Summer Talks

Summers are overrated. Whoever wrote the lines “A lovely day! Yet many such, Each like to each, this month have passed” about a summer day must be a very wise person, but I’ll go ahead and say that my encounters with this season have been nothing close to “lovely”. If you’ve lived in any of the tropical countries you’ll know what I am talking about. I don’t comprehend how summers are worth writing poetry. Spring or rainy season perhaps, but summers? I don’t really buy it. Summers in my part of the world are like being in a hot-pot at 45°C, the heat crawling inside and you perspire like there is no end to it.

The best way to beat the heat is to stay in close proximity to one of the greatest human inventions, air conditioners or ACs, as we call them in our day-to-day life. Back in my college days, we didn’t have the luxury of air-conditioned rooms. The common rooms, however had ACs installed in them. Totally understandable why they used to become a sanctuary for the entire hostel populace during the hours of sleep. This is just a simple example; the hunt for ACs goes up to many levels transcending the boundaries of money and rationality. For instance,

• Those who don’t like to be in close contact with books unless it’s for passing an exam spending some quality time in libraries, only because they are air-conditioned.
• People who are utterly uninterested in movies and their familiarity of Hollywood is limited to knowing Leonardo Dicaprio, going to a movie theatre screening Zoolander 2, because “Dude, at least they have AC!”.
• (Window) shopping in a mall even if you don’t really need anything. Is it a big price to pay for soothing your sun-scorched epidermis? Certainly not.
• Barging in restaurants at odd hours and taking your own sweet time to decide orders. This way, buying more time to savour the gentle air-conditioned environment. How shrewd!

Even if I’m not much of a summer aficionado some people actually are, like the health columnists of newspapers and magazines. Years may roll away and eons may pass, but the content of health column in summers will remain the same (They’re not to be blamed though, staying hydrated is indeed a big deal). Real holidaying for them! In a similar way, summers are very fruitful for many a business sectors. With the increasing intensity of sunrays come the incessant trepidations of getting tanned and the companies oblige by launching whole new ranges of cosmetics. Same goes for countless other products which are otherwise useless in rest of the seasons. The fuming summer-clouds have got a few silver linings after all.

There there, I was just being nice. Summer days are dreadful and the fact remains thus. Winters are not all that great either, but at least you can stuff yourself with warm clothes to feel at home. So the next time you’re cursing the chilly winds in the month of December, just remember that a day can get worse. Think about it.

 

 

 

 

An Open Letter to the Poor-Joke Spammers Out There

Dear PJ-Spammer,

I hold no particular animosity towards you. You might be one amongst my dear ones but when you say “hi guys” to a herd of cows passing by; I clench my fists tight and deploy all the self-control I have to stop myself from punching you. I know you have this natural inclination of playing with phonetics and word-roots, but that makes your audience feel like killing themselves, traumatized by the hurricane of mixed emotions evoked by your deadly words. I, therefore, have decided to raise my voice against this vicious malpractice.

The increase in number of people who humor themselves by cracking Lame or Poor Jokes (PJs) is alarming. As a matter of fact, you are everywhere.Every friends group in every college in this country has a person who tortures the rest by his/her brutal jokes.If this rate continues then that day is no longer far when good humor will become extinct on this planet.

Sure you’re funny (sometimes) and witty, but you’re a million other things too, most of which are synonymous to the word cruel. One day,out of curiosity I asked you why this lame-joke cult is spreading like a wildfire, you quoted growing mutilation cases in the ‘Joke Realm’ as the reason. In my exasperated frustration, I blurted “It’s so not cool, if you have anything against me then you should just say it”, you said without a moment’s lapse,” it”. I died a little inside that day.

Why, just why you have to opt for a degraded form of humor to amuse yourself when so many classic fortes still exist! We all love Chandler Bing for his spot-on sarcasm and Sheldon Cooper for his on-your-face wisecracks. We’re even fond of Bart Baker’s parodies and Russell Peters’s satires despite his racial slurs. So please oh please, take an inspiration from those good people and adopt a different type of humor for your kind indulgence.

I speak for the whole agonized recipient fraternity when I say “No thank you, you’ve got to stop”.

Yours sincerely

PR

 

Disclaimer: This post is to be taken as a light-hearted quip and not intended to hurt any individual sentiment. Thank you for reading!

Those Were the Days

The last few months of college are overwhelming times. Things seem to be on a rush and you hastily try to tick things off your bucket list. Bouts of sentiments flood your heart, you take countless number of pictures to document your #onelasttime’s but they don’t seem to be enough. I have experienced this tumultuousness of emotions too.  Now when they have got over, I sit nostalgia-struck, sometimes recapitulating the past. Here I’ll give you a sneak-peek of my mind palace, some incidents which make me laugh no matter what the situation is.

• The time we made daal-baati

For those who don’t know what baati is, it is spiced wheat-flour dough balls roasted directly in wood fire,served with daal and generous amount of ghee.

One fine evening three of my friends and I collected some dried twigs and tree branches, ignited a fire and roasted our pre-made dough balls in the simmering flames. The baatis with some daal from mess and ghee from the local Chinthamani departmental store made for one satisfying finger-licking meal.

• The Blur-ry weekends

There is this car racing game called Blur my guy friends are crazy about. It was a drizzly weekend when I gave in to their proposition and played it for the first time. Without much polishing, I’m ready to admit that I sucked at it. Maybe I’m just too evolved to participate in such virtual quests. I’m meant to deal with real-life problems and face real challenges (see what I did there?). Nevertheless, it was quite indulging. I could just steer my car off a cliff or hit another harmless car parked on the roadside and get away with it just like that.

• The trip of a (college) lifetime

A trip to Goa sets off a volcano in your pocket (apparently, the phrase ‘burn a hole’ doesn’t do justice to it), but trust me, it’s worth every penny you spend.

The Goa air smells of free-spirit. You can roam, drive and shop to your heart’s content irrespective of what hour of the day is. From idyllic beaches to ‘Dil Chahta hai’ fame Charpora Fort to Club Cabana, we did it all. To add cherry on the cake enter our luxurious stay, which was quite a steal on makemytrip, and Jia’s delicious cream cheese pastas!

• When I watched a Tamil movie

It so happened that I, with my 6 other friends went for an impromptu night out to the Trichy City where nightlife is non-existent save a multiplex and couple of coffeehouses. When we reached the said multiplex the only tickets we could procure such last-minute were of the Tamil movie ‘24’, and the Tamil language proficiency of me and my friends is limited to speaking and understanding basic phrases like ‘enna pandre’ and ‘Tamil teriyadha’.

Needless to say, time seemed to be on a standstill during the 2 hours of the movie attributed to collective self-pity, regret and our desperate attempt to understand the story from the visuals.

Our expressions during the interval, mournful in unison.

These are just a few events on top of my mind. I, of course have a never-ending list of memories which will be cherished forever. Hope you enjoyed the read.

Till next post, folks!