Overheard...

I was at the bus-stop yesterday night waiting for a bus to go back home. As is normal for me to do, I was beating away at imaginary drums and shredding imaginary riffs on a guitar. People around were giving me strange looks but they didn’t know the mystical therapeutic powers of ‘Overture 1928’ by Dream Theater from the album ‘Scenes from a Memory’.

So, there I was, totally lost in my world, on a huge stage surrounded by thousands of people and bathed in eerie strobe lights when it began raining. Then, this kinda-cute looking girl decides that getting wet in the rain isn’t a good idea and ran under the very shelter that was my stage. Damn!...but the nice guy that I am I sat quietly…Then she whips out her oh-so-fancy-and-nifty-with-neon-lights-toothbrush-and-makeup-kit mobile phone and begins jabbering into it.

Now, the things is that, I don’t listen in on other people’s conversations, especially ones in which I can hear only one side, but the lady’s concept of speaking in a low voice was missing something – namely, the low voice. She was drowning out the noise of the eight-o-clock rush hour traffic…

I kept still for sometime, hoping that seeing an enthusiastic drummer go “statue!” in the middle of an involved drum solo sent out a subtle message that screamed “SHUT UP ALREADY!!!”. No go…she went on and on. I whipped out a pad and a pen and started taking down notes, and this is how the conversation went…

“I thought that you people were angry with me so I stopped keeping in touch with you, but then now that I have called you and it’s all cleared; I will call you people up regularly…” (damn…how many more conversations do I have to endure?)

“This Jaffer(?) is crazy, ya. Everyday in the morning he keeps sending these romantic messages and good morning messages…”(People who have sense say "good morning" in the morning and "shut up" when you are loud…)

“I promised my friend that I would watch Da Vinci Code with her, but I want to read the book before I watch it…”(God, help you friend. Or alternatively, you could put duct tape on her mouth when you are watching the movie…)

“No…but I want to read the book first. I mean…I have to understand something about all this fundoo stuff before I watch the movie, no??? It’s become like studying for one exam…but I have finished only three chapters. You know, people tell me sometimes that books are dragging in the beginning but later they get so gripping that you can’t put the book down at all…I hope it like that for me[sic!]” (Mr.Brown, please please…grip her around the neck. And could you make it really tight…?)

“You wanted to meet in Forum, but that is so far from your office no?”(Yes, now could you get away real far from me…)

“Oh…it is all very expensive there??? So what do you do – just window shopping?”(No, they sweep the floors, clean toilets and look for lost puppies to scrounge up enough money to buy a piddly little panty that costs as much as half the GDP of a small country…duh!)

“So your boss is helping you out because he is leaving. So nice of him, ya. You like your work and all no?”(Oooo…how sweet. The poor chap is quitting because of your stupid calls maybe. Have a heart you loud-mouthed nincompoop…)

“Actually I am meeting this senior of mine from BITS Pilani, who has come for his holidays from the US for lunch.”(Don’t tell me you studied there….ah…well figures…no one told you to keep your voice down in the middle of the desert did they?)

“He keeps talking about all this things in Da Vinci Code…Mary Magdalene, Holy Grail, Priory of Sion and all that. I googled them all yesterday so that I don’t feel bored tomorrow. He is so fundoo, you know…”( Yes, I know. Thank you. He probably googled it too, but then both of you are from the middle of a desert)

And then, the phone went dead. I think the connection was broken and the network was too clogged to take the load of an entirely pointless call. For once, I actually prayed that the networks would remain clogged till the bus arrived. And they did. She kept looking at her phone and cursed it hoping it would turn into a frog or something. Nothing of that sort happened, probably because she googled her spells…

Back in black!

I started writing this post and somehow my brain(or that lump in my skull that masquerades as a brain, but in reality is a hunk of the Titanic) wandered off. Brains(yes…I know it is a rusted, barnacled hunk of metal, but humor me) can very easily wander off when you are in a lab trying to work on some seemingly insurmountable problem. Mine wanders for no particular reason at all.

For the record, I am once again doing a project at the Department of Management Studies at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The project is all confidential and hush-hush so all I can tell you is that it does not involve mayonnaise, engine-oil or live animals. In other words, no animals were harmed during this project. Save me. If that sounded impressive and you think I am a really cool guy, please drop me a mail at bluebarnacle@gmail.com and I shall be more that happy to dispel your illusion.

So, getting back to wandering brains, mine wandered off for a bit of grazing and I read some old e-mails that have accumulated over the past couple of years. It starts of with a punk who slowly becomes this smart-aleck, then a know-it-all-wisecrack and then finally this formal sounding serious guy who seems to have figured out the answer to life, the universe and everything else. It looks like me and the answer is not forty-two. It’s not entirely new, this exercise, - I keep doing this once in about 6 months and each time a little new pattern pops out, a tiny piece of the jigsaw fits in and I eat another sandwich.
I rarely delete mails that are from real people.

It’s been a long time since I have posted anything and yet for some reason the counter keeps ticking. Someone is checking my blog and I would dearly like to know a) if it is a real person, b)if I know them, c)why do you keep checking my blog and d)do you like it. If you do like it(or even if you don’t) then, please leave a comment or drop me a mail at bluebarnacle@gmail.com. That’s the same id twice in this post. Saves you the trouble of scrolling up. And, yes, if you think you might have a friend or a relative who might like reading it, direct them to my blog.

I happened to go to this quiz that was happening at this local college here in Bangalore. Most colleges here have a fairly normal male-female ratio that is almost equal. Unlike the case in my college where it is 13:1. To cut a long story short, I found myself in the company of two really cute and interesting women, thanks to an old friend. They were friends of his. The average guy from my college would immediately start plotting pick-up lines and ways to hit on them, but all I could think of was data mining and linear programming. I am not gay which, now, implies that I am a)stupid, b)blind, c)decent or d)Don’t know/Can’t say. You choose. Following this realization that I was probably the biggest reason for an abnormally high national average age for people having girlfriends/boyfriends and that I was probably screwing up some other more gifted guys chances I left the place, got home, ate slept, made pasta and sandwiches, spent the night at the lab and wrote this.

So, much for now. More in a couple of days.