My grievances :P

One sunday, after listening to five sob-stories, I decided to call myself The Shoulder. No, really, that's what I am... The shoulder everyone cries on. On the same day, I also realized EYE don't have a shoulder to cry on, if I ever needed one. What do I do with MY problems? Blog them, of course! So, here goes- a list of my problems. They don't qualify as sob-stories, considering I laugh at them myself, but still. Problems are problems, right?

The Tamilians didn't get my name right, and now, unsurprisingly, the Umreecans are butchering it, too. N-E-H-A. How hard IS it, people? Nea, Niya, Niha, Nina... One professor kept getting my name wrong (she had a different error each time she tried), and finally asked me to spell it out for her. I did. N. E. H. A. "Ah! Leena!", she said. I gave up after that. Another kid asked, "Uhm.... You mean, like Neo but not?", which was strange, because a friend of mine had asked me the same question a couple of days ago. I just burst out laughing, and I was like, "Not! Not!". Kid got a little offended. Oh well!

I hate pink. And this is the Breast Cancer Awareness Month (or something like that), so everything is pink. The fountains spout pink water. The Amtrak building is a different pink everyday. The clock on the tower has a pink dial. The city hall and the museums are lit up with pink lights. The skyline is pink. It's disgusting! The final straw- I used the copy machine in school, and the copies came out printed on pink paper!

I have the world's best roommates. What do your roomies say when you say 'Hi!'? Mine say "Sssshhh!". And mind you, it's not like I shout or anything. And a few days ago, some of the girls had exams coming up, and were studying. They need peace and quiet. I understand. Which is why I was using earphones to listen to music. But even so, one roommate complained that my 'music was leaking'. So I obligingly stopped the music (really, no point in listening to Nickelback at a low volume). And you know what? The hall, I realized, was FILLED with clicks and hisses because these girls mouth the words they read. That bugged ME so much that I couldn't study.

My only real problem, I suppose, is that I'm lonely. I spent most of the morning walking in the cold rain, and listening to the saddest songs you can imagine. You can easily guess how sorry I felt for myself! I even thought of writing a book or making a movie with the title "Friendless in Philadelphia". Okay, I am overreacting, but it's just so sad to be walking in the rain, alone, and listening to sad songs. I had to drink a large coffee (I never drink anything but Small, because even 'small' is much more than I can comfortably handle), eat a brownie and a whole packet of Cheez-Its before I felt better. I gave away my other brownie and my packet of candies to a student who said he was hungry, and I felt even better. So did he. He said I was the best instructor they'd ever had. So, yay!

Oh, and my other big problem is that I have a paper to hand in tomorrow, and I haven't even started writing yet. Of all the days I could have chosen, I HAD to pick today, to resurrect my dead blog. Oh dear... this last problem won't be solved unless I go DO that assignment.

Later!

Saying Goodbye

"Neha! When are you leaving?"
"Next week"
"Oh cool! You must be, like, sooooo excited, right? I mean, it's gonna be like, a new place, new college, new house, new friends.... How exciting!!!!"

I just smiled and nodded politely. The girl stopped gushing and went away, leaving me thinking, I am not excited. I'm many things- nervous, worried, apprehensive, weary, sad, confused- but excitement, somehow, doesn't figure in the picture.

I carried on walking towards the Preschool Training Centre. It was past six, all the kids had gone home. The halls and rooms were now being used for dance and music rehearsals, for annual day. I know I'm no longer a student of that college, that I can't just gatecrash a rehearsal. But as someone who's always been a part of the annual day culturals, who's almost always been an important member of the 'Invocation' dance team (the college decided long ago that singing a devotional song for the invocation wasn't so hot), I would surely be allowed to stay and watch the rehearsals. So I went. I sat on a cold, hard, granite-topped counter and watched my ex-classmates and juniors dance to a song I'm not particularly fond of. They were quite good. But I felt so lost, so sad, that I wasn't there with them.

P, who was standing next to me, leaned closer and whispered, "I miss you so much!". I miss her too. I miss my friends already. I miss it all... hushed conversations in the classroom, passing notes during lectures, 6 of us sharing one vada in the canteen, nights on the terrace, giggling away madly, dance rehearsals, parties, cultural events, going out for a bite once in a while, the pathetic coffee we had in the mess, the walks in the rain.... The list is endless. Well, I'm sure I can find pathetic coffee in USA too, but the people whose presence made even the sorriest cup of coffee taste good won't be around.

But I'm sure I'll be fine. Right now, I'm just glad, really really glad, that I have such wonderful friends... friends who are sorry to see me go. I would've hated it if people didn't miss me. I love them all... We have spent four years together, laughing, crying, making beautiful memories. I'll miss them terribly, but I'll be back, and we'll meet again.

All I have to say now is, thank you, guys... for everything.

Me :P

I promised myself I'd put up one post a month. But I guess I'll just have to add that to the long list of promises (mostly to myself) that I've broken. Now you know why I hardly ever make New Year resolutions... I just can't keep them up! There was this one time when I resolved I'd brush my teeth twice a day. I did fine till July, and then I fell back into my old habit of brushing only once (that too in a cursory way) a day, unless occasion demanded otherwise (now, just why did I have to tell you that?? Oh well... now you know me a little better!).

I never realized how hard it can be when someone says, "Tell me something about yourself!"... After studiously avoiding the 'About Me' fields on Orkut and Facebook, I was really stumped when someone asked me to say something about myself. Seriously, what should I say? That I brush once a day?

I did answer that question. I ended up talking for a very long time, and I never really finished. But that got me thinking... I barely know myself!

I know internship was supposed to be all about self-discovery and deep introspection and... you get it! Well, in Pondicherry, I was too busy having a good time to do any of that. But in Adukkamparai, where I had very little work in the hospital and even less things to do in my free time, I could’ve sat in my room (it’s really too hot to sit anywhere else, unless I sat in the bathroom. Bathrooms are good places to think, but… never mind) and thought. But I didn’t do much of that, because I thought it’d be really boring.

However, I did notice a few things about me that I hadn’t done before:

• I’ve gotten good at washing clothes, and I enjoy it too
• I read fast.
• I knew I talked in my sleep, and occasionally walked, too. But once, when I was in Vellore, I sleep-dialed my friend’s number and called him, at 5 in the morning. It wasn’t an accident, and I’m sorry it happened, especially since it was an out-of-state call.
• I’m fussy about breakfast
• I tan easily
• I can eat ice cream really fast
• I talk incessantly
• I have over 1400 songs on my laptop, but I listen regularly to only 148 of them
• I like giving lectures. We had to give a set of orientation lectures to the MBBS students in Vellore, and I enjoyed myself immensely
• I like bus journeys.
• I like making lists.

I guess that’s about all the ‘self discovery’ I’ve managed to do. I spent my free time doing more constructive things than thinking about myself. Here’s what I got up to:

• I read 21 books- Three by Jeffrey Archer, one Agatha Christie, five by Michael Crichton, two by Ken Follett, two by Amitav Ghosh, two by Arthur Hailey, three by Erich Segal, a collection of Egyptian murder mysteries, and two Mills and Boons whose names I do not remember. I often fell asleep while reading those. My friend wondered how romances can put anyone to sleep, but believe me, they do.
• I also read the Bhagavad Gita. Though I’m not a religious person, I liked reading it. I don’t claim to have understood it fully, but bits of it made sense, and the message was pretty clear.
• I watched 12 movies, most of them Tamil. Most of them sucked. I even watched No Smoking, which was harder than the Gita to understand. I gave up on that movie, ultimately.
• I took to making pencil sketches. I’m not very good at it, but I have a weird love for pencils and plain, white paper. I’m not a very creative person; I usually just copied the picture from somewhere… pictures on book covers or photographs
• I learned to sleep in the afternoons. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the boredom, but in spite of being the same person who, as a kid, used to sit and make toy chairs out of the cardboard cartons of toothpaste tubes (or embossed foil photo frames out of used toothpaste tubes, or I'd write messages on the mirror using toothpaste… you might say I had a thing for toothpaste) when the entire family slept, I started taking after-lunch naps. Long ones, too.

Some 'self-discovery', huh? :P

An apology, long overdue

I had this classmate in playschool... I don't remember her name or her face, but I remember one of her dresses. It was green and white, with a green cord running running around the waistline. On this cord were strung several large, bright, plastic beads. And she had the habit of sliding those beads from one side of her waist to another, the way one would slide beads on an abacus...

I was fascinated by that dress. And I was jealous, too... none of my dresses had fat, multi-coloured beads on them (now I'm really glad they didn't, but I was three then. I liked neon-bright beads). I loved that dress. I thought of it a lot. I never said anything to anyone about it, but one night, my parents and I were in bed, and I muttered (in my sleep?), "Her parents buy her such pretty things. My parents never get me anything!", that too in an accusatory tone. The moment I realized what I'd said, I promptly burst into tears, had a bout of coughing, and then threw up. My parents were really hurt, and for good reason too. After all, they've been the best parents I could ever hope for.

I still feel terrible when I think of that incident. It's a memory I wish I didn't have. I'm one of those lucky kids who got whatever she asked for. If you ask my folks, they'll tell you I never asked for anything, but that's not the point. The point is, they fulfilled every wish their kid ever had. They were my Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, teachers, friends and 'everyday-heroes', all rolled into one. They still are (not Tooth Fairy, of course..). I'm extremely grateful to Someone up there who let me have such wonderful parents.

I' still feel terrible about what I said that night, seventeen years ago. I wonder if my parents remember it at all... I'd like to say, nevertheless, Amma, Appa, I'm sorry!

Yours, Sinega.

I once received an SMS on my mobile- something about taking revenge on the British, who oppressed Indians and ruled over us, by butchering the English language as much as possible. It looks like people really are doing their best… check this pamphlet out. A little girl gave it to me in a bus. I was supposed to return it after reading, but I liked it so much, I kept it.

I also had a lot of fun reading the hoardings and boards in Vellore. Here are a few signs I noticed near the Vellore fort:

“Do not commit nuisance”
“Do not do impure here”

Then there were the usual ‘puncture shops’. ‘Puncture’ is probably the most widely misspelled word ever: Puncher, Pancher, Punchar, Punchur, Pantcher, Pancter, and on one memorable occasion, I saw Buncher

That was probably because of the Tamil indifference towards differences in voicing. That would also explain this board I saw hanging outside an ice cream parlour:

“Sold availeble here:
Chacopar
Garnetto
Bista-Badam
Gulfi”

As it turned out, people also had a lot of trouble getting my name right. I thought it was a simple enough name. Neha. Two syllables, and neither /n/ nor /h/ is especially difficult to pronounce. But the Vellorians had to struggle to get it right. Occasionally, they somehow managed to mutate my name into ‘Megha’ or ‘Rekha’ or something like that. ‘Nega’ was bearable. But more often than not, people called me ‘Sinega’ (that’s how they’d be writing ‘Sneha’ in Tamil). And so, to make life easier for the people of Adukkamparai, I let them call me Sinega. And whenever someone asked me what my name was, I’d just take a deep breath and say, “Sinega”.


Now you know at least one reason why I’m glad I’m back home… It’s good to be Neha again!

Vyaar eye vaas till now...

A long time ago, kbpm had suggested that I should post on my blog any JIPMER-ian anecdotes I might have to narrate. Life in JIPMER was chock full of amusing incidents. I’d like to share them, but first, let me tell you why I was there in Pondicherry in the first place.

It’s common knowledge that today, there aren’t enough audiologists and speech language pathologists (ASLPs) to provide screening, diagnostic and therapeutic services to all those who need it. We need people to screen newborns, help identify communication disorders as early as possible, counsel, suggest methods of intervention, and such like, but there just aren’t enough people to do it. Also, it takes time (and money) to produce ASLPs. So, as a way to create greater manpower, 1-year diploma programs and short term courses were introduced. Those who completed these courses would aid ASLPs in their job, carry out the work that required only a basic knowledge in the field, and spread themselves out all over the country, thereby ‘reaching out to the nation’ (heh. That’s our Institute’s new motto).

It was with this very intention that the Diploma in Hearing, Language and Speech (DHLS) was started. The program is amazing in that all the classes are conducted through video conferencing. The parent institute, in Mysore, conducts classes that are relayed to DHLS classrooms in Imphal, Mumbai, Delhi and Pondicherry simultaneously. Students in all centres can see and hear each other, interact with each other as well as the lecturer, take down notes while the lecturer scribbles on an electronic whiteboard… The whole thing is quite well thought out and cool.

But something tells me the DHLS program isn’t going to be a big success. I was there in Pondicherry to help out with program coordination and practical classes for the DHLS students. I also got to set tests, correct papers, give assignments, so on and so forth. It was while correcting the answer scripts of the first test that I realized that in spite of all that cool technology and the good lecturers and clear, easily understandable text books, DHLS wasn’t working. S and I corrected the papers together, and we laughed so hard, we nearly fell off our chairs. Here are some of the most ridiculous answers we came across:

Q: Name the three bones in the middle ear.

A: Reflection, refraction, fraction

(Bones in the middle ear? Really? We’d told them if they can’t remember the words malleus, incus and stapes, they should go for hammer, anvil and stirrup. One girl had answered ‘hammer, nail and striup’. We gave her half the marks. But fraction?)

Q: How would you check for the presence of nasal air escape?

A: Put your finger inside the patient’s pharynx and say ‘mmmmm’

(Why do you have to put your finger inside the pharynx to check for nasal air escape? Just hold it in front of the nose! The patient might really not be comfortable if someone sticks a finger in their throat. And it’s even weirder if the someone goes ‘mmmmm’!)

Q: What complications, during the delivery of a child, could cause the child to develop language disorders later in life?

A: Parents marrying related people

(What kind of parents are these, I wonder, who run around ‘marrying related people’ during the delivery of their kid? The student meant consanguineous marriage, by the way. Ok, it might cause a language problem, but it doesn’t take place at the time of delivery, does it?)

Q: Write an essay on why hearing is important in daily life.

A: Hearing is important because it is an interpret. If hearing we can music TV, Sun TV, Jaya TV, Vijay TV, Sun Music, Poghigai and movie musics also, and many radios like Surya and Big.

(You can also hear Star Plus and HBO and Pogo and DD Bangla, but it so happens they don’t watch these in Pondicherry. Sigh.)

Q: The 12 pairs of nerves that originate within the skull are called _________.

A: Brainial nerves

(Impressive, really. The cranial nerves, after all, do originate somewhere in the brain. Why shouldn’t they be called the brainial nerves? This answer got half a mark too. We’re extremely generous)

There were two other coordinators… Mr. T, a very annoying, very stupid, very exasperating kaamchor, and Ms. T (they’re not related), whose life’s mission was to feed us as much kizhangu (tapioca) as she could, and who abhorred Mr. T. She was quite sweet, really. She, unlike Mr. T, was open to new ideas, was willing to accommodate any changes or corrections we made in the way therapy sessions were conducted, and never claimed to know everything. Which Mr. T did. Which irritated us no end.

But to his credit, Mr. T was funny. Of course, he didn’t intend to, but he was ridiculously funny. He always spoke English, albeit badly. One afternoon, G and I were sitting at a table in one corner of the DHLS classroom and reading. Suddenly, Mr. T burst into the room and, gesticulating energetically, spoke to G.

T: Vyaar are you!

G: (blink blink)

T: Vyaar? Vyaar are you?

G: Uhm… I’m here!

T: Yes, but vyaar are you? (poor guy sounds really distraught)

G: T? I’m right here!

T: Yes. No. In the ago.

G: Huh?

T: (flapping his arms) Ago! Ago!

The conversation went on in this vein for a few minutes before he asked, “Morning… in the ago… vyaar are you?” Then we got it. We could barely keep our faces straight as G answered, “Oh. We were in the OT in the morning. Fridays… Surgery…” and we quickly made our way out of the room, where we collapsed in a fit of laughter.

There’s more, but I’ll put them up sometime later. This should hold for now...

I'm back... post-internship!

Before the commencement of our internship year, we’d been told that each of us would be posted in three cities, for a total duration of five months. Alone. Of course, that didn’t go down too well with us. We were sure we’d end up like those despos who punch out a random mobile number and call or send annoying text messages like, “Hai. I don’t kno f ur guy or gal, but I m alone. Will u b ma fren?” So we decided to have a meeting with our Director and voice our protests.

Have a meeting, we did. We asked her to increase our monthly stipend. She agreed. We asked her to cancel postings in Sonitpur and Nalbari, Assam (because we were afraid our classmates posted there would be gunned down by the ULFA). She, being the very soul of generosity, said she couldn’t just cancel postings like that, but if we got shot, she’d let us come back without completing that term. How sweet.

Don’t make us go alone, we said. At least send the girls in pairs, the guys said. She just laughed. We said we’d have to spend so many hours sobbing on the phone (STD calls, mind you), that our monthly stipend wouldn’t cover even a part of our phone bills. We told her we’d end up having everything from depression to multiple personality disorder. We shouted. We pleaded. She just smiled and said that all that time alone would lead to self discovery and deep introspection, that it was all for our good. Discussion closed, have a good day. With that, she regally swept out of the room, leaving us either gaping like fish or sighing resignedly (some even wore sardonic I-told-you-so looks).

It was decided that for the first term (five months), half the batch would work here in the Institute, while the other half went on their ‘outside postings’. At the end of those five months (and a 15-day break), the two halves of the batch would switch places. I won’t even try to explain how they worked out the whole who-goes-where-when… It’s immensely complex.

It was only when the first batch went out on their ‘outside postings’ that things began to change. Nalbari got flooded, so postings there were cancelled. Sonitpur was going through a mildly violent phase of random stabbing and minor bomb blasts, so that was cancelled too. They couldn’t find the students any accommodation in Mehboobnagar or Narindernagar, so those were taken off the list. Postings in Gujarat were cancelled for no apparent reason, and those posted there were transferred to Vellore. In some place near Barabunki, the students were told to get out of there unless they wanted to be sent home in body bags. Apparently, it’s the kind of places where people carry revolvers in their hip pockets and use them when they can’t find the right words to make their point. So, surprise surprise, postings there were cancelled too!

With fewer places to cover, we could now be posted in twos and threes. Excellent! I was still going to be with my buddies, but in Vellore. It must’ve been a real headache for the internship coordinator, what with everyone giving him a list of their preferences, then changing their minds, then changing their minds again… Poor guy! But almost everyone got what they wanted (or so I think).

I thoroughly enjoyed my first few months of my internship. I learned to make paper rockets (that’s right… I hadn’t known how till recently!), I read novels between therapy sessions, I often sat and sang songs in the clinic with a bunch of friends, I downed two cups of disgusting coffee at the canteen everyday, I went around screening newborn babies for hearing loss, I made an ear mould (and a shiny transparent heart, using the same acrylic material) for myself… Then came Annual Day. I had a lot of fun then, too. I was in four of the cultural programs and had to spend so much time rehearsing that one lecturer asked me if I actually intended to kill myself. But I had a great time, and the dances came out beautifully too. And yeah, I survived. It was just brilliant!

A couple of months before my ‘inside postings’ would end, the internship coordinator said Pondicherry had been added to the list of postings, and he needed two volunteers to go there. He then gave us an outline of the kind of work we’d be doing. A teaching job at JIPMER for two months! Of course I’d go! I volunteered, as did my friend S, and we got to spend October and November in Pondicherry. I already told you all about the places we saw there…

After a vacation that lasted 15 days, I went back to Pondicherry, but this time, with D and G. A, R and S, all of whom I love very much, were in Vellore, so I didn’t miss them very much. In the last week of January, my postings in Pondicherry ended, and G and I came to Adukkamparai, Vellore. Tiny village, really. There’s the hospital where we worked, a bakery (that sells, in addition to what bakeries usually sell, everything from paper to shampoo to mosquito repellant. One can even send couriers from there), a ‘gents parlar’, a few gaadis vending fruit and a seedy looking wine shop a little way off. There must be houses somewhere, but I didn’t see them.

Now, after spending three months in Adukkam-boring-parai, I’m home. I look deep-fried and my rear end has gone numb after 9315km of bus-journeying (over the past 7 months). Sure, internship was great fun, but am I sorry it’s all over? Not at all! After all, east or west, home’s best!

More of Pondicherry... Now, the Botanical Garden!

I first came to know of the Pondicherry Botanical Garden while reading Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. But a visit to this ‘heritage site’ of Pondicherry turned out to be a huge disappointment. Apart from the graceful entrance and a few boards that spoke of the garden’s history and ‘Importance of the Botanical Garden!’ (every sentence on the board ended with a !), and a sculpture of two bulls, there isn’t really anything worth seeing here.

The Pondicherry Botanical Garden is 181 years old, and the only one on the East Coast. According to one of the boards, it houses several tree species… Evergreen, semi-evergreen, tropical dry evergreen, deciduous, ornamental trees, fruit-bearing trees, and trees of medicinal and economic value. The board also claims that the rare and endangered Cynometra ramiflora is found exclusively here, and nowhere else. Apparently, one can also see specimen of Khaya senegalensis (native to Africa) and massive forms of Pittosporum floribundum, Spondias pinnala, Enterolobium cyclocarpum, Pterocarpus marsupium and Alstonia scholaris. We saw tamarind, teak, mahogany, palm and cannon-ball trees. We looked for Cynometra, pretty much scoured the botanical garden for it, but couldn’t find it.

In Life of Pi, there is a mention of a toy train that stops at two stations, Roseville and Zootown, whose name I have forgotten. There really is a toy train that runs through the botanical garden, but it has more than two stations, one of them being Fernhill. And I were somewhat surprised to see the train full of college students, roughly our age, hooting and whistling whenever the train passed through a tunnel, making an unbearable din even otherwise.

But oblivious to all that noise, under almost every tree, there slept a person (sometimes even a small family). Wherever we looked, we saw homeless people dozing in the afternoon heat, the trees providing some respite from the relentless sun. It’s really not the sight one expects to see at a botanical garden. There was an information centre, filled with sleeping people. Some families have set up home and are living in the botanical garden… we saw mini-kitchens and clotheslines where we should have seen exotic trees.

There’s a greenhouse (it was locked), a rose garden (we didn’t see any roses) and a ‘musical dancing fountain’ (which hadn’t played for years, by the look of it). As we walked past each ‘attraction’, not the least bit interested but still clicking away on the camera, a small gang of guys followed us around, muttering in Tamil and wolf-whistling. “Zoology students, da… Can’t you see how interested they are in plants?”, one Whatte asked another (what is a Whatte, did you ask? I shall explain in the end). I was tempted to turn around and tell him that a botany student would very probably be more interested in plants than a zoology student, but I wasn’t about to start an argument with a bunch of Whattes when we were outnumbered 3 to 1.We scooted out of there as fast as we could, and found better sights to see.

By the way, I went through the history of the Botanical Garden. There’s no mention of a zoo anywhere there :P

Soon after our rather sad tour of the Pondicherry Botanical Garden, that too on an unbearably hot day, we found a nice ice cream parlour on Nehru Street and gorged on delicious Choco-mint Sundaes. That, I believe, was the best part of the day!

Now, what a whatte is:

The word is derived from “What a (guy)!!!”, pronounced rather badly. A Whatte is essentially a wannabe dude… The look-at-me-I’m-so-cool type. The kind of guy who swings his arms with excessive energy as he walks (or struts) and holds them at a rather odd angle, away from his body. The kind with chunky steel accessories and overgelled hair of an unbecoming colour. The kind that ogles. Get it?

Go with the flow...

That's what X always told me to do... Go with the flow. I took her advice. I'm now caught in a current, unable to get out of it, and being swept towards that big waterfall right there...

It all began with one harmless fancy. I wondered what it'd be like to take the GRE. So, the last time i was home, I went out and bought PrincetonReview's 'Cracking the GRE'. I had no intentions of actually taking the exam... I just wanted to see what the big deal was about GRE.

I was wrong. One thing led to another- since I can actually prepare for the GRE, why not take it? Since I'm taking the GRE, why not apply to a couple of Univs abroad? Ah. You want to apply? Sure, go ahead. Get your transcripts ready. Get your essay written. Find professors who'd willingly write recommendation letters for you. NACES. Financial documents. Bank statements. TOEFL. So on and so forth. All because of one harmless book.

Sorry, this isn't really a post. Just a very lengthy and vague excuse for not putting up anything new on my blog for a while. I WON'T be blogging for several weeks more, there's that too.

In essence, I'm busy, and shall be unable to update my blog. That's all!