As you have noticed I haven’t been able to dedicate time to blog here or elsewhere. So after much thoughts and after a long hiatus I’ve decided to update this space again. I reckon I’m just too busy to keep the blog up the way it deserves to be and I must admit it feels great to blog again. Okay, to the post now.

Well, last year by the end of June, I was in Kerala along with my parents to attend a family function. When things got over I was asked to return back alone as my parents stayed back saying they had some more rituals to be performed. So I made my way to the railway station all alone. I reached the station beforehand and my ticket was also booked and after having a scrumptious meal, I stood there on the platform waiting for the train. I didn’t face any problems while waiting; the train was on time. My baggage wasn’t heavy, so I didn’t have problems with that either. Things couldn’t have been better. Great! I thought. I got into the train and went on looking for my berth in the entire compartment. With some assistance, I finally settled for a place. And as I noticed, just opposite me sat a young woman or rather a dazzlingly beautiful young girl I should say, who was busy listening to music on her i-Pod equally engrossed with a novel in her hand.

Where’s my music by the way?! Abruptly, I gave the baggage a good rummage but couldn’t find it. Well, I felt pretty bad when I thought I was without headphones. I didn’t have a book to read either, at least to while away my time. How do you think one could pass the time sitting idly? I suggest you make sure you carry either of the things with you while traveling. Severe boredom can sometimes madden you, especially when you are alone and when you are in such hapless situation. Well, for me it was almost like I was falling through a bottomless chasm of boredom. Quite, quite. Feeling tedious, a chitchat with someone or with the girl opposite me wouldn’t hurt I thought. And I wanted to break the ice sooner or later, so finally I decided to strike up a conversation with her.

It started off pleasantly well and while we did away exchanging agreeable pleasantries, the conversation suddenly veered towards globe-trotting, wanderlust-ing, and the like. Halfway through and all of a sudden, she posed a pretty interesting question which I feel, almost, went unnoticed as I didn’t have much to talk about then. I pondered for a while and came up with something which I felt didn’t strike her fancy. And that’s what the title is and that’s what this entry is all about.

Which side of the road is right? Yeah, which side of the road is right?

Sadly, even I asked to myself which side of the road was right?! When you’re driving, always keep left. Yeah, always drive on the left side of the road. But mind you, this is not the regulation everywhere. After surfing the Internet, I’ve found that one third of the world drive on the left side of the road while two-thirds drive on the right. Well, let me get this straight then, if you are an Indian in the U.S., you will face the problem of driving on the other side of the road. The same can also happen to Americans driving in the United Kingdom, Britishers driving in Europe, Aussies driving in Germany etc. etc., you can take a good look at it here. Initially, the traffic rule was to drive always on the left side of the road worldwide and they also had a fair reason to switch to driving on the right side of the road. What is interesting is that left-hand-traffic has a right-hand-driver’s position while right-hand-traffic has a left-hand-driver’s position, there are some exceptions to it though.

And I now reckon the girl who asked me this question should be either a born-in-India-raised-in-the-U.S. or born and raised in the U.S. type, faced with the maddening and vexing task of driving on the wrong side of the road. Otherwise she wouldn’t have come up with this question.

And according to the World Standards, this is what they have got to say:

 

If you are planning to visit the UK and happen to come from one of the many countries that drive on the wrong side of the road, the following advice, direct from the Ministry of Transport, is for you:

“Visitors are informed that in the United Kingdom traffic drives on the left-hand side of the road. In the interests of safety, you are advised to practise this in your country of origin for a week or two before driving in the UK.”

To cite an incident that’s related to this post, one evening as I was speeding along the road, all of a sudden out of nowhere came the gasp of power brakes. I slammed on the brakes as well and almost rammed into the opposite vehicle. I looked up at the blushing face of the driver and I stared intently at him with a devastating look. He came on the wrong side of the road and fortunately, nothing happened. My heart skipped a beat and for a second or two, I felt I had my heart in my mouth.

Hey dickhead, which side of the road do you think is right?

When he was too asphyxiated to speak, it would have abashed him even more if I’d blurted out that rhetorical question? No? Well, I’m just asking…

PS: This is just a random update to apprise everyone that this blog isn’t dead yet. I’ll try to update this space more often. So stay tuned denizens, watch this space anyway. Adios for now.

Disclaimer: Don’t take for granted that all the below events are true. Some might be fictitious; incidents with any resemblance to actual events or locales are purely coincidental. And by incidents, I don’t actually mean incidents. Not quite, not quite, not quite…

Coming to the post, I’ve been racking my brain hard to re-collect all the incidents that happened since my infancy. It took pains to recall them in all of a sudden. Eventually, I’m putting all my ability to arrange a few words together and string a proper sentence. Read on.

Novels are umpteen, and so are the authors. Favorites are afew and run-of-the-mills are aplenty. And what is the first thing that you look for, while choosing a book? Blurb? Author? Book title?

Well, I’m not choosy about the books, which I’m going to read or the authors either. If I find the blurb interesting, then without giving it a second thought, I go for it. I’d love to spend a good deal of time reading a book but I agree, I’m not an avid/voracious reader, books are my ‘first love’ though. I’d love to read all the books in a month or perhaps in a year’s time, but will life long procrastination, assist me in completing this herculean task? And because of my impecuniousness, rather than lying on the couch and having the material in my hand, I’m straining out my pair of oculi reading the e-books downloaded, free of charge, on my system.

Well, here are some of the authors I’d like to list and relate some of the incidents, if any, that has happened.

Sidney Sheldon: They charged an exorbitant amount for a membership; it was a pretty penny for me. Although I was penurious, flat broke, and penniless, I still managed to pay 250 bucks to the librarian and in return, she issued a membership card with a membership no. 2179 on 07/07/’07. Guess what? I was gazing at the card for quite some time while typing this blog entry and only now did the numbers really, impress me. Now that’s an especial date, innit? Well, now don’t you think that it is something easy to commemorate too? Perhaps, the day when boredom died off? Ah, whatever, this was the day when I got registered as one of the members of the Little Lending Library and it all started with a Sidney Sheldon book. Don’t ask me the title. Of late, I’m oblivious of everything that’s happening around me. Something seriously wrong with my wet ware, I guess. Never mind. Just a book or two left to complete from His shelf.

Paulo Coelho: If you are a regular reader of my blog, this must be a deja-vu for you. This name reminds me of the day when I stumbled over to pronounce His last name and eventually ended up getting offended by the librarian. Sue me if I spell or pronounce His name incorrectly again. Gone are the days when I used to mumble Paulo err., C…o…elho. Now I feel pretty good that I’m enunciating his name perfectly right. Hmmm, I did not know this maven until a friend of mine recommended Paulo Coelho’s books to me. Yep, a guy who had a special liking to His style of writing, and who didn’t reveal his other favorite authors intentionally just because His works were unrivaled, one and only, and who kept reiterating that He was his reigning favorite. Somehow I read the best book in my life; ‘The Alchemist’ that is. My thanks to Him, thanks to him as well.

John Grisham: On social networking sites, I always have the habit of checking out my friends’ profile, (hell no, I don’t stalk in the cyberspace) especially the books recommended on the profile by the person. I felt sick to my stomach when a friend of mine spelled His name erroneously. I could not bear that anymore. Unwittingly I tried to rebuke him and turned aggressive spitting out harsh words at him. Note that I was the one who scrapped him in the first place. I was sure of the spelling but I pondered for a while, and to make myself clear, typed in ‘John Gresham’ on wikipedia.org and hit the go button. I was taken  aback and I couldn’t imagine the unpleasantly surprising feeling when a person like the one I mentioned above, existed on earth or the trepidation either, which appeared and disappeared in a flash. Eventually he came out with a lame excuse saying that it was a typo. That should’ve been a real bummer. Hmph, I really thanked God for saving my skin. Ah, a sigh of relief at last.

Ayn Rand: Remind people of Her and they talk about the time frames. The novelist, philosopher, playwright, and the screen writer, Ayn Rand is an author whose story tellings are interminable and who always enjoys her works to be published in small fonts and while reading her book, I had my microscope and magnifier handy, anyway. Considering the minuscule font, it was practically impossible to complete it within a week’s time and the ones who claim to have done that within a day or two should either be a superhuman or Godlike. If my memory serves me correctly, I was gifted with one Ayn Rand penned ‘Atlas Shrugged’ book and believe me, it took approximately a friggin’ decade to complete the book. Huh, do you humor me on this? And I tell you, I was completely exhausted, fatigued, dog-tired, and drained of energy after reading the book, it was a pretty interesting read, though. From the reader’s list, Ayn Rand’s novels are on top of the list. It’s something worthy of high praise. No doubt, writers of Her talent and caliber are a few and far between.

P.G. Wodehouse: I have no intent on eulogizing him, but let me just ask you a question. Do you store up all the phrases and later mull them over, when you are in the midst of the populace and laugh your arse off with your unsuppressed titters? Or while reading his books, did you laugh at something that was broadly or extravagantly humorous?  Okay all that aside, I wanted to complete one of the books at a stretch. So the only option was to download the audio version and listen to the audio programme. Seriously, I tried to be in a jocular mood all day while listening to the audio book and wanted to stretch my laugh lines further, but it did not amuse me even to the least overwhelming extent, all I could settle for was the podcast which comprised of different dialects and accents. It was so deadening, draggy, and wearisome that even my mind went for fishing. I should say, I was thoroughly disappointed.

P.S. These are just some of the incidents that took place. I’m not trying to disgrace any author. They are great, whatsoever.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year, people.

Lesson#1: There’s a big difference between a “Hi” and a “Hello”. So read on and use ‘em properly. Damn.
Location: At my friend’s place, on the outskirts of Chennai.

This is a boring lesson. Last year by the end of August, I was visiting my friend’s place. I don’t know for what reason I went there, was it a social call, an extended stay at his place, a casual conversation, an official inspection, or for boarding a ship, I seriously don’t know.  By noon I reached his place and he received me with a bittersweet welcome. And after a casual conversation with him, he introduced me to his sister who was actually 3 years elder to me. On seeing her for the first time, I greeted her saying a “hello”, and received a hello back. After she left the place, my friggin’ friend pointed out that one should not greet elders with a “hello”, “hi” is a better greeting! Say hello to some one who is younger to you! Oh, really is it? I wondered. What a bummer!

Lesson#2: Always check if your pants are zipped before you move out from your place.
Location: City Centre, R.K Salai, Chennai.

I was visiting this place for the first time in my life.  All right, after watching a matinée show at Inox, I was getting down the stairs. As I was descending on an escalator with some of my fellow-mates, I was in for a big surprise. A lay man who was snooping there for quite some time started yelling at me. I could not figure out for what reason he was hollering at me. He saw me and pointing at my groin, yelled zippu pa, zippu, only then I could realize, I forgot to zip my pants! Damn!  All right, young man. Thanks a lot for reminding me. Eh, a lesson well learnt by me and the people around, within ear reach.

Lesson#3: Bikes/bicycles cannot scale walls. Despite what they show in cartoon and elsewhere.
Location: Somewhere down the road.

This one is a bit painful if you don’t have enough balance. When I was in my early teens I was very much obsessed with people who perform various stunts with their bikes/bicycles. In spite of the television advertisers who flash a statutory warning, saying not to imitate this  and that they’re performed by experts, I went on. I did not pay any heed to ‘em, in fact who cares a damn about that? All right, I don’t want to elucidate what happened here but you get the gist, don’t you? I tried to impress a girl and eventually ended up with bruises all over my body.

Lesson#4: When you’re involved in a heated argument with someone, don’t stab the person with a sharply pointed tip of a pencil.
Location: At my school.

This is the one that hurts the most, especially when when you don’t wear your undies. The folks in school keep pestering me like crazy. They have the habit of making fun of my stature. I agree I’m short but what if they go beyond the limits? Ah, simple. I call them names. When I was at the back of a god damned fellow, I realized that that was my moment. I had a sharply pointed tip of a pencil and with my bare hands stabbed him with that on his buttocks and I ran for my life. LMAO! That would have hurt him a lot, I guess. Sorry mate.

Lesson#5: Don’t ever touch the calling bell. Knock at the door instead. It’s safe too.
Location: At home, sweet home.

I remember a person who came home, one fine afternoon and he hit the calling bell right away. That was a god damned idea I should say, he should have knocked at the door instead. As there is no grill in front of the door by the entrance, it will take only a matter of seconds to greet the person in. As soon as the doorbell was rung, it started giving an ugly cry. There was some problem with the buzzer and eventually the buzz did not stop. It started making a hell of a noise like some old tape-recorder loaded with a half-dead battery. I stood there anxiously waiting for it to come to a standstill, so was my brother and so were my parents and so was the man. Eww, I could see the embarrassment on everyone’s face. Damn, that sounds really bad, doesn’t it?

Lesson#7: Serial number, experiment, observation, inference and result!
Location: In the Chemistry lab.

To a pinch of the mixture, a few drops of ethyl alcohol and concentrated sulphuric acid are added and the mixture is heated in a test tube and it’s then poured into a dilute solution of sodium bicarbonate. Finally note the smell emanating from the test tube. Argh, I don’t remember the experiment properly, pardon me. It’s also advisable not to carry out this experiment in the chemistry lab or elsewhere without adult supervision. Err., what am I talking about? Wait a second, while going through all this you definitely missed the 6th lesson, didn’t you? All right, things are going haywire now, I suppose my mind has gone fishing. So I stop here.

P.S- Kindly note that these real life incidents did not happen in the same way as mentioned above. I’ve randomly numbered them for my convenience.

Stranger 1: Hi da hw r u? How often’ve you received such kinda corny questions on your mobile? From an unknown number, not willing to reveal his identity and  plans to remain incognito till the very end. Perhaps what would a person think normally? I’m not sure but this is what my stupid pea-sized brain thought; maybe I know this person or I will just ask who it is. And this is the reply I got: ver r u studying da? Now this just pissed me off first of all, ’cause this person didn’t answer my question in the first place. Instead he posed another question and referred to me as ‘da’ as if I was his sidekick or something. So I did not reply. After some time ‘Y not replyng da? msgs nt reching u?’ Eww, it completely infuriates me when I see such heavily abbreviated texts. I stared at the message feeling sick to my stomach, that idiot didn’t use his dictionary on his phone or he didn’t know how to spell words either. And when I see a person like that, whoever it is, I immediately lose respect for that person and mock him/her cruelly. Using ‘u’ for you and ‘ur’ for your is okay but what’s the use in writing ‘reching’ to imply ‘reaching’ when you’re not really shortening the word, it is only one letter, for Pete’s sake. He probably thinks this way of writing is cool. That went on for quite sometime and later I myself thought of revealing  this; I said I was a he and not a she as you might have imagined. He felt dimwitted and he never messaged me back!

Stranger 2: This happened 5 or 6 months back I reckon. One evening I received an unsolicited message. Excerpts: “hey i dont know who you are but some stupid guy is messaging my number to you.” Did you understand a thing out of this? Well,  I never did. Honestly, I stood dumbstruck staring at this message. First of all, I never understood what it meant as I was feeling very dizzy, and in the second place asked who this was promptly. And again the same crap, “hey i … you” Holy f***! Then he asked my name and to which department I belonged to. I understood, this was actually a come-hither-kinda guy from my college. So I replied ‘Sarin Gopan, Computer science department’. I could not tolerate the nonsense anymore as he was getting on my nerves, so I messaged my friends and asked who this fella was.  One of them said it was ***, a guy from EC department from my batch. He told me to continue this pretense and I, however, had no plans of doing this but he insisted me to carry on. Okay, fine then. And this went on for days together and it was really a pain in the ass, sending replies to this talentless dickhead. One fine day,  or to be more precise one fine night he called and without seeing who the caller was, I pressed the answer button  unintentionally and said hello. When he heard my voice he hung up  right away, he had a certain element of doubt and so he wanted to make things certain, but after realizing who I was, he felt embarrassed. He even threatened me for doing such a thing. I’m afraid not, I was ready for anything.

Stranger 3: What do you have to say about those jobless freaks who lurk around, attending cheap online classes, and try to hit on women? And asking ASLs, pleading all the way and posing all sort of idiotic questions? Now, let me just rack my brain and tell you an incident that took place months back. Well, I got an IM from a guy, he started talking to me and from my name, he took me for granted that I was a missy.  What the f***?! And started typing in all the crap that he usually uses while trying to hit on girls. I told myself ah, this should be fun and continued disguising as a girl. What was even funny, I unleashed all my sarcasm on that poor guy and that little conversation with me  set his  wussy arse on fire, well not literally though. Poor chap. As I expected, that turned out to be freaking hilarious. The questions he asked was enough to crack me up all day. It was getting crazy. Eventually, in the nick of the time I told him the person to whom you were talking to was a guy and not a girl. Run for your life now, and get a life, you loser! And finally ignoring me, he let out a sigh of relief. Obviously, after a long time that should have pissed him off. Seriously how on earth can a girl endure all these lousy, senseless and trivial talks in the cyberspace and elsewhere? I really feel pity for them.

Jokes apart. Perhaps, one of the most embarrassing moments in my life is when a lecturer reads out my name loudly, they certainly don’t know how to pronounce my name(but some try and manage it) but I still wonder how easy, it is for people to pronounce a name, say for example Pranatharthiharan(a school friend of mine) but the people pronounce it perfectly! I even know a friggin’ Tamil actor from the Tamil film industry with a slight modification of my name and folks even call me by that name.  Holy fuck! I even compressed my name like YESJI(SG), I know it sounds really weird. I copied this idea from a friend of mine (AARJAY)R J RAMYA. Perhaps, I feel I have a very good name and anyone who hears my name for the first time keep asking me what it means and from where I got this name. Such a stupid question! I don’t know! Seriously! My parents named me!

P.S- The acronym STFU stands for Shut The Fuck Up. You don’t have to ponder on the title anymore .
Thank you.