The Wimbledon final that made a poet of me (with some help from Twitter's 140-character limit)
I'm reminded of the first tennis match I ever saw - Lendl beat Becker and made me cry.
If I was 4 today, I'd have bawled my tear ducts dry.
Sunday, 5 July, 2009
Monday, 29 June, 2009
Such is life
In a shelf not far from where I sit is a notebook. Its cover says Sketch Book 100 Pages.
In another shelf, not far from the shelf in which the notebook lies, is a box. The box contains pencils, six in total, of different graphite-to-clay ratios. A sharpener – Twin Sharpener, the box says – came free with the box of pencils. The Twin Sharpener is actually two sharpeners, of different diameters, in one.
I haven’t put the notebook, the pencils, or the sharpener to use, yet.
Someday I will.
Someday, I shall pick up a pencil, most likely the HB, and with its sharp end make a pattern, a rudimentary curve, upon a page of the Sketch Book. That curve may cause other curves to materialise, or it may not.
It may instead cause me to look around frantically for an eraser. An eraser may exist in this house, maybe in a shelf not far from the shelf the Sketch Book lies in. Or it may not.
On the day the HB pencil and the Sketch Book come in contact with each other, no eraser will be found. What will happen is this – in vain I will search for an eraser, and upon finding none attempt on a new page to create a satisfactory rudimentary curve, fail, and put the Sketch Book back in its shelf, after tearing out the pages with the unsatisfactory rudimentary curves on them, crumpling them, and tossing them in the bin.
The sharpener and the five other pencils in the box will have served no purpose.
All night the visions of a completed sketch will dance in my brain, teasing, tormenting.
The next day, I will find an eraser, in a shelf not far from the Sketch Book and the box of pencils, a shelf whose every inch I would have probed the previous day. Faber Castell, it will say, or maybe Natraj. Or it may say nothing, and look and smell like a slice of cartoon lemon instead.
By then, the visions that had swirled on the page the previous day, orbiting the unsatisfactory rudimentary curve, will have departed the retina of my mind’s eye, forever, or till the next time the eraser disappears.
In another shelf, not far from the shelf in which the notebook lies, is a box. The box contains pencils, six in total, of different graphite-to-clay ratios. A sharpener – Twin Sharpener, the box says – came free with the box of pencils. The Twin Sharpener is actually two sharpeners, of different diameters, in one.
I haven’t put the notebook, the pencils, or the sharpener to use, yet.
Someday I will.
Someday, I shall pick up a pencil, most likely the HB, and with its sharp end make a pattern, a rudimentary curve, upon a page of the Sketch Book. That curve may cause other curves to materialise, or it may not.
It may instead cause me to look around frantically for an eraser. An eraser may exist in this house, maybe in a shelf not far from the shelf the Sketch Book lies in. Or it may not.
On the day the HB pencil and the Sketch Book come in contact with each other, no eraser will be found. What will happen is this – in vain I will search for an eraser, and upon finding none attempt on a new page to create a satisfactory rudimentary curve, fail, and put the Sketch Book back in its shelf, after tearing out the pages with the unsatisfactory rudimentary curves on them, crumpling them, and tossing them in the bin.
The sharpener and the five other pencils in the box will have served no purpose.
All night the visions of a completed sketch will dance in my brain, teasing, tormenting.
The next day, I will find an eraser, in a shelf not far from the Sketch Book and the box of pencils, a shelf whose every inch I would have probed the previous day. Faber Castell, it will say, or maybe Natraj. Or it may say nothing, and look and smell like a slice of cartoon lemon instead.
By then, the visions that had swirled on the page the previous day, orbiting the unsatisfactory rudimentary curve, will have departed the retina of my mind’s eye, forever, or till the next time the eraser disappears.
Thursday, 4 June, 2009
Rain
"Join Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad" read the sign on the wall. I was in a bus; the bus was in Kodambakkam; we had just crossed Meenakshi College. Thankfully for the impressionable youth of the city, the chaps who had scrawled this on the wall had overlooked the fact that this wall wasn't perhaps the most ideal wall for the purpose. For the wall - only about two feet high - bounded a transformer with DANGER painted in red across the grey of its steel shell. A pat on the back for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board for doing its bit in the fight against far-right political outfits and their youth wings.
This was among the various sensory stimuli I was treated to on my bus journey from Vadapalani bus stand to my office - a distance of about eight kilometers that lasted just over two hours on this day in history. Before that, the auto journey that took me three kilometers from my place to Vadapalani consumed 45 minutes.
The trip lasted as long as it did because Arcot Road was the only navigable stretch of arterial road in the western part of the city, and buses and other vehicles that usually don't use this road were diverted into it. Other roads to its north and south were knee-deep in water from four days of rain that came in the wake of Cyclone Nisha's retreat - or advance, I'm not sure which, while the water on Arcot Road was merely shin-deep.
Strangely, after crossing the Kodambakkam bridge, all the other vehicles that had clogged up road-space alongside the bus I was on for an hour and a half seemed to disappear, and the horizon became visible again, after which the bus began to discover velocities it had given up as impossible - speeds of 15 and 20 kilometers an hour. Each time we turned left or right, I was thrown back and forth, centrifugal - or is it centripetal? - force causing vertical grab-poles* to jam into my right elbow, while simultaneously elongating my left arm clawing desperately at the parallel bars* on the bus's ceiling, threatening two hyper-extended arms at the end of the ride.
*How I wish I knew the technical terms for MTC bus design elements.
At the beginning of my journey, it had looked like it was going to be a typical post-rain Chennai afternoon. Bright sunshine, an expanse of blue sky punctuated by the odd, low-slung grey-tending-to-white cloud, and humongous humidity. Despite perspiring slightly, I was feeling good, for I thought one day of sunshine would bring a semblance of normalcy to the roads, and allow me to bring my bike back from the office in the evening, with only my rolled-up jeans suggesting anything in the realm of the abnormal.
As I got off the bus, however, the blue had faded to a deepish grey, the light was low, and a drizzle had begun. Oh well.
If it will do any good, I introduce into this text these wonderful verses:
This was among the various sensory stimuli I was treated to on my bus journey from Vadapalani bus stand to my office - a distance of about eight kilometers that lasted just over two hours on this day in history. Before that, the auto journey that took me three kilometers from my place to Vadapalani consumed 45 minutes.
The trip lasted as long as it did because Arcot Road was the only navigable stretch of arterial road in the western part of the city, and buses and other vehicles that usually don't use this road were diverted into it. Other roads to its north and south were knee-deep in water from four days of rain that came in the wake of Cyclone Nisha's retreat - or advance, I'm not sure which, while the water on Arcot Road was merely shin-deep.
Strangely, after crossing the Kodambakkam bridge, all the other vehicles that had clogged up road-space alongside the bus I was on for an hour and a half seemed to disappear, and the horizon became visible again, after which the bus began to discover velocities it had given up as impossible - speeds of 15 and 20 kilometers an hour. Each time we turned left or right, I was thrown back and forth, centrifugal - or is it centripetal? - force causing vertical grab-poles* to jam into my right elbow, while simultaneously elongating my left arm clawing desperately at the parallel bars* on the bus's ceiling, threatening two hyper-extended arms at the end of the ride.
*How I wish I knew the technical terms for MTC bus design elements.
At the beginning of my journey, it had looked like it was going to be a typical post-rain Chennai afternoon. Bright sunshine, an expanse of blue sky punctuated by the odd, low-slung grey-tending-to-white cloud, and humongous humidity. Despite perspiring slightly, I was feeling good, for I thought one day of sunshine would bring a semblance of normalcy to the roads, and allow me to bring my bike back from the office in the evening, with only my rolled-up jeans suggesting anything in the realm of the abnormal.
As I got off the bus, however, the blue had faded to a deepish grey, the light was low, and a drizzle had begun. Oh well.
If it will do any good, I introduce into this text these wonderful verses:
Rain rain go away, Come again another day. Little Johnny wants to play; Rain, rain, go to Spain, Never show your face again!
I was made to understand that it was Little Tommy who wanted to play, but in Wikipedia I trust. And the Spain bit I had no clue about whatsoever.
According to the people at Wikipedia,
According to the people at Wikipedia,
"Rain Rain Go Away" is a short children's rhyme. As with many nursery rhymes the origin and meaning of this rhyme is open for debate, but one theory dates it back to the reign of Elizabeth I of England. The invasion of the Spanish Armada was, in part, defeated by the stormy weather (which scattered the Armada fleet). A song, based on the rhyme, was co-written by Gloria Shayne Baker and Noel Regney, who were married at the time. Baker wrote the lyrics to the song, while Regney composed the music. Rain Rain Go Away was initially recorded by Bobby Vinton.
Bet you didn't know that.
Another thing you didn't know: The bus I travelled on today was an M17, but an M17 that in the past had been a 12B. How do I know? Well, Sathish, Prabha, Mukilan, Pradeep, Kumaravel, Vinoth and Rajan told me. Their names were scrawled below the words '12B guys' behind the last row of seats on the bus. On a journey of such temporal length, you tend to memorise, in order, lists of names that are only seven long.
But wait. Does this automatically suggest that it was a 12B in which the 12B guys were travelling at the time they declared their allegiance to the 12B? Were they perhaps recording for posterity that the 12B guys were, due to unavoidable circumstances, travelling in an M17?
By the way, the M17 isn't the same as the 17M. A couple of dudes who got on, and were told by the conductor to get off at the next stop and get onto a 17M, seemed to have made that assumption.
I wrote this late last November, sitting at the office after my epic bus journey.
Another thing you didn't know: The bus I travelled on today was an M17, but an M17 that in the past had been a 12B. How do I know? Well, Sathish, Prabha, Mukilan, Pradeep, Kumaravel, Vinoth and Rajan told me. Their names were scrawled below the words '12B guys' behind the last row of seats on the bus. On a journey of such temporal length, you tend to memorise, in order, lists of names that are only seven long.
But wait. Does this automatically suggest that it was a 12B in which the 12B guys were travelling at the time they declared their allegiance to the 12B? Were they perhaps recording for posterity that the 12B guys were, due to unavoidable circumstances, travelling in an M17?
By the way, the M17 isn't the same as the 17M. A couple of dudes who got on, and were told by the conductor to get off at the next stop and get onto a 17M, seemed to have made that assumption.
I wrote this late last November, sitting at the office after my epic bus journey.
Thursday, 21 May, 2009
Tomatoes
Tomatoes. I love them.But this hasn't always been the case.
Take for example this nightmare I had when I was a kid. It wasn't a nightmare really, but a picture that played endlessly, over and over in my subconscious - or is it unconscious? - mind. It involved a chef wearing spotless chef's whites, a spotless chef's hat and an impossibly wide grin (imagine a slightly eerie version of Martin Yan, the host of the now sadly absent-from-Indian-TV cooking show Yan Can Cook), holding in one hand a humungous, all-purpose Chinese Chef's Knife...
...which moved slowly to and fro, slicing thinly an especially cheerful-looking specimen of the tomato family that oozed juice as the knife cut through its membranes, tissues and whatever else tomatoes contain. This description, I can sense, communicates none of the nameless dread that enveloped me then as I watched, unable to tear my eyes away, unaware that it was all just a dream.At the time, I hated tomatoes. It wasn't the flavour - I didn't mind them pureed to within a micron of their lives - but the texture that so repulsed me and unfailingly brought forth the gag reflex as I accidentally ingested a piece that had somehow failed to lose all its structural integrity.
Suddenly, I don't know when exactly, I began to like tomatoes, in any form - raw, sliced thinly, thickly, diced into cubes tiny or chunky, carved expertly but unnecessarily into flower-like shapes. Even partially cooked, not entirely pureed tomatoes.
What I draw the line at is ketchup. Not ketchup per se - it's okay to dip the sharp end of a samosa or a point on the outer curve of a vada in a bit of ketchup - but the dousing, courtesy a red squeezy bottle, of such quantities of the ooze as to render the taste of whatever's being doused entirely negligible. Once, I even saw a friend of mine - heck, I sat next to him as he did the dastardly deed - draw squiggly patterns on a pizza with ketchup. How, I ask, did civilisation come to this?
Wednesday, 11 March, 2009
Aglets
Aglets. I bet you don't know what aglets are. I didn't either, until I was told what they are, by the same dude who told me what the philtrum is, on the same day. The aglet, he informed me, is the little thingy on the end of your shoelaces.
He didn't use those exact words, but if he did, he'd have been wrong. For my shoelaces that day would surely have long lost their aglets, through wear, tear, and my refusal to tie them properly.
Today, however, I wear shoes with laces that loudly assert their agletedness whenever they come undone, with a faint, but not so faint as to be un-discernible, tinkle. For my aglets are made of brass, or some similarly metallic substance. And they've remained steadfastly fastened to the end of my laces, partly because they're bonded on by some combination of superglue and opposite-charge attraction - in comparison to the faint-hearted transparent plastic aglets rolled around the laces of my school shoes - but mostly because I now redo my laces whenever they come undone.
That's partly because they look kinda nifty and I don't want to lose them, but mostly because of the tinkle.
The aglet that tinkles most lasts longest. My first contribution to the universe-sized fund of meaningless sayings. If this ever becomes popular, and gets recited in a hundred and seventy two countries in twenty thousand languages, I imagine that whoever reads about the dude who coined it - me - would imagine I had a beard.
(This is a response to Rajesh Madhini's response to my previous post)
He didn't use those exact words, but if he did, he'd have been wrong. For my shoelaces that day would surely have long lost their aglets, through wear, tear, and my refusal to tie them properly.
Today, however, I wear shoes with laces that loudly assert their agletedness whenever they come undone, with a faint, but not so faint as to be un-discernible, tinkle. For my aglets are made of brass, or some similarly metallic substance. And they've remained steadfastly fastened to the end of my laces, partly because they're bonded on by some combination of superglue and opposite-charge attraction - in comparison to the faint-hearted transparent plastic aglets rolled around the laces of my school shoes - but mostly because I now redo my laces whenever they come undone.
That's partly because they look kinda nifty and I don't want to lose them, but mostly because of the tinkle.
The aglet that tinkles most lasts longest. My first contribution to the universe-sized fund of meaningless sayings. If this ever becomes popular, and gets recited in a hundred and seventy two countries in twenty thousand languages, I imagine that whoever reads about the dude who coined it - me - would imagine I had a beard.
(This is a response to Rajesh Madhini's response to my previous post)
Thursday, 5 March, 2009
More handkerchief nostalgia
When I was a kid, my laces were always undone. I was always told that I'd trip on them and break my fall by breaking my nose. It never happened.
I did once trip and fall and land on my jaw, however. One of my teeth broke.
But that wasn't due to a shoelace coming undone. What happened was, I was tripped from behind by a chap when he and I and a bunch of other chaps were playing football, on a basketball court, with a tennis ball.
Ah, the memories. Tasting blood, getting up, shaking off the dust from my person, reassuring my friends that I was okay to carry on, scoring a goal about five minutes later - a low shot driven into the bottom corner from the edge of the basketball D - going back home in a friend's car, feeling a mild sense of something not quite feeling right, putting food on my plate - lemon rice - putting a spoonful in my mouth, looking down to find a tooth on the plate.
Even now, I wear a false tooth. It's one of those false teeth which have a large bit that fits snugly into your upper-palate, a false tooth that you can pull out of your mouth when you brush your teeth, and apply the brush to separately. It was supposed to be temporarily in place until I went back to the dentist to get a permanent one fixed - permanently - in my mouth. I never got round to doing that. My dad - on one of his visits to the dentist - asked him if it's okay, and the dentist said it's okay.
Between losing my tooth and getting a false tooth, there was a gap of one day. And it was a weekday. And I went to school and freaked everyone out for a while before feeling embarrassed and speaking with my hanky clutched to my face.
There was another day in school when my hanky spent a lot of time clutched to my face, in a stationary, non-wiping-nose manner. That day, a zit appeared in probably the worst place for a zit to appear, right below the nose, on what's known as - and a friend of mine revealed this to me during one of those trivia-swapping sessions - the philtrum.
Trust me, you do not want a zit in your philtrum.
I did once trip and fall and land on my jaw, however. One of my teeth broke.
But that wasn't due to a shoelace coming undone. What happened was, I was tripped from behind by a chap when he and I and a bunch of other chaps were playing football, on a basketball court, with a tennis ball.
Ah, the memories. Tasting blood, getting up, shaking off the dust from my person, reassuring my friends that I was okay to carry on, scoring a goal about five minutes later - a low shot driven into the bottom corner from the edge of the basketball D - going back home in a friend's car, feeling a mild sense of something not quite feeling right, putting food on my plate - lemon rice - putting a spoonful in my mouth, looking down to find a tooth on the plate.
Even now, I wear a false tooth. It's one of those false teeth which have a large bit that fits snugly into your upper-palate, a false tooth that you can pull out of your mouth when you brush your teeth, and apply the brush to separately. It was supposed to be temporarily in place until I went back to the dentist to get a permanent one fixed - permanently - in my mouth. I never got round to doing that. My dad - on one of his visits to the dentist - asked him if it's okay, and the dentist said it's okay.
Between losing my tooth and getting a false tooth, there was a gap of one day. And it was a weekday. And I went to school and freaked everyone out for a while before feeling embarrassed and speaking with my hanky clutched to my face.
There was another day in school when my hanky spent a lot of time clutched to my face, in a stationary, non-wiping-nose manner. That day, a zit appeared in probably the worst place for a zit to appear, right below the nose, on what's known as - and a friend of mine revealed this to me during one of those trivia-swapping sessions - the philtrum.
Trust me, you do not want a zit in your philtrum.
Wednesday, 11 February, 2009
Boom boom boomer
How I wish I shot that in autofocus mode, or at least had the ability to adjust the manual focus ring properly.
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