MY TRADITIONAL NEW YEAR’S EVE POST

Like I’ve maintained all along, 2011 has been a mixed year for me. So many moments, so many emotions- happiness, pain, dejection, love, support, motivation and friendship, I’ve truly been on both sides of the spectrum this 2011.

Life until now hasn’t really been easy for me, but the friends I’ve made over the years and the experience I’ve gained from my failures have only made me stronger. My friends who’ve been with me throughout, thank you guys, if I am still sane( well, am i? :P) it is definitely because of you. As for those who demotivated me and/or tried to pull me down, thank you even more. It is because of you all that I put in that extra bit of effort every day.

A special thanks also to this year’s bunch of juniors. Every single one of you. You people have been amazing. :)

So yes, never before have I ended a year with such a vibrant smile on my face. Let’s just hope 2012 brings in more joy, not only for me but to every single one of you reading this post.

I’ll sign off with this short story I found out on the internet.

The Story of the Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn't go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!
In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.
Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.

So next time you fail in something (@ezhil arasan, I am NOT referring to failing in an exam btw :P) remember about the butterfly. Struggles are what make us fly higher.

Have a wonderful 2012 everyone.

Until next time,

Adios!

MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI part 2

HUNDI BIRIYANIS, HANGOVER BUDDIES AND THE KOLAVERI BHAIYYA

Pardon me for the gap between the previous post and this one, the semester has begun and I am finding it particularly hard to adjust between doing-nothing-at-home to doing-nothing-in-college. B)

Getting on with the post, part 2 of ‘MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI’ will deal predominantly with food. And um, beverages.

AN OVERDOSE OF CHICKEN

Now if you are a die hard biriyani fan, you will most certainly know that Hyderabad is THE place to go to for authentic Moghul biriyani. We were not disappointed. The GOLD BAWARCHE RESTAURANT that was a 5 minute walk from the pigeon hole we were put up in served some amazingly good biriyani at dirt cheap rates. Now having grown up in a city that charges exorbitant amounts for relatively small plates, when we saw a hundi biriyani priced there at 140 rs, we thought “well ok, 140 rs, that could serve one person.” But the damned thing came in a container so huge, 3 people could have eaten from it. comfortably! Not only the hundi( pronounced as hun-di) biryanis but almost everything they served at the GBR was insanely good and amazingly cheap. Being a die hard non vegetarian, such good food at such an affordable price spelt only one thing. P-A-R-A-D-I-S-E.

MACHI OPEN THE BOTTLE!

Victory and celebration are something that are synonymous with cricket tours. Now each guy has a different way of celebrating. But one form of celebration that is universally accepted and followed is “machi, OPEN THE BOTTLLEEEE!” this tour had enough rest days in between matches and the guys decided to, um celebrate. Now being someone who doesn’t drink definitely has its perks. Like sitting there watching them making an ass of themselves. And with the right amount of prodding it can be entertainment guaranteed. A few moments from the tour are classic. Buddy’s back stretch, praga’s antics, panch-o going for a jog the next morning with half boil stuck in his beard and PT banging shoulder first into the wall while trying to lie down to sleep. Truly hilarious moments! Both on and off the field, this is probably the best team I’ve been part of. Extremely talented and obscenely funny. It was truly an honour to be one among you. Love you guys. :)

WHY THIS KOLAVERI?

Just a few weeks before this tour, sony music released a song from 3, a tamil movie directed by rajnikanth’s daughter and starring his son in law. A couple of days later, the song went viral registering page hits and downloads like nothing ever seen before!

Before leaving for Hyderabad, I was quite skeptical about this entire VIRAL thing. Agreed, a song can become so popular it is played in all sports events irrespective of the language or the context. Like say a ‘chak de’ or a ‘ringa ringa’. But only after reaching Hyderabad did I truly realize the gigantic proportions this song had snowballed into. It was everywhere. Literally!

Juice shops, shopping malls, chat kiosks, breakfast vendors, everyone kept playing the damned song over and over again! And if they came to know that you were tamil, they had only question for you. “COLA-VERI ka meaning kya hai?”

Now listening to a song almost all the time is something but having it played every morning precisely at 7 is another. Suprabhadam, yes I can understand but why this kolaver di, definitely NO! Our breakfast vendor would arrive at our room at exactly 7am and start playing the song. The worst part, he would put it on loop! So every time the song ended, dhanush would start off again in a few seconds with “yo boys, I am sing a song!” the first few days it was fine, but after the third morning it became too much to bear. What was the meaning of kolaveri you asked, you should have come seen the look in our eyes between 7 and 7.30 am every morning. ;) but then, the man was genuinely good and so were his idlis, dosas and mysore bondas. So we decided to spare his life, affectionately calling him the KOLAVERI BHAIYYA. At the end of the meal, he would make calculations in his head and tell us the total amount. At 10 rs a plate (4 idlis/2 dosas/4 bondas, same rate) we never really bothered to check. C’mon this was our very own kolaveri bhaiyya, he would do us no harm! The last day though, we did. And we realized that he had charged us an additional 40 rupees that day alone! Either he had looted us from day one or he was very bad at math, we would never really know. we decided to leave it at that.

A couple of days later, we were safely back home, the train journey surprisingly being largely uneventful. ;) In hindsight though, this tour has been one among the best. We played hard and we partied harder. It was a shame though that we lost. But then failure is just an opportunity to start over again knowing what to do and what not to. SRMite and proud!

Until next time,

Adios!

MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI part 1

Though people might say that I wasted 2 yrs by discontinuing from veltech and joining srm, I’d still say that it was possibly the best decision I’ve taken in the recent past. Yes, it is quite uncomfortable to be explaining to my classmates from school who are now either working or doing their higher studies as to why I am still in the 3^rd year of college but then, the fun I’ve had ever since I’ve joined srm tends to overshadow the disappointment.

College cricket tours were something I wouldn’t have ever dreamt off had I continued at veltech. Because, well, the damned college didn’t really have a cricket team. But ever since joining srm, I spend more time on the field than in class.

This particular blog post is about my recent trip to Hyderabad for, you guessed it right, matches! :D

We spent 10 days there in all and had amazing fun, so much fun that it would be impossible to put it all up in a single post. So 2 parts it will be.

Part 1 of this trip, I’d like to call “CLEAN ROOMS, WATERLESS TOILETS AND A DIRTY PICTURE”

Now the bad thing about college sports tours is that we get to put up with pathetic accommodation. Storerooms in hostels, empty classrooms converted into temporary dorms and haunted faculty quarters; we’ve seen it all. During this stay in OSMANIA UNIVERSITY, the FIFTEEN of us were put up in an independent house with ONE fan, ONE toilet and ONE bathroom! Though frankly speaking, the only reason we ever switched on the fan was to keep away mosquitoes. It was unbelievably cold there.

The rooms though were clean; not as in the ‘hotel room’ clean but as in the ‘inhabitable’ clean. The only problem however was that the following morning there was no water in the overhead tank, which translated into no water in the toilets! Perfect start to the day I would say. Just what you would want a couple of hours before the match. :/

The match was a breeze though and we ended up winning by a little under 200 runs.

And fortunately for us, unlike in IIT KANPUR, our room here was very very close to basic civic amenities; like good (in fact very good) hotels, a cinema theatre and a BIG BAZAAR family store. B)

THE DIRTY PICTURE was playing in the theatre along the road; now vidya balan in any role would draw crowds but vidya balan as silk smitha was sure to, even more. Prime example- almost our entire team flocked to the theatre irrespective of whether they understood hindi or not. ;)

Vidya balan was cute, pretty and hot all in one. But apart from the raunchy dance routines and the barely there costumes and a few genuinely good scenes and well written dialogues, there was nothing much in the movie worth a mention. Truth be told, it was the comments from our gang that kept us in the theatre through the entire duration of the movie. Ok, That and the couple behind us who seemed to believe that me and the others in the theatre were actually watching the movie and not the more interesting romance scene playing behind us. ;D

The movie did end but vidya stayed on in our hearts. B)

Apart from this, we also played cricket in the backyard, bought clothes lines, immersion rod heaters and other basic stuff you might need to survive in the house, ate amazingly good food, christened our breakfast vendor as KOLAVERI BHAIYYA and made friends with the pineapple vendor in campus.

Oh ya, we even asked a few people there for directions to kattankulathur, urapakkam and vandalur! :D

All these and much much more. But to know all that you’ll have to wait for part 2.

So until next time,

Adios!