My Chennai

I came across a link online, something that was about a 100 Things to Do in Chennai, of the hundred things one can do to stake their claim as a true Chennaivaasi I had only done a measly 15, half of which I would never had done had there not been the corporate culture of "Team Outing". I had never considered myself to be a part of this city, I had scoffed at those images that went online, something that went "Chennai is a city, Madras is an emotion". I found it to be a statement too shallow to my liking.

I was quite proud of my unfamiliarity with Chennai, as I felt it asserted my image of being a social outcast. When I told my friend that I had not even crossed twenty things one could do in Chennai, she chided me saying that I wasn't a true Son of the City, I rather found it to be a compliment.

While people who lived in Chennai or had migrated to from a different place, swear by the sights and sounds that she had to offer, I only cringed every time I had a reason to get out of my home. I would fret and fume whenever I boarded the buses and trains ranting to myself about the population and traffic, bemused at how people find the city to be liveable what with the extorting policemen and hassling autodrivers. Chennai is not a perfect city, why should it be?

Maybe I was irate because I lived two hours away from the city in a once quaint little town that now is slowly being inhabited owing to rising real estate value or maybe because the city is so overpopulated that the masses are looking for new places to occupy, and they've decided to occupy my once quaint little town. That's what they do, occupy, not live.

I had spent a good part of my two decades in this little town, I grew along with my friends in a neighborhood where everybody knew everybody, where I could get a store credit just because my grandmother used to share the town gossip with the local annachi.  Now, when I go for a walk in the evenings I feel like I have entered a different place. My neighborhood has changed, my little town is inhabited by strangers, those who had been here for decades have either been buried to the ground or have moved to a different place. It's hard to find a familiar face that I used to see as a child. My friends have gone away, my childhood crush lives here no more. The only place I could connect with, my little town, has transformed. From a ghost town it has now changed into a place that's bursting off the seams. Heck, even my playground now has apartments being built on it.

People associate their love for their city with the places nestled within it, I never could find any place in Chennai that I could connect with emotionally, not its beaches, not its joints, neither its temples nor its malls. I may not reminisce about Chennai thinking of the times I'd spent in the city, I have no emotional investment in any of the monoliths it houses. Even when Landmark in Nungambakkam was being closed down, I mumbled "Look at these people overreacting over a stupid bookstore closing down". 

For me, Chennai is beyond the places that define it,  for me Chennai is about the people it has gifted in my life. The few places that I would look back on fondly are so because of the people who had made it special for me. From the family I've grown up with to the casual acquaintances I have befriended, to the close friends who are dear to me, to the many loves I had fallen for, they are My Chennai, not the buildings or the beach or the bar. My people have been that piece of puzzle when put together completed my life, that have shaped my principles, that have made me the person, good or bad, that I am today. Chennai was just the large canvas where I was piecing it all together.

And as I spend my last week here, I've realised that my Chennai is about the strangers I have met with whom I have built a strong friendship, the first brick for which was laid with an awkward "hello". My Chennai has to be about the friends I once had who have now drifted away into being strangers, for no fault of theirs, of course. My Chennai has to be about the half-a-dozen times I had my heart broken, my Chennai has to be about those countless times I had fallen for someone on a first glance. My Chennai has to be about unrequited loves, the broken promises, the forgotten dreams, the false hopes. My Chennai has to be about the people who taught me and tormented me, who have forgiven me and who have forgotten me, who have accepted me and who have discarded me.

And if you're reading this and you know it's about you, then you my friend, are my Chennai.

NO MATTER FROM WHICHEVER ANGLE YOU TAKE, YOUR FACE WILL REMAIN THE SAME ONLY

“The way to a man’s heart may be through his stomach, but the way to a woman’s heart is through a DSLR”

-          Oscar Wilde

Studies have shown that there has been a rise in the sale of cameras since the advent of Facebook (A fact I’ve made up to add more weight to this post). A camera, that gadget which takes a picture of you while you are living the moment. It could be you sharing a laugh with your loved ones, delivering an acceptance speech, playing tonsil tennis with your girlfriend while assuring her that you are not videotaping it, or declaring war on Iraq if you were the American President. What makes some pictures more memorable is that it’s been clicked when you were not posing for it, you were IN the moment, you were in control of your emotions and of your facial muscles. NOT THE CAMERA. Over the years, I have had the ignominy of taking snaps for my friends who love posing for the camera. My pleas that them being no photogenic materials always fell on deaf ears. They just loved to pose a lot. They posed for a few photos, and they posed for some more, and then they posed for a lot more. 

And guess what….

THEY POSED THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

THE SAME WAY.

See how irritated you got when I repeated the same sentence? Now you know how irritated the camera becomes when you make it point and shoot at the same rehearsed scenarios.

Yes, cheeks together flashing their smile. The same clothes, the same background, with the same people. And while they are at it, they would give away instructions like they were posing for the front page of Elle.

“Hey, please take it from this angle no? Make sure my tummy is not visible.” – a line which probably every chap clicking a photo would have heard.

The wise reply would be to say “Why don’t you say that to your gym trainer? But wait, you are too busy hogging that it would be a monumental achievement for you to walk up to 
the gym let alone on the treadmill.” But you just give a wide grin and take the snap anyway.

“I think I should be facing left, and just zoom in a little to make sure my dimples are visible, but make sure that the pimples are not seen.”

I have always felt that the greatest cosmetic product that man has ever invented has to be Photoshop. Looking at the effective way with which it removes your pimples and makes you look fair, one can only ask those Ayurvedic products to go screw themselves. 

And to hell with all those Clean and Clear / Fair and Lovely tubes. Do yourself a favor, download a pirated version of Photoshop from the internet if you want to look beautiful.

“This pose is nice no? I and Meryl are gazing at each other, lost in each other’s eyes. Like a couple in love.”

One pose like that is believable that the two lovebirds are drunk on each other’s love and due credit to the photographer for spotting them in the moment. But a whole album of just the two of them looking at each other? Not one picture, not two… it’s a whole ALBUM.

Each of the above mentioned postures would have been clicked close to fifty times each, and ironically they would be posted in an album titled:

RANDOMZZZZ

Notice how RANDOM is spelt as RANDOMZZZ , did you notice the extra zzz’s they added just to let you know that it’s cool to spell it that way.

Facebook should make sure that with every account opened, one also gets a default photo album titled “Randomzzz”.

Or maybe, next time when somebody creates an album titled “RANDOMZ” a fist should burst through the monitor and knock them on their head with a dictionary and say “First learn what the word “Random” means, and then LEARN HOW TO SPELL IT!”

Picture this: There is an endless sea right in front of you, there is sand, the sun is fading away and you are surrounded by the people you love. It’s a picture perfect view seen on the back of postcards, you could chill by stretching your legs, with your toes under the sand as you watch the sun set­-that magnificent beast which looks cool even when it is dying. You are laughing to your heart’s content, playing pranks on your friends, stealing gazes from the one you secretly harbor a crush for, whispering sweet nothings in the ear of your paramour. Maybe in a perfect world that’s how people live the moment, but in this world people are busy capturing the moment. So busy we are in showing off the pictures to friends and people on Facebook whom we might never meet, that we forget to enjoy the company of our friends.

The camera might capture the people, the occasion, the expressions on your face, but the moment would just be reduced to another label to recognize the picture as, a marker to remember where and when it was taken. When was the last time you had ever flipped through old photographs, and were overwhelmed by all the nostalgia so much that it made you misty-eyed?

Do you even have the time to go through your photo albums?

So the next time if somebody asks you if they could take a snap of you and your friends, just take a couple of clicks and go back to living the moment rather than trying capture it.

Now if you would excuse me, I have to log onto Facebook and “like” a few pics I have been asked to.

The Art of Sending Friend Requests

Timing plays an essential part in our lives, be it the timing to punch the ball through the covers, or the comic timing to crack a joke to diffuse a situation, or the timing to pop up that question to the woman we love– “Will you please return the money you borrowed from me?” Timing is also a very crucial factor in sending friend requests to pretty women online­, something which I had learnt the hard way over the years. One has to build a proper rapport with a woman before clicking that “Add as friend” tab on Facebook. And by “proper rapport” I mean one has to make themselves aware of their existence to the woman they plan to add as a friend. There are the subtle ways of making your presence felt, it ranges from clearing your throat to cracking bad jokes, to cussing and swearing out loud, to burping out loud while you eat. The traditional way to get a woman’s attention would be to speak sense, but since we live in an age where movies on vampires and werewolves make women weak in the knees, I am throwing “Speaking sense” out of the window.

I had gotten into an awkward situation while I was on one of my routines of browsing through profiles of random women online (which apparently is termed as online stalking) while speaking over the phone. As I was surfing I came across the profile of a girl who shared a few mutual friends with me at work. I was in one of those zoned out states where neither was I aware of the prolonged conversation going on the other end, nor of the buttons I had been clicking on the website while browsing. Straying between the virtual and the present, I clicked the “Add as friend” tab absent mindedly.

There were no confirmation messages like ”Would you really like to add this person as a friend?” 

Or “Are you really really sure that you want to add her as your friend?”

Or “She is way too hot for you, think again, she might not accept it!”

There were no messages or warnings that would have broken me from my stupor. The next few minutes were spent contemplating whether the request should be revoked or not.

It’s just a friend request, why think too much over it? Getting my request rejected is not the end of the world ….

amiright?

 

AmIRight? 

AM I RIGHT?

AM I RIGHT!?!? 

WRONG!

Have you ever sent a friend request to a person you thought you knew, only to realize that they had rejected it because they do not consider catching you ogling at them as “Knowing”? Getting your Friend Request turned down is the virtual equivalent of a slap on the face, and the worst part is that you cannot slap them back. They finally have the last laugh by turning you down, and you go to bed wondering why they did it.

“The server must have been down when she clicked accept, and it must have gotten so slow that "accept" would have changed to "reject""

“She must have clicked ‘reject’ by mistake”

“May be it was her father browsing her account and he found me to be a threat since I am such a potential boyfriend material for her daughter because of my handsome looks.”

Your pride is wounded and you wouldn’t even know why. If you were a man with some self respect, you  wouldn’t go to them and say with a sheepish grin “Hey, I sent you a friend request which I think you rejected by mistake. I will send you one later, just accept it ok?”

After pondering over the scenario for a good fifteen minutes, whilst responding to the conversation happening on the phone with “Hmmm… uh huh.. ok… wow”  (in no particular order) I had decided to withdraw the friend request, thus nipping in the bud any potential chance for any of those awkward moments that may occur when I bump into her in the office. But later it dawned on me that what if she could have accepted it? 

What if she is not fussy like the other women there who accept you as their friend only after they are fully sure that you speak to them without looking at their chest?

What if she was like that punch line which every girl tells her boyfriend when he tries to make a move on her? 

“I am not like other girls.”

What if she was not like other girls?

Or what if she was online and had been wondering whether to add me?

What if the Universe had given me a sign and I had just shown it a middlefinger ?

Had I acted in haste by taking back the friend request?

Should I send the request back again?

Does this post make any more sense?

Do you even care anymore?

Are you still reading this post?

Maybe I should stop.

Ek Din

Shelf par ek puraani kitaab hai,

Dost ek mera mujhse naaraz hai,

Office mein ek ladki hai,

Mom meri gusse mein hai,

Gaadi ek ghar ke bahar hai,

Ghar ke chatth pe ek nazaara hai,

Filmon ki DVD bahut zyaada hai,

Ipod mein gaane thode kam hain

Whisky ki ek botal Dad ke cupboard mein hai,

Bag ka ek zip toota hua hai,

Boss mera zaalim hai,

Kaam bhi kuch khaas nahi hai,

Dost hai ek meri bahut pyaari si,

Woh kitab padoonga ek din

Us dost ko phone karoonga ek din, "Abey, kaminey kya hua?" poochonga usse, Kaan pakad ke maafi maangoonga ek din

Us office ki ladki ko coffee peene bulaoonga ek din,

Mom se kahoonga "Aloo ke parathe accha banaathi ho" ek din

Us gaadi ko chalana seekhonga ek din,

Us nazaare ko din dhalte mehsoos karoonga ek din,

Un Filmon ki DVDs ko dekhoonga ek din,

Ipod mein gaane bharoonga ek din

Us whisky ki botal se ek peg chori chupe piyoonga ek din,

Us bag ke zip ko theek karoonga ek din

"Tu jaaye bhaad mein" apne boss se kahoonga ek din,

Bin bole kaam chodd doonga ek din,

"Mujhse shaadi karegi?" apni us dost se poochoonga ek din.