was only in chennai did i first get a taste of how public transport actually works. So it all started probably with the 'gems' outings - from early childhood (infancy is it?) until 1st standard or so when i ceremonially go almost every evening and get a packet of gems( the little colourful yummy chocoloates) once dad comes home. I simply used to love it - maybe not for the bike rides atleast for the chocolates. Then to school and back, though i might have hated the ride in the mornings as i realise now that i am born to be perenially late, be it 2nd grade in school or final year of college!

And then, it was school bus for some time and my tryst with bikes halted. Then came my scooty. Yes, my automobile knowledge is good enough, i wudnt call scooty a bike, but for all practical purposes, let it be! From 9th standard to this day, its my most intimate, trusted possession, though i have almost stopped using it these days. Getting back on track, my bike friend would be rathika, the only one who trusted me enough to ride pillion, my dearest and most adorable friend to this day. The experience is something inexplicable - the first freedom it gives u, the first leash of fresh boldness to shout at someone on the road, to zoom past someone, to overtake the one who juz overtook you and look back, yes, life's small pleasures give you more happiness indeed.

Then its was the 11th class - the bike show during the sports day - though a group of boys did it, i really used to admire this guy shri ohm, my classmate for his biking skills - just that i guess he tried out the same on my scooty and ended up making a mess of it! He could do awesome wheelies and that super fast turns (oops i forgot the name! what was it?) apart from the usual stunts that every guy on earth probably tries out! He was extremely good at it, probably the best i have seen so far! (Sad, that he had to undergo a surgery coz of injuries due to his antics on the bike!) It was at those moments, for once, i wished i was a boy! Now, that's a confession!

Back to my story, towards the end of 12th standard, we (me and rathika) took great pride in how we actually escaped the policeman at a particular signal for four long years - While all the big bad biker guys of class had their stories of what happened to them without a license at the police station! Wow!! We actually had the guts to look at him straight on his face and pass a smile - no dupattas covering the face, mostly in school uniforms which blatantly blurts out that we were still not that legitimately old enough to get a license. But the world has good souls like him! Thank you police uncle! I wish TN police has more ppl like u! :) Now dont book me under any rule, this is not a confession! And rathika was the partner in crime - super cool even when some 5 drunk auto drivers surrounded us and started blasting for something as small as breaking the indicator lamp glass - that too with the impact of a scooty! Very funny!

And then, towards the end of school, the ride became more and more sentimental, how we would miss the ride, how life would become all boring if i get a license, how we would miss the sweet smile of the policeman, how never in life would we be able to get away with minor accidents with a biiiiiig grin and an angelic innocence on our faces, assuming false identities. There's one thing here, in rajapalayam, you can't afford to let your name, especially your family's name out in any circumstance. If i overspeed, my mom would know it even before i reach home. So concealed identities used to be a big thing over there,though not any more, here i am a non-entity! Yes, all that we talked during jan, feb and march 2006 is all true. I really really miss it! I wish i can go back to the maths tution and the physics tution days - when we used to overtake the tution master himself, just to be on time - talk of punctuality! Not to forget the advices that follow - "dont overspeed, especially in such bad roads", and then that becomes the excuse for being late the next day! Sounds like a girl who has never had fun all her life, i know, but that's something very very close to heart and i dont have the power of words to explain it!And then it was college - i had to take the public transport, though it came with its own range of fun during travel. But i havent bothered to take a license until today - procrastination at its worst! So, naturally i miss all that fun of going out, 47A now being my closest friend now!

To this day, my biggest bike experience has been on UP roads - in Noida around midnight! Mostly pillion! Wowww!! I remember it so vividly! UP/Delhi's lack of road law and order adding to the fun! I wish i get it back! The black pulsar! That was also the time when i actually got to try out a looooong time wish of mine - to ride a bike,all by myself! It was the same black pulsar.. Though i never progressed far beyond the 2nd gear, it was a long cherished wish! And, yeah not to mention my ignorance - in scooty the left arm control was the brake and in bikes, it's the cluctch, my mind never took this point seriously and i ended up having a hearty laugh in the end! Half of my love of NCR comes from the love of roads, be it the AIIMS flyover, DND flyway, the loooong flyover in the inner ring road, the most beautiful NH-8, the expressway.. Everything.. If there's something called on top of world feeling, it riding on such roads, minus the irritating traffic ofcourse! No exaggeration!

So yeah, as u can sense, if writing about it can generate so much enthusiasm in me, doing it in reality would obviously do a lot more good to my spirits. Back from the summer fun, life has generally been boring on this front - just tried twice riding arvi's bike and made a mess of my image :P and yeah, saw his antics once near annai - a wheelie that never went beyond a 20 degree i would say, sorry arvi for that dig! I know you have a dubious distinction about wheelies, just that your bike wasnt in proper shape that day! The whole love of bikes story flashes everytime i hear dhoni mentioning a 800cc bike or seeing a launch of a really good looking bike or seeing someone zooming past with the air buzzing on the face, ripping through the wind, when you get a feeling of floating in air! Omg! Why should boys have all the fun! Doesnt mean i would say scooty is no good. It has its own share of fun, no changing gears at signals, you would be the first one to take off, probably you wont rip through wind, you could definitely enjoy the breeze! Gals can indeed have fun! That's probably i luv every ad with this concept - From the silly village gal ad featuring priyanka, why should boys have all the fun, and the more recent, tu peeche baitega ad! Hilarious!

These are things that make life more interesting and i just hope this passion runs alive, though i might not get to ride a bike that very often, and get laughed at by my bro and cousins in the process! Yes, the passion can be kept alive by dragging people to a mall just to catch a glimpse of an all new macho yamaha or a lambhorgini or the breathtaking BMW showroom or even a more accessible volkswagen showroom! Seeing is believing they say, isnt it? :P So yeah, god, lemme own a superbike in the future, and have a good chaffeur friend/bf coz i cant always go through the ordeal of parking lots and traffic jams, hehe.. Long live bikes, bikers and bike manufacturing companies!!!

My Chiggy Wiggy with GRE!!! - Part 1

Yaaaaaaaaay!!! This post is being written from Cloud Ten... 1530 it was meant to be.. Thank you all, each and every soul who bothered to wish me on gun time, each and every soul who helped me with material for GRE, each and every soul who bore the brunt of all my badgering and blabbering before the exam, each and every soul who sat with me and helped me out with every step from passport to name change to registering GRE to preparing for it.... The endless travail of wordlist quizzing and solving quants.. Thank you all...

Hopefully, essay scores don't disappoint me as well. Coz, I have gotten out of that phase in life

- where everything/everyone had a word written on them ...

- when every signal in chennai meant a difficult word like 'sartorial' at taylor's road...

- when i think of food as -viand, victuals, collusions and comestibles and not as food...

- when i think of movie spoofs as burlesques and parody...etc etc etc

And now, life seems a lot more different! How much a person can change in 3 weeks!!! :)

I want to sing out aloud a couple of lines, that seemed so apt for my feeling for sometime now..

"Aa rahi paas ya door mein Ja rahi...
Janoo na mein hu kahan pe..."

Indeed, I don't know where I am going, Near or Far of where I want to be.. Sometimes, the truth is i dont even know what I want... Neither do I know where I am... Entangled eh??

I do understand that this is just the beginning of a long odyssey that's going to be weary.. I say this because I had told everyone that I am not going into MS or PhD way if this fails... I had my ISB website links ready just incase GRE became a debacle.. looks like its not meant to be that way..

And to myself and to all those out there who think i can't and won't do anything else except an MS/PhD... The final call hasn't been made still, I could as well turn out to be a MBA degree holder with a good GRE score, rather I wish so, somewhere in a corner of my heart... And the answer to all this, hopefully would be with me by April/May 2010.. Until then, crossing of fingers continues :)

Nevertheless, hopefully, I would sit and blog one fine afternoon with the same elation about me getting my MS or a PhD degree from a gud univ too!!! If that's what it is meant to be :) God willing :)

Nearing the D-Day...

And it's round the corner... GRE!!! Five more days to go!! Just five!! I really want to document and freeze this feeling in time. I want to revisit this page - when I know my score. Either, to be happy about and cherish my preparation times. Or, God forbid, Be more responsible and learn my lessons right from the debacle - not to sit and blog less than a week before the GRE!!

The decision to write the GRE, though it took years and months of contemplation, was actually taken in a couple of hours of self-introspection on a fine sunday evening. A widely publicised sunday evening at that! I know how many calls and msgs i got that evening sharp at 7!! So thoughtful of you all nice souls, happy to have you all in my life.

And I would be wrong if I dont mention about the people who made me do that - take that step forward. A Big Thanks!! A million of them!! I dont really need to name them, they know it. Well, as it turned out, people who told me not to go this way, actually helped me more in making this decision, than those who told me to go for it! So keep contradicting, disproving, stupefying and arguing with me, that's makes us both prosper! A special thanks for those!

So at this juncture, I am at my wit's end about how my fate would turn out.Crossing fingers about what would happen. As time progressed, I have somehow gotten this feeling that GRE is more of luck, chance and kismet (ofcourse ur preparation )than anything else. But this can't be an excuse for not preparing. As usual, my preparation has been in the last couple of weeks, it has been the same always and i guess I have lost the power and the hope to change this last minute thing atleast in the future. For the past two weeks, I have been seeing people with words written on their foreheads. This is a result of me attributing a word to each and every single person's character i know. I know this sounds hilarious and looks like I am on the verge of something wrong, but this helps. And hopefully, it will all be over by the 23rd!!

The thought of the moment when the score would flash on screen is probably the scariest. People have told me how they want to finish off the last couple of questions faster, and how they get impatient in the last few moments, just to see the scores a second earlier. There have been debacles - about how widely touted as 'sureshot 1400+' got shockingly less scores and also how the not-so-talked about came up with great scores! Well, I have always felt in any race being a well-prepared underdog is the best way to be, and by well prepared, I mean the preparation of victory speech inclusive.

So, wish me, that God, and what people call luck stay with me through the rest of my preparation and more importantly - from 23rd morning 9 to 1.

Right now, all I have to say is just one thing - Pray for me, Brother!! Pray for me, Sister!!