October 14th, 2009

Wednesday

1. Stayed up late last night till about 2 AM working on porting the ILP Java programs to AppEngine. Managed to get exactly one of those done before I felt that I’d be needing my rest for the morning. The Palindrome Count finder. I was pretty ’stoked’ at how it had turned out. Maybe I can work faster towards porting all of them now that I’ve figured out the initial steps.
   I also got myself back to identi.ca after a long absence. People actually noticed I’d been gone. It’s nice feeling to be missed.
   I somehow thought it wouldn’t hurt to check cracked.com before I went to bed (you see, everybody needs their daily dose of comic-relief) . I took the laptop with me to bed and that’s the last thing I remember doing.
2. Woke up at around 7 AM, just like yesterday. 7:15 AM was the time to be exact. Soft sunlight was streaming through the window and I could hear the sounds of life waking up downstairs and pouring itself a cup of tea. I was in the mood for one of those as well. Decided I would help out more than yesterday today.
3. I found the laptop my bedside companion in the morning. What had happened last night? I had a feeling it was something I’d sooner forget. I also realised that I’d been wearing my pajamas-that-have-round-holes-too-big-to-not-fit-square-pegs in them. I also remember amma’s appeal from yesterday for me to get some new ones. “Your clothes are pathetic,” said she. I for one have never really thought of those as that important. I’m most willing to make do with what I have.
4. Brushed teeth, extra hard since I hadn’t brushed the previous night. I do that a lot. I realise I’m too tired to brush and I just don’t brush. It’s weird, but that’s how it is with me.
5. Decided I would take a bath today, since I hadn’t taken one yesterday. I put on the heater and thought I’d wait 5 minutes and head in for a quick shower before beginning the day. I sat down to check my mail. Or did I? No, I think I went downstairs straight.
6. I came down the stairs passing acchan on the way upstairs to get ready for work. Amma was making tea for me in the kitchen. I figure she’d heard me shift the chair around as I passed it on the way to the bathroom. Ammachan was asleep, and he was listening to Harivarasanam, the lullaby that is supposed to put Lord Ayyappa to sleep. And oddly enough, it appeared as if he was actually, asleep. Smiling and clicking my fingers to Yesudas’ angelic rendition of “Sharanam, Ayappa…”, I headed into the kitchen.
7. A cup of tea that seemed very good today morning. There was always something different about the tea everyday. I liked it. Just as I relished the last sip, the tape which was playing signalled its end with a click. I rushed to rewind it. And after a few minutes of fiddling around with the now unfamiliar controls (cassettes have now become something people hardly refer to, it’s all digitally controlled now). Ammachan lay supine watching me fiddling with the controls, passing a few hardly-comprehensible inquiries here and there regarding my dealings with the cassette player. I finally managed to get the thing rewound to the beginning of the song, and hit play. A few minutes later, it was back to square one. Amma asked me to get the song loaded onto a USB pen drive, which would be very easy since we have one of those Philips all-in-one (CD/Cassette/FM Tuner/USB Pen Drive) players that would also allow content from any source to be “ripped” as the expression is to the pen drive in mp3 format. It was a good buy, and I think it saved us a lot of trouble today. So, I ripped the song out, and started text-messaging friends their wake up call. I asked Bhuvan if he was going to show today, he replied much much later in the affirmative. Amma joined me in the room to add more songs to the rip-queue. There was this particularly stubborn cassette (the one that was retrieved with a lot of trouble yesterday) that simply refused to play or did so reluctantly, and conveying it’s feeling with a shrill chorus that simply drowned out every song on the tap. We found that the tape had slipped off its spool at a point.
   Fixing it, we started ripping some more songs – songs from Deshadanam and Ee Puzhayuom Kadanu (lovely songs, all of them).
8. The time was around 8 AM when amma went up to get the clothes for acchan ready. The third song from Deshadanam was playing as I went upstairs. Ammachan then woke up and the old routine began all over again. Managed to get him to sit near the window in his room for a bit. About 2 minutes.
   Then spent the next ten minutes adjusting his bed linen and blankets. First he wanted the big woollen blanket to go on one half of the bed. The next minute, he wanted it spread all over. Oddly enough, I didn’t blow up, or even feel heated, I just coolly did as I was asked. I felt odd, but good. I supposed it was Yeshudas’ voice in my head. We next headed for the living room, and I sat him there in the sofa, as he sang – loudly and off-key. I might add – the words of the song Kaliveeduorangiyallo from Deshadanam. That lasted about 10 minutes, and then we headed back to his bedroom for some more blanket tussles. He visited the loo twice, I might add in the close to an hour that I spent with him. I managed to put him to bed by convincing him (for the moment) that a person of his age and temperament ought to be resting more so that they would be strong enough to handle the stress of the rest of the day. He woke up twice – with 2-minute convincing intermissions and 10-minute lying down sessions. Each time insisting that he would sleep later that night.
9. Amma came to my rescue at about 8:45 AM. By that time Kausalya the maid had come in, delivered the milk; the garbage collectors’ and their kupavandi had left echoes of their screeching behind and I was in the mood for a bath. I spent a lot of time finishing up my 200 free text message quota for the day. (I could have sworn that I’d sworn myself of text-messaging a while back! who knew it would be so much fun!) I still think I have some of them left now. Bhuvan had confirmed his presence later in the day.
10. I came upstairs, and checked my mail. The 8th semester marks cards had arrived in the college and this was the big news that had just come in. I informed people I knew via text message, added checking in with the fine folks at CMRIT to my list of things to do for the day. I also asked Rahul if he’d show up today. He said he was out and wouldn’t be able to make it today. I spent some time reading what Jason Calacanis had in his latest dispatch to subscribers of his mailing list. He is starting a campaign against firms that lure young and desperate startups with offers of meetings and demos with bigwig moneybags and VC fund houses for exorbitant fees. And judging from the reaction it provoked, I’m pleased to see that this side of the startup quagmire is out in the open. Forwarded these to Rahul.
11. 10:30 AM. Took a shower. 10:45 AM breakfast. Went upstairs for a 10-minute break. From about 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM was babysitting time, since grandad was hell bent on going all the way to Mangad house – our ancestral property, and more importantly, the house that my great grandfather built. Convinced him that we were still 400 long kilometres and around half-a-day away from there. He then switched his focus to Indiranagar. Somehow he found that it was very important that he be there at the earliest. After another half an hour of pacifying, we managed to put him to bed.
12. It was time for me to head to the bank and get that work done. Time was ten minutes shy of 1 PM and I hoped the bank would still be open. I had to deposit a cheque, collect some receipts, update the passbook and make out a DD to the fine-ass-officer at VTU for Rahul’s PDC. Managed to get the first three done by 1:15 PM. There wasn’t that heavy a rush at the bank compared to 10-11 AM horror.
    Headed to college and reached by 1:15 PM. Saw the HOD going off for lunch as I parked my motorbike in the parking lot. Internals was going on and students were all over the place preparing feverishly for the afternoon set of tests. I headed for the office, and found the file containing Vikram’s Conduct Certificate. Collected that. On enquiring found that the 8th semester marks cards were to be collected from the department offices itself. On the way upstairs, ran into Ramu sir, who told me about the shift of the department’s lab to the 1st floor where the old Internet Lab used to be. On hearing about my efforts to get certified, he also mentioned that certification exams for IBM DB2 could be obtained for free through the college itself (since the college and IBM had an understanding) and I was to contact the Placement Officer for more details. Promised him I would and thanked him, before heading upstairs to the department staffroom.
    I found that the teachers I wanted to meet regarding the marks cards, Suma ma’am and Lalitha ma’am were off for invigilation duty during the tests. Soma Pandey ma’am informed me of this. I thought I’d come back later for the marks cards since the need wasn’t as pressing as the need for the DD (actually, that was kind of overblown too, come to think of it). Headed back into the bright noon sun, and was on my way out of college, waved out by the keen-glance watchman who stands at the gate. Nodding at him, I headed for the bank. Back at the bank I managed to get a seat near the Bank Manager’s counter. He would be the one handing out the drafts. I noticed that an old lady and a young man were seated at the chairs in front of his counter and the chair on the other side was devoid of its occupant. A plaque on the table said ‘Lunch Break’. I thought about how funny it would be if it said ‘Out To Lunch’ and spent the next ten minutes imagining the possibilities.
    He eventually arrived and set to work consoling the old lady about one cheque that she’d deposited which had not been processed for a while. After she left, the young man held out his application form for a new account. After him, the young mousegirl in a yellow top (the one I noticed near the window squeaking into her phone) came squeaking about a cheque that hadn’t been processed in time and complaining that her friend (who probably had a voice more on the sqawky side) had encountered a similar problem that had been dealt with very promptly. The manager told her in a very practical voice of “practical problems” that arise in a bank, and assured her that it would be solved at the earliest. I got up then and moving towards the counter, noticed that my draft lay in a tray on the side of his desk. Drawing his attention towards it after the mousegirl had left.
13. Leaving the bank with my demand draft I got back home, and was greeted to the sight of a de-ammachan-ed house. Acchan had sent the driver back to take ammachan for a walk so that amma could be relieved for a bit. Swell of him. Was refreshed with a glass of mango juice. Lunch and breakfast were the same thing, last night’s Shanti Sagar curry with fresh chapathis. And yes, I mean, the same thing. First meal and second meal.
    I went upstairs after lunch and lay down for about 10 minutes. The heat had proven to be too much. Amma was making banana-walnut cake with plenty of assistance from Nitya. I helped whisk the mix. I was doing it wrong. So Nitya showed me how. I ran to ammachan’s side at each call.
14. Bhuvan arrived at about 4 PM. Just 15 minutes short of Diya’s arrival time. We spoke about his girlfriend, the reasons I don’t have a job yet, and other things – other people mostly, and he got a glimpse of what life had been like for us for the past two weeks and more.
    Preeti arrived soon later. She got a Nintendo Wii! And we chased her away in 10 minutes (no, we didn’t, we’re nice people, she actually had this something she was heading towards – please let it be a wall!). After which we headed to Ragam and spent some time there talking till about 6 PM. Heading back, we stopped at MK Retail because Bhuvan wanted mushrooms. A custom, he calls it. Heading back home, we spent about 20 minutes talking with amma and Nitya. Ammachan had gone to sleep by then. Dropped him off at the bus stop at about 7 PM.
15. Back home and now here I’ve been spending the past hour or so reliving the rest of the day, just after I got a change of clothes. And I also realised, I don’t . The time is just short of 9 PM. I’m feeling very tired. I think I shall tackle Collections tonight and then get to bed early.
16. Gas decides to play games. I’m not going to go into details here. But the boy-who-cried-please-tell-the-girl-I-love-that-I-have-loved-her-and-will-always-love-her-even-in-death-is-asking-for-some-serious-repeated-2-seconds-nahin-to-free-deliveries-of-intense-pressure-delivered-at-the-point-of-titanium-steel-tipped-boots. Since both the boots and the distance that separated the parties involved in the transaction would make the effort too much at after a tiring day at 11:15 PM, I decided to sleep on it. But I did get back at the aforementioned Gas by other means. Let’s just say, he had a lot of anxious callers keeping his mobile phone circuits warm through midnight.
17. Hung out a batch of clothes to dry, bringing in the ones that had been put out the night before.
18. I made a feeble attempt at tackling Collections but was unable to. I was in danger of falling asleep as the book teetered in my unsteady grip, ever-so gently bumping me on the nose as I lay in bed reading. Unable to take it any longer, I turned out the lights.