My Spy Family

Everyone has a little quirk somewhere in the family. An uncle who's irritating, a negligent cousin or a loud aunt. My family is no different. There's a lot to go around since my Dad DOES have 7 brothers and 1 sister. Most of them are these orthodox families with tarditional values and then there are some slightly 'liberitatrian' families. But they all have one thing in common; a passion for secrecy. I admit that just because we're family, you don't need to tell everyone exactly what you're doing but I think we'd like to know if we invite you to a party and you tell us you're in Amsterdam! The problem's become so acute that one of my uncles is always a question mark. We can never tell exactly where he'll be the next day so we actually have to tell him a week in advance and keep reminding him everyday to make sure he actually turns up and has no excuse to, for lack of a better word, 'bunk' the celebrations. And then there's my aunt. She is like the epitome of secrecy. Till now, she's conducted both my cousins' thread-ceremony at the crack of dawn and informed us within the hour to come collect the......alright I'm not too familiar with what it's to be called, so lets just say the stuff they give after such a ceremony. We actually fear she'll even marry them off without telling us and call us out of the blue to come attend the reception. Now, I'm one for family unity so I do wish my family wasn't divided into groups the way it is, but I guess that isn't for me to decide or even change. They're family and they have their reasons. All I can say is, I hope to God I don't wake up to realise my parents and I are in Kanyakumari on vacation while I was sleeping.........

Çiao!

I wrote this a part of a series of stories I wanted to write but I never got round to doing. The plot's clichéd, I admit but the idea of a friend like this was something I always dreamed about....

Taste 1: Sweet

Casey. I will never forget that name ever in my life. You meet many people in life but can’t always remember them. Then are a few people who change your life to such and extent that you can’t help but want them to live forever. Casey was that kind of guy. He was kind, helpful and always with a smile on his face. I still remember the day we met. It was the 7^th of May and I had just entered middle school. And as was my luck, I caught the eye of the school bully. For apparently no given reason, he decided I would be his punching bag for the rest of the term. So after school he cornered me, pushed me against a wall and demanded I give him my money. I thought I would be smart and con him into letting me go. So I asked him why he needed it. All I got in return was a punch in the stomach. Out went my option of being smart along with a bit of my lunch. Just then Casey walked by and asked what this was all about. The bully asked him to mind his own business and focussed on parting me from my money. Casey came between us and stopped him in his tracks. I was afraid they would come to blows when a teacher walked by and noticed all of us in the corner. Guessing what had happened he led the bully of to the principle’s office by the ear. Casey and I stood there, sizing, each other up. All I could think was what would have happened if he hadn’t walked by. I thanked him and we shook hands. That handshake sealed what I thought would be a lifelong friendship. From that day Casey and I became best friends. He was there for me whenever I needed him. The day of my first heartbreak, he consoled me and told me there would be many like such but I would know when I met the perfect one. The day I lost my bike he was the one who helped me scour the neighbourhood to look for it. We laughed, played, fought and lived life together. Casey was also a great animal lover. Every stray he saw on the road, he’d nurse and give to the adoption home. We existed in a world of our own and Casey understood all my fears and desires. We had planned to go to the same college and graduate together. We even planned to build houses next to each other. All these boyish dreams were shattered in just one day. It was the 7^th of May, exactly 5 years since I had met Casey when I heard on the news that there had been a shooting in the local mall. I thought nothing about and was about to go out when a chill ran down my back. I suddenly remembered that Casey had said that he would be going to the mall that day. I rushed to the mall as fast as my legs could carry me. Just as I arrived I saw the police carting off the criminal. I can never forget the expression on his face. It was one of complete calmness, as if he had just come for a shave or a haircut. I fearfully walked into the lobby where they had arranged the bodies. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the familiar outline of Casey’s body. I lifted the sheet and saw that serene face, those eyes closed and that everlasting smile on his mouth. I broke down and wept right there. I felt somebody move me away and saw it was Casey’s mom. She dropped me back home and I told my mom the bad news. We held a midnight vigil for him and in the morning when we received the body held the briefest of funerals. Even then, quite a few people had come to attend the function. A few days later, we got to know through the paper that Casey had not been one of the direct victims. He had died trying to save a little girl and got gunned down in the crossfire. Till the end Casey had stayed true to his nature. Even now, every May 7^th I visit his grave and just stand there, wishing God had not taken a way a boy so sweet and innocent.

   

Kitchen Chemistry

Culinary skills, supposedly the most important weapon a person has against that beast they call "hunger". For me, it's like some unwritten but subtly implied policy that my entire family's set. They're like,"You've got 2 years.......learn to cook or else you'll never amount to anything in the world. You'll never be able to feed yourself whenever you want and will always have to be dependent on others." And the dependent part is like leprosy for my Mom. She simply hates depending or troubling anyone for help, an attitude which she's somehow passed on to me. Not that I regret it or anything; it's just irritating for others apparently. Having a Mom, Dad and Grandmother for brilliant cooks can be a hassle sometimes.... But yes, I have learnt the importance of learning how to cook and have conducted a few experiments in some basic finger food. Unfortunately, I have a feeling the only 'finger' touching would be mine, since my combos tend to get really REALLY warped out. Let me give you an example: I most recently made a very interesting (read: red hot) sandwich which involved the following ingredients: red chillies, green chillies, tabasco sauce, habenero sauce, red chilly powder, Thai red and green curry paste and a sprinkling of black salt. To those with numb tongues, this may seem like a pretty ordinary attempt to reactivate their taste buds, which wasn't actually my aim (I'm not exactly taste-bud deprived but I do like my food hot..). But to any normal person, this may seem like the perfect shortcut to becoming a dragon! And thats exactly what happened when my Dad happened to walk into the kitchen and unbeknowst to me, took a bite out of it. It took me about a half hour to get him back to normal, after extensive milk/sugar/ice therapy. But most of my experiments don't end up this way. I'm a pacifist so I don't actually want to kill people with my dishes. I just get brainwaves which happen to translate to very starnge dishes. I also tried coffee-infused Bournvita which was pretty much bliss and my normal Sunday morning unwinder. But yes, a lot of the things I do involve hot sauce, although I am a pretty good hand in the kitchen. Unfortunately, after my recent destruction of a tablecloth in the absence of a coaster, I'm not legally allowed to enter the kitchen anymore. But there's always my cousin's kitchen where we invent many different cocktails and mocktails together. He's an IT professional so it doesn't happen often but I live in hope. For now, I concentrate on getting past the lock on the kitchen. I wonder where a stick of dynamite is when you need it.... ;)

Çiao!

Lost in Translation

Translations are a dicey business. You never know what can happen when something is taken literally without using the 'little grey cells' inside all those millions of heads. Over the past few days I've noticed a few examples but one stands out unequivocally. A few days ago, I had finally decided to eat at my college cafeteria, albeit only for breakfast. The humble idli was my choice and just as I was about to take my plate away to enjoy my first experience of cafeteria food, the server asks me, "Saar, do you want gunpowder?" My mind went blank as I just stared at his face for a few minutes. For those of you who do not know, I study in an institution where even the mere mention of war elicits a visit to the closest Father for a 'serious talk'. And since when have explosives been a side-dish for breakfast, except for Wiley .E. Coyote?? But I was in an adventurous mood that day so I just nodded expecting a load of black powder to be dumped on my plate and maybe even a complementary gun to boot. What I didn't expect was a coarse, brown pile of powder with enough oil to stop your heart just being slopped on to my plate. It was then I realise that 'gunpowder' was actually chutney powder. Now, who's brilliant idea was it to go call something so simple a weapon of mass destruction? It isn't even that spicy, for God's sake!! Then there's jaggery. Alright, I admit this story could just be me being the absent-minded boy I am, but it does illustrate how translation can deny people of really nice things. When I was 6, I had just found out about jaggery and wasn't too familiar with English. So I went and asked my grandmom what jaggery was in English. My grandmom was slightly confused how to explain how jaggery and molasses are related, so she just told me something in Tamil that translated to 'brown sugar'. Now, I blame the next part on TV. During this time, my family and I watched this serial where this little boy was drugged using 'brown sugar', the drug. Unfortunately, to my infantile mind, I understood this as jaggery and since then feared the sticky sweet till I was 16,  when I finally realised that jaggery and brown sugar just aren't the same. I had wasted 10 years, a whole decade of my life running away from jaggery, all because of my grandmom's inability to explain its meaning. (P.S. I don't blame her at all) Of course this is coming from the kid who wrote 'My father in a wood-cutter' when asked to make a sentence with the word 'wood-cutter'. I still argue that that was a brilliant sentence and really does make sense, despite what my parents say. But that was a long time ago. All I'll end in saying is, be careful what you translate, you don't want your hands to go pluck mangoes!! (I'll leave you to figure out where I got that from. If you're a Malayali, directly translate it into Malayalam. If you're not.......get someone to do it for you! ;)

Çiao!

Bio Lab Diaries

The Bio Lab and I share a very intimate relationship; so intimate in fact that I keep getting thrown out after 10 mins inside it every single time. The teacher fears my entry and the Lab assistants keep the door open for me. Lets start with my 10th standard. The scene is my final Bio practical exam. By some evil idea of God's or Fate's, my practical exams always tend to before lunch. I had an experiment where I had to check how the absorption of water differed in raisins in different liquids. I was really hungry so I quickly finished the experiment and ate the raisins. The teacher comes around saying that she needs to check my results and I tell her I've eaten the raisins. She looks at me like I'm some freak of nature and I break into frantic persuations. I convince her to give me my marks but she warns me not to this in an exam ever again.
Circa 2010. In my 12th standard Bio Lab. We had a Botany class and had to identify the different infloresences (the type of flower from which) of many fruits. I enter the Lab and there before me are an array of different fruits, all cut in half!! I freaked out and went straight to the teacher and asked her if I could eat some of the specimens. This being one of the first few classes, she didn't know me too well and thought I was joking and said fine. An hour later, as the class is leaving she screams that the fruits have been eaten. I, being a very honest (ahem ahem!!) boy, said I ate them. She comes up to me and with fire from her nostrils asks me how and why I did it. To this question I gave her a simple answer,"Ma'am, I asked you if I could and you said it was fine." The teacher was dumbfounded. She just stared at me and asked me if I was real. I just said it was what I did and walked off. Another day, we had to make thin sections of the given plant stem and show it to her. Once again being before lunch, I ate the stem given and found to my delight, it tasted like beans. I went through 3 or 4 pieces before she became curious and asked me how come I wasn't getting it. I said that I had already finished my work and was eating the rest of the specimen. She once again stared at me with a half- angry, half-extremely amused expression. I just told her that I was hungry. She pleaded with me not to actually do this in the exam. Now, I've always had a problem following orders. So the exam didn't go too well for me. I showed up as usual to the lab and found that I had an apple for my infloresence question. The invigilator was very attentive so I couldn't actually eat the slice in fron to of her, but I couldn't resist! I took a bite and she must have heard the crunch. She pounced on me and yelled at me for eating the specimen, asking how the rest of the people would identify it. She warned me she would give me a zero iof I did it again. So I diligenbtly finished my work and waited until everyone was done. Before I left, I asked her,"Maám, now that the exam is over, can I eat the rest of the apple?". The look she gave me said it all so I quitely left the place.
Í am now an Arts student so no more labs. But I still wish I could go back to my old lab one more time. The fruits are calling me....   ;)

Çiao!!

The Quests of Life

I maintain to this day that a day will come when I will forsake studies, the world and all in it for my never ending quests. I am a man of science and I need reasons for everything that happens or anything that performs the deadly crime of even existing. But I admit a few of my quests have absolutely no end. For instance, my quest to try and find out why playing with shadows causes me to stay awake at night (they don't but I can't say what they actually do to me. It's very embarrassing). There was a time when I was 6 and  tried to find out why I could never build a Lego wall higher than 12 blocks without it falling. Being a smart little boy, I tried adding a better base but it never worked!! The obsession held me till about 3 months ago when I finally did it and built the wall using the very same bricks that I used when I was 6, albeit with the help of a little superglue. Another time, I tried to make a pop up card for my friend but kept failing at keeping it closed. So I spent 5 years working and working and working, until finally I perfected the art of pop-up cards. Unfortunately, no one appreciates them these days so I'm relegated to try and teach my 11 year old cousin how they are a really sweet way of saying things (of course, there's also the fact that they cost nothing but that problem still has 8 or 9 years to strike him!). My current quest is to find the perfect finger snap. Being a lonely child and having almost nothing to do for most of the day, I stumbled upon the ancient art of Finger Snapping and have dedicated my life to finding the substance that enables the perfect snap. For those who wish to know,  the perfect snap must be quick, must not cause a lot of effort to be spent and must set up the fingers for the next snap simultaneously within a matter of milliseconds. So far I've tried rice flour (too grainy and causes wastage of effort), dust (causes fingers to be smooth and reduces the sound) and a few drops of water(hmm....still working out the kinks but has potential). A few more years of effort and I will find it, hence making mankind's life more or less the same as it was before. But till then, I live in hope!

Ciao!!

     

The Joys of Gibberish

People say I'm very weird; and they are absolutely right. To me being weird is being different, unique and sometimes......very annoyingly so. Sure, I ruffle a few feathers on the way; sure, I make people believe I'm loose in the head. But all this fails to make any difference in my day-to-day dealings with the people around me. One of the few things that people don't really notice, however, is the way I tend not to curse.....or more specifically, curse in the usual swear words. A long time ago, a relative of mine (can't really remember which one, seeing as I have millions of them) told me I shouldn't curse and that it's a bad habit. Any normal person would have not cared and continued, a respectful person would have listened and tried not to. But then, I'm not the avearge person. So what do I do.......I decide to invent my own language just so that I can continue swearing!! This was about 8 years ago. Back then I loved it since it made me feel that I was the only one who could do it and during that time, I made a promise to myself that I would never forget it (Please don't even begin to try and fathom why or how this happened. If I can't explain it....You can't either!!!!). Thus began the origins of something that would make sure I would never be called normal ever again. In an age when people used terms like "Dang it" or "Fish", I went so far as to label both these swear words as "Heftyn" and "China". Now, I can't bear to even spell the common swear words anymore!! Plus, the words in my language keep changing every year or so, so I have a so called "dynamic vocabulary". I admit, it isn't actually insulting to say, "China you!" to anyone. They would most likely just start laughing and call you a nutter. But the good part would be that they would walk away, thus ending what could have become a very nasty fight. And when has making people smile ever been a bad thing? So I'll end the post here so that people can continue calling me weird and I can keep cursing them in my own special little language.

Çiao!!