The one true Guv’nor

The Guv’nor by Lenny McLean

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

FOREWORD- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=guvnor

“I look what I am ..a hard bastard” for a tagline and a cover image of an almost Peek a boo stance (I do not think the “stance” makes any difference whatsoever to Lenny McLean, England’s toughest bare-knuckle boxer) ! The Guvnor cannot go wrong with a Selling point like that.

And then the content of the auto biography . The no-holds-barred narrative makes for a very interesting/ amusing and “street” read. I say street because the narrative in the book is free-flowing but not haphazard. Not really literary but not too crude either(the guv’nor bashing up thugs is not crude, its vigilante-stuff). Delightful and cheeky but not in a “cheap-bloke” kind of manner.

I have known nothing of Lenny Mc Lean before I bought this book. And then 10 pages through, I wanted to meet him someday. imagine my disappointment when I realized he is no more. May all peace be with him. The image of being a “hard-lined bad-ass” is his, all-hands-down! R E S P E C T

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Rains of Fire (Brighthelmstone chronicles part 2)

<<Circa  January 2014>>

The Southern English sea winds create an extreme disparity that tests the bodily adaptation of a person. Especially when you run, generate a body heat and the sweat gets blown away  in the wind almost immediately creating a chill that would give you …well,  an extremely brittle sensation.

Climate is in the range of 5 to 10 degrees Celsius but the sea winds hits sub zero and with high speeds enough to make a not-so-heavy person fly along with the gale

Well ! Getting to the point.  When you try running by the beach of Brighton in such weather the body needs to rapidly shift between the heat generated by the intensity of the workout,  the 5 to 10 degree C temperature and the fluctuating sub zero winds. Not really a pleasant phsiological task. You pretty much freeze after running hard from the Brighton pier to Shoreham-by-the-sea and back.  (an overall distance of perhaps 12 miles/ 19.3 kilometres)

Then,  I came back to the hotel room from this fitness-obsessed misadventure. Almost immediately dropped my clothes and rushed into the hot shower (to get some relief from the apparent frostbite) . Relief I did get! Or perhaps it was some kind of over-relief. Where the weight of the temperature-fluctuation due to scalding water on the freezing body created not relief, but a “Rain of fire” .

It was a very unique feeling, since I had almost gone numb in the body, I could only feel a burning sensation minus the pain. Slowly , I felt pain (indicating the parts were getting less numb) and then releif at the gradual bodily temperature adjustment. Very much like a reverse prcess of Tempering

 

Brighthelmstone chronicles

Preface

It is pretty damp to see how a pattern oriented work life changes the way you look, prioritize and do things

For instance, my blogging which has over the years been a pride of mine (not that I got an award or monetary reward for the content in it, but speaking more from a posterity/ cherishing memories’ and thoughts’ point of view) Not that I had no stuff to write oF. I did. But just that I postponed the documenting (notice how I instinctively use “documenting” and not “writing” … work-lingo by-product! Phew ! ) Or alternatively, just thought of it as a pastime that is nice to have, but can be back-seated in the shadow of better things to do! (Not that I have really done anything better though .. )

Anyway sorry for digressing like an aimless dilettante. The idea here is to talk about my Business trip to Brighton in the United Kingdom (UK)

Brighthelmstone

If the wonderful ‘reader’ (this can be anyone or just me in the distant future … hmm I am thinking Donnie Darko ish stuff now! Before I digress again, I will park that thought and get back to Brighton) put in so much dedicated effort 😛 to actually look it up, you would know that the ancient name of this touristic city is “Brighthelmstone” which I guess, justifies the title, haha ! I just find this name more conducive to sometimes-megalomanics like myself ! (Dont blame me for this! Grew up on RajniKanth )

I have been here for quite some time

I have been here before in September and October but owing to the same reason as mentioned in the Preface above, I didn’t muster enough enthusiasm to document this (Oh no! Not “Document” again ) . Also, owing to the whole micro-blogging revolution, my updates have been going very well with Twitter and Facebook, but just not with the self-fulfilling openness of writing in your own blog

Weather

It can get cold here.The Southern English climate is, as anyone might have already guessed, unpredictable. When it rains during a climatic temperature of 3 degree Celcius , it feels like “icicles shot at your face with a machine gun” (Ok! This catchphrase is now officially my most often-used metaphor this month!)

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I was a person who kept complaining about the heat in India and was not used to temperatures less than 16 degree Celcius (Hyderabadi winter! Yes! Thats all it goes down to) Living here for a brief period has given me a life-long enlightening feeling about seeing the Sun. So when there is Sun here this time of the year, the feeling is of relief, pure and pristine. But of course it does not last long and folks go back to weather-induced-depressive-moods again.

But then of course, humankind has always found means to fight negative mindsets. The highly tentaive depressive mood is perhaps what drives people here to “get a life” rather than give in to “hibernating under your blankets and eating lots of cheese” . People make it a point to socialize more and also do more sport. Party and Get exercise! Now thats what I am talking about … (now by exercise, I dont mean “go all Arnold”, even walking on a Sunday instead of taking a taxi is exercise by my book)

London

Now talking of weather reminds me of one thing …

my ordeal on November 10th

! I wanted to go catch the Manchester-Arsenal match ( Dont be impressed! I didnt get tickets, plan was to see it with a friend of mine in a sports bar near London Bridge ) But then North-bound trains from Brighton to London were down due to bad weather . Boy ! Was I peeved …

Anyway, I have been to London in October though. Thanks to these two (Akshay and Manasi) I had a fantastic time. God bless them!

Hey did I say God ! Its a coincidence ( would not like calling it Providence ) that I saw the fantastic movie “Rush” in England (considering its got a British central character … played by Chris Hemsworth ..yeah! Thor goes F1-driving!)

The book

Talking of providence reminds me of this book

In times like these ( read, all outdoor plans failing due to bad weather …yes! the November 10th ordeal again ! ) , I have been reading this book. The book obviously champions atheism . As tempted to speak of it as I am now, I will save this for another day. Hmm.. do I hear the faithful taking out their chain-saws to judge that post? 🙂 Yes yes ! The time will come …

Food

Now lets talk of food ..not unlike the rest of England, there is the famous “fish and chips” which I somehow am not a big fan of

I did try it once but was not particularly thrilled about it. Its just fried fish and a bad version of quickly fried potato. Perhaps its notoriety comes from the fact that it is warm fried food that can be instantly made. A sort of quick-fix and filling solution to a hungry stomach in cold English weather ..hmm … fair enough !

Talking of food takes me back to the November 10th ordeal. I had to compensate myself for the frustration of missing hanging out with pals because of no trains due to rains. I got myself a mammoth treat to please myself. Well ! At least one good thing is that you can get everything in a TESCO store from canned alcohol to quick-fix-takeaway food (yes even hot food) By the way, unless you do some sort of responsible recreational calorie burning, do not try this level of junk-snacking at home 😛

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(to be continued … )

The Teacher’s day Rhapsody

FOREWORD: Extracts from a fictitious letter to a non-fictitious P.T teacher (Instructor- Physical education) whose non-fictitious story has been blown up to semi-fictitious extravaganza

STATUTORY WARNING: Neither for the faint hearted nor the rigidly moral

x-x-x-x-x–x-x-x-x

Dear ‘My fav P.T.Teacher’,

Hello sir! In case you are wondering who this little chump (as you used to call your victims, I mean, students) is …I was your student from Niraj Public School, Ameerpet, Hyderabad in 1999 J

You have always been the eccentric one among all my teachers. You took great pleasure in making us kneel down for not doing jumping jacks properly. And how would the then thunder thighed, mammoth waisted, sumo bellied, chubby little me gain the stamina or the buoyancy to do a jumping jack, that too with jumping! My wonderful ma (God bless her! She was my real teacher, unlike some of the power-hungry, kid-torturing, flattery-loving, wannabe-capitalistic fuck-ups & losers who masquerade as teachers in wealthy private schools) used to make me delicious pesarattu for breakfast every Friday, the same day of the week which started off with your sadistic P.T.session! Sadly, after your P.T.sessions, I always ended up puking the slimy sickly mutilated mutated version of a once delicious pesarattu. Often have I harbored the fear that I would die asphyxiated in my own vomit, ala Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham

I mean, I had no problem with the constructive intentions behind PT. sessions, but it is not cool to megalomaniacally metamorphosize them into your own fat boy victimizing, bum-whacking, under-the-hot-sun-kneel-down-punishmenting episode of grandomaniacal torture.  I have a theory that perhaps, in your later years, after you left our school, you became a Catholic priest, joined the Vatican pedophile community and the rest is history. So what you could not do at our school owing to India being a conservative country that is protective of kids, you finally did abroad in a romantic place like Rome!!

Aaah ! That gets me to the point . You didn’t leave our school but got thrown out of it 😀 And  I am sure you often wondered why ! It was ME ! It was ME..the then thunder thighed, mammoth waisted, sumo bellied, chubby little ME! Muhahaha! Now the truth is out. Let me tell you what I did during the teacher’s day of 1999.

As you might be remembering, high school students dressed up like teachers to take classes for the primary and middle school kids on Teacher’s day at school . I dressed like you, stuck a fake moustache similar to yours, walked like you and talked like you! Then I went to the nearest 4^th grade class room and scared the hell out of the kids. I took a couple of  finger-sucking-after-nose-picking-after-ass-fingering    brats and fist-hammered the mud-eating-filthy-toothed-hell   out of them. And then I disappeared for the day.

The next day, their parents as you might remember, complained! You were screwed then.  Because the finger-sucking-after-nose-picking-after-ass-fingering   brats whom I fist-hammered the mud-eating-filthy-toothed-hell   out of, said that the senior was imitating your mannerisms. So the principle forgot about that episode and looked at the bigger and more threatening possibility of “your violent influence” on the high school teenage students. Oh! The day you were thrown out, I must have bakery-partied enough to add at least an inch each on my then thunder thighs, sumo-belly and mammoth waist J

That was the day I first felt like a boy finally on track to becoming a man ready to fend for himself. I for the first time believed that I was capable of innovative strategy 😉 Thank you for being the root-cause.

For that, I am gifting you with the truth behind your expulsion. No one but me knew this because I was quite low-profile at school. No one ever suspected me. In case you are reading this, you by now realized who I am. You are possibly working yourself up into a pissed-off state. To catch me and whack the monkey-crap out of me would be your next dream so to speak of possibilities.

But … you should understand that I did shed some kilos and pack a tad bit of appreciative muscle in the last 12 years. And did manage to learn a bit of taekwondo, karate, muay-thai   and  Ji-jitsu to name a few.  So it would probably not be a good idea to fight me in your now senile years 😉

Thank you once again,

Yours truly,

The dark, the fast, the fiery, the one and only,

~Ghost Runner

Independence day special

“We attain the real freedom only when a lonely women can walk freely anywhere in our country during mid-night”

 _ Mahatma Gandhi

The wise man I am pretty certain, alluded these words at the whole world and not just India. But anyway, this is beyond the scope and context of this post and the author shall leave it for another day ….

Anyway … I am tempted to but would not comment on pride or hypocrisy behind celebrating the Indian ‘Independence’ day.I am tempted to but would not comment on the service-oriented and uninnovative mentality of most Indians. I am tempted but would not comment on a nominal independence of a country still ensnared in dystopic politics, buerecracy, orthodoxy, casteism, closet-capitalism, the world’s highest concentration of racism and other blah blah ….

Phew! I dont deem myself patient enough to speak about these. But what I would do is share with the women some effective  self defence tips I found on the Internet, partly in my respects to the great man quoted above 🙂  So ladies! Enjoy  and may the force be with you…. 

Operation Korigad

The Trek:

Korigad , 20 km from Lonavla on the Pune side. It had one of Shivaji’s forts. It was supposed to be an easy trek but the difficult part in the whole trip was to convince the bunch of guys to go there.

Anyway aginst all odds we made it last Saturday on the 23rd of July 2011 🙂

The Trekkers:

El Papa the (in- , dis- , un- )legendary El Mariachi duplicate, Uncle the ancient one , Landy the loose cracker , Nippo the doped one and of course, the crazy ol’ mental me ….

The Self-Persuasion:

This part is akin to the tumultuous and cumbersome due-diligence phase that usually precedes a merger/acquisition – lots of brain storming (not where to go or when to go but why to go ? 😛 )

If at all we had decided to go there was the question of logistics …not only the physical but also the psychological and mental (Boy! I must be making a little hill like Korigad, sound like Mt.Everest !). For die hard adventurers, it is no mean deal. It’s probably like going for a casual Sunday picnic. But for wee city lads such as the ones under current observation, psychologically preparing to move butts from Mumbai to the city’s outskirts and physically transitioning the body from a hung-over Saturday morning state to an excited Saturday-trekker state is a Herculean task.

The Car and the road trip:

Landy boy’s got a new Nissan Micra in the orange color. The car’s selling points for the trek:

• We don’t have to take a train or book a taxi to reach the base village.
• In the road trip, Landy would drive the 200KM+ distance (wouldn’t let us touch the steering wheel of his new car anyway, leaving us to blissfully get lost in dreamland)
• It is orange colored! So stands out in the monsoon fog of the Western Ghats! God bless landy’s car …truly the hero of the story!

Anyway, so there we went. The Plan was to leave at 6 AM on the 23^rd of July. Dutifully adhering to the lazily cultural and boringly traditional best practices of the Indian Standard Time, we did manage to leave not before 7:30AM.

We picked up Nippo on the way (finding the route where we had to pick up Nippo caused enough delay to give in to taking numerous smoke’n’tea breaks)

The highlight were the extra-cheese infested but totally lip-smacking burgers we managed to gobble at McDonald’s on the Mumbai-Pune highway. That was just the breakfast!

The climb

For all those who thought this was a huge killer operation with never say die shouting Rambos scaling unimaginable mental odds and physical hurdles, a colossal Hahaha at you 😀 !!!  It was a little thing, more like a walk up a hill with stairs (though the acromegalic stairs do screw your knee caps a bit)

landy - uncle - baba

landy - papa - baba

At the top, there was a fog driven hither and thither by the monsoon winds. There were other people, which motivated some of the more lecherous among our group to delve in stealthily appreciating the ladies among the other trekkers. Big bada Boom  was the little harmless CA (chick-alert ) war-cry ! Anyway, apologies for the digression …. Back to the story …

At the top, I do opine that most of the other trekkers were a mightyless bunch of in-depth pansies. Besides being on an easy trek, you don’t go around playing ringa ringa roses  on the top of a hill (boys and girls alike). So we decided to set some trends  ….true maverick macho groovy style

The trend-setting

Nippo

We took off our shirts (oblivious of contributing too much cognition  & recognition towards bellies, body hair and everything else) and jumped in the big lake on top of Korigad. Much to almost everyone’s delight (perhaps a little disgust)  that finally there was some amusing action on Korigad.

who are the men eh ??? 😀

Other strangers followed suit by jumping into the lake too…. 😉

The Return

We ate at a food court on the highway after descending the hill and driving a few miles. Some of the more lecherous among us were at it again at the food court, staring here and there, whispering big bada boom  and laughing  a**es off. And then  we hit the road again when we chanced upon the old man …

The old man

There was a car in front of us. There was an old man in the car with his family. There was a minor traffic congestion in a narrow lane. So a medium-sized queue of cars was piling up. Someone kept honking from behind much to a lot of annoyance …then it happened …

The old man in front of our car, suddenly got off his car in a fit of rage (perhaps because he wrongly thought we were the ones unnecessarily honking) and stared at us. He then noticed there were 5 buffalo-like guys (Well Landy is a  feather weight , so 4 buffalos + one baby buffalo! 😛 ) in our car. Landy made a “Aah! What !”  expression with a rooster-like swagger of his head. The old man silently went back to his car. Drove us to a state of hysteric laughter ….

So there! Harishchandragad ! You are next 😉

~Ghost Runner

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Greeting card pic from Korigad:

what exactly was stinking ?

Third front intervention – Why the IIMC-XL sports tourneys are jingoistic

DISCLAIMER:

Whatever is being written is light hearted by the most serious of any blogging rules. By no means is it to be taken seriously , unless of course, one unfortunately suffers from the most retarded versions of a disease called the ass-brain-same-position-uptightness-syndrome

THE FOUNDATION:

While thinking between how RPFs work in the banking sector and how the Ude Garami can be varied with respect to the combat position ,I was struck with an idea that was totally uncorrelated with either.

This evolution of thought , where you are seriously thinking of concluding a pondering process between two mutually exclusive thoughts, and yet conclude on something else totally devoid of any connection to either; I have no puta of an idea what such an idea should rightfully  be called. For now, I will casually call it  the third front intervening-nugget :p

THE THIRD FRONT INTERVENING NUGGET:

Ever wondered why the IIM Calcutta and XLRI annual sports tournaments are so aggressive and jingoistic ? Stupid question. I am sure you all have your answers. So do I. The stuff that doles out like ‘tournament’s competitive nature, warm blooded warring-spirit, machivellian sportiness, et al’ ! Usually, I think so too. Yet, for the dilletantish sake, I have an another (additive but not exclusive) theory…

You see this good friend of mine , always made a thought provoking…err..thought that at some point in life, perhaps for a second or perhaps for longer, everyone thinks like a communist. The egalatarian idealism perhaps appeals to a young mind who yearns to see some equality in their frame of observance.Pute ete ? Anyway, totally granted …lets park that thought for a while !

Now you see in IIM Calcutta the gender ratio has always been sad , not so for good ol’ XLRI. So, when a sports contingent from Joka (IIM Calcutta campus) goes to XLRI for a sports festival, the boys are naturally expected to be in their good boyish, prince charmingish behavior . Who knows if the Gods will it and the XL brothers are not so bothered, the Jokaites might even score 😛 This is where the communistic-correlation kicks in …

Not everyone would score. By the laws of gender dynamics and the Uncertainity principle, not necessarily! If a few do and others don’t , the remaining might feel bad, sad and not at all glad. So to make the comrades be equal, an ancient IIMC-XL culture had been invented to prevent the ladies’ stud of Joka from succeeding.

THE SOLUTION:

That of jingoistic , Indo-Pak level sports rivalry where IIMC  and XLRI are the collective personifications of two rivals, and no niceties in between please. Hence, the comrade who wanted to score, should not, because he is part of a contingent that is only following tradition, open sports-rivalry and perhaps, closet marxistic distribution of unscoring! Get it ? 😉

Yours truly,

the dark, the fast and the only,

-Ghost Runner

3 SECONDS

DISCLAIMER: Chuck the foreword below if you have  a not-so-long time window! Screw the introduction below too if you have tiny time window! But if you are jobless, read through ….

Foreword: Prof.Srinivas , my +2/12th grade mathematics lecturer was good at teaching mathematics, especially the probability and derivative puzzles.Talking of derivatives, the author need not say that their definition evolves from limits.   Now in this post of the author, let there be  a variable x that denotes clarity of thought and t denotes time. If the rate of change of x and rate of change of t are very very small, it can be denoted by dx/dt which is nothing but the rate of your thought  (has correlated theories from the Inception  logic; but that we shall leave for another day)

Introduction 

By the above logic, if there is an isolated moment where your mind gets oblivious of the surroundings, your thoughts might last longer to your brain than they are in absolute time. (Has a complex and more accurate explanation in relativity; but that we leave for another day)

The main (and simplest) part of the post

It was MMA coaching at * the academy *at Khar.A sparring session was going on.  Neck crank was being executed to near perfection on my …well! …neck (Obviously! Its called *neck crank*)! In that moment of asphyxiated pain, the surroundings went into oblivion and memories became clear and long though within a span of only a few seconds …

THE FIRST SECOND…

‘It was all due to religion oriented culture’  I told Dad…. ‘I mean look at it this way. Christianity was there for two millenia and it did have its share of orthodoxies. But the western world , most of it came out of it to lead a modern existence. So it took them two millenia but they managed to get out of irrational doctrines!’

‘But look at India! Hinduism was there for nearly 4 to 5 millenia. And even then we had hardly got out of many of our irrational doctrines. Why ? Are not persons supposed to get wiser and more mature with age ? So isn’t Hinduism supposed to follow the same logic!’

‘Its not that simple!’ said dad in his usual Donnie Darkoish way.

…. back to present ….. 

I twisted ! The hold on my wind pipe was deflected.I harboured the hope  of getting out of the hold. But then, the well trained opponent of mine wound his legs around my torso to strengthen the hold. And so the 2nd second in mental isolation began  ….

THE SECOND SECOND …

Halley was presiding over a discussion about the education system, economy , and what not on his facebook wall .

The fb status started it all

‎“The more he invests in religion the more he loses himself” ..
“The more the worker produces the more he loses himself” ..
‘How could one person get so many radical ideas ??’

There was a comment saying *Gen X!* Simply and tersely put!

But that ain’t enough was it ? We had to get **** global**** on this 😉

So there was globe-loving-gratiano-style  that followed ….as shown below 

Anyway I was living and chuckling at this fruitless discussion …

back to the real world ….

I twisted again …. the opponents’s foothold got less firm. He was probably not a big master of stamina though his technique was impeccable. But then he tightened his hands around my spine and neck. Then I went into the third second of asphyxiated painful mental isolation …

THE THIRD SECOND  …

It was a phantasmagoria of thoughts and memories. There  was no definition absolute. The surroundings seemed more surreal, like in a dreamy state as opposed to the earlier visions where I saw seemingly realistic memories of isolated incidents.

*The Indian military men got carried away in a fucking garbage truck.Is this the way we treat our martyrs ?? *

*Females get killed at birth because of our existing social systems of dowry,  male chiavunism, patriarchal imbalance, etc.*

* If there are somethings which can be described as **beauty queens of Indianism filled ridiculousness ** you find them in overwhelming abundance(Indians paying surgeons to turn girls into boys) *

*Honour killings in rural India*    

*The country being the world’s hair supplier*

*The industry of spiritual Godmen*   

.....It was starting to get annoying!

back to the real world …

Three seconds done and I was going to go completely out of breath. Out of that desperation and the prior-generated annoyance, I did a full body twist, broke the hold this time and got into a side mount  and threw an Ude-garami to which he tapped to submit.

Phew! I won again, my 16th succesive victory in combat sports…but the country doesn’t seem to be on the winning side 😦  Because of which I don’t feel like a winner as my questions in those three ‘hyper thought rate’ seconds remain unanswered …. 😐

-GhostRunner

The Willow-cork resurrection

”Well! India has already been on the world map but with this  .... ” , exclaimed the French gentleman, Monseiur. F.Johnson (who  , as the English would say, knows bullocks  about cricket),  then made a gesture with a fist and shook his hand up and down. Usually accepted to be a gesture which indicates that whatever is being talked about , is the next big thing, it was a terse way to reflect what was going on in the heads of  not just a billion + Indians but the whole planet.  (Inspite of the gesture’s enactment coming this time from a Frenchman  who hasn’t an iota of an idea, does he ? :p But this very act from a cricket-illiterate person shows that the Indian victory transcends in impact beyond the boundaries of the cricketing world or of those who understand the rules of cricket)

Pardon the author’s lethargy in writing about the Indian WC victory a tad too late. But it does take a substantial chunk of time to recover from a happy resurrection (read exponential increase of interest in cricket followed by an explosion of pure pristine joy)

It all happened in the finals of the 2003 cricket WC. India vs Australia. Australia batted first , Ponting the captain made a century and India was nowhere near the run chase from the very start of its innings. As the order crumbled, so did my interest in cricket. I was 16 then.

Now 24, I saw the same situation in the quarterfinals. Aussies were batting first , Ponting hit a century. But the difference! India won 😀 And that was the genesis of an individualistic cricket-frenzy that had been dormant for nearly 8 years ….

The semifinals between India and Pakistan , though pre-match-hyped as one of the greatest matches in WC history was edging on ‘predictable’ , at least towards the last quarter. But it was a happy ending nonetheless.  Also, perhaps because the nation’s premiers were present, the players were behaving themselves a little more than I would care to expect 😉 (read , no dhishum dhishum like in the 1996 quarterfinals)

The finals was good. I know I am understating but I need not say further.  The Srilankan wrist players are like the super posh classy personalities of cricket. Subtle, seemingly harmless, zilch show of machismo, but indomitably powerful in their impact. They did contribute to my BP rising. But it was not exactly a nail biting finish. At least to my newly re born cricketing self , the result was obvious while there were still about 20 overs left in the Indian batting. But well ! Perhaps I was showing irrational complacence, which, thankfully, was not disrupted      😛

Glad India won the World Cup. I am very glad

This week that year

A cautionary fore statement would be that this post is in no way related to Valentine’s day or the likes. (The author believes the whole concept of Valentine’s day blah is nothing more than overrated celluloid induced kitsch, but well! That’s just the author’s opinion and a completely different story reserved for another day)

Anyway, I just sit here wondering what was going through my head and life at this time of the year over the last many years. I am surprised with a realization that I  am mildly victimized by a selective memory phenomenon. In other words, I don’t really remember what I was doing during the Valentine’s day week pre-2006. Honestly, I really don’t  😉

In 2006, I remember being on a roll. I had just lost some weight, feeling very good. IIIT-H (my alma mater) was having her annual fest , felicity. It was fun though I spent my moments wondering

1. if I should get a girl friend (haha! As if they grow on trees!)  or continue to live a free life ( Khula saand if I am allowed to use the partial profanity :p)
2. if I should seriously give CAT a shot or have a happy workless life working in some small time company

2007   V-day week was a little more eventful. I had to prepare hard for two things  … the IIM interviews  and trying to finish more than 4 laps at the Gachibowli stadium’s  swimming pool (never managed to 😦 )  And of course, life was taking quite a beating on the emotional side due to my sheer lack of emotions (or rather no opportunity to display them)  in life around that point of time. (dead inside ?! What a loser … :P)

2008 V-day week was at Joka (God bless Joka!! ) , the IIM-Calcutta campus. Academically, it was the worst period of my life. No dont get me wrong . Life was awesome … but my scores were low  that term. So thats why the previous statement.

Anyway, it was also the time when I carried out some self inflicted fradulent romanticism. For instance, since most of my pals were blaming me for the highest levels of insensitivity, I went to the jetty on the night of 14th Feb, took a chocolate , said *happy valentine’s day* and  threw it into the lake. The jolly good batchmates of mine actually thought I was treating the campus lake like a wishing well for future romantic opportunities . Lol …  how sweet of them ! little did they know that I did it only because I was a tad drunk and was trying to get rid of the chocolate because a caterpillar crawled on it … voila !

2009 and 2010 V-day weeks were  killers … I wouldn’t talk too much about personal stuff 🙂

2011 V-day week …. started off with Lalla getting married  😀  and I was so happy for him…see! So much for fellows blaming me on the insensitivity factor. Now I have to go someday to London to party with Lalla and Lalli 😉

Well ! Right now … I am sitting here with my bags packed and would be on a flight to  Palolem, (Goa) in another couple of hours . Well I am not exactly a romantic… more like a party fella who enjoys the dark paradoxes of life a little too well …need I say more ! 🙂

– Ghost Runner