34. When pictures speak

Devil decided to bug me again, and tagged me. An 'Angel' in disguise I should say, for that brought me here, back to blogging after a looong gap.

* For the 20 questions that have been asked, write down your honest answer (in a few words).
* Type your answers, one by one, on an exactly-as-written-on-paper basis, in the search bar of any image search engine that you prefer (Flickr / Google Image Search etc.).
* You MUST MAY use the same search engine for all 20 answers.
* For every answer, only from the FIRST page of the search result, save exactly ONE image.
* Once you have a list of 20 images, each corresponding to one answer, compose a post in line with this post that you are reading right now.

I tag: Hari, Crazy, Lx, Multiboy, Chrony


1. My age:


twen'teen' (yea...i still refuse to be an adult)

2. I am passionate about:

The Living Word!

3. My favorite place:
ma room(Ah!...)


4. I have a thing for:
dairy milk


5. My comfort zone:(read relief zone)
(Need i mention?)

6. My favorite animal:
chick(en)(Yumm....)


7. My kind of art:

abstract

8. The town where I was brought up:

Trivandrum

9. The town where I live:
Calicut

10. A past pet:
love birds(RIP...sniff!)


11. A past love:
sigh(Dont remind me...)


12. Current love:
Shhh!(Ha! you thought i was gonna say?:P)

13. Best friend's nickname:
The Devil(Do I have an option?:P)

14. I want:
More(Am I being greedy?)

15. Screen name:
Blah


16. A bad habit:
Nose-picking(Yuck!..disgusting)


17. A dream:
Landing on Moon(Will it ever become a reality?)

18. First job:
Structural(I think....)

19. I miss:
School Days(I never thought I ever will...seriously)

20. What am I doing right now:
Typing(Duh!)

33. 40 Blues

I am nearing 40…and it’s nagging me by the day…Yes, I’m confused…I’m worried. Lines (of concern) have already started showing themselves on my temples…. The thought never was a matter of concern to me –though it used to bother others pretty much (…..my parents, bro, grandparents, uncles, aunts and the rest in the list of people who know nothing better than to worry over you…Ya ya..i know it’s all cos they love me). But now, things have changed; I cannot close my eyes to this anymore.

The stubborn pointer refuses to budge to the right. After weeks of steady decline, now it is as though it’s stuck at 40.If what they say is true, my worry can be rightly justified, for I ought to hit 50 within a span of the next 7 months –a virtually impossible thing for me to accomplish. How the heck am I gonna make it??

Apparently, only then, can I get placed in a decent core company from this college!!!What the *beep*??!
Rumors--true or not, I being the only one in this precarious position among my colleagues, I really need to work on this… all by myself….

So what am I supposed to do? Should I change my college, and go to another where there are no such restrictions? Or should I ditch my branch and take up some software job, and prove a traitor to my branch? Or will I be compelled to go for higher studies so that I’ll have more time to reach 50? Or should I bribe my medical examiner to switch the 4 with a 5? Or should I sabotage the damn weighing machine which refuses to budge? Or should I just eat and grow fat???

32. Tah Dah!

Yeah! Finally after days of contemplation, and battling against acute laziness, my blog decided to shed its maiden skin!:D

Though it has been quite sometime since the “to do or not to do” process began, the peer pressure(from fella bloggers) was so immense that I finally decided to do it!(It would be improper at this juncture, if I fail to mention multimenon who used to yammer away about the “dull-mundane-out-dated” template of my blog, every now and then, as though he had absolutely nothing else to talk :P)

For those of you who were aware of the fact that I had attended a course on photoshop during the vacations and are nodding approvingly thinking that it had done me good, well hold on…for I never had any role in the creation of this new template:P
All I did was coax Leela(a photohsop whiz) well enough, until finally she gave in and sent me the template as a belated B’day gift:D…Talking about Leela, she is this friend of mine, who I like so much for the ways in which she makes me feel a lot heavier(:P)Though she looks like a 13 yr old kid, her writing skills have made some people wonder whether she’s a 30 yr old litt grad!Yeah that’s enough of publicity for her I guess;)

And talking about birthdays, my ‘big’ day was on 12th August, so if anybody else feels like sending me similar B’day gifts, do send ’em ASAP before 1 more candle gets added to my B’Day cake;)

31. Onam ’08-When traditions contravene …

Okay, first things first,some intro…

Onam is the biggest festival in the Indian state of Kerala. Onam Festival falls during the Malayali month of Chingam (Aug - Sep) and marks the homecoming of legendary King Mahabali. Intricately decorated Pookalam, ambrosial Onasadya, breathtaking Snake Boat Race and exotic Kaikottikali dance are some of the most remarkable features of Onam - the harvest festival in Kerala.

So there came the much awaited Onam ‘vacations’(that is, if you can call 4 holidays, including the weekend, a vacation :( ), and I made my way to the capital city of God’s own country. But what awaited me there was not any of the aforementioned breathtaking, exotic stuff…

To begin with, my house was in a state of extortionate mess. Our housemaid who has a knack of ditching our household at the most crucial times, did it again---just when I was home to enjoy the hols. Hmph! And the result –I had the honours of spending my hols tidying up the whole place and helping mom with kitchen work!

After the rain-drenched month of Karkidakam, with its privations, Chingam is a welcome month for people in the state of Kerala. The festival is the harbinger of spring — signalling the start of the harvest season.

But the way onam this time turned out was like, it might have made Mr Mahabali wonder if the calendar system in the ‘paathalalokam’(Hell-world) had gone haywire and had sent him here in the middle of the Karkidakam. Yeah man! It was raining cats and dogs during the very first day of Onam!!! But the cats and dogs apparently decided to give it a break and the next two days it was sweltering hot, sooo scorching hot that it made me wanna run back to my cool, cozy hostel room(yea for once the campus seemed to be appealing:O)

During Onam, the feast and festive mood of the people, dressed in their best, is conside

red reminiscent of the prosperous and truthful life of the subjects during Bali's flawless reign. People wear new clothes (Vastra) during Onam. The significance of wearing new clothes is about making the heart new by removing all bad thoughts and feelings.

Talking about new clothes, thanks to my spree of wearing new clothes during the last one week, I exhausted all my reserves of new dresses. And so on the big day(Thiruvonam), I found myself wearing, an old pair of jeans and my bro’s old t-shirt :|

What’s the new dress for anyway, when one is stranded at home. Well, dad developed this cervical spondylosis all of a sudden and he is to wear this neck collar for a couple of weeks. He is supposed to wear it 24*7 other than in bed. But because of his ‘acute shyness’ to walk around with the collar, he takes it off whenever other people are in the vicinity. This gave mom no option, but to have him house arrested. Needless to say that meant my house arrest as well :|

Onam epitomises the newfound vigour and enthusiasm of the season, and is celebrated with traditional fervour with visits to temples, family get-togethers and lots of merrymaking. Carnival of Onam lasts for ten days and brings out the best of Kerala culture and tradition.

Ah! but all the get-togethers that happened was that of the 3 of us(Mom,Dad pinne njaanum:D) assembled in front of the idiot box, from morning till evening :( and all the culture and tradition that I got to witness was that shown in the mallu movies, which seemed to have undergone a time dilation –for, the supposed to be 2 hr long movies didn't seem to end even after 4 full hours painfully ticked away. But one couldn’t expect more when they show bits and pieces of filmstrips in between the seemingly endless chain of ads.

Another speciality of onam is the ‘Onasadya’ or lunch, which consists of at least a dozen of pure vegetarian dishes, eaten from a leaf. There is a saying, "Kanam Vittum Onam Unnanam" which means "We should have the Onam lunch even if we have to sell all our properties" which shows the importance of the grand lunch on the Thiruvonam day. Even the poorest of the poor manage to find something for himself to celebrate the national festival in his own humble way.

Our first ‘Onasadya’ was from a neighbour’s housewarming party. It was as if they were having a non-veg fiesta out there –chicken, beef, fish…… That must have been the first non-veg onasadya that I ever had. Poor dad(a pure veg) had to adjust with just rice and daal. And for dinner that night, we had kanji(porridge) :( No complaints though, cos I know that it would backfire and would get me landed up in the kitchen. However we didn’t have the heart to screw up the Thiruvonam day’s onasadya as well. And I spent the evening, grating coconuts and cutting vegetables. Grating coconut…hmmm…that is one helluva task! Compared to it, filing at mech workshop seemed like a piece of cake…at least you had guys helping you out with it.

Carnival of Onam encompasses a spectrum of fascinating activities. Traditional people of Kerala even go out of their way to celebrate the festival exhaustive of stipulated customs and traditions in full grandiose. The mood of the people is upbeat all through the carnival and the high spirited people of Kerala are ever ready to indulge in merriment.

Yeah, so guess my Onam was indeed a ‘spectrum of fascinating activities’, lazying at home. But wait! What’s with all the whining and bickering? Isn’t being at home with your loved ones after 2 whole months, and being able to chat away to your old friends without having to worry about your phone balance, one celebration in itself? That was one lovely Onam after all;)

30. The last sting!

Bzzzz…zz.z….
Time:11:55pm
Location: an undisclosed beehive, in an undisclosed place.
Bzzzzzzz…….

The hive is buzzing with activity. The QueenB commands her workers to do this and to do that. Mr. B was summoned up and given orders to explore new sites for nectar-flowers. The exploring-new-flower-patches work has to be done at night, in the dark, without taking the risk of being spied by the bees from the enemy base-comb. And this was Mr. B’s first work, outside the comb, at night…Oh yeah…he was a bit excited and nervous of course…

So Mr. B takes off from his base-comb at 00:00hrs and sets out for his mission. It’s a pitch black no moon night, and normal visibility is quite poor. Mr. B switches on to night vision mode and scans the entire area. Soon it spots a shimmer of light near the rose shrub patches in ‘quadrant nine’. The light seemed to be coming from a building and Mr. B hovers around the building to find out the exact location of the light source, wondering how there could possibly be light after the sun had set.

Soon Mr. B reaches a window of the lighted room, and peeps in. Holy Honey! This is where the sun comes to take rest after setting eh?–reduce into a bulbous shape and hang there just like that?? Hmmm…interesting…

Mr. B extends his gaze further into the room and spots a female homo sapien reclining on a bed…Is she asleep? Ha! Hope so…humans are our enemies…they steal our hard earned honey…cruel heartless creatures…Hey but no, she is not asleep. She’s doing something with a ‘TV’ like thingy…but no, this is not the idiot box…I’ve seen enough of ‘em around. This looks like something else, and I think she’s reading from it…Ah! who cares?…let her do her job while I go fetch some honey…so…where are the flowers?

Mr. B enters the room through a small cleft in the wire meshed window, circumnavigates the whole place, and spots a bunch of bright red juicy flowers. Hey this one’s planted in a fancy pot. Never seen one like this before. These human females...they are so funny and fancy. Oops I musn’t linger around here for long. Should test these nectar samples and report it to her highness ASAP. Oh honey! here I come… and Mr. B darts towards the flowers when, Ouch! My fangs! Yuck! what is this thing? This aint real flowers…eek plastic!! Grr...dumb female! Hmph! looks like I entered the wrong territory. Gotta get outta here and go get some real honey.

Mr. B circles around the whole room, to find an exit. Oh no! How did I get in here? How do I get out? Mr. B keeps circling round and round and round till it gets exhausted...Low honey-level! low honey-pressure!…gonna crash…and lower and lower it went until THUD! Mr. B crashed his last and final crash…

Lying on the floor, taking his last few breaths, Mr. B reflects his whole life. Flashes from his life pass by through his mind...childhood, fun moments, loved ones, high and low times of life, the human attack on their base-comb…it regretted even on its death bed, not having taken any revenge on the human species…it felt its stinger twitch and sighed at having made no use of its powerful weapon at the rear. Suddenly the world around him began to quiver…it felt a mild tremor…OMG! what’s this now? An earthquake? Oh No! it’s the human. She’s got out of the bed…and Gulp! She’s heading this way…I’ll be crushed under her feet…What am I gonna do??? But all of a sudden, as the human feet neared the bee, his face broke into a sinister grin………

……………………………………………………………………………………………………

I was lying flat on my bed after a day’s work of chatting, orkutting, and blog hopping…My 4.8kg lappy on my tummy, and my head rested against 2 pillows, I was trying to read myself to sleep. I was struck by the writers' block yet again, and hence had downloaded a dozen of arbit blogs, so that I could get inspired to write again!

The sweet ‘honey-heavy dew of slumber’ was slowly descending upon me…just enough to lull me into sleep. It’s not very often that I get to get good sleep. Sleep often comes as a reluctant visitor, after sessions of twisting and turning around in the bed. In that blissful slumberous state, when I was all too eager to give myself to Morpheus’ hand(dun misunderstand me...its just an expression, I recently learnt from The Hindu literary section) I slowly moved to turn off the light, and was returning to the beckoning bed when, OUCH! Oh my foot!Aaaaaaa...........

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

That was yet another of my numerous encounters with the poly-legged/winged freaks. In the subsequent days, two other XplorerBs followed suit and met with the same fate as their predecessor…Also my foot ended up having 3 hideous swellings…for the next couple of days….grr…DumBs!!!

29. All for a guy?!!

I've been lying lazily in this same posture for the past 50 minutes watching amusedly the antics of my roomy. She has been in front of the mirror for the past 45 minutes or so…(please note that this is her second rendezvous with Mr. mirror today, having had a similar but a lengthier session earlier in the morning, when I was just taking my first few winks of the day). My other roomy having gone for some practice much earlier, i was left alone as this roomy's sole make-up-commentator(Sheesh! just my luck!!). Got tired replying to her never ending "How do I look?"(What can I say?),"Is this necklace too gaudy"(How do I know??),"Is this 3 inch long red stone studded ear-ring too much?"(did she really expect me to be honest with her???)"Does this hairstyle suit me or that?"(lol...who's she asking to? me eh? me who chops off my hair every now and then not knowing what to do with it!!)

Pfft!! thought that I was done with the viva session in the morning itself.But I was wrong ...
there comes another volley of questions...Oh no! not again! Why me??"Can you put the eyeliner
for me?"..Oh No!I'm getting outa here.....

"You will understand it when you get a guy"...Miss know-it-all+have-experienced-it-all starts off her 'how-to-be-a-good-gf-exhortation'!"Wait and see when you get a guy, and you go out with him, you will be doing the same thing"...

Ya right! I close my eyes; a faint smile plays somewhere around my lips... Ya right; you can say that again....

PS:to my roomy if u ever happen to read this...I chumma posted this here.. I was running out of topics for blog.. and couldn't help it watching you doing the same stuff for all 3 days...No harm/insult intended k?? Cheers! :D

28. My encounters with poly-legged-freaks

Yeah! I am a born arachnophobic through and through or rather an ‘insectophobic’ would be more appropriate, because just any insect for that matter can spill the gut out of me!! Creepy, crawling poly-legged-hairy creatures, dreadful eyes and scary fang, writhing about…Eeek! Just enough to send a chill down through my spine and make my hair stand up and render me sleepless for nights….Eeeek!

……………………………………………………………………………

A beautiful Sunday morning worship at church…Melodious songs fill the whole place...The church is not a typical church in the strict sense, it’s just a small hall, in a small nook of our ‘kattangal metropolis’ where 50-60 odd people gather every week for the service.

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and pains to bear,
What a privilege to carry,
Everything to God in prayer......

The believers are having a wonderful time of worship session, and they are singing their hearts out to the Lord. In the second row of the right wing, stands me singing away to glory along with the rest of the flock. But unknown to everyone around, my mind has an inner private chit chat with God Almighty…

God reminds me of the innumerable things He’s done for me in the past few weeks, and lists them down…
God: This is another week that you’ve got in your life Neethu, are you gonna testify the blessings in your life today at least? Don’t you remember all those things that I’ve done for you? Don’t you know that the testimonies you give encourages your disheartened brothers just as how you have been uplifted a number of times by their testimonies?
Me: Uh..hmm…ya Lord...but, those were big things…things which you can clearly label as real miracles….
God: Wasn’t scoring 19/20 for that subject in which, you weren’t even sure to scrape through, a miracle? Wasn’t the retrieval of your lost precious Fast Track watch from a total stranger a miracle? Wasn’t the healing of the sickness, the day before your exam, a miracle enough? Wasn’t it a miracle when the centipede that bumped against your foot went away harmlessly?
Me: hmm..yeah…but they can have other logical explanations too…cant they?? I mean I’m not trying to belittle you…but will they be good enough for the people to increase their faith? Wouldn’t it be nice to tell them about something, where only divine intervention, be the only possible explanation? When I come across such a one in my life, I’ll surely testify your goodness, Lord![I thus try to shy away giving all sorts of lame excuses]
God: [shakes his head and sighs at my chickening out ]: Do you want to wait till that?............… 
Me: [just shrugs off and continues singing… ]

After a little while, I feel something brushing against my leg. Was it the wind? Dismissing it as just the play of mind, I continue singing…quite uneasily though –all sorts of weird possibilities were cropping up in my head. But soon, I could feel the distinct crawling up…up of definitely something. Could it be an ant? Eek! I get freaked out by ants as well! But when did ants become so big and heavy? And did it have more than 6 appendages? Now I could feel it going up through my leg, above my knees…the picture of a scurrying centipede flashed across my mind (only a few weeks before, a centi had come and ‘kissed’ my feet and(thankfully)went away harmlessly) …Heck no! it can’t be a centi! It shouldn’t be that!

Whatever it was, it had now reached my waist –I was struggling to keep myself calm. I have watched enough of animal planet and discovery channel, to be careful not to agitate the whatever-thingy inside my clothes. I just loosened my pant-belt so that it won’t have any obstruction, and thus find a reason to sting me. Now I could feel it go up my body, my back. It was now scaling my spine. Just out of curiosity(read fear), I felt it against my body, with my hand over my shirt! Eek! It was something really gigantic…omg! Somebody do something! God???

Then all of a sudden the commotion stopped. God! Where’s it now? I stood still, barely breathing…Now I could sense a big lump near my shoulders. Fighting back fear and panic, I just peeped inside my shirt over my shoulders…and what I saw makes me jump up in fright and disgust now, even though I didn’t, then! One of the most dreadful sights an ‘insectophobic’ like me could ever have –100s of twitching legs of a big-fat-fully-grown centipede, snuggling ‘cozily’ against my shoulders!!!

howdy??....

I didn’t know what to do…But surprisingly enough, I didn’t freak out or jump up and down or scream the sense out of the people around. In fact, I was still subconsciously singing the song along with the rest of them! But I couldn’t put on that façade of courage for long -I whispered to MaSaJo standing next to me, that an insect had got inside my clothes, could she help me get it out (I didn't want to freak her out by mentioning that it was a centi). We both moved out silently…the centi still comfortably(highly uncomfortable for me) perched on my shoulders….

MaSaJo assessed the situation and declared that I should take off my shirt, if the thing was still inside. I too felt that it was the only possible thing for me to do. We went to an adjacent room in the church building. As soon as MaSaJo shut the door of the room, I threw away my shirt, and THUD! MaSaJo jumped up and let out a silent scream, as the 10-15 cms long big-fat-ugly-poly-legged creature hit the floor with a thud! It then quickly slithered away to the darkness, underneath a cupboard…

We both stood speechless for a while…then praise just began to flow from our lips and hearts…I couldn’t thank God enough…That was the scariest moment of my life, and I came out of it unscathed. Well, I asked for it…sort of…I was waiting for a tangible-divine-intervention-involving-miracle…and it seemed as if dear God went to this extent to give me what I had asked for. That’s the inference that I made out of this small drama. Otherwise why in the world did that yucky centi chose to make an expedition up my body, when there were scores of other people around me?

The worship session was just getting over, when we got back, and it was the time for the testimonies. I didn’t need any coaxing or cajoling now to testify the goodness of my God. My gratitude and thankfulness overcame my shyness and fear-of-facing-the-crowd, and I just opened my heart and testified His faithfulness in front of the whole crowd:D…

Anything could have happened. It could have given me a real painful if not a fatal sting! Or its 101 sharp legs would have been enough to hurt me! Or even if it did nothing, out of sheer panic, I could have freaked out and hurt myself or disrupted the wonderful service. But God miraculously helped me keep a level head and maintain my calm...:D

Even now I shudder as I recollect the whole incident. But when I think of the fact that I’m in His hands, I can be at peace. :)

“I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to
overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.’' John 2:22

:)

PS1: Well that wasn’t the first or the last (though it was the scariest) of my encounters with the poly-legged-freaks… Sadly(read scaringly) it has a freaky past, and unfortunately(again scaringly) it’s having a freaky future as well…will be jotting them down in subsequent posts…

PS2: Entomophobia –that’s the term for fear of insects…but I guess each encounter with various poly-legged-freaks is making me less entomophobic by and by;)