The bike curse

I strongly suspect some big shot enemy of mine has cast an evil curse on me. The curse works this way – any time I ride to Sree Padmanabha theatre, my bike would run out of charge. That’s right – charge, not petrol. I maybe repeating this countless times, but I enjoy saying it – I am the proud owner of an electric two-wheeler, thank you very much. Explanations done, we go back to the curse.

Instance 1 had the little machine dying a wee bit before the destination – viz home. That was alright. Saved without much embarrassment, barring a few sneering nincompoops. But instance 2 was harsher when dear Kweeki (she moves, she has her mood swings – she has a life and hence a name!) ran out of charge somewhere near Bakery Junction. Exactly at one of the busiest bus stops. Scheming Cris parks it near the bus stop and pretends to wait for someone. A hitchhiker who was showing upside-down thumbs all evening mistakes it as a welcome sign. Yea right, a chargeless bike and two bozos on top of it. Reminds you of a camel, in an endless desert, that refuses to budge. Schemer loudly ignores him – for some reason she seems to think, stifling a yawn and stretching hands wide would send him a message. That I didn’t stop here, cause I ran out of charge. I am just taking a yawn-break, don’t you see? That’s what bikers do all the time. They park their bikes and yawn. Helmets were invented to hide yawns.

Now Kweeki has a special charm. Keep her off for a few minutes and magically she gains a teeny bit of charge. So I ride a bit forward and to my horror find myself chargeless again in the middle of a protest strike. Dozens of young men were marching, singing slogans against the ruling party for some reason. Anger gives in to wonder for a minute as they stare at this woman who suddenly gets out of her bike and starts to drag it, forming the crust of their protest walk. I bet they would have loved to sit back and laugh but deciding that the gravity of the moment would be lost, they moved on leaving Dragger behind. To top it all, it was a bloody uphill! I might as well join the league of Malayalam heroes that carried heroines double their weight on their shoulders every time they sang. Kweeki was way over double of me! She might act a little human and consider pulling me up for a change, for all I have done for her!

Next time I take a trip to Sree Padmanabha, I am taking the bus! Well I might take Kweeki along too. Wonder if she’ll need a ticket – she’s still a baby. Hardly two years, you know.

Growing down

I should seriously consider growing down. Was reading one of my teenage diaries and I spoke with such maturity. Wrote about the importance of everyday-happiness in such elaborate terms. I even created a day called ‘Nothing Happens This Day’ so that I’d have a reason to celebrate everyday even if it was not special any other way. Well my idea of celebrating it was jumping 6 times on the bed first thing in the morning singing “Nothing happened this day… last year” in the tune of Happy Birthday but I am sure there still prevailed strong presence of maturity under all that scheming.

Of course such maturity may well have been confined to speeches. I remember repeatedly telling my friend ‘Girls attain mental maturity at 18, boys much much later’ – echoing someone else’s comment, but believing it wholeheartedly. My friend would tease me: “So, is it like a button that goes ‘on’ the day you turn 18?”

I did practice some of my theories. There was this time when I declared to my friends that college was only one and a half years more, and we need to record some crazy moments to look back later. I made them hop on the cement tiles outside the classroom at lunch time and walk in a weird fashion which they obliged to half-heartedly. What is with people and normalcy? Ye know what’s the gravest problem of society today – lack of spontaneity. Think of something, do it then and there. If you feel like writing a letter and personally delivering it to a friend, go ahead and drop it at the neighbor’s gate – under three blocks of bricks for your friend to find. Not laugh it off as a crazy thought! I think the do-it-now idea is completely underrated.

Coming to think of it, I haven’t had much use of maturity. Or maybe I have never understood the word clearly. But what I believed I owned in 18, I didn’t have reason to keep. Maybe it is good then I am not growing down. What if I find it again?

Stay two feet tall

It’s such a misery that people need to grow up. Last week I was reading of Adrian Mole, the spotty teen who wrote a secret diary. This week he is 32 years old, dad of two blighters and well… he is still carrying a diary. At least something about him is consistent. I should probably mention that, I read two different books of the same series. Missed a few in between and hence the quick growth of my hero. Strategically speaking (that’s not the right word, I just liked using it) years are not all that different from weeks. I mean I know it took me years to grow up but looks to me like little short weeks that saw my limbs stretch and my innocence fade into crooked phases of life.

One of the reasons I hate going to the beach is also one of the reasons why I love it. Kids. Little blighters rolling their whole two-feet selves over and over without a care in the world. And do all the grownup blokes around give a hoot? No. Imagine I take it into my head to follow these young Tarzans and cover myself in the sands of dune. Do they awwww me and think she-is-so-cute? I bet they’d wiggle out their silly mobile phones and snap away like crazy to send it to the local daily for its “weird photo contest”. Sure it is alright to say ignore the nosey snoopers. But counting a minimum 10 curious spectators, flashing their 100 watt sneers and 16 mega pixel cameras, a crocodile would hide its skin ten feet under!

So my advice to all the little blighters of this world: stay two-feet tall forever. And when you see new birthdays bringing new years to your life, don’t be fooled by the presents and promises – just chase it away back to time. Blow it away, sneeze it away, arm yourself with water guns, just do whatever it takes to make it go. Totally worth your while.

Cris Cracks 8

I thought she’s dead but Miss CC stays alive! She calls a columnist Miss D today to remind her about the column. D returns the call.

D: Hi CC

CC: Hi CC, this is D here.

Six totally-unimportant random updates

– Day 6 without phone. Loving it, loving it… but I could very well be fighting a losing battle. Sigh, let’s face it. The world needs my voice floating across its multimillion mobile towers.

– Suspect I had a minor attack of dyslexia in my childhood. Had the habit of getting the words jumbled up – ‘akusam’ for ‘asukam’, ‘sadara’ for ‘sarada’ and ‘akosan’ for ‘asokan’ being some of the most repeated bits in family jokes.

– When Cris closes a door, she opens a window. Facebook is on now.

– Just a kg short of the big 5-O! Sigh, the blissful schooldays of underweight!

– Very upset that the blue eyed European on the streets not only failed to notice me, but chose the dirty street corners in the city to me for his camera! How rude!

– Seriously think that there should be a job-at-first-sight provision which’d let you chuck the tests and interviews and take you straight to the job. Especially in Canada and London.

What a bordery world!

March, I have decided is a writers’ month. I am not quite good with the seasons but I realize spring is not around the corner. And summer’s rather a whiny time. But years ago March brought such a lot of happiness into my young mind. Cause even though I didn’t know my seasons, I knew a vacation most definitely tagged along with the word summer. Sigh two months of non-stop fun, of late mornings and later nights, of cricket and caroms… and well in the end, of hoping it would be June again so I wont be bored anymore!

I realize I have wasted every two-month summer vacation – that’s 24 months in my 12 years of school education! My dream about seeing the world could have been realized in those carefree burdenless days! Well there may be a bit of a practical difficulty what with my piggybank running a little short of the airplane fare and the myth that a child doesn’t know her way around the world. I wish the government installed free child packages for kid explorers. It would be such a good use of the tax money. And when they are grown up, they can decide where to go work at, now they have seen a bit of the world. I think it is a really smart solution to a lot of the global unemployment problems and youth indecisiveness. And coming to the subject of ‘global’ I still propose a ban of passports and visas and, going further, borders. I am sure thousands of years ago some innocent primitive kids drew these lines with little twigs when they played running-and-catching. Some idiot grownup saw it and called it border. And that’s how countries were created. Totally misguided idea if you ask me. I should have been a historian. The world could have progressed so much in the educational front, correcting their past mistakes.

I wonder what all this has got to do with March being a writers’ month. Another human shortcoming – lack of focus. I say that’s again the fault of the borders. I have not yet figured out how, but I am sure it plays a role in every one of mankind’s mischiefs. Actually vices would have been a better word there, but I liked the two m-words sticking together. See, there I go again. I have lived in the world of borders too long.