If a post happens on a dead blog and no one is around to read it,

is it still called a blog? Or it's a tweet, isn't it? No, a Vine? A Tumble? Chatsnap? Hashtag? That's the one, isn't it?

I'll hashtag keep this hashtag short. Brevity is the soul of twitter eh. Said who? I did.
Oh no, twitter tells me someone else has already said it.

So well, like Morgan Freeman in any film, I am too old for this shit.

Cuppatee.

Wow, they have raped my comments section, haven't they?

Darling poppadoms

you have been well my lovelies?

Five more syllables.

Boo

I wish I could say I am back. I really would like that.
I have much to tell.

Slapstick

The spunk is gone. Monkey barely remains.
So much has happened.
I was actually in a Kasaravalli-dilemma-struck-character reverie (no background music, out of focus camera, and Rushmore-still -- for about 6 minutes. We'll allow for a crow to croak, and for there to be dark clouds; working that whole Kalidasa Maaghe meghe vayam gatah pun) just thinking about the mindnumbing things that have transpired over the last two years, which by the way is the whole point of this post. (I was random blog-surfing, turns out that blog was celebrating birthday, hurriedly checked monkey, and it had been two weeks since it had been two)

Turns out, I am HIV negative after all.
Turns out, Neurology is my field of interest.
Turns out, I am going to be studying under guy whose profile picture has pink orchids.
Turns out, somebody else is paying for it, so it's okay.
Turns out, I have loved.
Turns out, I have lost. Too.

I remember that during the heydays of this blog, I would suddenly, as if in an epiphany, come up with a line that I thought was incredible, and would chuckle all the way back home at my extreme cleverness, inviting persecuting glances in 180 second traffic signals, and would type out an entire post 3000 word long just so I could put that line in somewhere nonchalantly. So purgatory it felt. It was never great writing, not even good, more often than not, but the fact that so many were reading, and wondering who I was gave me a whole Clark Kent - Peter Parker smugness. It could be that the number was two, but hey, someone actually spared a second.

But,
that was then.

Since then,
I have been through interesting quote marathons (You won't come back to India, I will, You won't come back to India, I will, You won't come back to India, I will, You won't come back to India, I will, Okay, let's begin, so you are a medical intern?, Ahaa, So tell me about subliminal economy, Huyn)
I have cringed enough to cause my hair singe.
I am showing signs of future raging alcoholic.
I have met an openly gay man.
And did not catch myself blurting, Ayyo you are gay?
I have braved family gatherings of 300+ strength, and emerged sane.
Although with cherishable sobriquets. National Treasure being my favorite.
"So, wedding near Thames aa?"
"No no, Buckingham-u, alve?"

"And for Kashi Yaatre, Pittsburgh-u! Ho Ho Ho"
"Orient is turning occident-u, and this is no accident-u, Ho Ho Ho"
(No, not Santa Claus)

And I have let slip the opportunity to document all these awe-inspiring events. In popular parlance, they refer to it as Losing It.

I have.
Not quite, but we are picking nits. While we are at it, I am zitfree!
Here's bye bye to adolescence. And hello, Old Spice.

(I should really post more often.)

(It's blogbirthday, so go right ahead and wish it many years of being scribbled in.)

So yeah.

So I just won the Rhodes Scholarship.
Yay me!

The Unbearableness of Being.

Like someone said, we are the children of nothing.
There's no great war that defined our resilience, when we could all break out in choruses of Vande Mataram with Hemant Kumar's music.
No great depression that tested our perseverance, when we could end up writing films and having Henry Fonda clench his jaw and say what were apparently words.
No freedom struggle, when we could sing Ekla cholo re while going to the bathroom and feel we are part of something larger.
No counter culture movement, when we could pretend we loved Joan Baez and Jefferson Airplane, and spout invective while high on God alone knows what.
No Emergency, (unless you count my 15 day stint tainted with blood and gore), when we could shuffle around in Kurtas and feel important, all the while thinking what the fuck has JP Morgan to do with any of this jail business.

Agreed we have the internet and free porn and sites to download free music from, but what good is it when I am stuck in the hospital 25 hours a day?
Agreed we have reality shows we could cry hoarse about and be known as the voice of India, if you know what I mean (of course you do); but Derek O'Brien is doing that already anyway.
Agreed we have Global Warming and Al Gore and electric cars and Leo DiCaprio, but that is like 12,ooo miles away.
Agreed we have the Beijing Olympics and the prospect of a Tienanmen square, but what chances that Jeff Widener pops up there and I get to be The Unknown Rebel? I am sure Dermatology wouldn't give me permission to so much as go to Byatarayanapura, let alone go to Beijing and face a bunch of tanks.
Agreed we have cloning, but have you heard a name beyond Dolly? Agreed we have the Spirit and the Opportunity too, but we would get to Mars sooner than we would get Deve Gowda dead, which is never.

So really, nothing defines us, unless you want to call us The Undefined and sound like a Clint Eastwood film, which is never a good thing. Do these bomb blasts define us? No, they don't. They just define Breaking News, in a weird literal way.

I represent nothing. I represent nobody. We are all a motley crowd defined by nothing new. Do not even get me started on the iPhone.
As an intern in a big medical college hospital, I am a bottom dweller. There is nobody beyond me on this side. And there was a time I used to say the exact same words, and feel exactly the opposite. I take orders from people who are aberrations in the concept of evolution, from people who are human mutations of the bird species that went extinct in Mauritius.
I listen and nod when they say they write fan mail to Chetan Bhagat.
I nod along when they listen to "We got a little world of our own" in the Emergency Room and say Rock is so awesome.
I laugh my head off when we are trying to resuscitate a patient three heartbeats away from death and the radio in the ER screams "Kolle nannanne..." (Kill me).
I sometimes get confused about the meal I am having. Supper, lunch, dinner, breakfast, snack... all different words for the same thing - Carbohydrates. Much like us interns. Roger, Rohan, Romeela, Rusvan, fair, tall, dark, blonde, white, Kannadiga, Slovakian, Herzegovinian, Kongaati, all boundaries get blurred. It's always a nameless, faceless, pair of legs that locomotes, and carries with it a pair of hands that can write, and a pair of vocal cords that says "Yes, ma'am" to the call of "Intern, go bang head against wall."
I have come to hate people, because people always have something to say, and it invariably involves central lab, biochemistry lab, microbiology lab, biopsy reports.
I am traipsing a path dangerously close to both insanity and indifference. It's tragic that I don't stick to one side.

There is so much I can tell you all about how disgusting and how exhilarating being in a hospital could be. The transition between the two does not take longer than two seconds at times. But that's for another post another time. Or for another book, which, going by my atrophied brain status would be called something as imaginative as The Devil Wears A Stethoscope or something.
For now, I gotta run. There is some PG throwing super convulsions because I did not get some report (that nobody gives a shit about anyway).
Oh yes, I am stealing somebody's internet right here in college. Suck on it, medico bitches.

The travails, the travesty, and other such trash.
Ah, internship.


P.S.: The initial bit had nothing to do with anything. I just love Tyler Durden.

P.P.S.: Thanks for all the mail. I am, erm, good. How are you?

In which we tell many things mostly random.

While telling you all that I am severely blogged out, I realize I am also churning out posts at a regularity that could match Amitabh Bachchan's Friday outings.
Geez, the man should take a break or something. Or stare into a crystal ball or something. Wherein all will be white owing to his vision being clouded.
By cataracts.
Owing to him being ancient.
That the man should continue to act despite that Jhoom Baraabar Jhoom eye-vomit costume speaks of bravery that is well worthy of the Godrey Philip Award, but he must realize we, the poor audience, aren't quite in the same league.

So why am I, evidently minus the baritone, myasthenia gravis, 6-foot frame and the eye-vomitness of it all, forcing myself upon you unsuspecting people who had thought that the life of an online monkey was no more than a year?
It is in view of finding myself in situations that are far too absurdly idiotic for them to go without being considered thus by a hundred other people as well. Yes, I do need approval from random strangers that there is action in my life and that you are in awe of it. But then again, that is in direct contradiction to the well-accepted adage which when very succinctly put reads, Blogs happen when nothing else does.
Well, who said I was perfect?

What I am though, is a flower.

I am completely aware of the uber-mensch implications of the above line, thank you very much. But yes, that very line was told to an audience of awestruck individuals in the confines of the department of Emergency Medicine by a man we will henceforth refer to as Pig.
Now, why Pig? Why Flower? And why o why, Emergency?
There lies a story.

(Ooh. Look at me simulate curiosity)

So.
So, I am in the village, right? Of Puttamma, of Growth Hormone, of Ragi mudde, the general rusticity, the specific scabies, yada yada? Now, what I am expected to at the end of my tenure there as an intern is to present a project, a Field Study to be specific, profiling a certain health issue hitherto not looked into, in the area I am working in.
So, what did I choose? Psychiatry. (Keep those wisecracks to yourself. No, really.)
So, what did I choose in specific? Psychiatry in Ob-G. (Now, let's see some).
Having thus come to a grand association of streams, the Monkey went to speak to Pig; Pig being porky (the wit, it burns) and a Professor in Community Health.
Pig looked piggishly and said, "Oink. Funtaabulous da, thambi. Oink."
"Gee. Thank you, sir"
"Okay da, now go to NIMHANS."
"Huyn?"
"Yes da, for your project. Go talk to hotshot epidemiologist there, and become hotshot yourself."
"Gee. Thank you, sir"
"Now run to mental hospital. Take someone along."
"Huyn?"
"Go man. Oink."

The project which was to be fancifully titled Evaluating the Efficacy of a Screening Tool in Identifying Risk Factors for Development of Psychiatric Illnesses in Antenatal and Postnatal Women in a Rural Area in South India or Some Such Shit That Seemed Longer, was spoken about with uninhibited gusto. The enthusiasm on the face of one of the interns involved was enough to give the sun the jitters and that on the other one enough to make a firefly feel like King for two decades. You figure who was who. Let's make it harder for you. The first intern wasn't me.

After this heart-piercingly interesting one hour, we decided we would make this visit to NIMHANS even more Damn-God-This-Is-Orgasmic interesting by visiting the most sun-filled and ever entertaining portals of the... Tuberculosis Sanatorium!

And just when I thought that the day had me so filled to the teeth with orgasms that if I opened my mouth I would only moan, I came up with a-nother grand idea to make this Day Out In Vegas a total Stripper Filled Sell-Out. Dean Martin, eat. your. slutty. heart. out.

I say to myself,
Hey, it's a bright sunshiny day.
Let's get stung by tons and tons of bees!
And look like Tun Tun threw up on me!
Ooh!

And that was exactly what I did.

Something buzzed in my left ear.
I vigorously tried to shake it off.
It wouldn't go.
I said Shit.
It still wouldn't.
I said Fuck.
It still wouldn't.
I said What the fucking hell.
It still wouldn't.
And then I finally thought I would say Oh My God, Help.
Which was when a bunch of them went into my mouth. Big Black Bees. At about that time, I panicked. Like my house was on fire. Only worse. Like I was on fire.
Which was right about the time I started running and jumping and shaking and screaming and yelling and hopping and howling and HOWLING. Meanwhile the dear friend that accompanied me said, "Shirt nikaalo, shirt nikaalo". Now, I am chased by a hundred bees. I could do with something covering me, right? Wrong. For, I took off my shirt. One of the side-effects of bee-stings is dementia. Or something. So, I took off my shirt. And the bees thought, Hee-haw more surface area. And took generous bites. Which hurt like mother-of-fuck.
Which was when I continued, in all my semi-naked splendor, with bees actively engaging in thinking of me as a pincushion, to run and jump and shake and scream and yell and hop and howl and HOWL.
There were about sixty people around me. A few just looked.
One of them laughed. The others guffawed.
It was just another day at NIMHANS.
Half naked guy running berserk, jumping flimsy barbwire compounds, and screaming Fuck-O-FUCK-O-FUUUUUCK, save me from this hell.
*Yawn*

One kindly gent then flung a bed-sheet across to me owing to him getting terrible gag reflexes just watching my Somalian refugee phenotype. It was electric orange and had many Mickey Mouses on it. They all had broad smiles on, like Mickey Mouse generally does and I don't. Under the happy gazes of the sadistic electric orange Mickey Mouses, I finally got some alone time. And I examined self.
Not. a. pretty. sight.
I then looked for the places the bees got me.
NOT. A. PRETTY. SIGHT.

The bees then buzzed off (Ooh). My friend, her of the great "Shirt nikaalo" suggestion (do you perchance have the hots for me?) scampered all over NIMHANS and got my keybunch, my mobile phone, my backpack, my shirt, my dignity. Wait, that hasn't returned yet.
The Casualty Ward in NIMHANS (which is surprisingly frill-free, no actually bloody damn basic), had terribly slow doctors, but one good nurse. She gave me a maha-painful Avil injection and said, Go oaf du yuver hawzpidul aa, deyy vil teyg gare (I know, they are everywhere and all that).

I was towed off to our hospital where I made the evening more exciting by swelling up grotesquely, getting rashes all over and throwing up blood. I also gave the Emergency Medicine staff a little bit hell by vehemently denying them any access to my veins. They got frustrated and poked me anyway. I contorted my face rather grotesquely.
Many friends came. They all laughed.
Many more friends came. They all laughed some more.
All the while I was swelling up and looking red and healthy, which was also when Amma turned up and said most excitedly, "Kempakke, gunDakke aagidaane" (He is red and fat, I like him perennially bee-stung).
The rash and the swelling would just not come down. So I stayed in the hospital where I wore the hospital uniform that would have made veteran Kannada actor late Vasudeva Rao look sexy in contrast. I also didn't bathe for three entire days which was like the best thing ever. Which means nurses coming in batches and giggling Bees, bees wasn't.

So were the following lines:
1. What were you doing among the birds and the bees?
2. What's the latest buzz?
3. Are you making a beeline for work tomorrow?
4. I'd make more jokes, but it would really sting.
5. But, bee positive.
6. Earlier you were just a monkey, now you can lay claim to an ape-iary.
7. Beauty and the bees.
8. Honey.
9. Thambi, you are a flower. (I had 40 odd hypodermic bee stings on me, sisters were poking pretty much every one of my veins, but that hurt.)

Anyway. Among other things -
- I turned a year older
- SULKED SULKED SULKED
- There was supraaais party in the village at midnight
- HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY
- Then they all gave many many birthaday bumps
- SORE ASS SORE ASS SORE ASS
- Conducted many (okay 6) deliveries
- GROTESQUE GROTESQUE GROTESQUE
- One of them delivered right on the hospital corridor
- SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
- One of the kids didn't cry at all, and our neonatal resuscitation kit in the village is from the 1920's, meaning it doesn't exist.
- SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM
- Then I realized these kids were brand new fresh 2008 maal, and I from about the 1920's
- SULKED SULKED SULKED
- Shit I am old
- SULK SULK SULK.
- Bloody young kids with no PG Entrance Exams, no internship, no age issues and ooh-look-I-am-so-cute-I-poo-in-my-chaddies-and-suck-my-thumb.
- JEALOUS JEALOUS JEALOUS
- Shit I am old, like AK Hangal old.
- DEPRESSION DEPRESSION DEPRESSION

To relieve this stinging depression, let's end with the Spunky Monkey guide to bee-ting the bees. (Aren't I just on fire) -

A. Don't go to NIMHANS.
B. Don't walk down the road even if you want to drink Goli Soda.
C. Don't ever say The Bee Movie sucked. Or that Jerry Seinfeld isn't really Ha-Ha funny.
D. Don't listen to your friends when they ask you to strip.
E. Especially when you are running from the bees.
F. Don't run from the bees.
G. Jump into a lake.
H. No, really.
I. Lie flat on the ground and close your ears.
J. Don't say Fuck and Shit and Fucking Shit.
K. Motherly characters around frown on you, and nurses throw looks of extreme disgust.
L. They won't throw clothes at you even if they were returning from the laundry with 100 fresh bedsheets.
M. If nothing works, HOWL.
N. Like HOWL.

That's it, really. I'm off to the village tomorrow, and it's rather late. Besides, you would by now have realized that the post has "yawn" written all over it, and "thought" pretty much nowhere.
Take care, and bee good.

And now, buzz off.

(D'oh!)


====================================================================
P.S.: How many are still reading this place? Let's find out...

Injessun kodi saar, baadi eet aaguythe - Part 1.

There was this ajji. Old, like very. With veins that popped out like cable wires, but ones so flimsy that to get an IV line through them is like solving Fermat's Last Theorem. Only worse. The theorem does not have troubles of double puncture and weird huge haematomas. Or may be us fresh interns just suck ass.

So we were all like sitting and generally being Ooh Aah about Ragi mudde and stuff. Then this ajji, quirky as hell and much loved for it, walks in, and we could hear her from like a mile or something. Cos she came with Acute Severe Asthma. And, she was chanting her constant refrain of the past 15 years - Yammo naan sattoyteeni, Yappo naan sattoyteeni. (Madam, I'll die off; Mister, I'll die off)

So, we were like Illa ajji, Illa ajji. (No dude, no dude)
And then she got worse and worse, and even as we were following the protocol, and even as I was checking her blood pressure, and even as we were talking about referral, she went silent. Like dead silent.
CPR didn't work. We saw some movement, but later realized that it was her kaddipudi (tobacco) sack obliging gravity. She had had it with life okay.
And then we were all like Shoot, Ajji illa, ajji illa. (Granny no more, granny no more)

So, we were like bummed out for a bit, and I was all like Shit, the fuck with this medicine bulljack, I will go become a hermit and attain enlightenment saying Aum.

And later that evening, this guy, nine years old with Growth Hormone deficiency walks into the clinic for his daily Growth Hormone shots. The size of a tittle mouse, and about as tall as your kneecap, he started dancing to Onde ondu saari, kanmunde baare (Superhit Kannada track from Sandalwood, with Golden Star Ganesh), facial esspreshuns and all.
And he was like Neevu maadi saar, neevu maadi saar (You also do, you also do) And then I was like No dude, full bummed out I am. And then he was like Neevu maadi saar, neevu maadi saar. And then I was like No dude, full bummed out I am.
And then I thought a mosquito bit me in my shin, and then realized it was this guy biting me in all exasperation.
And then I was also all Dayumn, Onde ondu saari, kanmunde baare. And then the kid got so happy that he jumped 3 cm in total joy.

And then I was all like, Shit, the fuck with this medicine bulljack, I will go become Bollywood side-dancer and attain enlightenment singing,
Ooooom Shanti Oooom, shanti shanti Ooooom.

The Cat Who Sleeps Through Hiatuses

"Eyy, how's that radio thing of yours coming along?"
"Oh that. Let's just say that in the hierarchy of *insert radio station name here*, I am pretty much the Pluto."
"Baby! You got outed?"
"What? No!"
"Then?"
"Then, I am the asteroid that won't be named until 3400 AD."
"Why 3400?"
"'Cos that's when the Martians will first mate on that asteroid and then destroy it, 'cos it was all too hard? I don't know?"
"I wonder what Martian sperm looks like."
"Oh those Martians. They will reproduce by Sporing."
"Ah, interesting. But what of infidelity then? Paternity issues? Family structure? Those light blue eyes that popped out of nowhere?"
"Mars, will be a free society."
"Meaning open sex?"
"Yes, sex will be had, of course. But the spore-sperm - it will arise from the pineal gland and float upward and fertilize random Martian female engaged in sitting."
"Oh, the seed from the seat of the soul. Shiva's third eye. Shiva, whose symbol is a phallus. The lingam. A little too obvious, but then it's you."
"Huyn?"
"But why the female only? On Mars, why can't the male bear children?"
"Oh some things can't be changed."
"But there is the gender pattern intact; male, female, sex, sperm la dee da."
"Who said Mars would be boring? I didn't."
"So, random spore comes and hits random woman, and there would be baby Martian?"
"Exactly. And it travels real fast. Shoot, and you are pregnant"
"But you would have to be constantly naked for that to happen?"
"Oh yeah, a crucial thing. Mars will be a nudist society."
"Wait. Did the Martians evolve from Britney Spears and the Malayalees?"
"That, is a palpable possibility."
"But, if it's a nudist society, would pornography be an industry on Mars?"
"Touche. And shit! I don't understand why so much money is being spent on those Martian expeditions then."
"Say what is the point to space exploration anyway? I mean, you don't go looking for an identical sand grain on Kovalam beach anyway, no?"
"It's a deep-seated philosophical question, involving the human psyche's need for reassurance that they are not alone, so that it does not mind-bedwet."
"Baby, are you okay?"
"I ate the canteen Idlis"
"Baby!"
"I know. Times, they are a changing."
"No sweetie, you still suck at science fiction."
"But you collect stool and urine of random strangers."
"And you sweetheart, live in a village."
"Ow."

====================================================================

"Amma, this rice is RED"
"Haan!"
"And this is plain rice I speak of. You do sense some problem, no?"
"Oh, like that-a?"
"Like that-ay."
"Some Mantra-akshate rice got mixed ya"
"Huyn!"
"I am not eating. Throw maadi"
"Yow! Friday it is. I am not throwing Lakshmi-symbolic rice and all. And it is prasaada. Press it to eyes, say Krishnaarpanamastu and eat off. Red, white, what difference?"
"Mo! What you are doing kidding-a?"
"Shett it I say. What you want me to make? Those pidja-type thingsa?"
"Maa, this is vermillion. It will give me Minamata Disease, and cause my death, you know? Mi-Na-Ma-Ta!"
"Ree, I told you. He is talking about Meenu and Maata (Fish and Blackmagic). We've lost him, haven't we?"
"You have to over-react, no?"
"Really, all our tredishuns and cushtoms and culchur and habbas and haridinas and shaastra and maDi and mylige and aal that. We are The Last Of The Brahmins."
"Okay ma, I will eat. Just don't start the Brahminism Gaan With The Wind speech."
"You little chipmunk with muLL-handi (porcupine) hair, how much you speak! That too, now you are living in a village. You will not even get this red rice there!"
"Ow"

====================================================================

Yes, I live in a village.
Even beans smell like chicken and pork.
And everybody eats chicken and pork.
I don't eat chicken and pork.
The company I am forced into, it sucks.
Then again, any company extracted from the college populace would suck anyway.
But the village gives ample opportunity for "writing". It's all stored in the head. But the need to type it out to people has died. I do not know why.
For now, I have nothing left to say. Besides maybe,
Ow.

Who knew I'd last this long, and who knew there'd be a post this soon.

But there is a reason. It has been one year since I have been perpetuating and unleashing unheard amounts of mediocrity upon you all. Cat's Cradle, Spunky Monkey, venivididormi turn one today. (How cool is it that they all share their birthday huh!)
So yay!

The blog has been like a support system in its own way. Every time somebody jeered at me, or said something rude, I'd say to myself, "Say all you want, I will go back to my place where there are people that actually like me". You all. Thanks for making me feel happy about myself. I know all this sounds like a beauty pageant winner speech, but this will probably the most I will achieve anyway. Especially since that book deal hasn't come my way yet. Dang, what must one do to get one. Get a life, and have lots of sex, and write about it, you say. But should it be that hard?

Anyway.
The blog has given me very good friends and most of them don't think I am obnoxious. So, that's lovely. The blog has made me respect writers a hundred times more (Chetan Bhagat is not one). It has made me realize that I write crap, and that there is so much to learn from so much brilliant, understated, clear, concise and beautiful writing there is in the blogworld. So until we get there, we will call this exercise typing.

AND, haven't you been reading the blog? This is a notification post; the latest one remains this. Go read.

So blog, today you can walk a few steps independently, transfer a toy to the examiner and say 2-3 words with meaning. You are one!
Thanks for everything.