what's left of my four wheels

I walked out of this car last thursday with only a misplaced little finger. I had a one on one with god in a very long time as the clouds cleared sirens drew closer. I thanked him for fact that none of my dear friends was with me that afternoon and also for saving my dad from an awful situation of carrying whats left of me back home to my mother.

Please drive cautiously and use good judgement..... it will save you from a lot of heart ache.

and my whole life didnt flash infront of me !

Q-Jumping

I dont mind you butting in on the line @ Lulu and i dont mind it when you cut in on me @ the airportduty free. I dont mind when you barge in @ the barber shop. It's your country and i am just another hindi and aiwa.. entha omani, i dont have enough wasta and i am not a g0raa. But no, i wont let you do that @ the hospital you asshole fuckers even if you say you have a chilli up your ass.

Frustrated after a long day @ the hospital trying to get some treatement on time for my 58 year old dad.

With out a forwarding address.

I am sure most of you never came across the name A. Ayyappan. He was a poet in "malayalam" my mother tongue. A true Bohemian in every sense he lost his parents very early and started writing at a very early age. The last of the anarchists of his time he never built a home or did start a family. He slept on verandhas and bus stations and stayed with his friends whenever it pleased him.

He was a poet of the youth. May be he was the only poet in my land who was given a welcome in the local market. He was the most famous orphan of my land and yet he had no forwarding address. He was found unconsious on the streets of thiruvananthapuram 2 days ago and was recognised only when he was being moved to the mortuary. His last poem was found inside the folds of his shirt sleeve. Its in malayalam but i have attempted to transalate it ..here it goes

The Teeth

An Arrow will hit me

Any moment from now

I am but running for my life

The Hunters Shack is Behid ME

A gang after my flesh

And the trees gave me no refuge

I opened the door of the rock

Stood still while he roared

And i am his meal, with pleasure

River,Canal and the Wadi

Cut 1 : My Phobia

I dread heights, i used to be more afraid of water. As a kid i once had the misfortune of watching a man fall from our terrace in to our well and there was the incident when i got swept off by the current while washing our truck in a river and i woke up later in a hospital. I also remember falling in to a water cask head first and remaining there till saw my legs sticking out and saved me from drowning. So by the school going age i was really very very hydrophobic.

An irrigation canal ( Source : Google)

Cut 2 : The canal

I am riding a bike, sandwiched between two burly 3rd year seniors of my engineering college, i'm feeling numb coz the ragging had been going on for weeks and i was sick to the point of quitting college. The bike suddenly veered off the main road to a dirt road and we approached a pedestrian bridge connecting two banks of an irrigation canal just wide enough for a man to pass. I closed my eyes and i could hear the gurgling water above the din of the motorbike. The guy must have crossed that narrow bridge a 100 times on his bike he crossed the bridge with out reducing speed and i felt the fabric of my jeans scraping the wall of the bridge. Our college had no mens hostel then and most of the guys rented out villas near the college. It was customary to name the villas so as to identify them easily and names went like "triple x", "white house" ," Pentagon" , "Kryptex" , "saplee villa" , " buji villa" etc. This time around they were taking me to a particular villa named " Durandam". I thought about all the stories about "durandam" , of it occupants and their antics. Durandam is a malayalam word which means tragedy i hope i neednt explain further.

I was expecting the usual round of punches slaps and horrific abuse which were common in those days in engineering colleges as part of the ragging for first year students but to my surprise there is only shakehands and casual conversation. One of them introduced himself and took me along for a walk. We walked and talked and then he lit up a cigarette and hoisted himself up on the railing of the canal's walls and made me do the same. He asked me if i could swim to which i explained my phobia. He nodded and pointed to me a foot ladder and told me to make a good note of it. I was still asking myself, why he asked me so when he just pushed me in to the canal's gurgling,froathing swirls. I opened my mouth to scream only to taste murky water , i thrashed around, i tried to call for help when i came up for air , the current was pushing me along like a twig. I saw a lot of seniors by the bank laughing their heads off. All of them shouting at me to grab the ladder. I grabbed it somehow and made my way up slowly, i collapsed exhausted and vomited my insides out. I smiled to myself as i my ears and nose slowly cleared. They had much fun at my expense but i got cured of my hydrophobia.

Ragging is really good to break the ice and get rid of your inhibitions,if it is done by sensible seniors and as long as it does not involve abuse. I made a lot of friends amongst my seniors and juniors because of ragging. When i first came to muscat i felt very very alone but my life here changed for good when i met 12 other guys who studied in the same college.

As-Siffah wadi near quriyat : (Pic by me)
Cut 3 : Wild Wadi

I am navigating using a gps, with kevin (my colleagues 10 year old son) on my lap. we are trying to find a wadi near as siffah dam. I see a bunch of omani guys jumping off a cliff face as we park by the wadi banks. I walk over to them saying salam and i watch as they show off their diving skills. One of them says to me " sadeeq taal minni, leish entha kauf ? "(my friend come over here , are you afraid?). I smile and tell them " aiwa sadeeq , aana wagid kauff" (Yes my friend i am very afraid). Another one sneaks up behind me and push me off, i was expecting it and i do my perfect knife dive routine and come back up with a thumbs up sign laughing my head off to the loud cheers whistles and mabrouk calls from the omani guys.

So this is the story of how i acquired and got rid of my hydrophobia, now i have the fear of heights to overcome.

The only Vuvuzela in Muscat !

That's me blowing my vuvzela @ office . Bet's have been placed and a carton full of beer is standing by . Nothing like a worldcup to beat the sunday blues. ;-)

Water Colours : The young man and the sea

All those times i flew over it and the countless hours i spent being a beach bum . I never imagined the colours that lay beneath ..... the deep blue sea . Ofcourse i have seen enough underwater pictures and movies but you have to believe me when i say nothing will prepare you for that moment you first see a coral encrusted rock or swim along with a school of fish or fly in formation with a sting ray. 2/3rds of the world is under the sea and that the food for my thoughts ever since i dived for the first time in my life last weekend. Owing to lack of equipment to take my camera underwater there are no photographs i took this time but i hope things will change and this is the begining of something that's truely satisfying and calming as a hobby ..( only if it wasnt so bloody expensive ;-) like all things i like to do ) .

Each Second Counts

I am sure most of you have seen Slumdog Millionaire. Do you remember the slum shown at the beginning of the film beside the airport runway? I have been there and it was while there I tasted the most delicious Bengali food garnished with love made by a strong woman who fought all odds to raise her kids after her husband left her years ago. Her son is my friend and we were out celebrating at a restaurant in Muscat yesterday night. I ordered lobster and he was relishing a falooda, we were having a very good time until he had a seizure . He began rolling and thrashing about on the restaurant floor and all hell broke loose, men started shouting and the women screamed. I sat there unable to understand anything and was still munching on my lobster for about 30 seconds.

It is not easy when someone close to you looks like they are going to die. Believe me, it takes time to register. Then I revved up... tables were moved and space was made for him to thrash about freely, a spirited (what is it that you want to say here) and kind Omani gentleman poured iced water on his head while others rubbed his hands and feet, loosened his clothing etc.
Although I had long ago learned in my Red Cross volunteer first-aid course that there is no risk of him swallowing his toungue and there is no point in making him hold something made of steel, as it is traditionally believed is the way to minimise control during an epileptic attack.

I still gave him a fork and spoon to hold. It was a blur after that, paramedics, the ambulance ride to the emergency care, filling out forms, doctors, reports etc...

This incident left me thinking about how many of us know what to do in case of an emergency. It is probably more important to know what not to do than what to do. We always complain about the inaction of a crowd when they see some one in need, and now I am thinking how many in a crowd know what is the right thing to do. I urge all of you to get yourself acquainted with necessary first aid and other resuscitation procedures applicable to commonly occuring emergencies such as burning, drowning, heart attack, electricution etc.

At least show the presence of mind to call 999 because really, each second counts

Thing's Missing :- Rain

A series of photos taken at my home after a bout of rain

I'm dizzy from the shopping malls

I searched for joy, but I bought it all

It doesn't help the hunger pains

and a thirst I'd have to drown first to ever satiate

Something's missing

And I don't know how to fix it

something's missingAnd I don't know what it is

At all

When autumn comes, it doesnt ask.

It just walks in, where it left you last.

And you never know, when it starts

Until there's fog inside the glass around your summer heart:

How come everything I think I need,

always comes with batteries

What do you think it means


Pics by me & Lyrics by John mayor

The smell of gunpowder and marksmanship

To me, the sharp, sweet smell (atleast to me.. it is )of burnt gunpowder you experience when you open the bolt of a rifle to eject a spent shell is heaven. I just love it, I have spent a small fortune on bullets just to enjoy that smell. In fact I have spent enough time on a shooting range nosing around, to be able to recognise the smell given off by different breed of catridges. Ok, enough about the smell.

This post is actually about my love for marksmanship. It's about hitting a dot dead centre a.k.a the bull's eye from a distance and being able to do it again and again all the while knowing that the probabality of hitting the bulls eye is more near to zero than one i.e. if everything goes the way things ought to go.

Speaking in scientific terms, you should be able to reproduce the outcome of an experiment if you are able to do it in identical controlled conditions. In a target shooters case the controlled conditions include but are not limited to 1) Three Part Breathing 2) Attentional control 3) Maintaining body posture aligned to the target and the the sighting scope etc.Hitting the bulls eye is the result of perfect execution of a series of actions like any stage art you can think of.

I still remember the first time I squeezed the trigger (they pull the trigger only in the movies), it was almost as good as any first kiss. ;). I long for the company of my fellow riflemen and their tall stories about their junglee exploits and about guns passed on from generation to generation ... in that other life of mine.

Borders Abroad

Growing up in Kottayam, a small town down south of India, I was kilometers away from the nearest border post with Pakistan but was never too far from the emotional shelling that happened every morning when news was discussed at the breakfast table and at playgrounds. We celebrated war movies, cried together when we lost a cricket match and silently swore to kill them all when ever a jawan came home from kashmir in a coffin. For me, patriotism went hand in hand with an underlying hatred for Pakistan and Pakistanis. I know hate is a harsh word but I would never have shared a meal with a Pakistani during my growing up years. To me ,Pakistan was in another planet .
Years later, living in another city, I now know that there is a Punjab in Pakistan along with Sindh and Balochistan. Now that I have friends from the other side, I have no qualms about sharing a meal with Most of the time, I mean it when I say "Bhai Jaan". Lahore is now just another city I can look up friends in, if I ever went there. I don't really mind when they call me "Hindi" behind my back because I identify more "Hindi " than being called a "Malabari".
The way I look at things now, there isn't much difference between us and them, if we forget what we assume and what we were told about each other. They like SRK and we like Junoon, they are mad about cricket as we are, and we always cheer for their team unless, of course, they are playing us, don't we ?
Of course, there is that invisible thin line that separates us in all ascpects of life out here ( we seldom watch cricket together, we don't talk about the wars and we never share accommodation). As the saying goes, good fences make good neighbours.

The General of J Block

Hans is my colleague and he is from germany. Every morning he walks past my office to his,after punching in. We wave to each other and say our greetings. This morning how ever it occured to me to wish to him in german and the words just came out of my mouth astonishing myself "Guten Morgen,Wie geht's?" ( good morning , How are you ?). I wondered to myself how the hell did i just manage that ?. I felt like a cold wave of air hitting my face. All of it came back to me in a jiffy and i was back in that hospital room again. Let me tell you how i ended up there back in December 2006. Every year on the 24th of december the boarding school i went to hosts a reunion for all its ex-students. As usual i had showed up late, managed to avoid all my teachers and got away with my buddies to the nearest toddy shop. Several Hours later i was on my way back home in my car alone and was perspiring inspite of the air conditioning, when i reached home i could barely manage to undress myself and get to bed.

My memories of the next 48 hours in some what blurred. I vaguely remember the endless vomiting and the rough ride in the dead of the night in an auto to the hospital . Of Being admitted to the understaffed casuality ward on xmas eve. Some nursing student finally learning to use the needle after several horrible trials on me . By that time i was vomiting blue and green and it was bile or gall secreted by hepatocytes from the liver. I was quickly diagonized with acute and potentially chronic hepatitis B . I slipped in and out for about two days amidst a lot of tubes and machinery.

Two days later i stabilized and was moved to a room on another block. Block J to be exact. I spent my time texting people , reading books , smiling at my visitors , flirting with the nursing students , complaining about the food and bugging the doctors. Then there was sister agnes. Sister Agnes was very old , frail , skinny but shar and shrewd like a hawk. She would come in early mornings to make sure i had been given my morning injection, she made sure my bed was made properly ( the students did that ),that i was fed nothing which had salt in it and a thousand other mundane things. In short sister agnes was in charge....she was the General of J Block. During the course of days i noticed her always muttering to herself under her breath in between shouting at the staff under her. I could barely make out what she said but it was sure in a language i never heard before and one day i mustered up all my courage and asked her about it.

It turned out that sister agnes had spent all her working life as a nurse in berlin right after her ordination as a nun till nearing retirement. Here was a woman who had seen the berlin wall going up and coming down. I was a good listener and she was a fabulous story teller and we hit it right off from there. I was awed by her stories from another world and i horrified her with mine.By the time i was up for discharge after almost a month we had become best friends and she had taught me basic german phrases , words and numbering.

Looking back i regret that i didnt gift her anything on the day we said our "Auf Wiedersehen" (good byes ) . She was such a relief to me. I dont know if she remembers me still but i sure am going to remember her every time i hear something in german or see some one from germany or read " made in germany ".

Star Singh

Hi all ,

I want to tell you all about star singh today. Star singh, ofcourse is not his name and i am using a pseudo name coz afterall this is an anon blog. I see him everyday. He works as a labourer where i work .Everyday i see him exactly at 05.30 am all dressed and good to go waiting for his transport to pick him up, i might as well set my watch on him. I can see him working all day, from my window at my office. He talks very little, works as hard and as sincerely as anybody else on the shopfloor. Star singh's two sons are in the indian navy and are well settled and he married off his only daughter ages ago. I wondered why he is staying on in oman for and i assumed that he is the kind of man who likes to hardwork till the day he dies.

One of those sleepless nights i wass tossing around in bed and my mind craved for a cigarette. I was out smoking in the parking lot when i got sight of star singh walking in through the camp gates lugging a huge sack on his back. What is starsingh doing with a large sack on his back in the dead of the night ?. I asked the same question to another guy at the office. Oh boy ! if i say i was shocked it would be an understatement. The crazy truth is that star singh is a sucker for bar girls. He visits them as often as he can. what ever salary he earns he spends on them and he stopped sending money home long ago. He has borrowed heavily from his provident fund. He collects empty cans all night. Yes thats right, after doing 10 hour duty star singh picks up empty coke cans all night and sells those to scrap buyers to pay off his debt.

ONAM : GULF EDITION

This weekend i had a chance to literally taste the gulf onam . for those who dont know what onam is ...It is the single most important important festival celebrated by all malayalis aka malabaris irrespective of religion and geographical location ( the word goes that neil arm strong met a malayali on the moon selling tea....meaning malabaris will migrate anywhere and do anything to survive )The actual onam is ten days with the most important day being the " thiruvonam "which marks the begining of the harvest. Please visit this page to read more about onam and how it is celibrated traditionally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onam

My muscat onam was actually celebrated over three days commencing with a party i threw at our office for all those who were not fasting. It actually helped that a traditional onam meal with 26 dishes and 3 payasams /puddings can be bought from ruwi malabari hotels for r.o 3 /- complete with the plantain leaf . The actual tiruvonam i spent with my relatives in alkhuwair (bcoz the rest of my family is in kerala enjoying onam ... i cudnt get away due to technical reasons) doing floral arragements enjoying the singing and besides stuffing myself. The day after that we had a celebration at the company staff quarters with more meals and what not . so this onam was thrice onamatic. The photo at the begining of the post is slightly out of focus and not sharp thats what happens when you try to eat and click at the same time .

shambhu

Hi , This post is inspired by a similar post by angry in oman.

It was the last day of the academic year . I was in my second year at college and my seniors at our shared apartment who were in their final year were packing up all their stuff. The air was thick with emotion. They were distributing their used textbooks, notes, xerox copies assignments and what not. Me, I was rummaging through their lab records so that i could cut and paste most of the diagrams needed in my lab records and substitute their lab readings for the sessions i would definitely miss in the coming semesters taking in to my account my extracurricular activities

;-) . Strangely i came across a name again and again "Vinod.Das" on the lab records . Around 16 guys stayed in that 6 bedroom house and everybody knew everybody else and i was puzzled. I ran up to where all were everyone was lounging some were smoking some were busy on the computer and others were packing i singled out my favourite senior and drew him aside his name was " shambhu" . (He and me slept in the same room for 2 years, got drunk togother a hundred times ,shared cigarettes a thousand times and had so much fun togother ) and i showed him the record book and asked him " who is Vinod D?". All hell broke loose,I will take the look on his face to my grave i guess . It turned out that his name was actually Vinod Das and because he had this habit of chewing on loose tobacco always people called him by that tobacco brands name

"shambhu"

Any ways it lightened the mood which would have been very sad otherwise.

Ghosts of girlfriends past - Spoiler

I dont want my blog to be a stereotype and i like to post what ever i want so hear goes .........

Connor Mead is our hero. He is a photographer/womanizer/heart breaker and he is home for his silent unassuming (his only living relative) brother Paul's wedding to a somewhat hot headed doctor. He openly ridicules marriage chases after the bridesmaid and manages to rub his childhood friend Jenny Perotti the wrong way. The night before the wedding he is visited by the ghost of his uncle who was in his time an ace womaniser and whom connor calls " the prophet" he is also visited by 3 ghosts from his past present and future . From the past it is the girl with whom he had sex for the first time she shows him how as a kid he was gifted his first camera by jennifer and how he was really hurt when jennifer danced with another boy while he was waiting. The ghost makes him remember how he felt at that time and why he chose to start womanizing with his uncles blessing . The second ghost from his present is his own Indian assistant who hates him and plots against him with his dumped girlfriends he shows him what a crappy life he is running and she makes him discover that he still have feelings for jennifer . The third ghost from the future is super sexy hmm she make him feel the pain of watching jennifer getting married to another guy and she also shows ihim his funeral in which only his brother attends . The rest of the film deals with how he keeps all the bad stuff from happening and getting back with jennifer .

Phewww !!! that was my first movie spoiler ... i dont want to review or critisize a movie. Its just fine the way it is made. The fear of being rejected by some one we love makes us do different things ...some of us become womanizers/heart breakers, some of us become chronic bachelors and some of us become suspicious maniacs. How hard is it for someone to love again after being rejected/cheated ? I guess its pretty damn hard

Abled

All my life i have been aware of them..... people like me, yet different in the sense that they had a disability or a special ability. I dont know about you but i always have tried not to stare,not to show any sympathy on my face when i saw a disabled person. I always wondered which was more sad, being born with a disability or acquiring one in the course of life. I have thanked god silently countless times for making me the way i am whenever i pass such a person on the road. I am never putoff when people comment about my receeding hairline or lack of fitness etc because deep down i realized long ago that i am very much blessed to be the way i am. I also practice safety like a religion.

This morning as I was coming into my office from our fabrication shop,our cleaner guy who is dump and deaf was working away furiously on my carpet with the vaccum cleaner. Oddly enough the vaccum cleaner was not on as he had streched the wire a little bit too far . It suddenly dawned on me that he couldnt realize it was off because of his disability and i felt very very bad. I walked up behind him and plugged it again and he didnt know a thing. When he finished my office i squeezed his shoulders and he must have wondered why. He is a cool guy tho he video calls and uses sign language on phone, he drives every day to work, he has his own home and is married with two kids and he is my age 24. Thanks to him now i know sign lang also. I am happy to say that oman is a disabled friendly country

Discovery

Hi,

Went out to sohar this weekend with my brother, after dropping my dad at the airport .

I love sohar very much because once i got a chance to spend an entire month in sohar wandering aimlessly in the souq, fish market, stables,farms and beaches.There was no movie thatre back then. For those who didnt know Sohar is " sindbad the sailor" home town .

I spent some time practising drums this thursday and i discovered the side mirrors. Really i learned to drive in india at a very young age and inspite of thousands of kilometers both on road and off road in india, i never really learned the use of mirrors.Wen ever the need occured i just looked over my Shoulders and my cars mirrors were always pushed close so as not to lose them in the bumber to bumber, door to door traffic in my home town. I never even bothered to fix a rear view mirror on my bike for years. So it was like learning to drive first time again, this time with the mirrors .....really frustrating because with out the mirrors i can come out of the drums in less than 10 seconds.

Friday we spend the time getting ready for the ramadhan stocking the fridge and making arrangements for the food and being the last day of partying my brother and his friends went to the sohar beach swiss hotel for a round of drinks. I chose to watch the movie " the ghosts of past girlfriends " at the city centre sohar, being not the partying kind of guy . It was a very nice movie.

This morning we woke up early and reached the rop office at sohar just in time for my drum and slope test . I managed to do the first half of the test with out the mirror, but they warned me to use the mirror and i complied . With some difficulty i managed to get out with out hitting any drums and i passed slope quite easily. Then i caught a taxi back to muscat and i am back at my office.

Really " The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear"



RAMADHAN MUBARAK ALL

Heart Break

Hi , I came across these lines in another blog this is pretty much i want to say to " her"
The link to the original blog post is http://soulofawoman-rane.blogspot.com/2009/08/to-love-is-to-understand.html

In the name of love,

I have broken hearts

I have left scars,

I have settled scores,and I have left open pores,

I have manipulated thoughts,tears I have shed,

wounds I have had,

but I have taken revenge,

I have asked questions,

I have seeked answers,

done a lot of tit for tat,````all in the name of love.

But with you my darling,all this feels like,so not me.

You will never come across,the immature kid,that I could be.

Unnecessary arguments,broken heart,countless tears,unending questions,

baseless expectations,Wont let any of that,happen between us.

Because I love you,a lot more than all of that,

(more than momentary solace,of settlement, argument and quarrels)

Sweetheart,it's with you,

I have known what love is.

It's you I want to love,in its purest form.

H1N1

Hi Folks here comes A QUICK POSTS ABOUT H1N1 bcoz today morning my driver was wearing a mask and the other passengers started to panic .

1)It is actually around since 1987

2)The infective Stage of the flue is around 5 days , 1day before and 4 days after the onset of symptoms

3)Masks are of Limited Value

4)Avoid recirculated air ( you know which malls to avoid )

5)Isolate yourself at home if you catch it

6)Humans are going to develop immunity to this virus , You cannot stop it is already in the air and dont panic

She is 62

"If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India!"

62 is not a unique number in itself . But lo and behold every one . She is 62

She is mother to billions of us . She derived her name from the river Indus on whose banks dwelled the first civilizations. It was in her lap that our kind first learned to count and to play chess . She lets her sons rule themselves . She was the richest country in the world till the white thieves leeched on her for 200 years . Yet she is coming out strong and her new avatar is 62 .

She is Ladies and Gentlemen INDIA .

"What makes a nation, is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past "

We have a glorious past , now come .............lets make a glorious future

Proud to be Indian !
Jai Hind !