On my sorority life and reality.

With all my pretensions to being a queen, unqueenly is what you would call me on any average day. I'd like my clothes and accessories to be simple and comfortable,
since I have to run around for cabs, autos and of late, public transport. There is no way I can walk around on pencil tip heels (the roads of Hyderabad would not permit me to do that) nor dress in loud colours (by nature I prefer remaining discreet). So when N sent me a Sorority Life invite on Facebook, I dilly - dallied for sometime and then made the plunge.

Hell, I discovered I could make lots of money just by clicking on those buttons called 'organise events.' Great. Soon I had a bank account, and each time I deposited money, I wished it was for real. I could pass various levels and publish my success stories on my wall. (Friends were flummoxed for sometime.) Somebody would pop up on facebook chat and I would ask them to scoot, coz I was busy playing and putting money in bank and acquiring lots of glam. Heck - I wasn't even gonna wear most of those clothes in real life.

I was hooked. Every morning, I would exhaust all my accrued energy on the game and wait for it to replenish so that I could quickly move to next level. Soon, I got a car, two more and then there was no looking back. For someone who gazes at all the audis and mercs in hyd, this was some kind of vicarious satisfaction.

However, something was not altogether right. I discovered I was losing money and confidence. Further investigation showed that I was being attacked by people whom I didnt even know. Worse...I didnt know how to retaliate. I was informed that I was losing because of my limited house (the number of girls on your side and the glam that they have helps you fend off attacks from others.)

But I grew over it in time. What mattered was the money and glam I was acquiring. Soon with the passing levels, I could play some interesting games which now keep me occupied. Consequently my progress on sorority life has become slower. Now I am a Level 41 Diva and the last I checked, I had close to 5 million dollars in my bank account. Only catch is that all of it is not real.

That brings me to the whole point about this - why at all do we have an online life? Why are we more of netizens and less of citizens? Is it the fact that our online alter ego can be all that we are not in reality? Does it offer a medium which remotely approximates to real life? Is that why we dabble in it? Is that the logic behind our addiction to constantly updating our online status? Or is it just our gregarious nature?

Bhandi Chai

For the uninitiated, bhandi chai is a heaven's blessing on those windy and tiring days. When you can make yourself comfortable and have those few sips of warm tea while the wind goes all about you. Just in case you may think otherwise, bhandi chai can also be had on normal days. Only that on those special days listed above, it tastes twice blest. A lot lot different from the usual mug of tea that has become my ritual every morning and evening. It is sold by those vendors who tend to congregate near bus stops. Along with the palli (ground nut) vendors, they make a killing combination. But lets forget about the palli vendors for the moment and focus on the chai walla.

You just walk up to him, ask for your cup of tea and pay something like one tenth of what you would pay in upmarket restaurants. Then, if it is the university, you can comfortably sit under the tree and take those refreshing sips. And of course, also look around at life in all its hues and colours.

The last time I had bhandi chai, I had to catch an eary morning bus. D's dad insisted on dropping me at the bus stop. The weather was nippy and it was gonna be a good ten minutes before my bus would arrive. 'How about a cup of tea?'he inquired. The cup in question is actually one of those small plastic ones. That was my first encounter with bhandi chai and I was concerned about the hygiene angle. But as those sips went in, I felt a warmth and an assurance that I will make this trip without being frozen to ice.

Today there was too much of information to analyse. I gave up, shut down the system and walked down to the university cafeteria. There was a lot of excitement going on about the student elections, and the policemen looking at everyone as a potential trouble maker. But hell,... who cares. I made myself comfortable with my cup of tea under a tree, savoured it thoroughly. And in the process, thanked the heavens above for those simple pleasure of life.

Not allowing me to express myself

The song which played while I wait fuming for the customer service head is that of airtel thanking the people of Andhra Pradesh for making it the best mobile service in the state. Fiddlesticks! Ask me and I will explain the irony.

I had taken a new post paid number of airtel. Idea had demanded that if I wanted to get my ideas across to people, I should hang precariously onto the balcony of my flat for my life and my limb. The Customer Care assured me that they were trying for a better network coverage which should be through in a few days. My wiser friends nodded darkly (they had missed neither the experience, nor the meaning) and said that they had been under the same delusion for more than a year now. So I decided to move to what were the apparently greener pastures of Airtel. If my experience with Idea had been that of dealing with deluded people, Airtel was worse. They justified as to why they were 'apparently' deluded.

It all started with that message which claimed that due to negative address verification, I was going to be disconnected.I had to contact the customer care immediately. What followed was worse that getting lost in Franz Kafka's castle. And the epilogue to the story is stranger.

CCE 1 - Madam, our servers are busy now. The status of your connection will be available only after half an hour.

After half an hour

CCE 2 - There seems to be some problem with your address verification. Please contact the address verification department.

The bloke was decent enough to give me a number which did not work. So I dutifully called Customer Service again.

CC3 - Why don't you try with a different SIM card? (assumption - I travel with different sim cards at a given point of time.. He was cheerful enough to attempt to help me though) Actually your address verification has turned out to be negative, though I don't know what it actually means.

Rude words from me and my call is escalated to the team lead.

Team lead - You have to pay an additional 500 rupees by the end of today since you dont live in a family accomodation.

Polite question from my side as to why this was not told to me before elicited the same response. Change of tactics - I ask by when do I have to pay. Response - ASAP. By now I am furious and start yelling. I had the right to yell coz it had already been declared to the dealer that I don't live with a family and the payment to that effect had been made and any lame learner of English can see that the phrase 'negative verification' patently means something different from paying extra money and airtel cannot hold gun to the forehead of its post paid customers like this. Moreover the writing on the wall was clear - this process means that within a week of your taking a post paid connection, you would get a message that would shake you out of your living daylights like this. I started threatening legal action. That is when the call was escalated to the Head of the Customer Service.

I will spare the details and his justifications, but I did threaten him of legal action since all my documents were in place. In his 'I am going out of my way for your sake' capacity, he assured me of direct access to him and requested me to make the payment by 8.00 pm that night to avoid being disconnected.

Then more out of malicious intent, I call the Customer Care again to find the status of my number

CCE 4 - (cheerfully) The number is working maam and there is no need to make any additional payment.


And to the end, the Customer Care Head (poor man,...I pity his wife who has to put up with this kind of talk everyday. Must be muttering the same sales talk in his sleep also) insisted that Airtel's procedures were the best in comparison to other services like Reliance and Idea, coz they give you the service but steal your data (god knows how this happens - whatever, this is definitely heterogeneous scenarios yoked together by violence) When I confronted him the next day, he was clueless as to how CCE 4 could give a different take on the situation and instead chose to escape into singing odes in the praise of the procedures of airtel.

Whatever, I have not made that payment till date. And my number continues to work.

Disclaimer - The above is a reconstruction of the conversation that I had with Airtel over a period of three hours (plus an hour the next day). Since it is based on conversations recollected in tranquility (after having established suitable distance between myself and the events) I cannot be legally held accountable for the remarks expressed anywhere in this post. :-)

From my Diary

I'm a nobody! Who are you?
Are you a nobody, too?
Then there's two of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

- Emily Dickinson

From my diary

The Nation
The heart is the capital of the mind,
The mind is a single state
heart and mind together make
A single continent.

One is population
Numerous enough.
This ecstatic nation
Seek - it is yourself.
- Emily Dickinson

Thank You for the Music

As I walked out of my apartment and into the lift, I checked my song list for any songs by Michael Jackson. I could find a lot of rock, few hip-hop and some retro. But only one Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson. How I have moved on in my taste for music. To develop a sense of music, do you need a strong foundation? The first time I heard Heal the World, I could hear Michael Jackson telling me, 'It is all in the melody girl!' And when I heard Thriller and the rest, I could see that there was a lot more to beat and rhythm than I had hitherto known. Frankly speaking, for an initiate, I could not understand what Michael Jackson was saying in his songs. [But he is a shade better than those Linkin Park's and others whom I listen to nowadays] But then,... who cared. When I was working about the house, the beats of Smooth Criminal, Remember the Time, Blood on the Dance Floor [picture me with the mopping stick mopping the floor in tune with the beats of this song...sometimes Queens can do the weirdest things. It comes with the position :)] used to keep me focussed. On my evening walks, Gone too Soon, Liberian Girl and Heal the World kept me company with their haunting music. Of course, They Don't Really Care About Us was quite therapeutic in my run-in with the authorities once in a while. My My! How have I moved on since those early days of my initiation into music. Most of all, Michael Jackson taught me to have a ear for beat, rhythm and melody, something that came in quite handy when I dabbled in playing a musical instrument. And he didn't stop there. He taught me how to appreciate music and enjoy it more. What Milton said of Shakespeare maybe quite true of Michael Jackson - he doesn't need a tomb in stone. His works become a standing testimony to his art - a vast sepulchre they will form - a sepulchre of songs that you keep returning to. As I hear the news about his untimley demise, I do wonder whether there was more to come out of him. Perhaps what he said of Aaliyah maybe true for him - I can't help but feel that he has Gone too Soon. Thank you for the Music, Michael Jackson!

Chasing your dreams with a mug of coffee

The night had been different too. For a change, Hyderabad witnessed some much needed showers, and a consequent drop in temperature. Morning had only brought a reminder of the storm that had passed the previous day - both on the landscape and the inscape. Dreams had been buried.

I have my one favourite coffee mug - Archies - with the message, 'Attitude is everything'. I mixed the instant coffee and made it sure that the mug was filled to the brim.

And as I slowly made myself comfortable on the chairs and with my laptop, with occasional sips of the instant coffee, peace dawned. A peace that passeth all understanding. A peace that promised that the joy lies, not as much in achieving the dreams, as in chasing them. A peace that said that you have at least tried, instead of regretting for the rest of your life that you could have,...but you didn't. A peace that said that this too shall pass. A peace that told me, never...never to stop chasing my dreams. My day moves on, as the last night remains just another chapter in the book of life. There are fresh pastures to be explored,... and I move on, creating and chasing new dreams. My book needs to be written...and it is going to be a tale filled with happiness and joy.