The curious case of the missing underwear

I have been warned by my sisters not to blog about this which is specifically why I decided to write about it, for the sheer joy of irritating them and doing something I’m not supposed to do. Anyway, I’m posting it here, saying my last prayers.

Let me first introduce you to the characters and the setting of this story.

N : My cousin sister who works from home.

L : Another cousin sister, who works away from home.

M : Our house owner who works from home, who ogles at anything remotely female.

V: His wife who works away from home (work timings 9AM to 6PM).


It was yet another hectic day at work for me and I keep checking my mails to see if any new issue has popped up or if I got any good forwards.

Among the bunch of new mails, I found this specifically interesting mail from my cousin which read “Help!!!! Serious problem!” She had copied L also in the mail.

I eagerly checked the contents of the mail and this is exactly what it said:


‘I was putting out the clothes to dry. My underwear has fallen into M's balcony!!!

How do I get it from him? Thought of dropping a towel so that it covers it but there is no guarantee that it will fall into the right place.

So please suggest how I can get it back without talking to you know who.......................’


It was a serious issue indeed considering M’s character and that he was the only one at home. N couldn’t possibly go to his house and ask “Excuse me but I happened to drop my underwear in your balcony. Could you help me get it?” He would surely oblige to help but I wasn't sure if that was the best option to go for.

Personally, if it were me I would’ve just let him have it. He probably would wonder who it belonged to and maybe throw it away (that’s the most decent guess I could come up with! ;)).

Well, what are cousin sister’s for. The first reply came from L in less than 2 min and it had these options:

1. Wait till evening.. till such a time that V comes back and then ask her

2. Say Par's stuff has fallen down.. or maybe mine (not a very good idea but still)

3. Put the towel down and try anyway


I don’t think point # 2 is that good an idea. After all, you shouldn’t be embarrassed to own up your own underwear!

I suggested that she should forget about it and move on in life which I’m not sure if she appreciated so much.

Anyway end of story is N did not ask for it back even after V got back home. She decided to let it go.

A wise decision I’d say, although we still wonder what happened to it and where it would be!

Goodbye Chennai

I can’t believe that my stay in Chennai has come to an end. Two and a half years in this big city has definitely been a wonderful experience. Ok, not all of it was wonderful but yes most of it.

I’ll miss this place and probably the little joys that I found here.

Chennai is definitely a nice place to be. People complain about the extreme climate here but you get used to it after a year :)
I’d love to write more about Chennai but I definitely need to get packing.

Can’t wait to see what Bangalore holds for me.

Change is inevitable. Places change. Things change. People change.

Change is good.

A dumb experience with a 'Smart Card'

Recently I was travelling from my native back to Chennai when I happened to meet my onsite coordinator from my previous project who was going back to Chennai in the same train as mine. I had not seen him in person before (Oh well he was in the US busy outsourcing work to us) but I recognized him from a team pic I’d seen sometime back.

Talking about onsite coordinators in the IT field, they’re these special people at work whom we would’ve never seen but interestingly spend hours talking to- about some client requirement of course. But yes, a software engineer on an average spends a minimum of 5-6 hours a week talking to his/her onsite coordinator. It is sometimes interesting to think that you can actually argue, fight and make up with someone you have never ever seen. Yeah, interesting role these onsite coordinators play in our lives! :p

Now, coming to my story, I met my onsite coordinator SK at the station, talked for five minutes there, boarded the train and reached our destination and got off at the Chennai Central station on a Monday morning. We did not see each other while getting off the train (we happened to travel in different compartments) and I just made my way to the local metro station right across the road to catch my train to work. The Chennai metro let me tell you is incredibly efficient and you got trains coming in every 10-15 minutes to take you anywhere in Chennai. But I must say the ticket queues can be pretty frustrating at times. There have been times when I’ve had to strain real hard to find out where the queue ends (Ya ok. Go ahead and blame my height for that! But it is indeed a tedious task to get the ticket!)

To provide some relief to the people waiting in long queues, they introduced train ticket vending machines in important stations and my station had two of them. You get these magnetic cards called ‘Smart Cards’ which you can recharge and use to vend tickets from it. Generally, there won’t be huge queues in front of these vending machines. So I decided to vend my ticket from the machine as I sneered past all those people who did not have ‘smart’ cards and were waiting in the long queue for their tickets. As I walked towards the machine, I found SK there waiting in the queue. Out of courtesy I waved my smart card at him and said I’ll help him get his ticket too. He happily got off the queue and we walked up to the vending machine. I noticed one of those machines was not working. Giving SK a confident smile, I used my card in its twin and the worst happened! It gave me a message in red saying ‘Sorry this machine is out of order’.

To me, it read ‘You really look like a jackass now!’ I gave SK a sheepish smile. He seemed a bit annoyed at me. He had almost reached the ticket counter when I deterred him from his mission and steered him into attaining absolutely nothing! Oh yes I would be surprised he wasn’t pissed at me for that!

Yet again, I suggested to him that we go and join the queue which had by then increased kilometers-fold. I guess he wasn’t open to any more of my suggestions. He said he was gonna take a bus back home, trying to hide all his irritation. I picked up my backpack and sadly walked to the end of the queue trying my best not to look at a single person whom I had sneered at before.

Things never work when you really really want them to. I have experienced this kind of a thing many a times before and this incident was just a repetition.

Smart cards they call it!

Ha! I don’t think so.

Or why blame the card. They should make smarter machines to use them I guess!!!!

The Vettaikaran Experience

Went for the Vijay starrer Vettaikaran with a huge gang of friends.
What do you know, I totally enjoyed the experience! And mind you watching a commercial Tamil movie is indeed an ‘experience’.

Around 20 of us managed to get seats only in the front row of the theatre but decided to watch Vijay and his absolutely unrealistic stunts at close range and drive the movie to success. The guys sat in close range solely to watch the heroine, Anushka shetty and her ‘stunts’ of course.

One of the interesting scenes in the movie were I'd say, when our hero Vijay jumped off a waterfall and escaped unhurt. Now, we have seen that in a couple of Hollywood movies as well. So I couldn’t appreciate that so much.

One time, he breaks a massive cement pillar into dust and yep the slow mo effect of the cement breaking into small pieces and turning into dust was great.

There’s this scene where Vijay does some 2-3 somersaults in the air and lands on a horse that was nowhere around when he started somersaulting. Awesome!

Our movie hero’s can do almost anything. Our hero shoots the driver of the van he’s chasing and miraculously the van flips in the air and overturns. I wish I could do stuff like that!

Then there was this scene where the heroine was captured by the villain and kept captive and our hero negotiates with the villain to get her back. It goes like this. The villain and Vijay sit face to face with a table in between them which has a bottle of pure spirit and 2 glasses. The villain keeps talking and our hero, untainted by the words of the villain, coolly keeps drinking pure spirit, glass after glass. In situations like these you should always anticipate something big from the hero. Vijay then took a cigarette and lit the lighter and when we least expected it; he just blew over the fire and thus started a fiery tornado that gulped the villain! I was like ‘wow’ when I saw that. :D I was totally not expecting that one! Impressive!

The day before Vettaikaran was released; most roads here in Chennai were blocked because of the Pooja and related ceremonies that were being performed for the movie to become a success. Somehow these kinda things promote the movie better than banners or advertisements, I feel. And obviously there will be huge cut outs of Vijay in different poses all around the city such that you turn anywhere and there he is reminding you to watch his movie.

I even read reviews that said that the movie ‘Avatar’ was no where close to ‘Vettaikaran’. I’m sure James Cameron would stop making movies if he read that one!

Another thing is you go for movies like these keeping your brains at home and just for the sheer pleasure of being in a group- whistling, howling and throwing pop corn up in the air when the hero/heroine makes his first entry etc

After this movie, a lot of people in my group were complaining of a headache though. The fight scenes just blast your ears and it did have some unnecessary songs in it here and there but what use would Anushka be of in the movie if she dint get to wiggle to the tune of a couple of numbers.

Overall I think it was a fun movie. Now, I’m waiting for the next Rajni movie to be released! That should be even more fun.:)

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As the year 2009 comes to an end, I have not made any New Year resolutions this time. Because, out of experience, resolutions just remain resolutions unless I probably make a resolution to fulfill these resolutions!

Right now, let me just wish you all a Happy New Year!

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