Scared Me.

Imagine you are 1 year old, just about getting comfortable standing on your own two legs and discovering the joys and pains of being mobile. Now imagine yourself ambling unsteadily along when someone unexpectedly pops in behind you and goes 'BOO'. I don't know about you but I lost balance, landed with a 'thlop' (that's 'thump' and 'flop' thrown against each other) and started crying. Actually I am not sure if I starting crying before I 'thlop'ed or after. Anyway, I have felt scared multiple times through the years but carbon dating that memory has shown that the above mentioned was my earliest introduction to being scared. Unlike that first time, though, I don't really remember the details about all the other times.

Except for just one other time.

I must have been around 11 or 12 or 13 or somewhere in that vicinity. I was discovering songs and bathroom singing and music and rhythm and dance and left feet and other, similar, important, life altering stuff. I guess that's also the same vicinity where that funny thing called 'Voice Breaking' happens because my voice was breaking at that time though I immediately had no clue as to why I sounded like I had a throat infection. It took me a few days to wrap my head around the whole breaking thing but after that, I started waiting to see how I would sound after it broke completely.

It was during one of those waiting days. As was usual for me then, I went in to take a bath. After a few moments of alternating between being scalded and being frozen, I got the temperature of the water just right. With the shower thus set, I relaxed and started humming some song, enjoying the water on my head. A few minutes into this serenity, I began to hear a strange, spooky, grating noise mixed with the sound of water from the shower. It just seemed to grow more prominent the more I concentrated on it. That shower, I used it everyday, was not supposed to make any sound, leave alone anything that was particularly that eerie.

Now, having entered the realm of double digits as far as my age was concerned, I didn't repeat the 'lose balance, thlop down and cry' routine from my baby days. But I believe I was just as scared as I was then. Even as I went stock still, held my breath and continued listening, the strange noise disappeared. All I could now hear was the water hitting the ground. The absence of the noise was even more unnerving and I was half expecting something to materialize out of the shower spout. I got ready to get at least one full-blooded scream out before being gobbled by said 'something'. But nothing happened. Other than me wasting water by letting the shower run.

Slowly I started relaxing again and cautiously turned my attention back to enjoying my shower and my song. And the noise started again! That is when the proverbial bulb got switched on bright and remembering my scared self from a few moments back, I couldn't but laugh at myself. That strange, spooky, grating noise was in fact coming from the shower. But not from the spout like I had imagined, it was coming from under the shower. It was coming from me!

It was the sound of me singing in my not-yet-fully broken voice.

Stereotypes and Concessions!

There aren't many guy friends of mine who would remember when we first met. Or where. Or the first time we fought and came to blows. Or other seemingly transient stuff that don't hold much significance in the context of our friendship. Like birthdays and anniversaries. These things happen, we live that moment and then we are off, to live the next moment. And as we move from one moment to the next, all we carry forward is a light backpack called friendship instead of packing king-sized bags rightly referred to as 'baggage'!!

Now, the case is diametrically opposite with my female friends (I am spelling this out for the benefit of those for whom I haven't been obvious enough already). Birthdays, first meetings, anniversaries and any other daily life event which takes their fancy - all these are memorable occasions to be remembered and regurgitated whenever the opportunity presents itself. Fights and arguments deserve a special mention here because these are stored in a special hi-speed memory bank with quick access technology so that at the first faint visible sign of any skirmish, the contents of this memory bank are used to hit you on the head.

for any female happening to read this and happening to be my friend, please don't take it personally. I don't mind you hitting me on my head. And please read on. I have nice things to say about you.........I think.

What I mentioned above is nothing but the stereotypical male and female. I accept I am probably as stereotypical as a stereotype can be. So is probably everyone in the rest of the world. We might make a few concessions to all the people or concede all to a few people. But all of us do make some concessions. Once such concession I make is trying to remember birthdays. At least for those people that I know would hit me the hardest if I don't.

Yesterday was one such concession day and I promptly did everything expected of me. I remembered, hunted down the phone number and made the overseas call. Only to hear a gruff voice say, "There is no one at home to take your call. Please leave a message and your phone number and we will get back to you." Back I went hunting, this time for the mobile number. And this time I heard a different voice - "Your call is being transferred to the voice mail box. Please..." - you get the picture, don't you?

There I was, acting out of character, just to bring some cheer and happiness to someone I know would be cheered and happy by my out of character acting and all I get is the answering machine! Talk about life being unfair! Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Damn!

Publicity

I never once saw myself in the mold of a proper writer. More than anything, I think I resemble a prolific scribbler than a halfway decent writer by any standards. Assuming scribblers also have some standards, I would seriously be offending them too by calling myself one. Anyway, so I am not a writer in the traditional sense of the word. My grammar is iffy, my vocabulary on the blog owes a lot to the different thesauruses that I have come across on the internet (and that in itself was a stroke of luck because I found an online dictionary that helped me figure out that a thesaurus was not a dinosaur!) and my spelling depends on the spell-check feature in MS-Word and the web-browser much like a patient on life-support depends on the ventilator.

All that is not to say that I haven't ever tried to write or that I haven't tried to improve. I have done both. All those writings I have done on paper are now lost or have been taken by people who probably intend to use them as examples of how not to waste paper and on the improvement front, there hasn't been much. So, given such abysmal standards, it's not such a surprise that the internet is the only place where I could easily publish my writing for public consumption. That and the fact that I figured out how to go about setting up a blog for myself. Ever since I started this exercise, I have known that I was exposing my unsuspecting visitors to the risk of losing what little mental health they might have had coming in.

So I knew that I was a 'dangerous' writer in the above sense but what I didn't set out to be was a 'murderous' blog-layout-color designer. On the color front Noodle House has, over the last 3 months, been plain black, black and gray, black and gray and blue, and now it is black and blue and orange. Agreed, it sort of presents a picture of clashing colors. But what I didn't imagine is the full extent of damage this palette is capable of. According to one person (I don't have a name to go with this person) here, Noodle House has colors capable of man-slaughter! The exact words (entry number 15 on the site): "If colors could kill, this site could have committed manslaughter."

I had a good laugh at that one. Can't say if I agree or disagree with that person because our opinions of what constitutes good looks, color-wise, are obviously not the same. But I would nevertheless be thankful to that person because by picking me out and putting me on his site, he has driven a considerable amount of people my way. I usually have around 10 people a day reading this stuff so a total of 7 people because of this one referral, all from Vancouver, is a whopping 70%.

Like they say, "There is no such thing as bad publicity." Thank you. ;)

I Am.

All I want to do today is to bring to the notice of anyone willing to notice it, that I have just touched the three figure mark today. Finally.

Very thankful to all my customers for taking the risk and reading the stuff on Noodle House.
I can only speculate about the reasons you would be driven to come here. My first guess would be that you must be really bored. Good. Bored is good.
Some of you seem to be more bored than the others because I have noticed a few who keep coming back. Are you sure you are not suicidal!?
Here let me re-iterate what I have said in my very first post. I am not responsible for the after effects of coming here.
Now, if all you guys out there still want to come in for a dose of arbitrary thoughts that might or might not tickle your funny bone, you are welcome.
Unless you come here because you want to steal my content in which case I have just one piece of advice for you. Go, get your brain replaced!

Precisely on the sixth day of the seventh month of the seventh year of the twenty-first century, I started Noodle House on a whim and a belief that even I can blog.
Racing to a century of posts has only re-confirmed that belief, though, unfortunately, I am not yet sure if my audience agrees.
A lot has happened since the time I started but that has only helped Noodle House thrive, since that is what provides all the fodder I needed for my cannon.
So much more has actually been left unsaid on these pages for the simple reason that I don't have enough memory to remember all the stuff I would like to.
Although what I forgot was probably not worth writing about, that claim can neither be confirmed nor refuted without actually attempting to write about them.
Doing so, though, would have taken up too much of my time, which is another thing I don't have enough of. Ever. Along with stuff like imagination and brains. :)

Pen and Paper

It's been a couple of years since I have put pen to paper to do some meaningful writing. Usually, it has always almost exclusively been only to put my signature on different kinds of papers. But long, meaningful writing seems to be as distant a memory as childhood. Actually it has been much longer than just a couple of years since the last time I was doing silly things, like using a non-electronic stylus on a paper based medium, on a regular basis. That must have been in college though my memory can't really be trusted in this matter. But I do remember that as kids we were taught to write using those primitive implements and I guess my experience today is the justification for that initiation into that ancient art form.

Even as I am sitting here trying to recollect what little I remember of that ancient skill called 'writing on paper', I am wondering at the wisdom that our elders displayed way back in time because they could clearly see that there would come a time when our modern electronics would fail but our need for written communication wouldn't cease and that this manual method would then stand between us and utter despondency. Of course, the fact that they didn't have all these funky electronics back in the day might also have been a factor but I am not inclined to think so. That sort of negative thinking spoils the whole quaint nature of the thought.

What can be more quainter than me sitting in candle light, ball-point pen in hand and furiously writing on a white paper with black lines? Like you might have guessed by the reference to the candle light, I am sitting here in the small oasis of that light because there has been a power failure and because two unrelated incidents, my laptop battery running dry and me getting a thought, happened to happen at the same time, I am writing all this down on paper. And all this while, I thought I was on the vanguard of the paperless era!

Goes to show that, just like world-wide nuclear disarmament, zero green house gas emissions, world peace and the Indian public supporting something other than cricket, the concept of a paperless world is just that, a concept. Something to be bandied about and used to look and sound modern and forward thinking but fated to forever being nothing more than a concept. Anyway, I don't have anything against using paper. And since in this instance it is the only way to make sure that the few and far between thoughts in my mind, which are currently coming out in a rush, still remain my thoughts, I am actually glad that we have this still with us. The surprise, of course, is not that I remembered to use a paper to note all this down but the fact that I still remember how to wield a pen.

Incredible as that may seem, the sad part is that I have to type all this again so that I can put this up on Noodle House. That's a definite drawback.

Huit & Neuf - Where art thou?

There have been many over the years and there will definitely be a boat-load of them in the future. I am talking about inventions and make that boat a few dozen sizes bigger than Noah's Ark. Among all these invented and to-be-invented inventions, there can be only one that can lay claim to being the most important invention that man-kind could invent. Zero. Zip. Zilch. A concept called 'nothing'. That is probably what most people will find in my post today. Nothing that makes sense. :)

It's the first day of the week. I don't understand why Monday should be the first day of the week. In a cyclic pattern that repeats itself every seven days, shouldn't it be possible for any day to be the beginning? I think it should be. What did you say? Oh, you think I should shut up? Ok, will do. Only about this. I do have other inane stuff that I am going to talk about.

Like the fact that we are biped. But the 'bi' is not restricted to just the 'ped' part of us. It's pretty much common to our other parts too. Like our hands, eyes, ears and nose, if you count the nostrils individually. Those are the 'bi' parts that are freely available for public viewer ship whereas the paying public will also be privy to internal 'bi' parts like the lungs, kidneys and the brain. Added to these, these days, some characteristics are also being given the 'bi' prefix.

On the other hand, this duality (though it's only in physicality) is probably what separates us humans from them Gods. Them Gods seem to have a few characteristics made in triplicate. Like, for example, the God Shiva (in Hinduism) who has three eyes. Or, to take another example, the concept of the Trinity. This second example, I believe, is pan-religion and I have heard about it in connection with at least two religions.

Is this an indication that we also can become Gods if, and only if, we manage to duplicate this triplication? May be. It’s definitely something to think about. But in truth, does anyone of us actually want to be God? I mean, whether they are in the North-east or South-east or North-west or South-west or in any other of the four corners of the globe, who, in their right mind and senses, would want to be in a position where they don't have anyone, higher up, for them to look up to and wish that life were better. Not me for sure.

Talking about senses, this is another area that differentiates us humans. But this time, not from them Gods but from them animals. We, I am referring to the humans, share the sense of sight, smell, hearing and touch with our animal brethren whereas I am not sure about the sense of taste. Those are the five senses every human is supposedly blessed with. Now the differentiation comes in because we can also make use of a sixth sense. No, I am not talking about Night Shyamalan's movie. I am talking about the sense that is known as intuition or, as it is more commonly called, gut feeling. And as if six weren't enough, we have also been given a seventh. Common Sense. However, like the wise-one says, "Common sense is uncommon in common people."

I am one of them common people too, though fortunately for me, the wise-one hasn't yet bothered to let me know that. With that statement of fact, I shall stop talking about inane stuff for today. But somehow, I get the feeling that I missed some inanity that would have fit right in. Hmmm, wonder what I missed!

A Rude Awakening

The harsh sound of the door bell mixed with the shrill ring of the cell-phone! Believe me, there is no worse sound in this world than these two indulging in tandem singing (If there is no such thing, well, imagine some such thing from the words 'tandem' and singing'). Before you disagree and say 'finger nails on blackboard', let me tell you that this is worse. Especially when you are sleeping.

Today is Sunday. Sunday is weekend. A day off. This is my 'laze around the house getting bored' day of the week. There I was, peacefully sleeping in the morning, before being brutally dragged out of bliss and thrown into reality. My reflexes worked faster than the rest of me by reaching out and trying to switch off the alarm. That's when it permeated into my drugged-with-sleep mind that it wasn't the alarm. Rather, it was the above mentioned cacophonous duet. The only way to mute the jangle was to answer both the phone and the door-bell. I reached for the cell phone and at the same time, tried to get out of bed to answer the summons at the door. But that didn't happen exactly that way. During the night, I had somehow managed to expertly wrap myself up in my blanket to resemble a mummy (the old, Egyptian variety) and though I got myself out of bed I couldn't get my legs working the way they were designed to work. Result - Butt met tiled floor. Ouch!

So why did I have to go through with this ordeal first thing on a Sunday morning? Who was at the door? Who had called on the cell-phone?

After I managed to de-mummify myself from the blanket and get back to my feet, I noticed that it was my dad on the cell-phone. And I opened the door to find my mom leaning on the door bell hoping to extract every last ounce of performance from it. With my dad standing behind her! They were just trying all the options they had to wake me up as early as possible because they knew that otherwise they would have to spend half the day standing outside, waiting for me to wake up.

I don't blame them. I am a heavy sleeper, they had to do it. But that still is the worst sound I have ever heard.

Words and Quotes

Indulge me a little. Please. First read through the list of words I have here:

"Gravitation", "Don't", "First", "They", "Worry", "Can", "Not", "About", "Ignore", "The", "You", "Be", "World", "Held", "Then", "Responsible", "Coming", "They", "Laugh", "To" ,"At", "You", "For", "An", "People", "End", "You", "Fight", "Today", "Falling", "You", "Win", "Then", "It's", "In", "Then", "In", "Already", "Australia", "Love", "Tomorrow", "They".

So, do you make any sense out of them apart from seeing them as random words? Let me toss this list up in the air and see if that makes a difference.**Tosses the words and looks up, open mouthed. Ouch!! "Australia" fell on his head. That must have hurt**

Well, well. After that aerial sojourn, the words seem to read less like a list of random words and more like meaningful sentences. Have a look see below:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."

"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love."

:).

Ok so these are all quotable quotes that I happen to like, made by some supposedly well known people. I just had to find a way to write about them and given my boundless imagination and incomparable writing skills, the toss-the-list-of-words-in-the-air technique is what I came up with. Patent and trade mark are pending, so if anyone wants to use the technique, they better get in touch with me with details about my cut.

Anyway, before I sign off, let me also reveal the identity of the quoters whose quotes I have just quoted. That first one is a piece of wisdom from some freedom fighter it seems. I am a bit fuzzy about his actual identity but I have heard him being called Mohandas or Mahatma or Gandhi or some such. The second one is attributed to one Charles Schultz. This guy seems to have had a thriving business dealing in nuts. Mainly peanuts. And that last one, I knew the guy who is supposed to have said it. They said the guy who said this was the same, slightly eccentric guy who explained the theory of relativity. Well, there can be only one person who fits that description. My high school physics teacher. I never knew he had it in him to say stuff like this!

Ok, hope you like those quotes as much as I do. Me sign off now. Adios.

Forget This

How would you define memory? My favorite dictionary in this ethereal medium, www.dictionary.com, says "Memory is the mental capacity or faculty of retaining and reviving facts, events, impressions, etc., or of recalling or recognizing previous experiences." In human speak, that translates to "being able to remember stuff." I guess I can safely say that this definition, if I may call this that, refers to humans. Now, I very vaguely remember having heard, somewhere in my very distant past, something on the lines of metals remembering their shapes! Yes, I know, it sounds a little 'Terminator-2'ish but the ethereal medium does have an answer to this too. A quick google (verb) then threw up a name for such metals. They are called Shape Memory Alloys or SMA (Duh! Really!) and seem to 'remember' their original shape even after they have been bent out of it. So what 'Memory' are we talking of here? Does this have the same definition as the one I gave above?

If anyone is actually pondering that highly philosophical/intellectual question, please don't. My idea behind all that talk about memory was to just say that I think this memory thing is way overrated! To save you from scratching your heads wondering how and why I am saying this based on the above, let me clarify. This is not based on what I said above. That was just to introduce 'Memory'. The basis for my 'memory is overrated' thought is what is below.

We have a memory that helps in remembering facts, events, experiences and such. So what? The presence of these so called SMAs is proof that leave alone being a unique human trait, it is not even a unique living-being trait. Having memory is like saying I exist. How unique can that be?! Ok, let's leave the fact that it is just another common property for stuff on earth. It's not like our memory is something that leaves a good taste in the mouth either. Yes I remember the good days, the old days and the good old days. At the same time, as if to temper my happy feeling, I also remember facts that I wish weren't, events that I wish hadn't happened and experiences I could have lived without. This is the main reason I think memory is overrated. It's not unique to us and it's just a thought retrieval agent that blindly brings back everything, good or bad.

Instead there is something else that, according to me, deserves far more recognition than it currently gets. It is called 'Forgetfulness'. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the greatest gift man-kind has been given but it definitely is up there with the other contenders like jalapeno peppers, bubble wrap, chocolate chip cookies and certain other things. Without being blessed with this divine gift, imagine the amount of stuff you would be carrying around in your head. We would have started using the other major organs like the liver, pancreas and the colon to store our thoughts. Given what those organs are intended for, I can only imagine the contamination our thoughts will have to go through, literally. And that one reason is enough reason for us to be thankful for being forgetful.

So here is me, doffing my hat to this wonderful ability of ours. And.....................................................................................ok, so I forgot what comes next, but rest assured it wasn't anything important.

Madness and Madras Mainroads

Of course it's not called Madras anymore, at least not officially. It's called Chennai. This change in nomenclature came about some ten years back when the rulers, supposed public representatives supposedly elected to the role by democratic vote, deemed the name 'Madras' to be a hangover of India's colonial past and sought to redress the situation by calling the city 'Chennai', supposedly in chaste Tamil (or 'Tamizh', to be phonetically correct!). Of course, the political mileage that the then rulers got out of this move is in the realms of the regular 'R&I' (i.e., 'Rumor and Innuendo' for those who are not familiar with the short form) and we can just speculate all we want without anyone ever saying that we are wrong or right.

Madras, as I persist to defiantly refer to this city of my birth, is a name I like and as my rant above shows, the change in name hasn't gone down well with me. However, now that I have that out of my system, I think I better get this post back on track before it gets more lost than it already is.

**Looks around to see any familiar landmarks leading to the correct path. Scratches head, scratches two-day-old stubble, turns the map a full 180 degrees in all 3 dimensions, looks around once again...aha! Found it. Trudges back and is finally facing the correct direction**

The only other country I have set foot on, apart from the land of my birth, is the US of A (Oh no, I didn't mean 'country' as in 'country-side' but 'country' as in 'nation'. Sorry about the confusion!). I was in Big Apple and its neighboring New Jersey (Small Apple???) for a little over 2 months with a trip to Washington DC and Dallas, Texas thrown into the mix. And the first thing I thought as I was making my way out of the airport was, 'Wow! Look at the wide roads!’ The last thought, as I was making my way to the airport was also more or less on the same lines. And in between these two, I must have thought that thought a few hundred times. Minimum. When you look at the world map, look at the US of A and then take a look over at India. Compare the size of the two. Now compare the 60+ million head count in the US with the 1+ billion head count in India and the contrast between the two is just compounded further. That will probably give you an idea of why I was wowed by the vast stretches of empty space and wide roads.

This combination of a humongous population and a small land mass can only result in one thing. Cramps. Causing further cramps is the on going economic boom in India and its most visible manifestation - the increased car/SUV/truck population on the roads (a majority of which are poorly maintained). As someone who stays a fair distance away from my office, my daily commute is done using my bike. When I started work some six years back, it used to take me around 20 to 25 minutes of maniacal riding to reach office in one piece. If I didn't mind reaching there in more than one piece I could have made it in 15. Six years hence, it takes me upwards of 45 minutes irrespective of how many of my pieces reach office. And this is when I leave home before the peak hours to escape getting caught in traffic!

As if that was not bad enough, the whole time I am on the road, I need to maintain a 360 degree surveillance of my immediate surroundings to avoid coming into intimate contact with other road users. This includes two legged creatures that choose the moment, when the light turns green for the vehicles, to test their faith in God. And God forbid, a non-serious accident happens, the traffic freezes! The warring parties pitch tent right there at the place where one fender brushed against the other and the rest of the traffic gives them company and moral support by stopping and gawking. For most of the on-lookers, that might be the most interesting part of their day but me, I'd rather be home, acting comatose and staring at the TV.

Before I forget, honorable mention to the umpteen traffic light GPs that take place (yours truly is an active participant in these even though he realizes the futility of racing for a mere 100 meters before stopping at the next signal for a minute and half!). If I want to catch that elusive thing called an 'Empty Stretch of Road', the only option for me is to take part in these mini, spontaneous GPs. Further encouragement to take part in these comes in the form of the long, wide lines of traffic jammed around each signal. Get caught in the middle or the back of these and you can be sure to be looking at the same set of lights for a couple of signal cycles before you get to move ahead.

Me thinks this long rant should end here. Two reasons. I don't think I have anything else to rant about this particular subject. Second, I am feeling sort of light in the head, now that I have un-loaded all this. Finally, if you are reading this particular line, I have just one more thing to say to you - "Dude(tte), you are either very patient or very jobless!!" :)