A friend of mine and me (both of us sworn Christie fans) were having this conversation on orkut while the cricket world cup 2007 was in the air...here are the excerpts for you -
A - I was awating you in the libraray..didn't find you or anyone else. Then realized a world cup match was going on and hence there was no Body in the Library
B - Ah, yes. I was watching the match, too. But left it in between as a Sad Cypress.
A - Why, why?
B - Well, After the Funeral of the Big Four (Sachin, Sourav,Rahul, Dhoni), I had not the courage to wait as The Clocks ticked until the fall of the Curtain And then there were None.
A - You are quite right. Our team is faring as though it's Destination is Unknown; and for the poor audience, watching the match is nothing but Ordeal By Innocence. By the way, for these Aussies, Murder is Easy!
B - Next time India is sent to play another match with them we shall call it Appointment with Death. But what can be the possible reason for our team to be in The Hollow like this? Goodness, it seems to be an Endless Night for the team!
A - If you ask me, BCCI is a Crooked House and after that Bhuvaneshwar airport fiasco, Chappel is our Secret Adversary. I hope Dravid realizes it While the Light lasts. Else I forsee that Death comes as the End for his cricketing career - at least for his captaincy.
B - What can we do yaar, we are but a Dumb Witness to the whole thing. By the way where are the teams putting up?
A - At Bertram's Hotel! Where else!
Showing posts with label Just Chill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Just Chill. Show all posts
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Terror at the homefront
The interesting thing about miracles is that they happen - so opined G.K. Chesterson. Replace miracles with co-incidences and the statement holds true.
Less than 2 hours ago (my post in the Gupshup C box shall bear me out), I was bemoaning the lack of inspiration in my amateur career as a blogger. And now here I am, an inspired individual, feeling that familiar upsurge to put words on a web page. That's co-incidence for me. On second thoughts, a more apt quotation would have been 'One often gets what one wants.'
They say inspiration strikes you from unusual sources - it fairly takes you off your guard at times. Well, they couldn't have been more accurate in my case. Surely enough, inspiration to write a blog after a more than a month long hiatus is something I owe to something as uninspiring as a cockroach. Okay, not just a cockroach - hundreds of them to be frank.
Now before I proceed I consider it my holy undertaking to warn my delicate minded readers (er, are there still any left in this literary world of gore and sinew?). What follows is a tale of simply unpalatable violence and written in rather poor taste apart from being wholly useless and without any morals at the end. Proceed at your own risk. Though I do hope you do. Proceed, I mean. After all so many cockroaches paid for this piece of blog with their lives.
I hate cockroaches. Nobody exactly loves them, but I simply dislike them, abhor them, detest them. They are an anathema to me. The only other thing the hatred of which can hold a candle to this hatred is my hatred of lizards. So when I landed into my friend's house for an extended vacation, the presence of several roaches in the kitchen as my chummy flat mates did not appeal to me in the least.
I made up my mind as to my next mission in life. Just like the W.H.O. has made it its mission to eradicate the polio virus once and for all, I decided to do just that with these hideous pests. Breaking News - 'Roaches were soon to get locally extinct from my friend's kitchen.
The first step was to study conditions. Don't snicker. If you think cockroaches can be done away with without proper planning, you've got another think coming. Roaches have outlived dianosaurs - so you can imagine what tough customers they are. Now where was I? Oh, yes. The conditions.
My friend's extremely busy schedule, her maid's stubborn decision to fulfill the cleaning rituals as sketchily as possible and the roaches' inherent resilience against extinction - all had combined together to help the pests build up an impressive number. This part of the research was instrumental in my giving a small demo to the maid on how to be a more comprehensive cleaner - after all I wouldn't be there all the time.
The next item on the agenda was to make a careful demographical study of the population with special stress on behavioural patterns and age class distribution. Which niches did the devils occupy? Well, there was hardly a place in the kitchen which they did not occupy - the sink, the refrigerator, the cupboard linings, even inside the large cooking vessels that are not used regularly. Besides hi-jacking my friend's kitchen for their living quarters, they also had the temerity to use it as a the outside of a Gurudwara where kadaah prasaad is always available. And being the health-freaks that they are, they even utilized the tiled kitchen walls and floor for regular walks.
Carefully timed surveys at meal times and between meal times helped me do the population survey. The head count was impossible to take, in the wake of their overwhelming numbers and the general problem in differentiating one individual from another. But I did get a general idea as to their number. They were infinite. There were several adults and many children, too. Yours truly not being an expert on cockroach sexology, gender determination was another poser.
Not exactly covering myself in glory in the above task, I was still far from disheartened. I had the bigger goal, the bigger picture in mind, viz., to kill, to destroy, to annihilate, to disembody the entomologist's Lucifer.
The next logical task was to get an anti-cockroach spray. There I was not disappointed at all. Whatever spare time my friend manages to have, she devotes it to the killing of these unhygienic creatures and for this HIT spray bottles are always at hand in the house. These canny beasts invariably give her the slip by hiding here and there, simply waiting for the deluge of the spray to die down. Its not her fault. A software technologist cannot compete with a budding ecologist in killing roaches.
Anyway, so here I was, with all the preliminary studies done, all the required material gathered and just the task to begin.
The task began with gusto. In my present status of bachelorhood, it is the cockroach that brings out the housewife in me. I pick up the broom, the dust pan and the cleaning rag without any visible signs of disgust and can make several kaam wali baais become envious or appreciative depending on their constitutions.
The cockroach also brings out the hardened professional killer in me. The general respect and kindliness toward all life forms that had made me take up Biodiversity in the post grads recedes to the backbench in these moments and my baser self takes over. The self that revels in death by violence.
No, I am not taking out a neon-shine knife from my pocket and stroking my chin or palm with it meditatively. Neither my eye has an unwholesome glint in it. Relax. All I am engaged in is opening all the cupboards one by one and emptying them of utensils and the odds and ends of a kitchen. This the den of the Mephistopheles. I believe in going to the core of the problem at once.
Several roaches were shocked out of their pleasant interludes by my simple act of jerking open the cupboard doors. 'What the heck!', I think one of them said to the other. I ignored their chattiness. We professional killers are rather the strong and silent variety. Down came the spray of HIT, hitting the chappies squarely. Some were blown away by the impact of the jet force. They landed and commenced writhing. With one swift stroke of the broom, I swept them away. They were no more important. Important ones were those that were escaping. Running pell mell wherever they could go. I worked both my hands - one holding the HIT bottle and spraying accurately and the other holding the broom and swatting, again, accurately. Five minutes later I was standing triumphantly amidst the corpses. So must King Ashoka have stood after the Kalinga Battle. Only I was feeling no remorse and not even the slightest inclination to turn Buddhist. The triumph any way did not last long. I discovered amongst my victims several that had only been stunned and were now wriggling their legs in an effort to recuperate. Not possible with me around! Another vicious spray of HIT and several bangs of the broom on the floor apart from my occasional stamps of feet on the unlucky arthropods ensued with satisfactory results.
The same procedure was followed with all the other cupboards. It became impossible to know what colour the kitchen floor tiles were. Um, ok. That was an exaggeration, but it sure did become difficult to walk on the floor without treading on what had been cockroaches. The kitchen floor was thus duly cleaned with an indefatigable spirit.
My eyes, trained for the last few hours to register all moving objects from the corner, suddenly detected motion. Lo! A number of roaches, rather panicky after the massacre of their brethren, were huddled along the kitchen slab and walls, above the cupboards. Some were even walking up the walls, trying to reach the ceiling. Not to be undone, I pulled a chair in and stood up. The antic of HIT in one hand and broom in the other was repeated, this time a little higher in the air. This time it became difficult to discern the colour of the kitchen counter. One of the corners of my eyes caught some roaches struggling in a spider web up above where wall met ceiling. Spiders, featuring rather low in my estimation, went several notches up in that one moment.
One more round of brisk sweeping and scrubbing followed, after which I gave a great sigh of relief. I had won. I had won!! My retina registered movement yet again. Ah. Here was one survival, trodding weakly along. I impinged him with the HIT spray, my reflexes by now trained into the 'spray at sight' order of my brains. The creature wobbled. I persevered. The last roach of the kitchen took its last gasp.
My mission was over. I relaxed before the idiot box. Somewhat co-incidentally, they were showing 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' on cable. As I watch the movie and type this yarn out, I am wondering if several hundred ghosts of roaches shan't haunt me tonight. I hope not.
Less than 2 hours ago (my post in the Gupshup C box shall bear me out), I was bemoaning the lack of inspiration in my amateur career as a blogger. And now here I am, an inspired individual, feeling that familiar upsurge to put words on a web page. That's co-incidence for me. On second thoughts, a more apt quotation would have been 'One often gets what one wants.'
They say inspiration strikes you from unusual sources - it fairly takes you off your guard at times. Well, they couldn't have been more accurate in my case. Surely enough, inspiration to write a blog after a more than a month long hiatus is something I owe to something as uninspiring as a cockroach. Okay, not just a cockroach - hundreds of them to be frank.
Now before I proceed I consider it my holy undertaking to warn my delicate minded readers (er, are there still any left in this literary world of gore and sinew?). What follows is a tale of simply unpalatable violence and written in rather poor taste apart from being wholly useless and without any morals at the end. Proceed at your own risk. Though I do hope you do. Proceed, I mean. After all so many cockroaches paid for this piece of blog with their lives.
I hate cockroaches. Nobody exactly loves them, but I simply dislike them, abhor them, detest them. They are an anathema to me. The only other thing the hatred of which can hold a candle to this hatred is my hatred of lizards. So when I landed into my friend's house for an extended vacation, the presence of several roaches in the kitchen as my chummy flat mates did not appeal to me in the least.
I made up my mind as to my next mission in life. Just like the W.H.O. has made it its mission to eradicate the polio virus once and for all, I decided to do just that with these hideous pests. Breaking News - 'Roaches were soon to get locally extinct from my friend's kitchen.
The first step was to study conditions. Don't snicker. If you think cockroaches can be done away with without proper planning, you've got another think coming. Roaches have outlived dianosaurs - so you can imagine what tough customers they are. Now where was I? Oh, yes. The conditions.
My friend's extremely busy schedule, her maid's stubborn decision to fulfill the cleaning rituals as sketchily as possible and the roaches' inherent resilience against extinction - all had combined together to help the pests build up an impressive number. This part of the research was instrumental in my giving a small demo to the maid on how to be a more comprehensive cleaner - after all I wouldn't be there all the time.
The next item on the agenda was to make a careful demographical study of the population with special stress on behavioural patterns and age class distribution. Which niches did the devils occupy? Well, there was hardly a place in the kitchen which they did not occupy - the sink, the refrigerator, the cupboard linings, even inside the large cooking vessels that are not used regularly. Besides hi-jacking my friend's kitchen for their living quarters, they also had the temerity to use it as a the outside of a Gurudwara where kadaah prasaad is always available. And being the health-freaks that they are, they even utilized the tiled kitchen walls and floor for regular walks.
Carefully timed surveys at meal times and between meal times helped me do the population survey. The head count was impossible to take, in the wake of their overwhelming numbers and the general problem in differentiating one individual from another. But I did get a general idea as to their number. They were infinite. There were several adults and many children, too. Yours truly not being an expert on cockroach sexology, gender determination was another poser.
Not exactly covering myself in glory in the above task, I was still far from disheartened. I had the bigger goal, the bigger picture in mind, viz., to kill, to destroy, to annihilate, to disembody the entomologist's Lucifer.
The next logical task was to get an anti-cockroach spray. There I was not disappointed at all. Whatever spare time my friend manages to have, she devotes it to the killing of these unhygienic creatures and for this HIT spray bottles are always at hand in the house. These canny beasts invariably give her the slip by hiding here and there, simply waiting for the deluge of the spray to die down. Its not her fault. A software technologist cannot compete with a budding ecologist in killing roaches.
Anyway, so here I was, with all the preliminary studies done, all the required material gathered and just the task to begin.
The task began with gusto. In my present status of bachelorhood, it is the cockroach that brings out the housewife in me. I pick up the broom, the dust pan and the cleaning rag without any visible signs of disgust and can make several kaam wali baais become envious or appreciative depending on their constitutions.
The cockroach also brings out the hardened professional killer in me. The general respect and kindliness toward all life forms that had made me take up Biodiversity in the post grads recedes to the backbench in these moments and my baser self takes over. The self that revels in death by violence.
No, I am not taking out a neon-shine knife from my pocket and stroking my chin or palm with it meditatively. Neither my eye has an unwholesome glint in it. Relax. All I am engaged in is opening all the cupboards one by one and emptying them of utensils and the odds and ends of a kitchen. This the den of the Mephistopheles. I believe in going to the core of the problem at once.
Several roaches were shocked out of their pleasant interludes by my simple act of jerking open the cupboard doors. 'What the heck!', I think one of them said to the other. I ignored their chattiness. We professional killers are rather the strong and silent variety. Down came the spray of HIT, hitting the chappies squarely. Some were blown away by the impact of the jet force. They landed and commenced writhing. With one swift stroke of the broom, I swept them away. They were no more important. Important ones were those that were escaping. Running pell mell wherever they could go. I worked both my hands - one holding the HIT bottle and spraying accurately and the other holding the broom and swatting, again, accurately. Five minutes later I was standing triumphantly amidst the corpses. So must King Ashoka have stood after the Kalinga Battle. Only I was feeling no remorse and not even the slightest inclination to turn Buddhist. The triumph any way did not last long. I discovered amongst my victims several that had only been stunned and were now wriggling their legs in an effort to recuperate. Not possible with me around! Another vicious spray of HIT and several bangs of the broom on the floor apart from my occasional stamps of feet on the unlucky arthropods ensued with satisfactory results.
The same procedure was followed with all the other cupboards. It became impossible to know what colour the kitchen floor tiles were. Um, ok. That was an exaggeration, but it sure did become difficult to walk on the floor without treading on what had been cockroaches. The kitchen floor was thus duly cleaned with an indefatigable spirit.
My eyes, trained for the last few hours to register all moving objects from the corner, suddenly detected motion. Lo! A number of roaches, rather panicky after the massacre of their brethren, were huddled along the kitchen slab and walls, above the cupboards. Some were even walking up the walls, trying to reach the ceiling. Not to be undone, I pulled a chair in and stood up. The antic of HIT in one hand and broom in the other was repeated, this time a little higher in the air. This time it became difficult to discern the colour of the kitchen counter. One of the corners of my eyes caught some roaches struggling in a spider web up above where wall met ceiling. Spiders, featuring rather low in my estimation, went several notches up in that one moment.
One more round of brisk sweeping and scrubbing followed, after which I gave a great sigh of relief. I had won. I had won!! My retina registered movement yet again. Ah. Here was one survival, trodding weakly along. I impinged him with the HIT spray, my reflexes by now trained into the 'spray at sight' order of my brains. The creature wobbled. I persevered. The last roach of the kitchen took its last gasp.
My mission was over. I relaxed before the idiot box. Somewhat co-incidentally, they were showing 'Shootout at Lokhandwala' on cable. As I watch the movie and type this yarn out, I am wondering if several hundred ghosts of roaches shan't haunt me tonight. I hope not.
Double Entendres
Why am I blogging about Double Entendres? Because of 3 reasons -
1. I am semi-non-pachydermatous
2. I am a female
3. I am living in a sex-crazed male world
Now don't you go about getting the wrong idea about me. Being an Evolutionary Biology enthusiast, I am a Life Sciences graduate and post-graduate. I know the importance of what bees and birds do. I am, in addition, quite a no-nonsense, non-squeamish, academic discusser of that three-letter-word-which-should-not-be-pronouned. I know that makes the world tick and while I do not go about cracking the ashleel, maansaahaari category of jokes, I do laugh at some of the more decent ones amongst them.
Besides, the mood of this blog is not angry or irritated. Actually three unintentionally rhyming words shall describe my current state of mind well - Bemused (33%), Amused (40%) and Confused [100-(33+40)% calculate for yourself if you are that enthu. We biologists pride ourselves on not knowing much of maths].
So that sets the preliminaries right. Now for a little bit of history.
I recall that as rather raw, green-behind-the-ears 18 year old, I used to go to the Symbi mess to have my dinner with my elder flatmates and their elder guy friends. The express instruction to me and to two others like me was this - 'If possible keep shut before the guys. And if you do open your trap and utter something you are not to utter, you are to shut right back up immediately after I give you the hint to do so.' This instruction had come our way after one or two bewildering (to us) situations when something innocent said by me or the others had got the guys in our group either wreathed with mischievous grins or with devilish glints that said not in words but action - 'Oh Yeah? And then....?'
I guess the male of the species and many of the females reading this blog shall know what I mean. The most innocent sounding words somehow get twisted into having sexual connotations without any apparent rhyme or reason! Why o why? The other day my friend raised this topic, and we got to enlisting a number of these mis-meant strings of letters. I was baffled by the sheer number of words that I came across! Nearly every third or fourth word we speak in our daily lives is not always what it was meant to be. In fact, it was her suggestion that this topic may just be worth blogging about. Abhilasha here goes your suggestion converted into action.
But thing is, I am myself a little unsure what the exact purpose of this blog is. Is it because I wish to bring to the notice of the orthodox literary world that look what's happening to your dictionary? Do I wish to share with other females my feeling of embarrassment covered beneath a veneer of 'Oh-okay-it-happens' when it does happen? Do I wish to rebuke the male species to mind their language interpretation skills?
Don't know yaar! I am, just as I mentioned above, Bemused, Amused and Confused. In that order. And did you calculate the %age of confusion in the blog and in me? And did I use any words here that have unintentional double entendres? Wonder!
1. I am semi-non-pachydermatous
2. I am a female
3. I am living in a sex-crazed male world
Now don't you go about getting the wrong idea about me. Being an Evolutionary Biology enthusiast, I am a Life Sciences graduate and post-graduate. I know the importance of what bees and birds do. I am, in addition, quite a no-nonsense, non-squeamish, academic discusser of that three-letter-word-which-should-not-be-pronouned. I know that makes the world tick and while I do not go about cracking the ashleel, maansaahaari category of jokes, I do laugh at some of the more decent ones amongst them.
Besides, the mood of this blog is not angry or irritated. Actually three unintentionally rhyming words shall describe my current state of mind well - Bemused (33%), Amused (40%) and Confused [100-(33+40)% calculate for yourself if you are that enthu. We biologists pride ourselves on not knowing much of maths].
So that sets the preliminaries right. Now for a little bit of history.
I recall that as rather raw, green-behind-the-ears 18 year old, I used to go to the Symbi mess to have my dinner with my elder flatmates and their elder guy friends. The express instruction to me and to two others like me was this - 'If possible keep shut before the guys. And if you do open your trap and utter something you are not to utter, you are to shut right back up immediately after I give you the hint to do so.' This instruction had come our way after one or two bewildering (to us) situations when something innocent said by me or the others had got the guys in our group either wreathed with mischievous grins or with devilish glints that said not in words but action - 'Oh Yeah? And then....?'
I guess the male of the species and many of the females reading this blog shall know what I mean. The most innocent sounding words somehow get twisted into having sexual connotations without any apparent rhyme or reason! Why o why? The other day my friend raised this topic, and we got to enlisting a number of these mis-meant strings of letters. I was baffled by the sheer number of words that I came across! Nearly every third or fourth word we speak in our daily lives is not always what it was meant to be. In fact, it was her suggestion that this topic may just be worth blogging about. Abhilasha here goes your suggestion converted into action.
But thing is, I am myself a little unsure what the exact purpose of this blog is. Is it because I wish to bring to the notice of the orthodox literary world that look what's happening to your dictionary? Do I wish to share with other females my feeling of embarrassment covered beneath a veneer of 'Oh-okay-it-happens' when it does happen? Do I wish to rebuke the male species to mind their language interpretation skills?
Don't know yaar! I am, just as I mentioned above, Bemused, Amused and Confused. In that order. And did you calculate the %age of confusion in the blog and in me? And did I use any words here that have unintentional double entendres? Wonder!
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