A Quiet Hangover

First of all neither is this a post-another-beautiful-gal-broke-my-heart-up post nor is this a the-morning-after-heavy-booze-in-the-night write-up, so all near and dear please think straight. As a matter of fact this one which i am enduring right now is more sinister than the two mentioned above. The first one has a remedy ‘to move on’, yes this is what your friends and sisters say after your heart tissues have been stretched beyond their elastic limit, also the fabled ‘you deserve a better one’ and tell u what it kind of workS. Yes that ‘S’ instead of ‘ed’ was mournfully deliberate. The second one has a remedy ‘to go on’ drinking water, actually the physiological condition during a hang over is same as during dying of drought, hence the water the rescuer. This one has absolutely no practical cure. Enough of what this hangover is not and we’ll start with what it is. Yesterday i had one of the best meals in my life in the mess of an engineering college!!! Impossibly insane as it might be, yet it did happen with me. Neither was i served Caviar nor was i sharing the table with any Victoria’s Secret Model but i had an opportunity to open my mouth for some reason which was different from eating rice. I hadn’t uttered a word for the past one week during my lunch. No, nobody has got the better of me in wits but with my knowledge of South India limited only till the word Rajnikanth i was bound to have this problem. The reality struck me all the more severely after 24 full hours of Hindi speaking and abusing and eating. For most of our lives we are taught by ‘cool’ people to ignore what others are saying and carrying on, well i am just being taught this practically.

**dedicated to swapnil, dhingra, IIIT Hyderabad

Spoons

Akka(Didi) ho gaya. I am done Akka, i have had enough...She so very sweetly put some more RICE in my plate after hearing something she didn’t understand and i started with the rice after hearing something which i didn’t understand. All this happened with smiles all around. This is an altogether a new situation for me, not the not understanding part, no, i have had enough vivas for this where i don’t understand what is being asked of me and when i answer the prof doesn’t understand what is being told to him and mind you only the prof is stupid, what is new is the mutual smiling. I have never been pampered so much in my life neither at home nor away as i m done here. After every morsel i am asked- how is the food, did u like it??? With smile on their faces and sparks in their eyes, these people are indeed very proud on their culture, which i am sorry to admit but we north Indians lack. Neway my answer is always the same, nice, delicious, tasty, new. And don’t think that the answer is out of fear of being pulverised by my friends and co-interns but the food actually is nice here. After being famished on the mess food for two years with the same taste (bad taste) and the same smell (the MESS smell) i can very well appreciate the spices’ aroma and taste in the food here. The weather is nice and the people are nicer. I haven’t paid for my lunch for the past three days straight!!! The confusion which i face after bath as to me being wet due to water or sweat is ofcourse a small price to pay for all these incentives. The fabled old Hyderabad still seems to be a weekend away from me though. Never ever have i enjoyed more working as much as i do here in my intern, integration and enthalpy calculation was never more fun. Next time i meet you i bet i can explain all what u wanna ask through sign language which is very rapidly becoming my third fluent language.

This land where restaurants are called as Tiffin Centres and where people love to make toung twisters out of their names and put extra ‘H’ in them has just started feeling home.

**dedicated to my flight to Hyderabad in which i drank atleast 4 glasses of water and learned that the air hostesses go alternate when summoned ;-) :-P