Other than old books, magazines, tapes & old clothes, here are a few things that are just collection dust.

Steel cupboard in my bedroom
It’s huge and bulky and in the way. My mom pushed it onto me as there was less space in my parents room. I use the bottom two shelves for storing old tapes and my cd collection and some books that I never read and may never read again. I usually keep it locked up as I rip all my cds and store them as m3s on my laptop and on a separate external hard disk. The top most and biggest shelf in the cupboard is filled with sheets & shawls & cloth material that was bought a long time back and will probably never be used at all. Not in my lifetime anyway. It’s an absolute waste of space as I also have a built in wall closet that I can store my books and cds in.

Old coffee table
My dad broke the glass table top while carelessly trying to move it. Now the coffee table is placed under our dining table so as to not attract undue attention & embarrassment. So we bang our knees against it while we eat dinner. My dad breaks things.

Old tvs
The two old tvs will probably be tossed out soon when I buy a new tv set. The decade old BPL tv is broken and can’t be fixed and the older than old Sony is an embarrassment of biblical proportions. Come to think of it this old tv was probably manufactured around the same time as the bible was first written.

Currently I do not have a desire to have a big fun filled vacation. Something like this would be ideal:

I would want a week away from the office & work, home and all my family. I do not want to pick a phone call for the duration of that week. I would want to take my laptop and would want a solid & fast internet connection. A small house or cottage surrounded by greenery, with cooler weather and quietness. A well stocked kitchen and fridge with plenty of fresh juice and the softest & freshest of bread. A good amount of popcorn and some sort of chips would be great. Ofcourse the pizza delivery guy should be able to get there quickly as well.

The cottage should have a balcony where I could sit and watch the sunset (sunrise would not be an issue as I would sleep late all the mornings). Nice big king size bed with thick blankets. A huge LCD tv with access to cable and a dvd player. A couple of good books to read.  Quite days with only the sounds of the birds breaking the silence, the sounds of the city far away from my ears. A neighbours dogs and cats for company in the lazy afternoons. Total relaxation and pleasant evenings with a couple of drinks. Ofcourse a chance encounter with a gorgeous, buxom woman who would like to get “better acquainted” with me, if you know what I mean

What? Why do you think I wanted the king sized bed?

What would I say to my 16 year old self if I had a chance to go back in time and meet up with him..err me? Plenty so listen up buddy boy 16 year old Roshan.

First things first; 16 was when thing started to go bad for you so pay close attention. You had no skills or talent to go for engineering / science and hence should not take 1st group in Pre-degree. Just because the cousins immediately older than you all were going for it, doesn’ mean that you should too. Instead you should have listened to good advice and opted for Economics or Commerce or Arts. That would have been a more sensible option but instead you let yourself go where you should haven’t.

Next you should have just swallowed your pride and gone to Maharaja’s college or Bharat Matha and not gone to St.Paul’s college. That was the wost choice you could make. You made the wrong selection in courses and college and now you also made the wrong choice in group of friends. They led you the wrong path. Perhaps not intentionally but yeah it was the wrong group to be with. Look at what happened in the end; they all managed to scrap through and you were left in the lurch. And within a few months you were no longer friends with them and they forgot all about you.

You also let your heart & hard on rule your head and fell for the wrong girl. 18 months of chasing & pining after her, you also lost some pride along the way but you did get her in the end. You thought it was forever but 3.5 years later it went down the drain. And for awhile you lost your pride, your wits along with your virginity and you were obsessed. Believe me that although it will hurt like hell and consume you like a black plague for years you will be glad that you didn’t end up with her. That was a disaster waiting for to happen and I’m glad that she & I were history by the time I was in my early 20s.

If only you could avoid all this stuff, you would be fine in time.

For reasons that I feel are genuine to me, I avoid family functions like it were a plague. I’m just not in a very ‘family gathering’ mood for the past few years. So that means not going for weddings, family parties, gatherings in a house/venue, child births, house warmings etc. I do not know how many kinds of excuses I can invent but large gatherings of people just make me uncomfortable at the moment and I can’t wait for it to be over. Also, I hate the same stupid questions being asked again and again which only go on to irritate me and it’s only the comfort of alcohol (if provided at the venue) that can keep me from bolting.

The last two family gatherings I had attended mandated my being there – last year we had my dad turning 70 in January and my mom turning 60 in September. Both were momentous occasions and special for my parents and therefore I just had to go and so I went and I pretended to have fun. It was more important for me to see that my dad & mom had what they wished for on that occasion and that they were enjoying themselves. But there are nosy people who, on seeing me, grab my personal space and start bombarding me with talk. And they always feel that I have lost my way and that they need to advise me. A lot of this has to do with my parents – have always felt that it is due to my father & mother that my other relatives feel that they have this ‘right’ to sit and judge, belittle and advice me. When I look at them I know that they aren’t in such higher positions that they can advice anyone! But they consider it their right. Fuck no!

Marriage is one such agenda for discussion on these occasions. I’m 34 and not married and hence that is a big topic of discussion. What these morons with half a brain don’t realize is that they are just depressing me. Oh and by the way, I discovered from a cousin of mine that there are some relatives, mostly my mom’s first cousins, who think that I have a bad reputation and am a bad influence because – get this – why would I, past the age of 30, be unmarried! Like it is a personal choice! Grow some sense you assholes. I don’t want to wimp out and let my parents pick out a girl for me (unlike most of your children have chosen) and since I haven’t found a woman myself, I am unmarried! There I said it and if anyone has a problem with that, go fuck yourself!

I’ve had it with people judging me based on their assumptions and preconceptions. I might say something back which is so obvious on their lives and ask them what makes them such experts that they can give me advice. Some of them are well meaning but their ill-conceived methods far outweigh the good intentions. At the last couple of events I could see a couple of relatives, faces lighting up on seeing me and marching in my direction, with me finding no place to hide. And at my father’s 70th birthday an uncle passed an unwarranted comment at me, to which I replied something sarcastically but he was too stupid to understand. I wanted to say something more but then I looked at the sorry figure this asshole was and thought to myself “fucker, the joke’s on you”!

And there are some others who I don’t care about and I know what they think of me and the thing is I think even worse of them. Loser, moron, half brain, moocher, numbnuts, kiss ass, pathetic fool, wind bag, idiot who doesn’t count in the big scheme of things – these are the names I’ve given to some of these relatives who think they are bigger than what they actually are. So do you think that the next time I hear a comment, I’m going to lay low like an obedient dog and pretend to roll over? No, I’m going to give it back to them, two or three insults, faster than they dulled brains can even think back a retort. But then things would get strained between me and my parents and as it is my mom and I don’t get along very well. She does not care if I am right; her family meaning brothers, sisters, cousins – can’t do no wrong. So why push it?

For any of these reasons, I am not going to suffer fools lightly.

I’m a person who swears a lot. Well maybe not a lot. I don’t sound like an Italian Mafia guy from New York if you know what I mean! But I use the occasional ‘shit’, plenty of ‘asshole’ usage, lots of ‘fuck’ and the usual ‘sonofabitch’. In no way do I use it as exclamations or punctuations and I try to avoid using it around women but the odd one usually slips out.

I find that it relieves stress, tension and pent up frustration. Dealing with stupid impossible clients – give a discourse on how they spend their sex life! Cross functional battles – choose words that best describe how their parents created them! Anything just to get some anger out.

I remember when I was 13-16 and swear words were considered to be such a big taboo. I used it cause I thought it was cool and I was a bit of a rebel. I used so many swear words in front of my sister that I think she developed an immunity to them. I loved to read novels and then mimic the swear words in similar situations in my life. I would wait for a really antagonistic, know-it-all, self-serving idiot to piss me of before I lifted my middle finger in a defiant salute at him and yelled ‘Mother fucker’. Ofcourse it is usually pronounced ‘Mutha fuckaaah’!

In my native tongue of Malayalam, even though I can’t read & write, I know enough swear words to make the locals proud. I can enunciate them like the best of them and spit out the words with enough vitriol to make you understand the meaning….even if you didn’t know a word of the language. Yes I consider myself the Ernest Hemingway of swearing, although I control using it as much as I can. I am so pro using bad words.

Ah, my favourite date of the year, Friday the 13th. No matter where I am or what I am doing I always note this day. A big fan of the macabre and horror movies, Friday the 13th always holds a dark fascination on me. Like today for example – I’m just recovering from a fever, brought on yesterday and with lots of rest and sleep I’m feeling a whole lot better from evening. But the date is still on my mind.

I remember that as a young boy, before ever having watched any of the movies involving Jason, his machete or his hockey mask, my cousin Arun put this notion in my mind that all Friday’s were scary days and that the 13th was even more horrifying in particular. He was so good in describing the horror that not only did I get scared……but he got scared as well!!! I mean, the first movie came out in 1980 or 81 and this incident must have been around 84 or 85 (when I was 8 or 9).

Anyway this day is noted to be one of bad luck by superstitious people, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners. Another theory is to do with the ledengary Knights Templar – threatened by that power and eager to acquire their wealth, King Philip secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France on Friday, October 13, 1307. In the Gregorian calendar, this day occurs at least once, but at most three times a year. Any month’s 13th day will fall on a Friday if the month starts on a Sunday. Today is this year’s only Friday the 13th.

I would want to have the power of seduction! And I would be called Weapon of Mass Seduction man! Any woman, no matter how hard she tried would never be able to resist my charms.

You know of a sexy but evil woman hell bent on destroying or taking over the world? Ask for me to intervene. I will charm her with my ways and take her finger off the trigger and onto my body. She will swoon and she will drool and she will be putty in my hands.

Living in India, we are used to many power outages; forced and unforced. Forced is when the dams that store water that run electricity for us in the state of Kerala are running low, usually during the long summer months, the government lays down a scheduled power outage of 30 minutes during the evening hours for all. On a rotating basis, your area will have the lights go out for a half hour between the hours of 6:30pm till 10pm. Some years you don’t have to suffer, as the rains have been plentiful and the Idduuki dam is filled – like this year, yay!

But unscheduled power outages – man they can be a pain in the arsre. The Kerala State Electricity Board is so efficient that a minor lightning effect can cause a lengthy power outage; the briefest of winds can cause transformers to blow up. They are so efficient in this manner. Luckily, that too is on the downside this year but we are treated to one every few weeks. So how do I spend my time?

We keep candles ready, on the dining table in the living room. Matches are always kept handy nearby as well. A few candles, an emergency electrical battery charged lamp can brighten those dark evenings. Since I have a 1GB ipod shuffle and my BlackBerry too, I can always listen to music while sitting at the window or lying on my bed. If I have enough light, then I can also read a bit and try and finish the last few chapters of that novel that has been lying around for ages. And a cup of coffee would keep me company as well.

Strong black coffee keeps me wide awake 0~0; it gives me such a buzz that my eye lids are pried wide open and they won’t shut down.

A bad day at work usually keeps me awake. A good movie or tv series has that same affect too but only the latter is enjoyable. I especially like watching scifi movies/tv series around 11 or 12pm. Horror movies too.

But the thing that can keep me up at night the most is depression:

About where I am in life and the mistakes that I made which kept me here. About the stuff that I did that I now regret and wish I could go back in time and undo. The decisions that I made which I have to live with and the remorse that I feel when I am reminded of it by something. The fact that I’m turning 34 in a couple of days and there’ a lot of things that I haven’t achieved / done / got at this stage of my life which I think I should have by now.

But most of all what keeps me awake at night is loneliness. The feeling of emptiness that a guy feels when he does not that special woman to share his life with. I look to the right side of my bed and see the big empty space just begging to be filled with the form of a woman. To hold onto and talk to and hug to myself and feel that I’m not alone. Not having that special someone to confide in and be there for her as well.

That’s what keeps me up the most.

Do I believe in the death penalty? Here’s my answer : with a few exceptions, I do not believe that the death penalty. It’s confusing even to me because who is the right person or persons to decide which crime or crimes deserve the death penalty? What kind of human being is to be declared unfit to continue his/her existence on this earth that killing them and ending the pain will be the best outcome?

I do believe that serial killers, rapists and child molesters do not deserve to live. A man who kills babies & small children, old people and the ill who cannot defend themselves do not deserve to life wile their victims are dead. Someone who sexually abuses his own offspring or another child related to him cannot be considered fit to continue living. Organ stealers, drug peddlers who target the young.

Who about war crimes? Dictators, leaders, politicians and kings who have committed genocide and massacred thousands of people. Do they deserve to live? The religious fundamentalists who destroy other lives just because they do not see eye to eye on beliefs and way of living?

Who is to decide? I do not know if the law is correct. Can there possibly be a man/woman who everyone else has declared unfit to continue and even a danger if he/she still lives and so they all decide that he/she is to be killed? Not even Saddam or Osama or even Hitler etc etc.

Although there are quite a few people that I wouldn’t mind seeing dead, heck I may even dance on their graves and hand out free candy to passers-by, I’m not sure that I could decide if the death penalty is the right punishment.

Well, except if you are a member of a boyband!!!!

I haven’t been blogging much about the weather have I? It’s been raining a whole lot the past 3 days. The entire weekend I stayed back at home and every time I thought that the sun was finally going to come out and give us some heat, he would dart back again behind some clouds like the sissy that he is. More rain, wind & cold.

This morning was so windy and cold. And in the evening it’s like it was waiting for me to get out of the office (I stayed back for an extra 80 minutes) and then it poured down like it meant business. It was quit windy and my umbrella was getting bent outta shape and so once I got down from the bus, I ducked into a small restaurant and decided to wait until the rain died down a bit. I ate dinner there, noodles and chicken (yum), and then walked back home.

At the office we all got our new offer letters post the annual appraisals. I’m finally getting the kind of pay that I should have got….ages ago! I blame myself for losing out. And I’m not happy that some of my team members haven’t got better. They do work very hard and they deserve a lot more.

I’m feeling very lonely, especially during the evenings and night. I’m gonna turn 34 in 2 weeks and I haven’t found anyone yet. All this teasing of me with a colleague is only making me feel even more depressed. I’m starting to long and I’m starting to yearn. And look longing at women around me…..oh wait, I do that all the time!

Well that’s a wet evening behind me now. It’s raining quite a lot these past few days and the best part of it is that it keeps the temperature low and the air cool. You can bundle yourself in sheets or wrap yourself in a thick blanket and stay snug and safe in your sleep. But you can’t do much in the heat except sweat and feel totally uncomfortable.

I’ve had a bad dad and I’m not ready to talk about it at the moment. Maybe during Sunday or after I’ve had sometime to wrap my head around it. I’ll get back to it soon. But I can’t open up about it until I get over it in my mind. But it’s got me all messed up in my mind.

Oh and tomorrow is a harthal! Another fucking day that the political parties are gonna make us miserable and ruin any chance of us normal folk to have a hassle free work day. The reason for the harthal is that the sudden sharp increase in the price of petrol & diesel and hence these motherfucking politicians need to make it even worse for the public and block trains, buses, cars and stop people from opening shops, stores and offices. The political party members usually don’t bother private vehicles too much but a lot of people are scared to take their cars out. Bikes seem to go about as usual but most offices close down….except for the 24 hour BPO companies like the one yours truly works for! Yes, slap my ass and call me Judy!

So, I’ll bid you goodnite as I have to get up really early at 3 am and get ready for a company cab that will come to pick me up around 4:30 am. I’ll probably reach the office by 5:15 am and leave the office around 6pm! Yeah, just like last time.

Although I came to know about this in January, I kept it buried in my mind for the last few months. It didn’t seem like a big deal, an inconsequential piece of drivel said by someone I would not be able to identify in a lineup even if my life depended on it. But it did affect me. I didn’t know it at the time but yes it did affect me.

Some of you readers would know my cousin Sujith and I came know about this through him. See, around the same time that I came to know Sujith, he introduced me, online only, to our then 16/17 year old niece (who is the daughter of my second cousin). Now I have never met my second cousin, or atleast I would have probably met her but can’t remember her, but I got to know this niece over gtalk mainly because she has an awesome taste in music and she sings. However a few months later she cut all contact with me without an explanation. I tried contacting her but she was never online it seemed. Gradually I forgot about her; didn’t seem like a big deal.

When Sujith and I met in January, he told  me that the reason this niece of ours stopped chatting with me because of her grandmother, who is my mom’s first cousin. She, her grandmother, said that it wasn’t advisable to keep contact with the “likes” of me and because I have a “bad reputation”! Now I’m no angel and I never pretended to be. I’ve make my mistakes and I’ve made quite a  few. But the last controversial thing I did was way back when I was 18 years old and I’m gonna turn 34 in 3 months! The only other thing I can think of that some people in the family would not like is that I’m an atheist and do not go to any temple at all. Is that it lady?

Now, this cousin of my mom’s is someone I can’t remember having met. I can’t remember having met her. So….what the fuck does she know about me? And who the hell is this bitch that she can pass such judgment about me. Fuck you! Are you so fucking perfect that everyone else is so below you? I don’t get it, she does not even know me. And then a few weeks ago, I spoke to my mom about it and she didn’t care. According to  her, first I must correct my wrongs. Gee, thanks mom. I didn’t realize that everyone in your family except you son is perfect. But that is always how it has been; her family, and by that I mean everyone her generation and above always passes judgments cause they have the sun, the moon and the stars shining outta their asses!  I’ve felt this hypocrisy my entire life and I’m tired of it.

So to this cousin of my aunt, screw you!! Kiss my fucking ass  bitch. You better hope that we never get to meet in a family function cause I’ll tell you what I think of you.

The people of Kerala are very predictable. If you want someone to start talking and keep ranting on & on, just make a casual remark about the weather. I do from time to time – to the random auto driver, bus conductor or passenger, shop owner etc etc. Then I stand back and listen to a barrage of ranting about the way the current weather. And the complaints!

If it’s hot then there’s complaints. If it rains, then there’s the complaint that it’s too cold. There’s mostly only only two kinds of weather in Kerala. Monsoon or Summer heat. There’s no other weather. That’s the way it has been for as long as it has been. I dunno for how long it will continue (cause we are fucking up the earth, you know). So I dunno what the big complaint is. We do live in the hottest place on the planet (I guess so).

And after a few complaints & rants, I’m also treated to a history lesson in weather in Kerala. How last year it was so & so. And the few years before that. And two decades ago. And the years just before my birth. And the ones before my parents were born. And my grandparents. And before the British were here. But it has always been hot when it doesn’t rain. That’s why our forefathers created the dhoti and the mundus. So air can find it’s way to our thighs and keep it from sweating so much. Predictable yes, original yes.

Now, it’s not like I’m saying that it’s you Keralites and you Malayalees are like this and I’m not. Cause, this particular post is a rant. And what have I been ranting about? The fucking weather!! I’m just as predictable as you guys.

Now that I have the laptop, I thought great. I love the system but there’s a couple of minor pains – one of which I will address here. The second one is for another blog post, when I fix that particular issue. This one is about using the scrollpad or touch pad.

I just don’t like it that much. I haven’t used one till now and the late start could be the reason but I don’t see myself using it if I had a choice between that and a mouse. A mouse is so much better for my hand. So I went to buy a USB wireless mouse today. The prices surprised me a lot. I settled for the cheapest one that they had, a model made by iSmart which cost me Rs.900. It’s a cute enough model and although it’s not the picture here, it looks pretty much the same.

After spending the afternoon out, I came back home and opened the packet to try the mouse out. I inserted the usb stick and then tried the mouse. Oh you need to put batteries in. Ok, a little later, I went to the shop nearby and bought pen torch batteries, which would prove to be dumb! See, in my inebriated state, I hadn’t check the size; it was of a smaller size than the usual pen torch batteries. So I bought 4 batteries for nothing! Shit, I didn’t feel like going out again. So I’m gonna wait for tomorrow and see if I can buy the right ones.

Alternatively titled as “the 3 week saga”. Well as you all know that for three weeks I couldn’t get online from home as I had had issues with first my hard drive and then the motherboard of my 3.7 year old pc. With all the hassle and repair and also the fact that here was an opportunity to give it off and get a new laptop, I chose to wait for the beginning of the month and the hike in salary that was to kick in and get a new computer. So that also meant that I had 3 weeks of boredom to face without being able to listen to my vast collection of songs (my old stereo died a couple of years ago and I survive on mp3s), my movies and series that I download and no internet.

No internet! That was a situation that faced me for the first time in 3.7 years and it wasn’t a pleasant one. I was so used to it. Anyway I was bored and i needed to fill my free time with something to do. I went out with friends a couple of weekends. I read a lot of books that were engrossing. I spent a lot of time flipping through channels and watching stuff that I wouldn’t watch usually. Cooking shows for example. Saw a few movies and some tv series. Slept a lot. And I spent a lot of evenings after work in coffeeshops. I played Brickbreaker on my Blackberry so much that I seriously considered turning pro……if they did indeed have a Brickbreaker tour, I would be the Tiger Woods of the game! Minus the bimbos! Ok, I lie I would be neck deep in bimbos!

I chatted a lot using the gtalk software on my BlackBerry. I tossed and turned on my bed a lot as I was bored and spent intervals of starring at the ceiling for a couple of hours at a time. But now i am back and I am eager to be entertained.

It has been a very tiring week. Month end reports, searching for data. Working on data. Computing data. Struggling to get data. Then putting it together to create more data. Working on Excel sheets and ppts. Sending out emails after emails. But it’s been worse than the previous year and a half. But I am glad that it’s over….for now.

I have also been feeling a little tired. Actually a whole lot tired and it’s because I can’t get much sleep these days. It hasn’t rained since last Friday night. Well maybe a little trickle. And it’s hot & humid and dry as a desert. So I sweat a lot and I get drained of energy. I lie in bed every night watching a movie or tv series. After an hour, my sheets & pillow covers are soaked. I drink a lot of water to replace all the liquid that I lose but what about the salt?

Anyway, I decided to leave the office 30 minutes early and headed out to Cafe Coffee Day near Shenoy’s Junction. After suffering some really annoying fellow passengers who acted like idiots rather than grown men, I got down and walked over to the cafe…it was empty of customers and cool! Perfect. I bought a hot dog and a frappe and it felt good. I love coffee but I love it even more when it’s cold. Especially during weather like this.

Then I came home and it’s even more hot and sweaty. I hope it rains.

Don’t you just hate Mondays? I do and I do so with the most heartfelt hatred that there is. I get two Saturdays off in a month and I really do enjoy the ‘proper’ weekend that I am privileged to receive. But the worst part of a 2 day weekend (after being so used to a 1 day off work week) is adjusting to working on a Monday.

See, unlike when you have only a single day off (Sunday), you have more time to relax, enjoy, sleep and basically get back to doing the natural things that make you human. So now getting back to the office grind is twice is hard. This also happens to me twice a month. Like the last weekend – I had a sore throat and a bit of a cough and so I decided to take it easy and stay in the whole time. Watching movies and tv series and getting lots of sleep seemed very enticing.

So as I went in to work today, I found myself being dragged in different directions at the same time. I was doing 3 things at once, working on 3 reports while balancing 2 calls and 4 issues. Couldn’t attend a meeting properly because my mind is on completing the month end reports. The day did pass by very quickly and was kinda slow too at the same time. Know what I mean? Can’t wait to say goodbye to today.