I've come so far since...

2013.

That's apparently when I last updated this blog.

I got a newspaper job, quit it within a month, freelanced for a while, started working as a copyeditor, found a ridiculously cool work family, learnt to drive, became vegan, faced a thousand or so blows of rejection, felt compelled to quit my job, quit my job, and now...I'm going to travel for a year, embarking on a rural journey with one of my closest friends.

She's my 'journalist friend'. We don't know what to call each other. We cannot say we're 'friends', because it makes it sound too casual. We aren't just friends. We cannot say we are business partners, because we aren't starting a business. Just 'partner'? Makes it sound like we are lesbian lovers. So we decided on 'journalist friend'.

This plan was inspired by one of our professors at ACJ, who would say, 'If you have a sugar daddy, take two years to just travel across India and get to know people -- your people. Experience issues on the ground.'

Sadly, we haven't really found our sugar daddies. But we have some savings, and we plan to be frugal as fuck.

I can only hope that this journey is everything I've imagined it to be.

And I discovered Shaun T. I really love Shaun T. #digdeep.

Wisdom from my favorite television series

Life is fundamentally unfair. It takes real talent to make unfair seem cool. -- Veronica Mars

Marvin's lullaby

Now the world has gone to bed Darkness won't engulf my head I can see by infra-red How I hate the night Now I lay me down to sleep Try to count electric sheep Sweet dream wishes you can keep How I hate the night -Marvin, in 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' Happy 61st, Mr. Adams! You are truly a hoopy frood, if there ever was one.

Pet peeves

1. An entire generation of boys named 'Aryan'. 2. When people say 'psychic', but actually mean 'psycho'. 3. When people say 'hotel', but actually mean 'restaurant'. 4. The 'anyways' people. 5. The excruciating 15-minute long menu of options one has to navigate through before reaching Airtel customer service. ( No, i DO NOT want ring tones, dialer tones, cricket packs, bikini packs,or ANY of your other services.) 6. People who clean the dirt in their nails with their nails and the sound they make while doing it. 7. Stores that do not list prices on books or other things and when you ask a salesperson for the price, they say that they will confirm and let us know and take ages to do so. 8. When people climb onto furniture with shoes on. This may happen only on American television shows, but it is annoying nonetheless. They even sit on beds with their shoes on! Nyaaakham. 9. Egregious misspellings like 'are' instead of 'our'. I recently got invited to a birthday party of a one-year old where the text message inviting me had the phrase 'are bundle of joy has turned one'. Seriously?! 10. People who take immense pride in their have-never-read-a-book-in-my-life habits and are totally unaware of how dumb it makes them sound. 11. People who have private conversations with their friends in public places while giving others accusatory mind-your-own-beeswax glances. Grow up, no one is interested in the time line of your love life. 12. People who interrupt a conversation with "this is nothing compared to..." all the time. 13. People who say "relax" or "control!" in a conversation the moment it gets too intense. 14. Online stores that charge extra for cash-on-delivery and 'handling charges'. 15. People who use "come on!!" or "oh, please!" as a retort in arguments, followed by nothing else. That is their whole point. Come on. That's it. 16. Book stores that have handwritten prices penciled in on the top right corner of the first or last page. Also book stores that have the "2 for the price of 3" offer, but on the really trashy books only. 17. People who use the terms 'geek', 'nerd', 'dork' and 'jerk' interchangeably. Also people who call you 'bookworm', or 'bookish' if you bring up some book you read about in a conversation, and mean it in a smug way, as if being a bookworm is a bad thing. 18. 210 second signals. Traffic police who make you back down because you are too close to the zebra crossing which is invisible to the naked eye. 19. People who do not vote and say that "they are not interested in politics". 20. When I send long text messages with eloquent prose and it gets only half-delivered. 21. People who use '@' instead of 'at'. --

Seven years of relentless, arduous, back-breaking, malaria-risking Mud Marvel Making

Before I proceed with this post, I must test the preliminary knowledge of the reader relating to the subject matter of 'killa'.

1. What is a killa?

A. Brand of t-shirts and artifacts
B. Fine-ass weed
C. The best out there, like, totally number one
D. First single by R&B American group Cherish

Your options are:

1. Only A
2. Only D
3. A, B and D
4. B, C and D
5. All of the above
6. None of the above

In unabashed UPSC exam 'all answers are right answers, but some are more right than others' style, the answer is all of the above (i.e., option 5) as well as 'none of the above' (i.e., option 6).

For the uninitiated, 'Killa' means 'fort', and is alternately spelt as 'quilla'. In 2005, Louse discovered that it is tradition to make a killa during Diwali. That's what I love about Indian culture. There are so many traditions that even if one were to choose to follow even 20% of them, one would be busy all year long. So you can just pick what you like, and reject the others. Like tasting all the ice-cream flavors before picking some. Due to exigencies of time, we follow only 2% of our traditions, and yet we lead a happy, fulfilled, culturally-enriched, blissfully-unenlightened life. Thank you, Internet. But this killa-making seemed like a fun tradition, so we vowed to get it out of desuetude.

Another trivia quiz:

Why do Maharashtrians make microcosms of Shivaji's empire with mud and clay and vim and vigour during Diwali?

a. Shivaji is the 11th reincarnation of Vishnu on earth
b. The Indian Mud Marvel Making Act, 1890 (which consolidated and amended the then-existing laws on the subject of Diwali celebrations and fan-fare in India) passed by the British rule mandates it
c. Because our parents say so
d. Because Munna Bhai says so (Bhai ne bola na killa bananeka, toh bananeka, kya?)

The answer is, as you may have guessed, none of the above. No one knows the exact nexus between the Vishnu incarnations and Shivaji. If you ask your parents, the correct answer is "Don't argue! It's tradition". If you ask Deep Thought, the answer is 42.

So keeping in mind the newly-discovered age-old tradition, we began embarking on Killa Making Adventures since 2005. A lot has changed since our first killa. Civilizations have risen and been lost. Regimes have changed. Tulsi Virani left the KyunKi household (which she had been occupying only for a bimillenium or two) for heavenly abode. Also, we now have QWERTY keypads. But our Killa-Making tradition withstands the test of time.



This is our killa's F-1 track with the scaffolding still on.



Isn't it 'F'ing '1'some? Our theme was 'An F-1 Killa' this year.





Photo credits: Glitterbug
Head Architect: Louse
Chief Chikkhal Thapper: Glitterbug
On-site In-Charge of Chikkhal Mixing: Niche Ant
Chief Quality Analyst: Louse
Scaffolding Overseer: Glitterbug
Head of Aestheticising Committee: Sinned Hu

Creestore

That's the new curse word I came up with today.

creestore: (n) (pl-creestores) (Pronunciation guide: kri-stor) an incomparably incompetent, inefficient imbecile with whom commercial transactions should be carried out bearing in mind risks of not receiving item paid for, not receiving cancellation mail, not receiving refund, blood pressure escalation, hyperconniption fits, other stress-related health problems.

I had ordered books from Crossword Estore on 8th October, 2011. The expected date of delivery was 18th October, 2011. On the 19th of October, Crossword Estore sends me an e-mail saying, "No can do, amigo. We can't find the books we said were available in that pretty green font 10 days ago. Our bad. But will try for 3 more days, fo' sho". It's the creestore version of beginning to prepare for CAT 2010 in the month of July in 2011.

I cancelled the order via e-mail and called them up to ask them when they would refund the money. After a lot of circumvention of direct questions with "I can't say for sure, it could be now, it could be after the earth is populated by aliens" when I would not accept ambiguity, the guy tells me it'll be refunded "as soon as possible". When would that be? Within 24-48 hours, you might get a cancellation mail, Ma'am. After that within 3-5 days you will get the 'money has been refunded' SMS. That was on 19th October, 2011 at 11.24 a.m.

Today, on 24th October they still haven't sent me the cancellation mail. Yet they are quick to "assure" me that the order will be cancelled, don't worry. The money will be refunded, take a chill pill. The cancellation e-mail will be sent within 24-48 hours, don't have a cow. How exactly will that happen? Dunno. Who will know, can I speak to your manager? No no, I am only the person to talk to. Well, I don't have the exact details right now, but I'll do everything in my power to make sure it happens. You could get your money back sometime in the future, why are you taking so much tension? Relax. You might get your Rs.2000 back as soon as possible, no need to fret. We will piss on your back, and tell you it's just raining. That's the procedure we follow. But we will make sure you get your money, we "assure" you.

They did the same thing to one of my friends. After prolonged teasing of the 'here's-your-money, come-and-get-it' variety, she was refunded her money. Infuriated by the number of follow-up calls she had to make, she said, "After that I haven't seen their face again, nor visited their website. The mere sight, or even a sidelong glance, at any website with a yellow and black header with the words "best deal" and that discount % blurb makes me go all coprolalic. They are now dead to me."

Time taken to accept money: Precisely 2 nanoseconds
Time taken to refund money: Sometime in the future
Time taken to let you know that the book you've ordered is not available: 11 days, 1 day after the day it's supposed to be delivered
Customer service call where someone claims no responsibility and refuses to escalate the matter: Priceless

In omnia blogia paratus!

It has been my lifelong goal to start a blog. But due to long bouts of existential angst, I had been postponing all my lifelong goals, not just this one.

Recently, I found all this awesome reading material.

1. The Masochists' Jokebook by Masochistopheles
2. The Complete Cognitive Dissonance Guide by Madame Come Hither and Sir Libi Don't
3. The Arcane Self-Deprecating Rant Chrestomathy by Various Russian Authors
4. The Oxymoron Omnibus by Oxfrood Publications
5. The Complete Beginner's Guide to Avoiding Contraceptive Time-Traveling Accidents by Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth
6. The Bedlamite Travel Book, Annotated
7. The Mellisonant Portmanteau Dictionary [Vol. II] by Oxfrood Publications

So angst shmangst. I read all the above literature cover to cover. And so I deem myself blogworthy. Yay me!

P.S. Anyone with any trouble with the seemingly desultory hyperlinking of this blog can refer to the Dirk Gently Omnibus where the fundamental interconnectedness of all things has been satisfactorily explained. Yes, all things are fundamentally interconnected. Of course, some are more interconnected than others.