change me, may-be?

may has been a month of unplanned (but desirable) changes. so far, three:

1. joined a gym. took a three year membership. no excuses for the next three years (or so i imagined)
2. after a year's break, got back to watching morning shows of movies. alone. also helps that i get two heavily discounted tickets every month ;)
3. bike trips. mostly breakfast rides.

the only thing left to do is cut some cruft out of my life to make room. currently the only thing i've ended up skimping on is sleep. which is a terrible thing, really!

mr know-it-all

most of my school years are a blurry memory now. and today i realized why.

i wasn't living in the world around me. i was living in another world.

i was living inside books. a lot of books, in fact.

i remember, when i was about 6, dad brought the whole "childcraft" collection. a big box of hardbound, glossy, full colour encyclopedia volumes. he paid a bomb for it, because he probably knew it would cost even more by the time i was old enough to start reading them.

he didn't have to wait too long. once i started, there was no stopping me. i read them once. i read them twice. i read the parents guide on how to get the child to read them. and then read them again.

when i was 8, i was hospitalized for a week, for appendicitis.

the evening before we went to the hospital, dad took me to the local library, and signed me up. "king's video library". the deposit was 30 bucks. my membership number was 1530. each book cost about 50p to 1re to borrow.

i don't remember what was the first book i borrowed, but i remember finishing every book i was "allowed" to in the next two years. luckily, i turned 10 by then, and was allowed access to my school's library. i still don't understand why you had to be in the 4th grade to be allowed to read, but that's how it was.

my school library had two sides, the fiction side, and the non-fiction side. fiction had about 8 racks, non-fiction, about 10. about 200 books in each rack on the fiction side. the fiction and non-fiction racks were arranged in ascending order of appropriateness for age.

in the 4th grade, i finished the first rack.

in the 5th, i finished two more.

in the 6th, i finished another two racks, and all the ones i had missed from the previous two.

in the 7th, i finished fiction.

that's when dad handed me three cardboard boxes from the loft. it was filled with packages, wrapped in yellowing (browning, in fact!) newspaper, with years written on them.

30 years of reader's digest. 1972 to 1992. i finished them in the summer vacation.

that's when things came to a head. i was out of reading material. my only option was non-fiction.

i started at the 4th grade end. and worked my way to the top.

around that time, i started cycling to school as well, so i wasn't restricted by school bus timings. i would reach school 5 minutes before the library would open, and leave after it shut. since it was full-day school, we had two breaks. i would eat my tiffin walking to and from the library. while reading.

i would also read in class. at home. in bed. over breakfast. i would have probably read in the shower if i could. i would read a paperback in about an hour and a half.

during the vacations, the school library was supposed to be closed. but it wasn't.

before school shut for the vacations, i made my arrangements. i took the librarian's number, and since she lived near school, i'd call and let her know my ETA. she'd lock me in the library for as long as i told her i wanted to read. i was allowed to take expensive encyclopedias (that students had to take permission to unlock the case, even!) home.

by the time i finished my 10th standard board exams, i had pretty much finished reading most of the library. my dad's college textbooks. all the manuals at home. and heaven knows what else.

it sounds unbelievable. but it's true, and i know it. i don't have many other memories of my school years.

i don't know whether it was because i overdid things, or whether i found more interesting things to do, or that college opened my eyes to the world around me, but everything changed. by the time i was 18, i had practically stopped reading for pleasure (and it's surprising how little i had to read to pass exams!)

most of my present-day best friends probably don't know about my reading story. most of them won't even suspect that i've probably read over 4000 books in 25 years, 3000 of which were in the last 5 years of my school years.

but they probably still find me an irritating mr-know-it-all.

... and the art of motorcycle maintenance

i woke up two minutes before my alarm today (6:28am, beat that!) and got ready for work with time to spare for the office bus, but when it was time to leave, i realized i was so sleepy i might not be able to function if i didn't grab another hour of sleep in bed (as opposed to the office bus, where i usually simply toss around, half awake)

i was at home. there was a bike, placed upside-down on some sort of stand. it was an orange and black duke 200. the stand was interesting. it looked something like this:

(yeah, the blue is the stand.. and yeah, i drew this in paintbrush :P)

anyway, it's kinda strange, considering that i live on the 1st floor of my building, and there's no way a bike would have made it up the stairs, but i guess dreams don't care much for technicalities :D

so i was doing some sort of maintenance on the bike (oiling and greasing stuff, i think), and then wiped it down with a dry (microfiber?) cloth. while wiping it, i noticed one side of the fork was orange while the other was grey, and concluded the paint had been scraped off the grey side.

when i was done, there was some sort of weird sprocket wheel left over, and i didn't know where on the bike i had to reattach it. i also noticed that the left handle's lever was moving freely, disconnected from whatever it was supposed to be connected to (it should have been the clutch, but somehow in my dream it was the brake)

since i guessed the missing sprocket was the reason the front brakes weren't working, i tried fitting it there. tried it in all sorts of clearly unusable positions, before i decided that wasn't it. i clicked a photo of the sprocket with my phone and tried using it for an image search (yeah, not sure how that was supposed to help either). finally, i gave up and flipped the bike back on its wheels (much like i would flip my bicycle over after repairing it) and plonked it right on the ground without so much as a thump.

that's when i realized why the brake wasn't working... it was a disc brake, and the brake hose was a transparent rubber tube, and there was clearly a huge air bubble in it. i tilted the bike while pumping the brake, and (inexplicably) got the bubble to the top of the hose. a bit more pumping on the lever and the bubble mostly disappeared.

i then thought the sprocket was from somewhere around the rear brake. but then a quick glance revealed that the bike has disc brakes at the rear as well.

that's when my second alarm went off. 8:15am.

glutton for madness

i usually try to budget my time before making lifestyle changes, but i suddenly find myself completely out of my depth.

my to-dos pile up until i decide to start afresh, and then they pile up again.

i click more photos than i sort.

i favourite more tweets than i can read.

i note more blog ideas than i write.

i borrow more books than i read.

i subscribe to more blogs than i read.

i queue up more music than i listen to.

i dream more than i write.

and sadly, i promise more than i can deliver.

i finally bit the bullet and took a 3 year gym membership. with every intention of proving the cynics (and the precendent set by my past attempts) wrong.

and then there's stuff that i want to do, that i don't note or plan for anywhere. places to go, people to meet, things to do, food to eat.

i'm running out of time to sleep.

i'm running out of things to keep my sanity intact.

to make things more difficult, i've always lived without regrets: doing what i can, with no second thoughts about what i can't. but when the "important" stuff seems like it will take 10 lifetimes to take care of, it feels like i'm doing something wrong.

sometimes, it feels pointless. after all, i do a fairly decent job of keeping myself happy, no matter what i do. either my activities gravitate toward things i enjoy, or the things i enjoy expand to include things i find myself doing regularly.

it feels like i have no way to quantify and qualify my ever-expanding appetite for things i must do.

how do you prioritize?

man overboard!

i'm quite an extreme person. i don't like moderation, even though i occasionally strive for it. it's just not how i am.

as the joke goes: "who's this moderation, that people keep telling me to drink with?" :D

anyway, it appears i'm not the only one, or so some tweets suggest:

@Aletheaius: "Wow! Someone just RT'd, favorited and manually RT'd the same tweet!"

yeah, that would be me. i sometimes even un-retweet and retweet the tweet later, so people can see it again. seriously.

@lisa72s: "Some people make you want to respond to everything they say. Then you worry about coming across as a creep. And you hold back."

yeah, that would be me again. except that i usually don't hold back, unless the person expresses irritation. after that, it's usually just a matter of time before i unfollow the person. because it feels unnatural to restrain myself from going overboard when i want to, and i hate feeling unnatural :)

anyway, this weekend, i feel like going overboard on the blog. brace yourselves.

that's what she said

before we begin, the first sentence of my twitter bio says "#TWSS bot."

i never bothered finding out how this genre of jokes came about, but i love innuendo and wordplay enough to (some may say, excessively :D) indulge in it anyway.

"that's what she said" jokes are simple enough: reply to any innocent-sounding statement, which, taken out of context, could be interpreted as innuendo (wordplay, slang and all other such things are allowed while reinterpreting), with "that's what she said" or "that's what he said". or, if you're on twitter, #TWSS or #TWHS for brevity.

so far, so good.

the confusion arises when you need to decide between "he" and "she". and that's where i need to make a point.

the gender of the person who made the original (innocent) statement doesn't matter at all. nor does the gender of the joker. the gender *has* to be picked so that the hypothetical innuendo is as funny as possible, taking into account pop culture, slang, gender biases, and whatever else may work to make one side funnier than the other.

eg:

@TheSoothsayer_ said to @hinnaz: "they look so awesome!" (both people involved are women)
me: that's what he said.

yes, that's a he. why?

simple. ever heard a girl telling a guy (assuming both people involved are straight, to avoid confusion) that "they look so awesome!" (they, referring to *ahem* body parts here)?

me neither.

guys say that to girls all the time though.

and so, it's a *he*.

on the other hand:

@Sakshikumar: "Phew. All good now. Couldn't breathe there for a moment."
me: that's what she said.

no points for guessing why that's a she. (fine, sakshi is a she too, but that's irrelevant)

okay, enough lecturing for today.

TL;DR: picture a guy saying x in a sexual situation. picture a girl saying x in a sexual situation. which one is funnier? bingo!

scream 2

this one hit closer to home than the last time i woke up screaming. so much closer, in fact, that i was of two minds about blogging it, because the people involved might read it. also, i was extremely distressed when i woke up from this one, so i didn't have the chance to commit it to memory before i tried to sleep again. the actual dream started a bit earlier than this section that i can remember now :)

in the dream, i was at home, half asleep. not in the hall (where i usually sleep), but in the bedroom. on a mat on the floor. it was late at night, and the lights were out in the rest of the house. mom was asleep, and dad was about to. suddenly, we heard a splash outside. turns out that where we have a terrace in real life, we had a swimming pool in my dream. and someone (let's call him S) had just jumped into it. the splash jolted me out of my half-sleep, and i opened my eyes, in the dim light, to see dad getting into bed.

a moment later, the splashing got more agitated, and S started screaming for help.

i sat up, and was about to jump out of bed, but from the sound of it, S had jumped into the deep end of the pool, and there was nothing i could do as i don't know how to swim. so i screamed for dad to save him, but dad said he couldn't. when i insisted, dad said that whatever was drowning S would drown him as well.

i refused to listen, and got out of bed despite dad trying to stop me. as i was passing through the kitchen to the hall (which had the gate to the terrace), the splashes subsided. as the sound died, i started screaming his name. but strangely, only a gurgling sound came from my mouth.

as i was trying to scream, i woke up.

i was in my bed, still trying to scream S's name, making that weird sound instead. my brother was holding my hand, telling me it's okay, everything's okay, nothing has happened. but at the same time, i could still see and hear my dream. and in my dream i was still in the kitchen, looking out of the window. in the moonlight, i could see S's legs and sticking vertically out of the water, head inside.

as i watched, he leaned backward, legs moving towards the window, almost like a slow motion backward tumble, until he was sitting on the window ledge, facing away from us. but the slow backward tumble continued.

he tumbled through the window, the grill, the net.

and then by some strange twist of physics, he was sitting on the kitchen counter, staring at me.

except that it was a drenched, long-black-haired, ghostly-white-skinned, white-dress-clad (yeah, exactly like that girl from the ring) girl now. she was looking at the ground. and as i stood there, staring at her, transfixed, she looked upwards, straight at me.

this time, i screamed for real.