Today

I saw her on my way to the lab. I walk or cycle nowadys as the weather is simply brilliant. Warm and sunny, albeit a bit too dry for my taste. I saw her as I walked down Neil ave and she was crying.

She pointed towards a kitten lying motionless beside the sidewalk. It was a furry little thing, light brown with tiny little paws. It had succumbed to the carelessness of some reckless driver on the road, and this girl, seeing it lying injured on the road, had stopped to help it. She had taken it to the sidewalk and was looking around for help, but the kitten was already dead by the time I met her.

Then we tried to look for its owner in the neighboring houses; a kitten this small couldn't have gone far from its home. But no one answered to our calls. Everyone seemed to be sleeping tight on a holiday or away somewhere. After a futile search we finally came upon an old couple who promised to bury the cat at their backyard.

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I was on my way back home after a long day at the lab. Its been pretty dry and hot for the last few days though its still nothing compared to the severity of Chennai.

The nights are better though and I love walking back alone from the lab in the cool dark night. The air was heavy with sweet smell of flowers, and it was just beginning to rain. The smell of damp earth mesmerized me, and reminded me of days gone by.

It reminded me of my days in school when I used to walk back all drenched, my bag soaking wet, and my shoes and socks brown and muddy. Mom would scold us for spoiling my school uniform, so I and my sister would try to wash them before she came back home. Now, I am sure she wouldn't scold me for anything. She misses me far too much for that.

The smell reminded me of the days back at IIT when we used to play footer in the rain in our little hostel quadrangle. It reminded me of the walks I used to take sometimes with Setia, just to get drenched, and then go to Gurunath for a cup of steaming hot tea.

It reminded me of the times I spent sharing an umbrella with her, for more than two years. We always used only one umbrella even when we had two. Heavier the rain, better it was. We made ample use of the deserted streets and umbrella, warily looking over each others shoulders in case someone spotted us :P

It also reminded me of the day I had my first flight while coming here to US. I was finally in the clouds, nervous with excitement as the plane swayed and tossed about in the inclement weather.

I am so glad the wet earth smells the same everywhere.

















Photo: A footer match in the Godav quadrangle.

My Hands

They feel weird. I don't know what to do with them anymore.

It was perfectly fine a few months ago. They never asserted their existence, but were always there whenever I needed them. They were there to hold a pen as I screwed yet another exam, to hold a muffin while I ate it, to hold a bat as I got bowled over on the very first ball. Even when seemingly I was doing nothing but walking, they were always there beside me subtly adding to the balance.

They even saved my life that day as I hung outside the door of a female compartment holding on to the bars of the train door for over two hours in the dead of the night.

It all started with the winter. The frigid cold here forces one to keep ones hands inside the pockets. Now, after doing that for over 4 months, with the cold giving way to warm sunshine they simply don't know what to do.

They search for a pocket, but don't find the once familiar jacket. From the perspective of a third person, it must be pretty interesting. Imagine the pair of hands going towards the sides of one's belly, and after a slight hesitation, sliding inwards and downwards, not knowing what to do.

A tshirt or a shirt doesn't have pockets down at the sides where a jacket normally has and hence, I tuck them into the pockets of my trousers. But the weather is warm now, and that is not a very comfortable posture to walk anyway. So out they come. Then suddenly I feel the presence of these two appendages hanging from my shoulders, not kowing where to go, and what to do, still searching for pockets.

Girls are crazy,

well, at least half of them.

The other half make the people around them go crazy.

Sucker for soccer

I played soccer again after a long long time. It was so long that the football felt weird between my legs. Well there were a lot of things that were different compared to the 6-a-side we used to play at the hostel quadrangle.
The best thing about the match that day was the playground. I had never played on such a lush green field! It took some time getting used to the soft, bouncy feeling with every step I took, but it was just fabulous. There were a few good players too, and it was a pleasure playing with them.

Another interesting fact was the presence of 4 girls in our team. Talking about girls, I was a fairly strong believer of the beauty-is-inversely-proportional-to-footer-skills hypothesis. Not any more. That hypothesis has been proved false and replaced with the hotter=better hypothesis, which apart from being more concise is more versatile in its applications.

All of them played as defenders, and pretty good at that; not all owing to their dribbling skills of course :P. Rather than kick the ball when they got a chance, the strikers of the other team would for some mysterious reason try caressing the ball slowly towards the goal as if they were afraid its the ball that would get hurt otherwise and not the girls!

No wonder, after leading the match 4-0, we finally lost it 7-5 after the girls in our team left.

Blown away!

It says: Yer arrrrrcount has left to fight some scurvy traitorous rogues, but will return. This be not a marooning! Better luck next time ye scurvy sea dog after a few sots o' rum.

Things like these are what scary nightmares are made of! I hope my account hasn't been hacked.
Also I wish I hadn't changed my language settings so that this thing made more sense. :P

An evening away from lab

I am not a fan the races, but when a few friends invited, for the lack of anything more exciting, I just decided to go and watch the Kentucky Derby. Besides, my friend assured me that there would be good food, and that is reason enough for any grad student to venture out of his lab. There were about 15 of us, and we all contributed 1$ each, and random chits with a horse number allocated to us. Whoever won, was supposed to get all the money. I had a ticket for No 9

The race was intense. No 5 was leading followed by 17. Imagine my surprise when we all discovered that "5" was actually 9! The jockey, the moron that he was was blocking the view partially.

Trifles apart, I was excited; my luck had never been any good, rather lady luck has always punched me in the face, and when I stumbled kicked me from behind. You get the idea. Only a few seconds of the race were left and I was eyeing the cash with glee. The horse was named "Join in the dance" and I did that with full abandon.

Then as people there would testify, lady luck came and did her part again, and I was left with my foot in my mouth. Now you know why I called him a moron in the first place!

After that, we went to short north, and it being the first Saturday of the month again, there was festivity everywhere. Open galleries, music, art, food and beauty; the atmosphere was ripe with such noble things. It was the stuff that made one's heart sing, and induced a spring in ones step. I and my Canadian friend roamed on the crowded streets and admired the beauty: natural, aesthetic as well as feminine. We went to a few art galleries, saw paintings, sculptures budding musicians on the street struggling to attract attention and discussed the trials and tribulations of a grad life.

We finally went to a bar where we had chicken wings and carried on our discussions. But that didn't go very far. After all a bunch of girls were having a bachelor's party beside us and an exciting ice hockey match was on the huge television. One of the girls from the group came to the table for a drink, and I noticed something sticking out of her cleavage! On careful observation, it turned out to be a small plastic replica of what Joey (in FRIENDS) refers to as a soldier or Little Joey.

I am a gentleman and all that, but I just couldn't control bursting into a guffaw. Thankfully she was drunk and just said "Hello."