"Santa clause does exist" or does he?

Before any kid who believes Santa exists reads this-Santa does "exist", so no need to read this post ( its not like i have a huge base of 5 year old kids reading my blog. But i just thought I needed to be more socially responsible)

Now every Christmas my family had a regular plan, we went to the midnight mass came home slept and my mom would prepare a feast fit for 3 kings! And the rest of the day we spend by trying to digest all those delicacies. When I was in second standard I had one of those brainwaves (seems absolutely foolproof at that moment, only to backfire in totally unimaginable ways) I thought “why don’t I hang up one of those socks on the Christmas tree with a wish list of things I wanted for Christmas. (Inspired by a Hollywood movie I saw at that time and the idea of making Christmas more productive brightened up my young face, just like our Christmas tree in the living room.) 

                                                        So I got one of my father’s large socks and put in a long yet sweet list of toys I wanted for Christmas and hung it up on the Christmas tree.(hey, I was really young then) I was so exited that I jumped around even in the church.The jumping and all the excitement made me fall asleep quicker than my expected time of Santa’s arrival. And of course my sister was skeptical of the idea (she had that higher wisdom- she actually knew Santa was a myth, and that knowledge made her even more like the kid who liked burning ants with a lens)

                                        And yet I wake up in the morning and before anything else, ran to the tree to see if there was any "new development” there. No gifts of any sorts, but the sock was gone.(at first I thought Santa was after all a poor old man- he needs some time, or may be there might be some red tape issue at north pole, I mean even parcel services worked slower even with a lot fewer deliveries) Then I had started having second thoughts about my theory after I saw my sister walk into the room. I asked my parents and my sister if they took my magic sock, my parents in response kept asking my sister if she hid it they even searched her room. But no, the sock seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth like magic. To a 7 year old there are fewer things more thrilling, and awesome than that. So when I was hopping about and teasing my sister, my father was in the backyard watering plants- he called me and my sister.

                                                            When we were in the back yard, what we saw was our pet dog Ronny (Sir Ronald, I later named him) chewing on something at the far end of the garden.(Ronny was a puppy back then and we used to let him loose inside our home, he slept on my bed, or in the toilet or he would make my bed his toilet and sleep there. But you get the point right?) if you still didn't guess what Ronny was chewing on- it was the magic sock. So the mystery Santa clause was none other than our loyal friend/pet Ronny, he looked at us with his usual “what did I do wrong now?” look. So that was one of the Christmases to forget that I never fail to remember. It’s the human nature when we ask our self or someone else to not do something, that’s when we actually want to do it. Like- Me:"hey Bill don’t look there", bill: "where?" (staring at where i just asked him not to look at) So I forgot what I wanted to write about sorry reader but thanks for reading any way.

me, with the culprit.

the auto miracle!

Only yesterday a friend of mine was narrating a long but a cliché story of the time he missed a train. It got me going back the old memory lane and I remembered the time when we nearly missed a train, if it wasn’t for an auto rickshaw driver we would have missed a train trip to Kerala to attend a hire certificate hearing. The incident took place 4 days before my first 12th standard board exam, me and my mom had to attend a certain send off and a prayer to write the exams well meeting at my school. At first we thought the program would last an hour or so, but we were sorely mistaken. The train was an 8.30 teagarden express to Cochin. And our original plan for the evening was- we attend the function, return home where we pick up the luggage and my sister then scramble to the railway station. But the function never seemed to stop, the principal so anxious to get a 100% result and possibly a state rank holder dragged on the prayer a little too long for our comfort. At 8.00 he finally thought it apt to stop the prayers and start reading stuff about the school’s new programs for the next year. My mom was practically shouting at me to go and talk to the principal to exempt me from staying any longer. And so I did with my mom accompanying me at the podium, where we explained the situation to him. Thankfully the principal being a good man told us we had to leave as soon as we possible to catch the train (like we didn't know that).
                                            My mom was running to keep up with me, she was panicking and kept saying “oh my god we definitely are going to miss the train.” (Frankly I thought so too, In fact I was confident that we were not going to go back home then to the railway station in time to catch the train) If we were to have any hope of reaching on time the timing had to perfect. In 25 minutes we had to make a 15 minute trip home, a further 10 minute of utter confusion and pandemonium there, and finally a dreaded 20 minute trip to the station. What we needed then was a miracle, and a miracle we got in its crudest form. A really rickety, fragile looking auto rickshaw pulled up at the entrance and asked us where we needed to go. Me and my mom jumped in told him the destination and explained the mess of a situation we were in. the driver suggested we call my sister and tell her to haul the entire luggage outside and lock up the house (which we followed to the word). After the call, the excitement drowned a little (only to rise, tremendously again) then I realized we were practically flying through the streets. My mom holding on to the seat for her dear life, as the auto driver made yet another death defying turn to miss being hit by a truck. In order to avoid the traffic he was literally driving on the wrong side of the road, but we weren’t complaining in 5 minutes we were home. Then the driver got out, stuffed the suitcases behind the seats and we were back on the race track. But you got to give it to him-the driver, I think he was in the wrong profession he could earn millions in the stunt driver business. My sister was too scared to even open her eyes throughout the journey.
                              I really enjoyed the movie “the transporter” of Jason stathom, now I was in the real life version of it and it didn’t look all that “FUN” all of a sudden. The 10 minute ride (if we had a police car chasing us and a helicopter above us taking in the whole scene on camera, the ride would be the best car chase escapes of the century) felt like a whole eternity, and my hands hurt real bad, after all holding on to the armrest so hard will hurt your hand (and I held on it because otherwise I feared I would be tossed out when the driver makes those sharp turns) the auto finally came to one of those screeching stops. (The ones you see in movies and think you want to do that too, take my word for it it’s not the same when you are actually in the vehicle when that happens) My mom handed him a 100rs note for a 70rs journey, well I think the driver earned every single paisa. And the pleasant surprise was that the train was still there and we got in just seconds before the train slowly started to move. We sat in our seat and laughed our hearts out for about half an hour. Of course everyone there were staring at us like we were mad people who just walked in, but if they were in the journey I’m sure plenty of them would fall on their knees and thank the lord for surviving the trip!

i was attacked by a toilet flush

If you think the title is a little bit too difficult to believe or unrealistic, my friends you are sadly mistaken. Yes I was attacked by a bathroom flush. It happened while I was on a train to secunderabad. I always found train toilets filthy, smelly and poorly maintained now I have just added a new word to describe it- dangerous. It was half past 10 and I was going to use the toilet before I slept. But the queue outside the bathroom was enormous. Even after 15 minutes of sticking around there, a guy was still ahead of me. He was standing right outside the doors ready to pounce into the toilets just as soon as someone would exit one of the toilets. But the people occupying the toilets were in no hurry. So I decided to check out the toilet in the next compartment, lo and behold one toilet just got vacant just as I went there. Around the time when everyone goes to sleep on a train the toilet seats are as hard to get as an IIM or IIT seat. So anyway I did my business in the toilet and like any good citizen wanting to keep the government property clean I pushed the flush button – BIG MISTAKE.
Then there was pandemonium in the toilet as the flush button was in my hands, it came off. And the water was everywhere; I tried putting the flush button back but the more I tried to fix the situation the more it worsened, there was water all over me and not a single drop went into the toilet bowl, where it is supposed to go. And finally I almost fixed the flush up with a minor plumbing work of my own; just a few drops were dripping. (Not bad work for an amateur plumber) so the worse was yet to come when I was out of the toilet I checked to see how bad the situation was. I wore a black t shirt so the shirt look pretty much dry, the pants on the other had was wet in all the right place, to make the illusion of me wetting my pants. So I began walking towards my berth, the people who saw me outside the toilet, waiting there for more than a quarter of an hour (pacing up and down like a new father outside the hospital’s delivery room) and suddenly I disappear and when I came back my pants were wet. Looking back I think I should have done some explaining. Its not like I wanted this to happen, who would want that (I don’t go to sleep every night checking off the “I was attacked by an inanimate object” column) but with me these things happen, is it because I’m unlucky or is it just another hurdle life throws at us ,I don’t know but its an experience I can remember for a long sad time. Be sure you can have the same experience. The train I got in was sabari express coach number s4. the bathroom to your left when you go there through s3. (for reference of any plumber who might read this)


Oh and p.s I never fully understood the expressions "a hurdle life throws at us". Why would life do such a thing? I mean, they say life is a rat race and how are rats supposed to jump over hurdles let alone evade them when life keeps on throwing them at you? Silly language, English is!

a case of curious identities

One would think, the purpose of a photo identity card is to establish the identity of a person. But the meaning of the identity card obviously got lost in translation with the government of our great nation. I say this because when my mom got her voters card (in Andhra pradesh) she went down to the registration office because she thought she got another woman’s voter’s card. My mom’s name is Magi Justine, but the card read – “mega jestis”. (I know it seems like a super hero’s secret identity!) She might as well have worn a cape and jumped off a building yelling “mega jestis to the rescue” than argue with the registration office clerk, that the card got her name wrong. Their big argument was “the picture is yours so it’s okay”. But the photo was a masterpiece of it’s own right; painters can get a person’s likeliness wrong, but for a photographer to get it wrong I mean what are the chances of that? The photo looks like a mug shot of a dead body that just washed up on a beach. And my mom’s husbands name (my dad) was printed as jestis M S. it’s funny because my dad’s name is Justine M J, at least that’s what my mom wrote on the application. I still am in amazement on how a person can confuse J with S. (written in capital letters)
But that was nothing compared to the utter speechlessness our family was in when my dad got his voter’s card. The name read -jeswin . Em . Je .(“seriously, People can get initials wrong” might be your question. The answer is a big YES!) But the best part was spelling mistake (highest form of an understatement calling it a spelling mistake) on the wife’s name (first of all there was no wife’s name only father/mother/husband’s name so I pity all the married guys who got a voter’s card back then) my mom’s name appeared as –“jan Em. Vi.” But an optimist would have said “look on the bright side at least his photo look a little bit like him” but im not so sure! So thus the “non”identity card was to be tolerated and thus for a few months in Andhra my parents were jeswin Em Je and jan Em Vi, thanks to the election commission of India of course.

fishing in hell

Okay fishing is a hard job; imagine fishing without water or a fishing rod? (No, fishing is not in a metaphorical context here) there’s this tank at our back yard, it was supposed to be our septic tank but it was not properly built nor was it closed, after a new septic tank was built. In a town where it rains almost daily the tank is almost always filled with water .And the people we rented our house to before we moved there had put some fishes in the tank so that mosquitoes don’t lay their eggs there. So one hot summer day my mom comes to me and says “there’s fish at the bottom of the tank, the tank dried up so you can catch it easily”. So I decided to be sport and catch some fish, thus began an hour I desperately try to forget.
Imagine this, the tank is 4 feet deep, it had dried up in the summer heat.(regrettably not fully dried the floor was a wet muddy mess) I could spot two fishes (mudskipper or catfish, I don’t know the name but they are more elusive than an al queda terrorist) they were in a small pool of really wet mud. So the traditional method of a hook and bait would definitely not work. The only weapon of choice I had was a pair of long sticks that I had to use like a giant pair of chopsticks to push it into the bucket attached to the string my mom placed near the fish. I know what you are thinking if it was just 4 feet deep why didn’t I get in it and get the fish. The floor of the tank could be placed in the top 5 most disgusting and dangerous terrains in the world list, so getting inside the tank could be placed as the last possible resort to get the fish. The fishes were alive and they were more slippery than a greasy pole with motor oil poured throughout its length. And what’s more annoying is having my mom and sister yelling instructions at me “push it in” “lift it with the two sticks” “go right” “go left”. An hour passed by with no luck. When people give you directions (that’s only use is to cause the poor soul listening, a migraine) and you are the one doing all the work it causes a feeling of at most annoyance that cannot be described in mere words. But finally I managed to push both the fishes in the bucket (one slippery living hell at a time).Two sore hands, a few bruises and a really tired body later there they were, the two fishes that ruined my day. But when the question came on who would have the pleasure of killing them, I thought I would be more than glad to kill them (and kill them violently) but I couldn’t, after more than 2 excruciating hours in the sun trying to catch them I couldn’t get myself to kill the fruits of my hard work. So I let the killing and cooking with my mom, I didn’t even eat the nice curry the fish had the poor fortune of becoming. The moral of the story is when you work so hard on something, only for your effort to be eaten by others you have to make sure have a little bit of it yourself or you’ll have to starve !

Venus human trap !!!!!!

Yesterday I got myself into yet another pickle of a situation. My ambition after getting my degree is to do an MBA. And for that reason I wanted to enroll myself into a CAT entrance coaching center. I heard there was a coaching centre in a building near my gym. So I thought I’ll check it out, despite me being seriously fatigued by a tough work out session. The coaching centre was at the 4th and top most floor of a plaza. I took the stairs up there; people at the coaching center were looking at me like I was a stray dog that just walked into a church. I was certainly not looking sharp after a 2 hr workout, and the limp I developed (because of the new exercise I got for my thighs) was not polishing my image either. But the place did not teach the subject there, they only had MAT. The news did not disappoint me, but the thought that I had to get down 4 flights of stairs simply broke my heart.
So then I saw a heart warming sight, the cushioned walls of the lift and the air conditioned atmosphere in it was like a light in a dark tunnel (literally, the corridor was so dark). So I got in the elevator, no one else did they opted the tiring stairs. I thought to myself “why do these people use all the facilities in such a nice place?” When the lift doors closed I noticed something on the door -“venus” It read. I didn’t give it a second thought, I pushed floor 0 and waited for my floor. The lift announced “welcoming you” in two languages. (I hated it when recorded messages are grammatically wrong) so finally it came “ground floor” but the door wouldn’t open , I pushed the open door button. NOTHING! I tried every thing, with the same result, the stubborn door appeared to be laughing at me. then it hit me, when I was trapped in the lift like a toad in a well. I understood why “venus” seemed funny at that time, one thing came to my mind then “the venus fly trap” everything about the elevator drew me in the bright lights, the cool air, the (grammatically wrong) electronic voice ushering me in, or the prospect of an effortless ride instead of a strenuous walk down the stairs. But the lift had taken a day off, maybe the lift had ‘problems’.(how do I know about the secret life of an elevator?) for 10 minutes I panicked and tried everything I possibly could do( I yelled out like my life depended on it, I hit notes that would make any whale cry with envy) then I though “if I’m stuck in an elevator why not have some fun while I’m there.” I went up and down and up again, this went on for a quarter of an hour; then I had a brainwave I went to the top floor and I yelled , kicked ,screamed made as much noise as I could. Finally one woman from the coaching center thought she heard some faint noise (faint for her, throat busting for me) and pushed the lift button. Then I heard one of the sweetest sounds ever the lift said “thanking you visit again” and the doors opened. She asked me what was wrong, I explained to her my ordeal with the most stubborn lift, and I said goodbye and good riddance to the floor.
And looked towards the stairs, and never have I felt so glad to see a dirty, smelly, energy draining flight of stairs.

12 tasks for hercules

Think Hercules had a tough time doing the task given to him? Now if he needed some Unfeasible tasks i got a few for him(based a little bit on the chores I had to do) here goes:

1) Cleaning all the weeds from my mom’s garden. Do that in the burning sun and humidity which would put a sauna to shame. And the tool you have to use is a shovel which is broken and may at any minute turn in its axis to cut the user’s foot in two.

2) Clean the water tank the water has to be drained away. ( Hercules better not wear his best shirt to the job when doing this) The stubborn sand at the bottom won’t come off leaving the person frustrated and with a migraine.

3) Catching cat fish from the drained off well like structure. For your information, cat fish know how a human thinks, it’s filthy, it bites, and it gets into the hardest to reach corners.

4) Attending the class of our management professor and, (here comes the tough part) staying awake the whole time. The most resilient of students from far off corners of the college have tried this task. The most one has managed is half of the hour, and the record was set by an insomniac kid. ( well insomniac till he attended the class at least )

5) Stealing food from the school canteen where I did my 12th. It’s like a tough communist ration center there. Or a prison canteen.

6) Eating the bonda made in our college canteen, Seems refreshing? Well sometimes I think they are made with tortoise shells and titanium shavings. Biting it means loosing a tooth or more. My friends buy the bonda to use as a throwing weapon, it’s an excellent projectile.

7) Reading my accounting book, and comprehend at least one line from it.

8) Cleaning my room. Hercules may have cleaned the Augean stables but when he takes one look at my room he may start hating himself.

9) Try to apply for any government identity card in Kerala. If he gets the job done in less than three months he deserves more than just a place in the book of Guinness records.

10) Turn into an inanimate object or into a lower life form like a dog or cat. I bet he can’t do that. Neither can I, but we are discussing Hercules here.

11) Get our washing machine to work. I will even pay him for this.

12) Last but one of the toughest of challenges, hang around with me for a whole day. Between the blunt jokes and moronic mistakes. If he still manages to pull through he will be disqualified on the basis of failing a mental test.