A Few Leaves from The Diary Of Jane

Sunday
There’s this guy I know from the church. He seems intriguing. I don’t know his name but there’s certainly something in him which I find mysterious. Most of the times he appears pre-occupied. He comes alone, departs alone and doesn’t talk much. He even prays in silence; I wonder if God understands his wordless prayers. He doesn’t even close his eyes, as if he has no respect for the custom. People like him should better be atheists. He doesn’t bother much about what he’s wearing. Today he showed up in a checkered blue-black shirt and Bermuda shorts. But the worst part was: he was in sandals. What sort of a sane person does that? I’m sure there are a lot of losers like him wandering the streets, waiting for a chance to be with someone like me; like that’ll ever happen. What a loser!

Tuesday
I saw the guy from the church in market today; not that he was buying or anything, he works at the general store instead. I always knew that there was something that caused him to be the way he is. I know he’s my age, at least he looks so. What could’ve been the reason behind his working at the store? Probably his dad’s a drinker or -god forbid- is dead. He didn’t seem to recognize me. We’ve seen each other many times in the church, but I wonder if he was ashamed of the difference in our positions: his behind the counter and mine on the other side of it. That could be the only explanation of why he didn’t indulge in small talk with me. Most guys his age would give away their comforts to talk to me.
I don’t know why, but I certainly feel for him in a way a girl would feel for a boy she liked. If only I could hold him close to me and tell him that whatever he was, I would be there for him through thick and thin. If I could have him lay his head in my lap and caress his soft hair, I’d not feel this sadness I do now. Poor guy, I long for him.

Thursday
I went to the store again today, hoping I’d find him. Sadly he was not there. I asked for him and found out that people refer to him as JD. He was on a leave and he would be back tomorrow: the noon shift I was told. I will go there again tomorrow, not to let him know that I am fond of him or anything because that is the guys’ job; we girls just sit pretty and have them do the hard work: that’s the way this works. I will go there just to look at how he’s doing and stare into his deep blue eyes and gratify my eyes in the process, give him signals that will prompt him to talk to me: that’ll be the icing on the cake.

Friday
I was dressed my best today. I went to the store, right when I expected him to be at the counter. He was there, much to my joy. I waited for some time to let the other customers depart. I wanted his attention to be entirely subdued by my presence: that was plan A. As soon as the others were all gone, I went and stood in front of him, peering into his eyes, searching for the answers that had eluded my intellect. Actually that was my way of tantalizing him. He looked at me and waited for me to say something. After a while his gaze gave way and he looked away. Looking down he asked me what I wanted. I waited for him to look at me again, and gave him an inviting smile. He smiled at me, not in response to my smile but out of shyness and embarrassment. I told him I couldn’t find certain items in my list and asked him to help me out looking for them in the stalls. I led him to the stalls and he followed me. I’d look into his eyes and make him look away and then ask for a random product and make him find it, look into his eyes again and smile at his discovery; this was my little game. I did this several times, making sure he understood my signals. I swear I’d have continued this business for quite some time had a group of people not come in, forcing him to attend the counter again.
I am pretty sure he now has the knowledge that I want him to possess.

Sunday
What a loser. I’d have told him to go get a life had he waited long enough. JD met me in the church today, dressed all smart and smiled at me. Not only did he smile at me, he said hello. How did the wuss get all the courage to act in this manner? When I did not reply and walked past him, he stopped me and said he wanted to speak. I waited and he told me that he’d seen me at the store; as if I didn’t know. He asked me if I had been passing him signals and said that he wondered if I liked him. He must sure have overestimated himself; how could a girl like me like someone like him, why would a girl like me pass signals? I told him I was not interested and he said it was fine with him. How could it be fine with him? He should have shown at least some wistfulness, some disappointment. But he did not show any. He is too full of himself. How could it ever be fine with anyone who could not get to be with a girl like me? Guys like him do not deserve the company of girls. I knew from the beginning he was no more than a worthless loafer in the search of a girl to be with.

The Best Pickup Lines

Well, recently I have been experiencing a serious subject crisis. What I mean to say is : despite all the events that are happening around us, lately I have been feeling a lack of subjects or topics to write on/about. I cannot come up with a reason to explain this apparently strange phenomenon right now; maybe the things around me aren’t inspiring the writer in me, or whatever. It need not be mentioned that the frequency with which I write blog posts is on an all time low. But the pen has to be kept in flow, lest the ink might dry up; hence I am putting forward this post. Before you judge me (on the basis of the content), let me ask you to read the opening sentence once again.

Well, pickup lines have been the basis of all population, if you know what I mean. When I say all population, I mean almost all population. Let us, for the sake of the argument, leave out India from the population I was talking about ( a logical thinker might protest this segregation, arguing that India is almost all the population in the world; oh, what the heck! ), for here the conventional protocol that leads to population is the concept called “arranged marriage”. For those oblivious of the concept of a pickup line, let me quickly enlighten you with the definition: a pick-up line is a conversation opener with the intent of engaging an unfamiliar person (usually of the opposite sex) for dating, romance or copulation. In other words, a pickup line is the hammer with which you strike the ice to break it.

Without making more fuss about it, I’ll list fifteen pickup lines which I found worthy to be included in this post. Now that IIIT is full of new faces, these might come in handy for my college mates. For what it’s worth, this might still make a good reading:

1.If I asked you out, would the answer to that question be the same as the answer to this one?
( I personally would give it a ten on ten. It is foolproof, only that nine out of ten people who ‘d be addressed are likely to fail to figure this out. )
2.If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together.
3.You’ve made me so nervous that I’ve totally forgotten my standard pick-up line.
4.(After the target walks in) And out of nowhere comes the sunshine!!
5.Do you have any raisins? No? How about a date?
6.I’m sorry, were you talking to me? Target: No. Well then, please start.
7.My friends bet me that I didn’t have the guts to talk to the most beautiful girl in this bar. Wanna drink with their money?
8.Excuse me, but I DO think it’s time we met.
9.I was blinded by your beauty so I’m going to need your name and number for insurance reasons.
10.I’m invisible. (Target : Really?) Can you see me? ( Target: Yes) How about tomorrow night?
11.Apart from being sexy, what do you do for a living?
12.Can I take a picture of you, so I can show Santa just what I want for Christmas.
13. Hey I just realized this, but you look alot like my next girlfriend.
14.Screw me if I am wrong, but haven’t we met before?
15.I bet you $40 you’re gonna turn me down.

Yuktahaar – Appetite’s Best Friend

I never knew what delicious food was until I started eating in Yuktahaar, and then it was too late to know. Well, I do not exactly believe in the crap I wrote in the previous line but I find it funny, so I put it there and let it remain there in the final draft of this piece of writing.

Now that I’ve mentioned that I eat in Yuktahaar, you must have speculated that it is one place where food is served. People from IIIT would know what I am talking about, but for those not familiar with the campus, I’d state that it is one of the four messes in our college. The food is really cheap ( at least in terms of the amount they charge us per meal ) and you have to sit on the floor and eat, not to mention that people who eat there are supposed to wash the dishes themselves. How’s that for economy? In fact, one of my companions who eats in Yuktahaar – Mayank Juneja – once suggested, “Dude, since we wash the dishes daily, why don’t we seriously consider working here, at least we won’t be paying for our meals.” My reply was, “Seriously chum. We could use the money too.”

Now that I’ve disclosed the royal treatment of the people who eat there, I better not conceal the fact that people love the place so much that there’s always a mile long queue for chapatis. I never used to eat rice before, but rice and I are two inseparable lovers now. And Murphy’s law applies here as well: the more the haste you’re in, the longer the queue is and the slower it moves. The love for the place doesn’t simply end there : there’s another half a mile queue at the sinks to wash the dishes. It is an ultimate test of one’s patience. Once my patience was really being put to a tough test and I blurted out, “ I can stand for an hour in a queue to get a blasted chapati but I cannot stand in this queue for 5 minutes to wash the goddamned dishes.” However the benevolent mother nature made me wait for another 10 minutes and I passed the test. I’ve grown a lot more patient since Yuktahaar became a part of my life. After that incident even the petty insolent kid who stuck a pencil in my eye failed to get on my nerves.

Once someone asked me if the cooks in Yuktahaar were good. My reply was, “ Are you kidding? They sure know how to prepare something fit for human consumption by means of heat.” Ask anyone who eats there and he will testify the truth of my statement. I must tell you that it is not only good food that is served there, for it is one such place where you learn while you eat. Don’t ask me what it means: I leave the interpretation as an exercise left to the reader.

There are quite a few quotes that adorn the walls of the temple of diet. I’ll list a few of them with my remarks. Don’t hate me, I’m not being judgmental- I’m merely putting myself in the shoes of a common man – who ate there once – and stating his observations subjectively.

Quote 1: “Enjoy health not taste.”
Remarks: “ You’ve ensured the second conjecture. But what about the first?”

Quote 2: “Wasting food is a sin, not allowed here.”
Remarks: “What’s that steel bucket with all the waste food doing there? Did you not put that there? Irony! ”

Quote 3: “Please take a maximum of 3 chapatis if queue is present.”
Remarks: “ Can anyone not see the queue? Or is it that I’m hallucinating all these people standing one behind the other?”

Quote 4: “ The remedy of a disease is the kitchen, not the hospital.”
Remarks: “Kiss my a**.”

I love Yuktahaar- I eat there all the time. Everyone loves Raymond. Everyone loves Yuktahaar. Noticed the analogy? People have their terms of endearment to refer to Yuktahaar, some call it Muktahaar and some call it Kuttahaar. In fact there’s a community dedicated to Yuktahaar on Orkut . Please join it and show that you are as much in love with it as everyone else it.

Everyone should eat in Yuktahaar at least once, after all happiness is not everything.

The Analysis of a sentence : ” Blast Your Red Whiskers “

Red Whiskers are Cool

I seldom write about things I don’t understand. But when I do, I turn my brain into a bowling alley with pins of sanity falling with every strike of the ball of attempt. And the result of the exercise is a preposterous masterpiece of utter NONSENSE. At times people who try to comprehend such literary crap end up with a sore psyche and suicidal tendencies. Why I involve myself in this life threatening exercise is a tough question. I reckon I consider myself a creative thinker and being some sort of a loner I tend to seek some sort of a companionship with my perceptive abilities which stay with me and are always faithful to me. My mind, being my companion and friend often talks to me. And sometimes, it talks nonsense – like all friends do , in an attempt to stir up humour and put up a show of its unparalleled jocularity. But believe me, I hardly understand its jokes and stuff. And consequently the rest of this document marks my genuine efforts to analyse this statement, ” Blast Your Red Whiskers “, which happens to be one such statement which makes me nervous each time I think about what it means.

I heard this statement several times in a hollywood motion picture once, and by the mercilessness of chance I don’t have the complacency of remembering its name. The particular actor who was hollering out this particular line did so in times of great personal anguish, in an attempt to imply to his co-characters that they needed to get lost, get out of his sight or go to hell. That was what I guessed he meant, but its hard to be absolutely certain of what someone other than yourself has in mind. So rather than trying to plunge into the deduction and interpretation and rendition of the statement, I’ll try to confine myself within the bounds of semantics. In other words, without even bothering myself about WHAT THE HELL THAT JERK MEANT, I’ll only try to get an idea of the meanings of the different words used in the sentence.

Being given to dealing with first things first, I’ll start with the first word first. Now “blast” here doesn’t mean an explosion or a blow. In this context it is used as an interjection, an abrupt emphatic exclamation expressing some emotion. “Blast” here stands for an exclamation of annoyance. As far as my knowledge of the usage of such words is concerned, I believe one could’ve used the term “damn” or “goddamn” or even “curse” as a safe altenative. So the statement could well be reconstructed as ” Goddamn your red whiskers “.

The next two words in the combination are well understood. “Red” as an adjective could also indicate the property of something characterized by violence or bloodshed. However such a usage is ruled out by the presence of the last word in the sentence which happens to be “Whiskers”, a noun in the context. Whiskers are the hair growing on the lower part of a man’s face – that is the moustache ( and not beard, as most would conclude ). Moustache can definately be coloured red but not be violent or sanguinary. Therefore the “red” in the statement stands for the colour and not for anything else.

So in a layman’s terms the statement could be put as ” May god curse your Red Moustache “. It makes complete sense from the perspective of a student of semantics, but it hardly makes any from the perspective of a student of metaphysics.

The statement has an asthetic value as well. Each time I read the statement, the phrase “red whiskers” succeeds in creating an impact on the mind’s eye whose vigour doesn’t seem to lessen. How beautiful and soothing is this picture of Red Whiskers the mind creates. Red Moustache has something manly about it that one often relates with the masculine street hooligans from the West who are found on their Harley Davidsons loitering about with no particular purpose. How the idea of a white or a black or yellow-skinned man having his moustache coloured red fascinates us, no one can fathom, not to leave out the red heads. It has a hint of metrosexuality but that is OK in the modern times.

Although this statement is not so popular in the east as the traditional “f*** off” and “go f*** yourself” are, but I am quite sure it will definately be used a lot more in the times to come and will emerge as the hands down winner because not only is it less offensive but also is a newer concept and more esthetically pleasing to the ears.

So folks! Stop using the prehistoric obnoxious reprimands and start using the user friendly ” Blast your Red Whiskers “.

 

Non Sense

Concentrate Damn It

I am trying to write a song
but i can’t seem to get the thoughts
into my mind
on account of the lack of a mind.
Admitting this is one thing i don’t mind.
I had a mind once
that i got used to using so much that
i lost it completely.
Its been overused they say.
But i hardly believe them because
you need a mind to believe.
But its overused they say
and i believe its no use trying to use my mind
which is of no use anymore.

Writing a song becomes all the more difficult
because of the lack of inspiration.
Nobody inspires me because there is a lack of perfection inherent in everybody.

Well the last statement could well have been interpreted as
” there’s somebody called nobody who inspires me because there’s a somebody called everybody
who’s not perfect” but there’s a fundamental flaw in this interpretation because i have used the
term “somebody” twice, and if there is “somebody” at all who is called “nobody” in the first place
, “somebody” cannot be called “everybody” at the same time. Unless ofcourse “somebody” has two pseudonyms
in “nobody” and “everybody”. Say, for an instance we believe that it is the case, then it becomes all
the more self contradicting an argument when the “somebody” is not perfect and the same somebody inspires me.
Unless of course I am someone who is given to being inspired by somebody not perfect.

I guess I’m tad confused. So I’ll not continue with this futile exercise further.