Dancing – substitute for exercise?

Realize I talked about dancing a few days back. I just am back from a few wild minutes of dancing to Jaane Tu songs. And I am as good as a, mm… err, as a chocolate doughnut that lost its chocolate. In one word, tired.

This is not really a post. I just want expert opinion. Is dancing a good substitute for exercise? I mean there is a lot of movement and exertion and that’s what exercise is all about hah? There is jumping too. So does it qualify? Can I not worry about waking up at 6 and getting a yoga-mat (as soon as I buy one) if I dance for, like, say 30 minutes a day? Not just any dance. Dance with lots of jumping around. Help everybody, please let me know! It’s very urgently important. This is to help save the homo sapien cult not lose a very significantly prominent member to the Elephantidae!

Conversation with a chocolate.

The nice little chocolate no one took out of the Cadbury box stayed gloomy till the hands of Ms Cris had reached it.
“Oh dear Cris, please have me. No one ever wants to have me. Sniff, sniff, sob and sob”
“Sure no probs, come on take a leap to my hands”
The little chocolate, lets call it Chocky climbed happily and burst out singing.

“Today today is the day,
I am I am released.
And I owe it owe it to
Dear dear Ms Cris”

“Uh what is with the double-words?” Ms Cris asked
“That’s to make it poetic. That’s how we chocolates write poems you know”
“Ah. Your favorite hobby?”
“Yeah when we are not getting eaten, we write poems”
“Amazing”
“Oh dear Cris, you don’t know what this means. The only way a chocolate can have salvation is by reaching a human’s stomach”
“Hmm you should rephrase that to going through a human stomach. There is no guarantee you will remain there”

Chocky broke out singing again. “Today today is the day”
“Ok ok little guy, relax! We will take you in now, shall we? You ready?”
“Aww Cris is it time already?! Wow I feel like I am about to get married!”
“Sheesh! More of that and I will put you back in the box!”

Ms Cris took Chocky towards the mouth, but decided to sniff first.
“Oh wow you smell real good!”
“Oh Cris you are making me blush now!”
“Ok ok in you go. Lets take this conversation up from inside my stomach now”
Ms Cris opened her mouth and in went Chocky.

“Oh Cris you have such a beautiful tongue”
“Err thanks! Why don’t you go talk to your other fat chocolate friends down there?”
“Aww Cris it feels so good to melt here. You know how to treat a chocolate nice!”
“Err don’t you mind getting crunched? I kinda feel odd biting a friendly little fellow like you”
“Odd? Cris this is the first step of salvation. Its like when yogis meditate you know. We are in touch with peace”
“If you say so. Strange way your system works”
“Maybe one day you will be a chocolate to a bigger system and you will know what I mean!”
“What?! Getting chewed up?! No thanks, I prefer natural death!”
“Oh well I guess everybody is not that lucky. Alright Cris I am leaving your mouth now. Going to meet other friends you salvaged down there. You will bring more wont you? Help all of us in our cult?”
“Sure sure. Always glad to help, err, salvation. Nice talking to ya Chocky! Have fun!”

Ms Cris then eyed a big fat one in the box. She could hear loud screeches of “Choose me, please choose me”, coming from all corners of the box. Which one to choose, she wondered, hmm the fat one, she decided. But this story doesn’t end in a tragedy. For every one of those little fellows, fat and small are going to be treated fair and square by dear Ms Cris and they will all find salvation. They now sang in chorus

“Today today is the day,
I am I am released.
And I owe it owe it to
Dear dear Ms Cris”

And Ms Cris sang

“Today today is the day,
I turned fat and squat,
Thank thank you guys
For making me so so”

Living in death fear

Ok I know the title sounds way too melodramatic. But I think I experienced a really minute version of that yesterday. My mother and I were watching TV at 6:45 pm when the bomb scare hit all channels. Last 2 days when I was reading about the Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts, I wondered what would happen if this came to Kerala. And I got myself the reality bite when all channels were talking about the phone call to a Bangalore TV channel, from someone who claimed to be “Mujahideen” (Indian Mujahideen) announcing the next target to be Kerala and the bombs to go off at 7. Gulp!

Few days back I might not have paid a lot of attention to a cranky call. But having seen bombs exploding for 2 consecutive days, I couldn’t help but take the fear to my head. Ashamed now, seeing how most of the others I talked to went on with normal lives. I kept the fear to my self and Mother not wanting to be laughed at. I didn’t let Amma walk away from my side even to a room away when the clock kept ticking towards 7. Terrorism was always something which happened in far away places, something I worried about only on seeing the news and then forgot about later.

This was the first time it hit me what people who are hit by terrorist attacks every so often must be going through. Fearing everyday for their lives, for their dear and little ones, for what could happen the very next second. It is a horrible, horrible feeling. You feel something missing or something rocking hard and fast in your heart. I am not playing drama school here. I know the feeling now. And though I may sound carried off, it is real. I have a habit of taking things to heart, being way too imaginative I am more vulnerable in that regard. Where someone else just hears a story, I might have it all pictured and running live scenes in my head. So the bomb explosion became as real to me as it did in Ahmedabad. Hmm I should probably consult a psychiatrist!

I am not an awful coward as might be the impression I gave away being too blunt. It is just that the understanding I suddenly seemed to have attained was more than what I could handle. I was reduced to feeling I was better off not knowing things ahead. So ok if a bomb exploded and killed me, yeah that’s that and everything would be over, but when someone told me there is a bomb ready to explode any minute and live in fear of that, its not my area of expertise. I thought about all the police force, and the bomb squad people and even the media-persons who had to be in close touch with all this, who actually lived on top of what I call the death-stage. What did they feel like? Bold? Responsible? Or did they too contain a small amount of fear? I doubt that. When they took the path to their professions they knew what was coming, what was on that path. And they still chose it.

No one knew if it was even a real threat. Someone could have been having fun. “Ah 2 cities had its trouble, now we will go and scare the third one”. It was the whole state that feared however. People still seemed to mind their normal everyday business. I found myself losing the fear when the clock ticked way past 7. But those moments surrounding 7 pm, I was expecting to see yellow and orange flames any second. Crazy me!

Hmm I even toyed with the idea of writing one “last blog post”! How carried away can someone get? Well anyway I can’t admit I am back to complete normalcy and sewed the heart of Jhansi Lakshmi Bhai in place of mine. Cause the over-imaginative part of me has now started thinking all the hullabaloo was to drift attraction from the actual event which may happen on a day totally unexpected. Hmm it’s a never ending fear. And when I say my heart goes out to the people in Kashmir, Mumbai, and now Ahmedabad, it really does go out, no exaggerated content of emotions there.

Tagged: Mah Bucket List

Ok my second tag! And I owe it to Dhanya who keeps a really neat blog, something when you are done reading you could use to lull yourself to sleep cause it provides the audio requirements for your count-sheep-to-sleep activities. Thanks Dhanya 🙂

The tag. Creating bucket list. Totally new to me. The tag and the movie. I have to write down my wish list, with the things I want to do before my breathe says “Alright I am tired, I am going to stop coming out and going in now. Ta!”
I have made a wish list sometime back but that was not having a dead line in mind (dead line?! Ouch! That’s some pun!)

Anyway I will bring in 6 here, cause that’s my favorite number and cause if I brought the whole list I’d need 6 pages.

1. Live all by myself for a while: this has been in my mind ever since childhood. Alone in an apartment (its got to be an apartment-building, my imagination could sometimes be too monster-specific to live in a stand-alone house!). Where I have planned to leave things as they are, and not worry about waking up or cleaning up or any other ups! One room to sleep, where I hope to have a clean bed (which considering my habit of confusing bed for the universal bin could be a difficulty). One room to have a huge drawing board with a white paper all ready for action, where I will have a lot of sunlight coming in from an adjacent balcony and a huge glass window facing the sky (my apartment is going to be top floor, next to the moon :D). This room will also have plenty of novels lying all around the floor and one table and chair with lots of white paper and a pen to write. Another room where I could watch TV and dance. Ok that’s too many rooms. But then there won’t be a kitchen. So it’s alright.

2. Study/work abroad for an year or 2: I’d prefer student life more cause my intention in going abroad is seeing as much of the world as possible in one short life span. So possibility of that happening if I am tied up with work (hah me and work!) is not so promising. Well this wish could actually be rephrased to see as much of the world as possible. Cause I want to meet people and see places all over the world. Talk to them, know them, make friends. Or sometimes just stay away and watch the world run in front of me while I am just a silent spectator enjoying what I saw. Sounds sadistic! But I just meant the good stuff.

3. Author a book or more: ahh this is one huge big wish. One I really hope would happen in the near future. But something tells me hoping and wishing is not going to create chapters for me. Hmm I can’t decide on what to write. I personally prefer humor. But then I am not sure how much that sells. As a first time author I have got to establish myself as a they’d-read-anything-she-wrote writer. I am thinking thrillers and I am thinking detectives. I am thinking Percule Hoirot 😀

4. Adopt a 2 year old girl: another long time nourished wish. Don’t know the possibility or practicality of this happening, but while I am coming out clean, why not. But then if this happens I can’t let myself pop out soon. So the bucket-hitting will have to wait.

5. Stage dreams: Make one great speech to the right crowd (people who are familiar with the inactivity rates of my tongue on stages would appreciate its listing here). Attend and perform a ball-room dance once. Act in a movie once (yes yes don’t laugh). Play one neat song on my violin.

6. Sea/Travel/Crazy: Be a hitch hiker once without any aim or destination, except just hiking wherever I pleased to. Sail on a boat all alone once, and stop in the middle to stare at the sea, or maybe even fishing (I am letting the fish go back). Swim, surf once. And adding two crazy ones: stop in the middle of a street to stare at a statue open-mouthed completely non-conscious of the world around me (I have no idea what makes it wish-list worthy); second, wear a long white wedding gown like this one and get a picture taken of it and then sleep with it on a couch peacefully (I know. I am nuts).

Ah forgot. The second part. Passing baton, Dhanya send it to 9 others. So no clue of how many. Now since I have done 6 all along, I will choose 6.

1. Gov: He has been doing too many tech and too very rarely, he needs to take a break, both from tech and from the break!

2. Tedy: Newest reader of my blog, and brought back to blogging, again by [ahem] my blog, am sure could do wonders with this tag. But I am not sure which of his blogs this tag should go to, well thats his pick.

3. M.Rose: Actually she is the newest reader, I know you’d like this one dear 🙂

4. Kochuthresiamma: She is pretty regular with her blogging, so I hope she wont mind taking this up.

5. Robbie: He has been taking long breaks with his blog, the villain being hectic work. Time to push all that work away and do more important things, like taking up tags Robbie bro!

6. Nikhil Menon: Kid reader of my blog, not sure if he might have already done this.

Little girls in Kerala, victims of terrible fate

The thing I thought I will blog about today was when for an interview, Kavya Madhavan (Malayalam movie actor) said about the old times when young girls had only to worry about kidnappers who in the words of old Grandmothers “kannu kuthi pottikum (poke your eyes)”. And Kavya went on “Not like today, to do these bad things”. She was right. I too had my childhood around the same time. We only feared things like that which happened to Revathy in Kakothikaavile Appoopanthaadikal (Malayalam movie of 80s, where, as a child, she gets kidnapped by a beggar). Not that it was anything holy, but it sounds more human in these days.

So I was thinking why did things like this and this happen so often now and suddenly all over in Kerala. Surely people all over the place can’t suddenly turn evil. Yeah I realize there have been perverts all the time but it never occurred to them to target little girls. So what was the provocation now? And my answer was again coming back to the same old media hype.

Yes, I agree these things have to be brought to light and people made aware of, so they will take care of their little kids more intensely. But the bad part of letting people know is giving ideas to already twisted minds. They get it in their heads “Ahh so there are little girls younger than teenagers I never thought of before”.

So what I think should be done is give more attention to the punishment to these crimes more than the crime itself. So the idea-getters get into their head that its no game of tom and jerry playing with little kids. But this, Amma pointed out when I told her, was not happening a lot. It took years to bring a case to light, have the people arrested and put them into jail. And even then somehow these people get acquitted of the crime in the end. So publicizing the results may infact lead to encouraging others more.

Now it has come to this. I can’t find enough arguments to tell Amma it’s alright to let me go out alone and worse part is I don’t feel like arguing. But then recently when in a case involving the rape and death of a little girl, the accused had come clean of charges, the father, Sankaranarayanan, had gone ahead and killed him. When convicted he got many letters of appreciation from many young women all over the state. He was released a couple of years later. That he did that much for the little girl makes me believe in hope. I realize that’s not how the system works, that revenge is not the solution and murder not an answer. But where law lets the guy who killed his little girl, walk out a free man, he reacted; he killed. And in my eyes, he is a hero. He gives me hope.

Why can’t old people have fun?

Where I come from, this line is heard quite a lot. “Vayassayal mindathe oruconilu naamam japichirkyan paadille?” – Translates to Cant you sit in one corner and recite your prayers when you are old. I never paid attention to these lines because they were mostly in movies or novels and it somehow never reached out to me. But now that I have started seeing it in real life, it’s a lot different.

I believe life is just one and years not too many. Things that never fail to irk me are another person trying to decide the way you live. So what if an old person wants to travel a lot? What if he/she wants to talk loud and laugh? What if they want to sing/dance or do whatever they want? Its their life and they do it. Just because they parented and grandparented to bring future generation to the world doesn’t mean they have to submit theirs to anything/anyone.

True, you are not 10 when you are 70. You can’t afford to do many things you did all those decades ago. But unable to do is different from disallowed to. Heck if you could do things as you pleased when you were 25, you might as well do in 75! If you want to climb Mount Everest do it! Wasn’t it a couple of months back the oldest climber to Mt Everest set himself that record? And a lady of 90-something became the oldest blogger some time ago. Chances are this is now beaten by 100-something year olds.

Life is not an extended piece of elastic you could stretch to infinity. Sooner or later each and every one would reach there – the end. So leave old people alone. They have lived so far, so they know how to take it on. I consider life precious, the simple fact that the biological process making it happen is so complicated. You are lucky you got through all that and finally landed here. You could do so many things in so little time, best of all being your ability to think and do. Each second upto the very last breathe was important. No one should be allowed to tamper with that.

Down to childhood… another episode of silvery days

Two instances took me down the memory path to childhood today. One, a fellow blogger went nostalgic in her post and another, a phone call with an old classmate from 4th grade when we talked about the totally nonsensical activities very importantly undertook, all those years ago.

My friend, I will call him MR, talked about his crushes from age 7. At age 9, when he was in my class, there was this girl who was the class topper. Another of MR’s “recipient of ardent admiration”. MR gladly stopped by-hearting poems knowing the teacher would ask him to sit with the girl and learn from her. MR told me another story of his 6 year old self always feeling comfortable when he had company in receiving corporal punishment. “The only relief when that happens was in knowing my friend was next”.

I wasn’t short of my own 6 year old tales. In 1st grade, I once ran out of my school bus on my birthday, to the middle of the road (potentially on the strong belief all roads lead to home). I can’t remember now what exactly my purpose in doing that was. But I remember the old driver and me having a marathon race in the middle of the road and when finally caught, me struggling to fight him down and run again. For I knew, whatever happened, nothing should break that run. The driver complained to Amma later that day, that I nearly gave him a heart attack. Hmph! Can’t a girl have some morning exercise anymore? Oh wait… I remember this conversation with him.

Me (actively involved in brawling): I want to go to the bathroom
Driver (actively involved in sighing): you can go when we reach school, just wait
Me: Waaaaaaaa! I don’t like the ones in school… they are baaaad waaaaaaaaaaaa
Driver: They are good
Me totally unconvinced (Repeated line every 5 minutes in the story): Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

I am guessing the race was a follow up on this conversation.

I think if there was an honest horoscope somewhere in this world, my life might be marked pretty dangerously wavering between life and death at the age of 6. Cause on another instance, I chose to sleep right through an episode when the mosquito coil fell on the sheet and all of the sheet started burning around me. Amma came to the rescue just in the nick of time and so yours truly is alive to tell the story. Whew just imagine what the world would have lost!

In 4th grade I was constantly placed between boys, the rule that governed 4th grade administration policies being gender-mix substantially altering noise pollution. So I was between MR and a guy called P (Forgot P’s last name). P was a guy wearing the kind of specs popular back then, one that had a chain hanging down on either side. An ally of mine Ms. BAJ reported later that P was showing signs of extraordinary admiration towards me, her opening lines being “P is in love with you”. The following incident was then chronicled in all graveness.

When MR took my eraser in my absence, P snatched it from him, held it close to him and said “This is my C’s eraser” (C being me). BAJ and I recognized a potential danger of undue affection lurking in the premises. I, with great apprehension decided to present the matter to senior authority, namely Mother. Mother after spending what seemed like an eternity in endless mirth told me I had a few years more to worry about romance, and for the moment just go enjoy my childhood. Hmm. I couldn’t say I was too happy with her response. I mean we were talking erasers here! Surely, that meant something serious!

There are too many more from those under-10 times, I might write a book on them. I will finish with a famous line I said, when a whole gang of people, of all ages, was watching some movie on TV in our living room. On one occasion when the hero and heroine were together I announced happily

“When a man hugs a woman, there will come a baby”

Manmohan’s speech against Advani, amazing

I am not political. Infact am the exact opposite and know too very little to stand on anyone’s side. But happened to see the speech scroll on NDTV today morning that Manmohan lashed out against Advani. And I couldnt help applauding.
Some parts of it were

“Before levelling charges of incompetence on others, Advani should do some introspection. Can our nation forgive a Home Minister who slept when the terrorists were knocking at the doors of our Parliament?”

“single handedly provided the inspiration for the destruction of the Babri Masjid with all the terrible consequences that followed”.

“at least three attempts to topple the government to fulfill his ambitions, the Prime Minister said, “but on each occasion his (Advani’s) astrologers have misled him”

“At his ripe old age, I do not expect Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come” — my personal favorite

“Can a nation approve the conduct of a Home Minister who was sleeping while Gujarat was burning leading to the loss of thousands of innocent lives?”

And against Left – “Our friends in the Left Front should ponder over the company they are forced to keep because of miscalculations by their general secretary.”

An old trip remembered

In 12th, we were taken to Padmanabhapuram palace from school. My friend GL had blogged about it. She was apparently annoyed by all the noise the girls were making. I don’t think I noticed all that. My primary activity on reaching any old or ancient buildings was to imagine totally insignificant everyday-moments of people all those ages ago.

At one point I’d imagine a girl wearing yellow blouse and dressed like women did in old Ravi Varma paintings , with her hair all lose and a long bindhi, looking out of a window, staring at something I couldn’t see. It was like a movie screen which limited my view of the place, so I could only see the girl and not what she saw. Then there’d be someone who must have walked through these very paths I was taking now, with no purpose at all. I have no idea what kind of excitement I get out of it, but somehow I am always enchanted to hear or think of normal everyday activities of people. So the story of just another day in someone’s life might interest me more than a heroic adventure.

(pic removed temporarily: will be uploaded soon)

For this trip, apparently I missed to join the rest of the group, lost in thought at some point I imagined was a secret hiding place for kids long back. My Physics teacher, who found me there made no secret of her alarm and frustration. Subjected to a non-stop list of words that flew out of an angry teacher’s angry mouth, I was reduced to a frowning face and moody interiors. I decided to avenge by not taking part in the “good” things for the rest of the trip. So I visibly stood away from a waterfall we went to later while the rest of the girls shouted and got wet. I made sure my teacher saw this too. But she didn’t seem to worry about my non-participation while she herself was having a good time in the water.

Dang, I loved playing in water. And now that I have refused all my friends who tried to change my mind, I was left with no option but stay dry and frown more. But finally, a blessed soul decided I was being too difficult and she a little stronger than me, lifted me up and threw me into water. Laughing and thanking her heartily inside my mind, I frowned and expressed indefinite anger outside. And maybe no one noticed I wasn’t going back from the water despite all the vexation I was trying hard to display.

Cinema goers

I went to see a movie today. As it is, I was finding it quite an effort to concentrate on lip movements (as obviously it was a waste of time to make out the actual words when actors chose to breathe louder than they talked). Here comes the deal that brought me to blog today (for of course it takes heavily major deals to bring me to blog!).