The Dumber Years

When I was in school, I always thought work life of adults was stress free. One that involved a lot of freedom and fun. Somehow not having to write exams, the stupid cycle tests, record notebooks, not doing homework, not having to get beaten up by both ('indhi' master) Balasubramaniam sir and P.T. master Janakiraman on Monday mornings seemed like a wonderful prospect.

I often yelled at my dad and my other elderly cousins that their lives were much better than mine. They wore colour dress, drove their own vehicles and didn't have to ask permisison to put leave. They were 'settled' and didnt have to write an exam to prove their worth.

How wrong was I. No wonder I got beaten up so much by Balasubramaniam sir.

A Madras Moment

Was totally engrossed in a quiz conducted by @kweezzz in twitter today and had one of those 'madras moments' when the following were seen as the Quiz question and answer.

Quiz Master: The New Secretariat, Library and one other Chennai Structure share something in common. What is that Chennai Structure and what do they share in common?

Answer: Namitha.

Quiz Master: It is an old structure.

Answer: K.R. Vijaya.

Cricket

I am realizing that not following the champions trophy and not caring to have yet another stupid opinion on the Pagisthan match fixing controversy - gives me a sense of superiority complex. I now look at people who do follow and who do care with a sense of disdain. I regard them as I would regard people with no velai/vetti who need to have an opinion on every breaking news on TV.

Dealaa! No Dealaa!

Maraamandai thamizhans can't treat capitalism with maturity. It is okay to earn/win crap load of money on a TV game show and spend it on whatever needless thing one feels like spending on. If you win 50 lacs on a platter, it is okay to not spend any of it on charity. You don't need to be extremely poor to win that 50 lacs as well. I want a contestant who says that he is not desperately in need of that 50 lacs at all. One who declares that he does not want to spend any of it on charity because he is simply not interested in charity. And to be rub it in, he should perhaps declare that he plans to blow it all up in deepavali pattasu.

But somehow thamizhan feels the need to be humble and need to justify participation in a show that needs no other talent beyond the ability to say a number between 1 - 30. So we have people who claim to be in extreme poverty. That they need to feed 30 children and pay 72 loans (Ofcourse they won't mention that their best idea to combat all that at the moment is a TV game show). Or we have sob stories on how the 50 lacs one can win will cause them to somehow run a livelihood or pursue further education etc etc. Really. Now you have totally got me rooting against you. I want you to remain shit poor. This show is about having a few boxes with a bunch of money in it and you are doing 'inki pinki ponky'. No matter what poverty porn you pour into it, this show cannot have a deeper meaning. Give me a contestant who says he really does not need the money and one who has no clue how he is going to waste the money. That's what the show is all about.

Wilbur Sargunaraj

I just dont get him. I don't know what people see in his youtube videos. I sort of see a poor man's Borat but don't really find it hilarious. I tried my best to like him because he looks likeable and really looks like a nice guy. However, I actually could not see even a single video till the end and simply clicked on to the next video and so on until I gave up. So don't get what the fuss is all about.

Monster Inc

When I was bachelor, the only piece of furniture in my house was a Futon. I put that in front of my TV in the living room and pretty much sat, ate, slept, there watching TV. The TV was strategically placed so that it also faced the kitchen. So in case I had to cook or walk to the kitchen to get something, I could continue watching TV. Since I went to bathroom only during commercial breaks I ensured that 'real' T.V. time never got reduced. I was mostly alone at home. The silence was golden. It was just me and my thoughts. If my thoughts were another person then I would say he was louder than me. We developed radical ideas together, replayed great cricketing moments, and rewrote movie scripts to fit thamizh milieu. Our lives revolved around TV programs and movie releases. We were particularly proud of one piece of electronic equipment. The Bose LifeStyle II Audio and Home Theater system. We would wonder how William tell symphony sounded without the Surround feature turned on or how the small strings in 'Pachai Nirame' song came out so clearly in this system. This is the only piece of electronic equipment that survived my bachelor days.

I bought this with my first month's salary. A few years ago my newly married wife carelessly dropped the remote causing it to get scratched. The consequent domestic squabble caused the man and woman of the household to not speak for an amount of time - prescribed as appropriate for cold war silence by the Board of marriage - before the man of the house relented and apologized. The concept of wife has often been commented upon in Solomon Pappaiyah patti mandrams and S. Ve. sekhar dramas. And what Raja says to Paappaiyah is true. Wife is audit/investigative/controls & compliance unit. The unit is programmed that way and the unit will execute. No matter what. The unit could not compute the presence of this other person in our life - my thoughts/day dreams/drift-offs. Looking back it was inevitable that thoughts and wife wouldn't get along. She quickly found out that he was a competitor. And constantly kept asking him 'who are you'? Thoughts didn't like being interurupted. Especially when he was telling me to spot all the small little sounds that ARR puts in his tracks. Then one day he got up and went away. Wife unit then began to constantly switch off the music and shut down the laptop and said 'let us talk'. But I wasn't used to talking. Thoughts was the one who talked a lot and he went away.

Fast forward to now. It has been about 3 months since I switched on my TV. Maybe more. I would have been sure if I knew what date today was. I don't listen to songs anymore. The last ARR album I purchased was Ayidha Ezhutthu. I have a little monster running around like E.T. on steroids pulling out parts of my DVD player, keyboard, sub-woofer, TV, wireless router and Comcast Receiver. Yesterday I saw my Bose speakers being thrown down from their stands and the remote was getting repeatedly smashed against the wall. And all I was said was "No.. I said NO". E.T does not understand languages. It does not know what 'NO' means ( I actually believe toddlers think 'no' means 'clap clap'). I could have snorted instead and it would have made as much sense. But i wasn't angry at my remote getting totally smashed. Thoughts might have been very angry. But he doesn't live here anymore.