ek gaon mein ek kisan raghu thatha! :P

It's been a week in Pune already!! :O
and believe it or not  - I have fallen in love with this city! <3
or maybe it is just another one of my defense mechanisms , protecting me from shocks. Whatever this is , it has aroused me enough, to write a post! So let me finish this before reality sinks in .
( Side note :

hahaha

  Defense mechanisms are pretty intriguing . Do you know that I haven't cried a single tear drop yet? My friends think it is some kind of sacrilegious blasphemy from my  part. But hey! If pessimists argue that I have effectively ended one life , I argue back that I have just started a new one :) I do miss chennai . However , I am not going to go gaga over it. Okay I just did . )
I haven't had much chance to discover the city in its entirety yet. But , from whatever I have seen - it is fresh , green , pleasant and mindnumbingly beautiful :')

So here it is . The elusive list of things I have noticed about Pune and my new life in general :

Not THIS adventurous generally :P

1) I was never a nature loving person or that's what I thought. However , climbing the hill in my college ( yes , there is a hill in my college :O ) changed that perspective. The liberating atmosphere , the refreshing smell of pure , fresh air is well worth the climbing - which in itself is exciting and adventurous! Also , I am for the first time realizing that there are four types of climate in a year :P Living in chennai can easily erase this fact into a mere illusion. Back there it is either hot or hotter :')
And in other seemingly related news I got crowned 'Miss Green' by the Mess Bhaiya ( more like a thatha actually :P ) Don't start clapping already - I got called that because i was wearing a green kurthi LOL

2) My new friend rightly said , " Here in Pune , people talk to you in Marathi . If you don't know that they'll talk to you in Hindi and after that they stop." Yeah that's right. English doesn't work with the rickshaw wallahs . Coming from Tamil Nadu , a state which has fervently opposed Hindi often in the past and which doesn't give importance to Hindi in it's education system - I am at a huge loss here . It doesn't help matters that I hated my L3 hindi teacher and in turn conditioned my hatred towards that subject. To all the young readers out there - Learn HINDI. It is very hard to learn later and in this increasingly globalized world it is good to know 3-4 languages . And learning the 'official' language of your country is never a wrong place to start :)

The fundamental problem with most Tamils in this regard ( I am heavily generalizing here ) can be summed up with one joke in a yesteryear Bhagyaraj film , which sadly is still popular. Instead of saying ' Ek Gaon me ek kisan rahta ta' the hero mispronounces it as ' ek gaun me ek kisan raghu thatha' Thatha means grandfather in tamil and raghu is a common name. And ever since then Hindi has been ridiculed and not learnt -_-

3) I love the food here. My hosts may think I'm being overly polite when i say I love roti over rice. Fact is I actually love north Indian food :') Being open to trying new dishes has finally helped this time. Thank you masterchef australia for opening my eyes about food :*

4) Heavily generalizing , yes. I find the pace of Pune to be much slower than Chennai . Maybe it is the monsoon's cozy feel . It perfectly suits a lazy person like me :')

5) It doesn't hurt that folks back home miss me . Makes one feel loved ,you know :P ( even though this may  only last for a short while)

perfectly put by some random citizen :P

6) Lastly but not the least , I am very proud of my new found independence. I make my own bed , wash my own clothes :O , do my dishes etc. Being self sufficient makes one immediately feel adult like :D I was so proud when I wore the tee shirt,which i had washed with my own hands ^_^  P.S - This doesn't mean that I'll do housework when i come back home to chennai xP Home is where the ass lays ;')

Random realization - Blood clots are very random o.O

Semi

Internet Anonymous

Status quo has changed.

I've shifted to Pune , Maharashtra for my college studies :)

and have switched over to the dark side. I have given up my soul completely to social networking and instant messaging. Tweets and statuses have invaded my brain and I crave for likes and not views now.

Yes I am a social addict.


(disclaimer : Purely fictional work. Any resemblance to actual events PURELY coincidental :p)
It all started innocuously enough - when i was in fifth grade - seven years back.My dad bought a computer. Road rash seemed like the coolest game ever. You could ride a bike and hey! you could beat up the guy too :D That motivates a child.







Then we had email id's and yahoo! messenger . Sending random voice clips and animated emoticons seemed like the coolest thing that could happen to you. I still remember my friend p calling me so that I could come 'online' and chat with her. ( and we thought phone calls would be replaced by chat didn't we?)

Then came Hi5 - the more beautiful version of facebook WITH games. Yet , it failed to catch on like orkut ( maybe because it was too fancy). Believe me when i say that orkut was considered very dangerous and none of us kids used to use it.
Then came FACEBOOK. I think i was in eight grade then . I used to have decent attention spans , read an enviable amount of books , never worry about likes ... no I really can't remember life without facebook or my life after facebook :P

It is so dominating ( like an old grandmother) that newer forms of networking like google plus don't feel 'right'. Twitter is cool and quite informative ( and gossipy) but never quite as addicting as the eff bee monster.
No , not for one second i hate what I do but yet the realisation that I am wasting precious time consumes my already broken spirit. I do know that I play less , read less and care less yet I post it as my status.
I know I have no redemption. Even if you remove the dhoni-dada , modi -rahul , vegan and non vegan and other pointless pop corn munching debates from the site , I will continue to use it.
I will poke you , add you and block you but never have an original 'convo' with you. I'm too bored for that. I am generation y
Gtg , ttyl
semi

Food for thought

"I should totally blog today."

you can succeed only if you try

After 21 days of fruitless inaction , I thought it was my mind playing mirage-like tricks with me again. Then I realized it was my lack of determination and fear of writing bad posts, that has caused this drought .  Remembering  what Hrithik Roshan said after his disastrous 'kites' in Kofee with karan  - it was something like ," You have to do something in the first place for it to be right or wrong. Worrying about an exam before writing it won't get you anywhere" Thank god he did write his exam - and we got zindagi na milegi dobara :')
So I should totally blog today. But I'm not guaranteeing you any quality.


 Ironically QUALITY has become my biggest problem right now. I don't even know what I mean when I use that word. But , I read all the blogs out there - enormous amounts of talent and potential :O and the sheer amount of posts in a month stun me. However there tends to be more misses than hits when you generate 50 posts a month ( or so I think ). When I was young, I used to cry to my mom about how my friends always wrote more pages than me during an exam and she calmly reassured me that ' quality is more important than quantity'. So I try to give my best every post and pray that at least half of what I hoped to convey reaches you.

I do promise you one thing ( i hardly promise anything in my blog - as I almost never keep it up :P) I will concentrate on writing more in this forum for at least my sake, if not yours.

 Sorry for the writer's rant :P I am sure fellow bloggers will understand. I needed to let it out of my system to progress . In this post I hope to 'rebuild my empire '  and give you tidbits of insights that have struck me this summer.

1)  Food for thought - I watched master chef USA 3 as it aired on t.v . I was never a huge fan of  the USA version in comparison to Australia as the former relied more on drama and antics, than anything remotely related to food. However ,since becoming the admin of 'Gordon Ramsay memes' ( see how I subtly put it? :P ) I felt an overwhelming sense of duty to watch the show . And surprise! this season was more about the food than about hate speech towards one other! :O And the most surprising of all - the winner of a cookery contest was blind. I heard tales of 'fixing' permeate the room but the truth is always far more inspiring :)
The finale was between the industrious josh and artistic christina. It reminded me one thing about food which we tend to forget somewhere in the over complicated world of reality shows - taste always triumphs . Josh produced stunning looking dishes with complex techniques but Christine simply made food full of flavor and yumminess . At the end of the day ,we do not care if the food is sauteed or grilled as long it tastes heavenly :)

2)That moment- After reading Agatha Christie's innumerable mysteries , I was very keen to get an idea

The eye in your mind paints things differently

about what went through her head and picked up her autobiography. Surprise! She led a very normal Victorian life , befitting the era. She puts us at such consummate ease, that her writing tips made sense to amateurs like me :') Among other things , she was a world traveller at a time it was enormously difficult to global trot for women . She didn't want to re visit countries she had already been to - she didn't think she could re capture the magic of the first venture. And somehow I totally emphasize with her . If she is scared of revisiting her favorite spots on earth , I am afraid of re reading my favorite books for the same reason. Every book has some poignant memory associated with it , and it is tough to breach the same ground without the feeling that it won't be as good as the first time. Sounds like blasphemy - but I haven't read even Harry potter more than once! :O

*Wow this post has drained me already :/ *

3)  The end? - The greyest book I have read in recent times is Dan Brown's Inferno . Among other things the book's plot is about the threat of overpopulation and that it will lead to extinction. Ironically living in India , I haven't really thought about that angle much. The 'antagonist' wants to wipe off 1/3rd of world's population , so that mankind can survive from extinction for a longer time . Is man made disaster the answer?  Should humans take this matter into their hands? Genetic engineering looks appealing from the outset , however its potential for danger makes it scarier than nuclear bombs. Should we interfere with evolution just because we assume we are 'superior' races? but what is the alternative - waiting for the inevitable? That doesn't sound very homo sapien -y :P I am asking instead of answering because I'm very confused about this topic and I don't want to make an uninformed statement or create an opinion too fast. If the book was true , you'll forget what you just read and deny that overpopulation maybe the end.
The book does conveniently ignore the enormous amount of resources trapped with the very rich - which has already resulted in general squalor in the 'bottom' rungs.

"The darkest places of hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality during times of moral crisis "

cheer up till then
semi :P

Haters Haters Everywhere !!

story of my life :P

First of all , a big thank you to all those who kept nudging me to write a post .
 a) It makes me feel special :P
b) Gives me the incentive to move my lazy glutus maximus :) .If exams suck all the energy out , holidays suck all the purpose .

Epitome of hate xD 

So today i am going to blog about HATE. Hate is an emotion of mass destruction , if ever there is one. It gets formed in a twisted way. When we love our own status quo too much , it results in an irrational negative feeling towards the opposing change. Most of the time ( generalizing , yes. )  it is formed before inspecting a scenario factually and the consequent 'evidence' is tinkered  the way our brain wants it to be seen. So we basically fool ourselves into hating things most of the time.

Hatred  also manifests when our favorite goals are jeopardized by the object of our ire . Simply putting csk hates kkr for 'taking away' their final and rcb hates csk because they 'cheated' them of the last ball.

 As we all know and have probably felt ourselves , sports invokes intense passion and emotions which can turn ugly very quickly (if uncontrolled). Cricket has always been known as the 'gentleman's game' and legends like Rahul dravid and Tendulkar prove to be those gentlemen. However , the recent cricketainment of t20 has not gone down well with traditional viewers. There has been lot of criticism from their quarters .
However , the hate I was surprised by in this edition of ipl (6) has been the one from the fans - towards opponent team members , who for the rest of the year they so steadfastly support. Lets analyse.

The Indian premier league has been around for 6 years now , and from the infant everyone pampers it is growing to become a toddler who adults are wary of . Deficits will be naturally noticed , rebuked and innovations struck down.  Also , team solidarity and familiarity has led to a humongous fan base for even unsuccessful teams like Pune warriors. Every team starts seeing themselves as the 'virtuous'  , the champions and the opponents are demonized.

So when a team wins the fans simply use these excuses :-
Chennai Super kings - They have BCCI support , all matches are fixed to help their cause .
Mumbai Indians - Ambani owns them . So duh , fixing.
Rajastan Royals - Luck / spot fixing / they won't come far in the tournament
RCB - Mallya fixed it / Gayle is an one man army.
SRH - Sun tv is close to BCCI (!) / it is a chennai team
Delhi Daredevils - They'll choke in the playoffs
KKR - Sharukh khan is evil / gambhir character assassination / srk fixed it
Punjab - Only Miller saved them , they'll never make it to play offs.
Pune warriors - Nobody cares :P

Why can't fans just accept that their teams lost! And the team won it fair and square . Even if spot fixing allegations prove to be true , a bad ball still has to be hot for a six and a catch for a wicket to happen -_- Grow up guys.
Csk vs Rcb , RR vs DD , Csk vs kkr  ,csk vs mi ( I am obviously a csk fan) , srh vs rcb are contest followed with interest due to the intense rivalry.

Competition is not bad . If it was no trophy would be awarded . But hatred is , support your own teams alright but stop hating the rival ones and for god sake stop spreading it online! There is this page called troll cricket - a popular cricket meme page .  And sadly every alternate post ends with Pakistanis and Indians fighting pettily and both calling each other terrorists. I mean like , where does this stem from really? Pathological prejudice and hatred dude to lack of adequate knowledge about the other side. And cricket is just one of the many outlets through which these ugly emotions erupt.

The angry young men - 
If pak - ind verbal wars are atleast seen as inevitable , the kohli - gambhir ones are not. We have for a long time had legends with impeccable manners in our team . eg. Sachin , dravid , laxman , kumble etc. Even Ganguly wasn't offensive with his aggression . Dhoni , Raina and some others are cool heads who can't be faulted. So when people like yuvraj , kohli and Gambhir express themselves on field it is misinterpreted as arrogance and 'bad behaviour' . People like sreesanth and Harbajan do go overboard but most of the time it is simply the fanatic supporters of the opposing side over reacting to emotion on field.

you call it arrogance , we call it passion :)

That too on Virat kohli . He is one of the most gifted players around and is quite clearly the future of India. When he gets angry and shows aggression against national teams it is seen as passion but when he replicates it for his franchise - well , he is arrogant and has the 'wrong' attitude towards the game. Being aggressive is one of the values Australians and West Indians cherish and one of the prime reasons that they won and dominated for a prolonged period.
It was deeply saddening to see him be booed by the Mumbai crowd for simply running out a player. Here is a man who gives his complete effort and dedication when he plays , why can't you enjoy that? When he hit that classy 99 , we all enjoyed it and can't blame him for feeling disappointed for not reaching his century o.O
If you can feel so emotional sitting at home , imagine this twenty year old playing the very game in front of a million fans/haters. Sympathize at least. Don't expect every player to be calm headed. Everybody cannot be the same.

The great dada vs dhoni  

Under every post congratulating Dhoni , there are a million 'who is the better captain?' debate. It doesn't seem to affect the fans that the players themselves mutually respect each other , leadership is not quantifiable and both the players served the same national team! Dada is one of my favorite players ever , seeing him hit through the off side was one of the first memories of cricket I have and strangely I was his strongest supporter when people wanted him to resign . However more than 'dada fans ' it is the 'dhoni haters' who concern me.
They seem to hold an unreasonable grudge towards this man who captained them to the greatest heights , questioning his motives all the way through . It is disappointing when respect is not given where it is deserved.
 I think I am ending this post quickly because generally I hate bringing up negativity in any of my blogs . However , the nonsensical mob with their saddening opinions left me with no choice. And another issue I want to bring up here is that of Justin Bieber . I don't really like his music but that doesn't give me a reason to personally abuse him or hate him . Also calling him a 'woman' or 'gay' is offending at so many levels. What is wrong with being a woman/gay person in the first place? Truly sick of such posts.

Yours wearily yet hopefully
Semi 

The family

Second post in the same month! Don't die of heart attack already xD There are many csk matches for inducing that . In another two days 'SS&S' [semi's stories and sharing's needs a nickname too :P ]

will turn three years old. This year has been a silent one to say the least :- 18 posts in 12 months = blasphemy . I saw this blog with 26 posts in one month! While even Dravid accepts that he can never be a gayle , he still has to perform in his own style to retain his place in the team. Similarly , I need to post more regularly to call myself a blogger :| Okay inconsistency rant over. 
And strangely enough 'sss' has crossed a milestone quietly even when there were no posts to fuel her :P sss has crossed 50,000 views *Fake applause* and it seems only like yesterday I was mulling over 10,000 views. 

...Aand this is also my 91st post!! Why does 91 warrant a mention?
a) My second favorite home ( cousin's place) is called that
b) 9*9 = 81 ( my favorite square no. :P ) + 10 ( god's no. = Happy b'day Sachin Ramesh TENdulkar <3) = 91 LOL.
c) I forgot to celebrate  the 90th post :|







Today I am going to write about ze topic ' family' . Partly because it is the 91st post and because I never usually write about them. Also because I read Mario Puzo's 'Family' __/\__

For the review of the book , click -->  here

Disclaimer - A personal post with a lot of I and me's :P 

So yeah lets talk about family. I live with my parents , brother and grandparents. Two characters who stand out distinctly and complete my life in unique ways are my grandmom who I call 'pattimma' and my newly found love <3 = my dog Laika!

Pattimma
She is simply amazing. I can write a book about her ( maybe i will) and it will sell a  million copies. She is a sociologist's delight. Orthodox in the expected ways and progressive in alarming ways. My incessant and annoying amount of talking can be attributed to here genes :P She can talk about tamil serials one minute and switch to complaining about the scarcity of helps in the next. Above all she loves yelling at me and brother with the most hilarious abuses ( from our viewpoint atleast) and we love ignoring it and provoking her to yell even more ^_^

What does the word 'pattimma' mean? It is an unique connotation developed by me after I began to speak. It combines the normal 'patti' ( meaning: granny) with the all important 'amma' ( mother) . For many years I thought I was the only person to use it. However sadly , my dreams were shattered when i saw many old movies where this term was used widely. Whatever. At least my family acted as if I invented it <3  and I bet i'm the only one to use 'thathappa' .
When she was young , she used to walk plenty of kilometers and catch a train and walk plenty more to reach her school. Yet , she is adamant about me cycling to my school which is only 10 minutes away from home. She actually got double promotion from second grade to fourth as she got 100 in all subjects :O if only she had completed her schooling , she would be ruling the world by now.
I am not kidding . she has photographic memory and can remember dates and events alarmingly well . She once amazed the neighbors by correcting the year THEY settled in chennai and the year THEIR DAUGHTER got married :P She remembers the color of sari she wore to every marriage ( and let me tell you , the list is 'quite' long) and can easily detect the lies we say , when they don't coincide with the previous ones :/ And i can't even remember her b'day. Y u no transmit me your good genes? :P
Her managerial skills are amazing as well. Only a taskmaster can make me work - and well , she is one. She gently cajoles the first time , and annoyingly persists with the request. And if i'm still acting dumb , she lets her high pitched voice and past memories of hardships and present bad health do the trick . Ah , grandmothers.
'Saniane' , 'panni' , 'abhistoo' , 'motachi' and other censor-able words  flow from her mouth :P and I love her the most <3 :')

She has the most hilarious contingency plans for disasters. Remember last year when everyone was convinced world was going to end and there was a small tremor in chennai?  The news channels were harping about how the tsunami was going to swallow us all and we live quote close to the beach. So what does pattimma do? Goes quickly to the safe and starts wearing all the golden ornaments! Convinced that she had finally lost it I asked her what she she was doing. And she solemnly explains that if the tsunami 'carries' us away , we'll at least survive with the gold wherever we land xP

Laika
I am not much of a dog person or an animal lover. I don't run away when i see them nor do I go hug and go gaga over them . Pretty much neutral ( semi xP )  towards them .However , when this dog landed up in our backyard , I wasn't very happy to have it around. This can be attributed to my suspicions that my brother must have smuggled it there. However , gradually in her own doggy way 'Laika' has spread her charm over our lives. She hates dogs , thinks she can challenge dobermans and alsations o.O ( very distorted self concept) , wants to fly like the crows - insanely jealous of them and hence chases them  and is scared of cats.

She is rowdy rathore no. 1 :P one cool ragamuffin . Kills you with affection when you are pre occupied and makes you feel guilty for your insolence and indolence towards her. However , when you try to go hug and be nice to her - she acts all cool and begins sleeping :P  She sleeps when she is bored , happy ,tired , angry. In different positions . Very funny ones :)
She has become my best friend in this last one year and I cannot imagine a life without her . This is for you laika  :* :* <3

Pattima + laika = I never thought the combination will work. But it does :O Tired of taking care of human babies all her life , pattimma is now deeply in love with this doggy baby xD She had gone for some marriage and was not home for 2 days. She calls  ME with GREAT concern and inquired if l LAIKA had eaten. There arouse my human envy. If I was any younger , I would have plotted her murder - like i planned my brother's :P