Virtual Ramblings

Skittles has an interesting topic for this week’s Heads or Tails. She wants us to share a fond memory. I could’ve brought something out of the my 26 year old memory bank, but I chose to bring out a very recent memory, something as recent as this weekend.

This weekend I took a break from my routine work and decided to take a small weekend vacation with my my parents, my cousin and his family, and my aunt’s family. It began with a plan to spend the weekend at a resort, only to find out they were all booked, we didn’t want to cancel, so decided to spend the weekend at my aunt’s place instead. However we just stopped over on the way to Mysore, to see if there were any last minute cancellation at the resort we wanted to stay, and to our surprise we found what we were looking for. We booked for a single night stay for Saturday, and we negotiated a good deal from Saturday morning till Sunday late afternoon. What followed was a string of sweet memories.

• Nostalgia from years down the line spent in Mysore with my two cousins, the times we have had fun, places visited and pranks relived, fun remembered. Sometimes it fun just reliving the moments from the past
• An Aunt’s special dinner, with a delicacy which she prepared the best, I have to admit I ate a little too much
• A place which is very small, and has an almost unnoticeable grandeur, well I am not talking about the famous Mysore palace, but a place called “Mylari hotel”, famous for their amazingly soft Masala Dosa. Saturday morning spent over a sooper cool breakfast.
• Being greeted by some Bikini clad people at the resort by the pool [well I am naughty sometimes :)]
• An hour spent along the river kaveri, trying to help my 6 year old niece catch a fish.
• Hours spent lazing in the pool, without knowing how to swim, and almost blind without my specs, with my niece and my cousins.
• Playing cards with the family till 1 am filled with roars of laughters and lots of fun.
• Sleeping till 9:30 in the morning to be woken by a bored niece
• A trip to a local hillock and a very calm temple, walking bare foot in a scorching sun.
• A long enacting of a being a wild flower, with a lot of swaying and hushing noise as well, my niece is playing a flower in her summer camp’s play. So we got a demo of her play as well as the dance she is gonna perform.
• A post lunch card game to wrap up a lovely weekend spent, with a lot of fond memories to carry away from.

Let me start by saying, I get embarrassed very quickly. I have had numerable instances where I have been embarrassed because of people around me. I think main reason for this is the high standards I set for myself, and how strongly opinionated I am about things. When you believe in something very passionately, you kind of feel violated when someone behaves totally opposite to what you believe in.

You guys do know how much I am particular about time. When I invite someone out, or when I have planned a meeting or so, and the person is late, I get furious, but still I kind of leave some margin of tolerance mainly because its me who invited them, may be they did not anticipate an unexpected event. But when somebody else invites me, and they are late, my blood pressure generally hits double century. How can one be late for an event planned by themselves. It happened on Monday night, I was invited for a dinner outside and was asked to be ready by 8:30PM, I kind of thought its too late, well I do prefer to be at home by 10PM,  anyways I got ready by 8:20 and was waiting, I did not even get a call till 8:50, and I was told they will be there in another 5 minutes, and even after that they took fifteen minutes to come home, so its was already 9:05. Now I had lost the little mood I had to go have dinner, but because of the earlier commitment I got my lazy ass into the car.

Now let me tell you with whom I was going out. I was supposed to go out with a  couple of cousins, when I say couple I mean literally “couple”, my cousin and his wife. I am close to both of them, so she has automatically turned into my cousin. Anyways I generally avoid going to hep places, places which has young and modern crowd when I am with my family. I hate to use the term “modern”, but then that’s what my family does to me, I mean any tight jean clad lady, with a drink in hand is ultra modern to my family. So I avoid going to hep places mainly because, I don’t like to listen to some comments about the crowd which I am sure would disturb me, and make me feel out of place, and embarrassed. My cousin wanted to have something Italian, and as It was already late, only place I could think off was Casa Picola which has opened recently very near to my house. Its not that hep a place, so I thought this would be safe. When I got into the car, I had a surprise, there was one more relative of ours in the car, he is almost my cousin’s age, so he had been pulled along. We had not gone out as a group much, so did not know what to expect from him.

We arrived at  the place, and it turned out be a lounge bar attached to the Italian place. I really liked the place, totally my kind of ambiance, pale colors, very few people around, very comfortable sofa’s and even bean bags around, we chose to be seated on the terrace as the interior place was very hot. As we reached the terrace, I saw that the crowd was very young, a little dimly lit [which I don’t like], and almost all of them looked like pretty cool and minding their own business types. I was happy to see that, even with many people around it was quiet and all in all I was very happy to discover the place.

We got seated, me and the other guy at one side of the table, and my cousin and his wife on the other side. From where we were sitting I could see a couple of women, [not sure may be girls ] sitting across the table, the girl kind of looked good, and I was back into my discussion about who is going to drink what. That’s when the guy began, he had a problem with the girl smoking, he was cribbing that she hasn’t kept down the pack ever since we entered, and how can she do that. Mind you he was a smoker as well, he had the cigarette almost all the time we were there, and still he complains, and the worst part was he kept staring at the two women. I did see her a little annoyed with him staring at her, and once in a while the other two turning back and watching them. I was so embarrassed, I wanted to walk upto them and apologize, If only I had better socializing skills.

Anyways then it came to ordering stuff, now that all three of them were having fosters, and me with  my new found sober year for 2008 had ordered a mocktail. We were supposed to order some appetizers, and I picked out few and decided what we may want to order, and when the waiter came to take the order, I told him what we want, and when the waiter was just about to go, this guys screams at him “Hello!”…”do you have any egg item, something like a egg burgee or a egg omelet”, almost every one at the less crowded places turned towards us, I just wanted to get up and run away.

He continues to stare at the two girls, and couple of other pretty girls who had by now come into the restaurant. How can a married guy stare so much?, just because his wife is not around does it mean, go and visually abuse any girl around?, and that too when we have a girl in our group as well.

Anyways, its time to order main course, and by now I just wanted it to get over as soon as possible, so I ask them well in advance, since most of the Italian stuff is bland, what they want to eat, do they want the spicy one, or they want to try the authentic blander versions. And they all agree to go for the blander one, I knew they are not gonna like it, so I suggest some not so bland ones, and for myself I order a dish named “epinard al a crème”, it’s a potato and spinach baked dish. When the dish comes onto the table, they are more intrigued by what I have ordered, and want to grab a bite, which I oblige easily. Worst part was to follow, after just 2 bottles of beer, this guy begins to burp as loudly as a loud speaker, and every 5 minutes, I don’t know how much gas he had in him, he eats a spoon and burps out a big on ‘brrrrrrrroh”, and I am furious at his ill manners, how can you burp so loudly in a restaurant like this, atleast you are supposed to keep the sound down, but no, it appeared as if he wanted everyone to know the strength in his vocal chords.

I was waiting for the check to arrive, so that we can pay and leave. I can’t remember any other time I have been embarrassed this much. I wish those two girls should have walked up to our table, and given us a mouthful.

Thinking Aloud who writes at Aalochane has tagged me with a meme, which is about recollecting thoughts from the past, Trying to recollect the posts you have written and reliving some of the thoughts related to family, friendship, yourself, and your love.

I think I had seen this meme on one of the blogs before, and I had liked it instantly, mainly because its more about reliving those moments when you wrote those posts. So for a change I chose to do the meme on the same day as I am tagged :).

For the readers, here are the rules
“Post links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like. Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances so that you get to know them each a little bit better.“

Here they go …

Family.. I think one of the things which should be and will be in all of our minds is family, actually I was searching through my older posts, and I never thought I would not find posts related to family in there.
I remember this post which I had written about parenting, I am not a parent, but it doesn’t stop us thinking like one, does it?, heres “parenting blues from a non parent.“.
There are times when I totally feel a disconnect from my family, and its followed by a realization and getting back into the family groove, one of those times over here at “family lost and found“.

Friends…
I have had very less number of friends over years, but the ones I have, have been really close.
There have been times when I have wondered where it all starts, like here “lets talk about beginnings“.
There have been times when I have wondered about how friendships have been under confusions over years when gender is involved, “friendship talkies.
“
Yourself…
Looks like all posts I write, somehow relate to this topic in a way or other :). I wish I could put all the links here..
I have some real strong attachment to this thought, mainly because this is the first time I wanted to write something. This is the first time I documented the thought that was going through me. Here it is “Inspired by the 2 way“
I have written for prompts over time, and one of the posts which I really liked was about writing letters, I think this was something which I felt for “Times when I wanted to write a letter“
I have never shied from admitting I tend to be over sensitive, and there were times when I have thought more about the topic like here “I am talking sensitivity today”

Your love..
I am really apprehensive when it comes to this topic, mainly because I feel my brand of romance or love is something not the typical types, or may be not even something that can be considered as love.
I once spoke about the music of silence between people here at “Silent strings“.
There have been times when I have been expressive, about how I see ‘her’, what I want ‘her’ to be like, for example here at “she“.
My ideas of sharing romance with a partner was once upon a time expressed over here at “bed share story“.

Somehow did not find the 5th topic on TA’s blog, so went ahead and chose something which always finds mention on my blog.
Relationships…
I once wrote about equations, and I was really impressed with the title I chose..”x2 + y2 = z2“

I am supposed to tag 5 people, but I am really bad at this, so I think I am gonna bail out on this one :).

Random Thoughts:
Recently I read a comment “here“, even though I thought the whole post was with a sense of humor, my eyes did catch a comment which said about about being tongue tied when guys approach a thinking woman. Lets forget about the distinction of being a thinking women, and take women in general, how many of the men really approach a woman and talk freely. I guess there is a lot of difference with boy approaching a girl, and a man approaching a woman. I have seen and have myself been at one point of life in the category where the shyness in approaching a person of opposite sex was very high. I think somewhere we grow out of it, may be that is called maturity, or may be we just grow up. Coming back to the comment about thinking man/woman, I do not think there is anyone who does not think, may be the topics we think about may vary, and also our sensibilities.

Random update:
Driving classes, I have finally started ticking of things I planned to do in next two years. I started my driving classes last week. Waking up early was never an issue for me, but it had been quite a while since I got scoldings from some one, when my driving instructor scolds me early in the morning sometimes, I feel like being in my primary school, where my teacher used to scold me for not doing my work properly. It is almost the same environment as before,where I do some silly mistakes and the instructor is all set to pounce on me. Its still all in fun

Random Reality:
Last week has been really taxing mentally, I had a feeling of an unknown urgency, an unknown mental blockage, I was not able to think for most of the week. It all changed on Friday, as I reached home a little early, there was a big power cut, for about two hours, I had nothing to do, I was laying on the bed, that cleared my anxiety very much. I began to think again properly, and for a change, the unscheduled power cut in my locality had a great soothing effect on me. Well I did receive some comments about writing block on my post of Thursday, more than the writier’s block, it was my mental blockage which was making me very anxious, I am glad to be out of it

Random changes:
For starters I hate to change my routine life, more importantly I hate to change things associated with me. It took almost more than 2 years for my cousin to make throw out my old outdated mobile. I guess I am guilty of attaching too many memories to things. This week I finally am going to move onto a different number, I mean I am changing my network provider, it had been Hutch from last 5 years, and the same mobile number for as long as I can remember. Finally they have lost my loyalty and me my number. Not that many people call me on my mobile.. still its something which I brought with my first earned salary, even though I lost the instrument the number had a lot of memories associated with it.

Random Nostalgia:
Speaking of mobile phones, and memories, the week had a lot of nostalgia associated with it. Somehow I was ending up remembering many people and incidents from the past, not just the incidents even the movies I saw, kind of had memories associated with it. The week had some interesting movies being shown early in the morning in one of the channels, just in time of my breakfast when I get to have 20 mnts of TV time. Why do we do this, why do we associate memories with things around us. Its not just a movie, its the people who have watched with, the state of mind I was in when i watched the movie.
BTW, that reminds me, Its been quite sometime since I watched “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind”.. should catch it on DVD

Random quotes:
This was an interesting observation made my fellow blogger shefaly on one of my posts extremes. “Rambler: Have you considered an academic career? I notice you notice things (empirical data) and then try and identify a pattern (define algorithm or propose hypothesis) around them. And of course, from what we know, you are not married so this discussion is purely academic, no? “
Actually this kind of surprised me, she might have just joked about this, but does Rambler really do this?, hypothesize a lot on available data and experiences?..

The topic over at skittles today is “first” if you call heads or “last” if you choose tails. The words first and last have so much significance in our lives, we give so much importance to the “first” or to the “last”, not just us but even in times of our ancestors.

Thinking about ancestors I remember a discussion I had with my father, about the importance of first and the last son in “Hindu” rituals. In particular the “tithi” or the “shradda” which is a ceremony performed every year. In layman terms, [this is what was told to me when I had asked about it as a 6 year old], its a way of offering food to my tata [grand father] who was dead, ones every year. So the obvious question was that we eat every day, so why once a year for them, to that the answer was that our one day is equivalent to their one year. In reality it is a way of offering our gratitude and thanks, and more importantly remembering the ones who parted us, mainly performed by their sons.
You can read more about it here shradda.

The discussion started with the fact that the whole ritual is performed mainly by the first son, and the rest of the sons are a mere part of the ritual. This looks so unfair for the rest of the siblings I thought. so I probed further, thus began our discussion on the first the last and the middle. Heres a comprehension of what we discussed.

In Hindu philosophy, the First son is called “Aatmaja”, which is a Sanskrit word which means Born from the soul [aatme jayati iti aatmaja - one who is borm from the soul]. He is supposed to carry forward all the laurels of the family, not just materialistic ones [ones earned in iha loka], but also the ones which has been passed on by ancestors from generation to generation, births and rebirths [ones earned and across the lokas].
Scientifically I would love to find out if any research has been done in this regard, is it true that the first offspring carries higher percentage of genes from the parents.
Logically too, it made sense to me when I think in retrospect, being the eldest always means more responsibilities, the oldest one, because of being older has higher chances of having better experiences with dealing with the world, and he can take care of the legacy better.
Emotionally as well, being the eldest he deserved the respect of all the younger siblings, as an act of respect to the eldest brother, the others let him perform the rituals.

So what if the first son cannot perform the ritual due to some inconvenience, may be he is not well, or out of the station or something. I was surprised to know that its not the next son in the ladder who gets to perform the ritual. Instead its the youngest of the siblings.

The youngest son is referred to as preetija, or the one who is born because of the love. In modern days of family planning it may not really hold good, but in the olden days people did have children late in their life. As one became older, it is out of pure love and not lust[kama], they made love to each other. So most of the cases, the youngest one is the most loved in the family. Even if not the reason what I mentioned earlier, just being the youngest, gets lots of liberties at home, normally people are more patient, more forgiving and more affectionate towards the youngest. They get loved more than the rest by everyone.

So in an effort to please the elders, it is the duty of the youngest to perform the rituals, someone close to us, offering us gratitude will be truly cherished is the idea.

Logically too, I got convinced, anytime we meet, all cousins together, the youngest get priority, whatever they say we generally don’t argue, thinking that they are small, they should be happy. So it does make sense to give them an opportunity to do things, which they never get to do otherwise.

I don’t know if it is right or wrong, the first and the last son getting privileges in the rituals, but have to admit fascinating for sure.

After couple of days, where I was kind of taking it easy with my posts, I am back to myself today, so back to my random randomness from this week.

Random Thoughts:
When someone provides you support unconditionally, tries to be behind you in everything you do, not just for few months, but years together, why is that, after all off that,we still can’t be the same to them. The worst part must be, when they see us doing the same thing to others, not for them, it must really hurt. Guilty, we all are guilty, of this.
Taking things for granted, plagues many relationships. I just wish, I could improve upon these finer points of life.

Random Work Week:
In my last randomness post, I had mentioned that week had been highly boring and uneventful, also kind of low. This week was a total different note, was extremely busy at work, so amidst a busy work, there was a good friend at work who kept on interrupting me, even after telling that I am busy and would look into his problem on Monday he kept on disturbing me, and I lost my cool, I kind of had a bad verbal argument with him, and have been regretting that from Friday. I guess its time to mend that on Monday. I have to do this.

Random Turnaround:
I think I commented on one of the blogs I read about this, that no one really checks out pictures we put up on our profile on social networking websites, specially not if you are a male. I was really surprised, when I got a comment from a good friend, he/she said that the picture I have recently put up on my profile was really bad, and it did not look anything like me in that picture. I was really surprised that someone checked it out, and also made the comment. Guys I take back my comment, people do check the pictures I guess :D.

Random Anonymity:
Guys Rambler is not totally anonymous any more, it so happened that couple of my good friends at work found out about my blog on Wednesday. So I guess Rambler is not all that anonymous anymore :).

Random Surprises.
Well not many know about my celebrity likes, well not many times have I spoken about it in open, very few know I am a big admirer of “Kangana Ranaut”. One of these days I was watching a song from gangster on TV, when my dad who was sitting next to me, asked me who this lady was, and he said she looks pretty. Well Just the other day I was talking about children being copy cats, look what we have here, the other way round :)..
Just for curious people, the only other time I spoke about my celebrity likes was here on “Girls on screen“

Random Quotes:
This is my cousin’s wife on listening to my new year resolution of “no alcohol in 2008″, “What!, why do you always do such stupid things, how could you alone take this decision without taking our permissions“. Guys I know it was sweat and all, but I could not stop laughing, just the idea of taking some one else’s permission for decisions that I make, sounds damn scary!

Random Kindness.
I had an interesting conversation with one of my good friends from blogworld, it was about a comment I left on her post “my rose“
Creative that she is, she came out with a poem based on our conversation, here it goes, she calls it “Covet I“

Today’s topic over at skittles for “Heads or Tails” is anything that starts with the letter “C”. and I chose copycats.

Whenever people spot a new born kid, I guess the first reaction in most cases, is he/she looks just like her father, or mother, or grand parent, or like her aunt, or like the neighbor… oops last one just slipped in :).. Anyways the point was that, people do try to match the features of the kid to one of the relatives. In most of the cases it does turn out resembling someone in the family. Even today when people meet my father after knowing me for a long time, they comment “Now we know how you are gonna look when you are old”. Guess somewhere, whether you want or not, “creator” does leave some similarities.

Kids growing up always try to ape parents. Anything the parents eat, they want to taste too. The words they speak too, is very much what parents use. Sometimes the mannerisms are copied so nicely, like the style of walking, I have seen so many kids walking the way their parents do, like folding their hands when they walk, or swaying the way their parents do. The best time to catch them copying someone is when they are playing, they always pretend to be their teacher trying to teach what all they have been taught that day to an imaginary student, or when a girl kid tries to play house, the cooking style is exactly like her mother, or when a guy kid tries to drive an imaginary car, just try to observe the way they move their legs and hands, it would be exactly like their parents.

When kids grow up a little, I guess they try to copy their siblings a lot, girls want to do the same thing as their sisters, like their sibling’s choice in clothes. Guys on the other hand, want to learn the exact same sport as their brothers. Its fun stage I guess, where older siblings are always annoyed with the younger copycats. I am sure every one would have tried to copy the hair style of a sibling, or have fought with parents to get the exact same things as the other sibling.

As teenagers, friends and celebrities become a big inspiration, The attitude is more like, if he/she can do, why not I. The sales people have it very easy with teens, if one kid at school buys it, its almost sure that he/she would be followed by lots and lots of others. Same with celebrities too, late teens are I guess wanting to copy their favorite stars, their hairstyle, fashion, and even attitude. I still remember when the movie Aashiqui was released, and every one in our school was sporting Rahul Roy’s hairstyle and the heroines kind of a hair accessory. Again a fun age to watch the copy cats.

As people become adults, the copy happens more subtly. I mean most of the time we wont even know we are copying. Let my cite an example, when I was in the states alone, for the first time in my life, I was cooking everyday. I mean I had cooked before, but not like a daily routine stuff. I reached there on a weekend, and I didn’t realize the burden of cooking when I had pretty much nothing else to do. The first working week, I realized the time crunch in the morning when I had to cook before I go to office, in the evening as I was watching TV, I saw what vegetables were there in the refrigerator, and I planned what I wanted to cook the next day, and cut them accordingly and placed them in the refrigerator. Next day morning, I woke up, put them in a cooker, placed that on the stove and took my bath as the food was getting ready. and my cooking was done within just 15 minutes extra time. And suddenly it stuck me, I was doing exact same thing what my mom does back in Bangalore. She follows the same routine, watching her 24 years do the same stuff everyday had me copy her even without realizing I was doing it.
I guess as adults the decisions we take and the actions we do, are so much of a replica of people we have seen in the past, we would know exactly so and so would have reacted in the situation. Whenever I am planning my finances, I know I unknowingly follow the way my father would deal with it.

I know its not good to follow, its not good to copy, one has to be the “leader”. All said and done we do copy, we do follow, don’t we?