A little over two years ago, I made the most amazing discovery in the world. I realised that the voice in my head (the one that says shut up when I’m saying something stupid and sings tonelessly when I’m sleeping in class) turns into something entirely different during exams. It is soothing, entertaining and the first time I heard it-just plain weird.

It was during my second maths revision exam in the tenth that I first made its acquaintance. I was stuck with a particularly difficult proof and the voice was going Fajitas! French toast! Flambé! Flootsnoot! and then out of nowhere it changed to Robert Pattinson as Edward “Glittery” Cullen going ‘As if you could outrun me! As if you could hold me back!’ And repeated that over and over and over again till I wasn’t sure whether I was worried about my unsolved paper or the creepy personality change of the voice in my head. I was getting all tense and the voice seemed to go Asifyoucouldoutrunme!Asifyoucouldholdmeback!,working itself into a frenzy till I did manage to finish the proof at which point it stopped. And sang a little Linkin Park.

Weird as that was, I soon realised that the Exam Voice was an extremely talented being. It could sing-not tonelessly like before- but actual singing and could read parts of books out loud. At one point of time, it even quoted poetry from recitation competitions held in primary. But the best thing of all was how it stopped being a voice and became a TV during English exams. Fancy watching Emma Watson go ‘It’s Wingardium LeviOsa not Leviosaaaa’ when you’re pretending to be Sachin/Sneha writing a letter complaining about garbage problems in the park near your colony to the local newspaper. (If you don’t understand, you’re better off not knowing. Seriously)

Good times. Today was my first board exam. And I was looking forward to some entertainment during Business Studies. I even thought of music I’d like it to play (The Rolling Stones and some Bon Jovi) But then disaster struck. The voice didn’t work! It started the beginning of You Give Love A Bad Name before coming to an abrupt halt and muttering stuff about the principles of management. I felt rather glum after that. I need it back before English! I need it to play Star Wars

N: You need a case study/example to back it up.

A: Oh, cool. Lets write one.

N: You don’t write one. You do some RESEARCH.

A: No you don’t. Here’s what you do. *pulls out notebook* Place- Surat. Person- Farmer.

N: Wait I think there are mills in Surat. Maybe you should look it up?

A: Nah. Alright. Place- Surat. Two men- push one button. Hence, underemployed.

N: ….

To understand the ultimate importance of dragons in epic tales, one has to visualise a tale bereft of dragons.

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom of …….. there lived a beautiful princess in a stone tower. The tower was in the middle of a forest and the beautiful princess was a little cold and lonely but not too unhappy. She was free to leave any time but didn’t wish to since the tower was her home. A handsome young knight was riding in the forest on his beautiful white horse and stopped by the tower to see the beautiful princess. “Hey there! Are you a damsel in distress?” he called out. She looked down and replied “Oh no, I just live in this tower. It’s quite comfortable.” This answer stumped the knight. What was one supposed to say to a princess in a tower who was happy to be there? “Thats lovely. But are you sure there are no dragons that you need me to slay? Or even a pack of wolves to fight with?” The princess looked down at him bewildered. He was a mighty queer chap. Who wanted dragons around? So she just shook her head silently and an awkward silence ensued. The knight was intensely uncomfortable. All he wanted was an adventure-not an awkward conversation with a damsel-not-in-distress! He waved awkwardly and rode off into the sunset. And they both lived reasonably average existences. The end.

And that is why a tale without a dragon is nowhere close to epic. Now, if there was a dragon in the story, it would have gone something like this:

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom of …….. there lived a beautiful princess in a stone tower in the middle of a forest. She was as beautiful as she was unhappy. And she was very unhappy because she was trapped in the tower by a scary fire-breathing dragon who wouldn’t let her out into the sunshine. A handsome young knight was riding in the forest on his beautiful white horse and stopped by the tower. He could see the princess’s silky, beautiful hair at the narrow window at the top and fell in love with her immediately. He knew intuitively that she was a damsel in distress and he had to save her. He needed desperately to get to the top of the tower and rescue her but found the stairs were guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. With his supreme ninja skills, he cartwheeled onto the dragon’s back and clung on for dear life as the beast tried to shake him off. The knight then jumped into the air with a loud war cry and drew his light saber from inside his shirt. The saber flashed green and red as he directed beams of light into the dragon’s eye and squirted tequila into its nostrils. The dragon fell down in a dead faint as the knight rushed to the top of the tower, swept the princess into his arms and jumped with her onto his horse’s back. His horse then turned into a unicorn and they rode off into the sky. They all lived happily ever after. The end.

I don’t think I need say anymore. Dragons are obviously the only cool things in epic tales. Also light sabers. But yeah, dragons.

=) peace

Author’s Note: If I was a traditional Epic tale-ist I would probably have had the dragon die. And there would be an absence of tequila and light sabers. But since I am after all my very own unique little snowflake, I’m going to let my tale stay epic the way it is.

For more than sixteen years, I’ve had your voice on my mother’s cassette player/my computer/ car stereo telling my that you just called to say you love me. I do not remember such a call ever happening. And it is improbable that it ever happened since you’ve been singing this from when I was 3 months old. You, Mr Wonder persist in saying you called me and then keep telling me when you didn’t call me. That really isn’t very helpful is it? And since it disturbs me that I may have missed a call from you, I did some extensive research to investigate when you could have called me.

No New Year’s Day to celebrate
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of spring

This helped me eliminate the New Year Celebrated by communities all over the world (red in the calendar) as well as the month of February when chocolate covered hearts are sold to make single people feel bad about their lives. 21st March being Spring Equinox is eliminated as well.

No April rain
No flowers bloom
No wedding Saturday within the month of June
But what it is, is something true
Made up of these three words that I must say to you

Before I get into checking more days off, I have to ask why you persist by saying you said three words to me. I have NEVER been told three words by you. Not even ‘clean your room’ or ‘go study economics.’ Oh well. Those sentences tell me you didn’t call during April. Pity really, I wouldn’t even have had school. And evidently you didn’t call on any Saturdays in June.

No summer’s high
No warm July
No harvest moon to light one tender August night
No autumn breeze
No falling leaves
Not even time for birds to fly to southern skies

Wow. Now you’re just eliminating months like crazy. No July, no August. And as for Summer-  March, April, May in my country and June, July, August for you. And we can’t forget the Australians can we? That would be being hemisphere-ist. So no November, December, January.

No Libra sun
No Halloween
No giving thanks to all the Christmas joy you bring
But what it is, though old so new
To fill your heart like no three words could ever do

Oh! kay… So now we’re eliminating a bit of September and most of October. And Christmas day. Huh. Looks like most of the calendar is gone.

Dum-da-dum. Mr Wonder, you claim you called me sometime between the 1st and 23rd of October (except the 11th) or from the 25th to the 30th of October. Now you’d think I was happy I’d actually narrowed down this alleged call to 28 days out of 365. I was. Except, then I remembered I was born in December. And if you’ve been telling me this since I was three months old, you’ve been claiming to call me BEFORE I was born. Lawyered. (kind of)

…..

I don’t know whether to be happy to have (kind of) lawyered you or to curse myself for having spent 20 minutes composing a post about you.

No Love,

The-person-whom-you-claimed-to-call-to-say-three-words-to-though-you-never-did

This post is inspired by my mom who recorded I Just Called To Say I Love You over and over and over again on a cassette and played it for me every night so that I’d go to sleep.

The first question can be easily answered. Most history books these days include a page which tabulates the changing meaning of  a ‘Fraan.’

Stone Age: Fellow Tazo Trader, Chandler To Your Joey

2004: Orkut/ Facebook Pal

2009: Farmville buddy

2012:  The guy who promises to have your back till the world ends.

2013: The guy who did have your back when the world didn’t end.

2100: Pre-orders you a flying motorbike.

2220: Buys you a MyTwitFace account. (The unique 23rd century version of Facebook+Twitter+MySpace)

2350:Stands in line with you to buy your first silver jumpsuit.

25o0: Throws you a surprise party on the moon.

This makes things quite clear for all concerned. Though the slight change in spelling of Friend to Fraan in the 21st century did cause some confusion, it was not unduly disruptive. The second question is not resolved as easily. How DOES one celebrate Fraanship Day?  The logical thing seems to be to look at ancient traditions and adapt them to suit the current trends. Consequently, studies are being made by anthropologists and the suitable changes are to be formulated.

“The main problem is,” said Prof. Louis Rottenhead, “the changing languages. We speak a very different language from the ones our forefathers used. So our objective is to translate some of the ancient documents into iLanguage for our easy understanding.”

In stone age, most Fraanship Day cards contained messages like this:

To my best friend,

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet,

And so are you!

Happy Friendship Day!

This is obviously nearly incomprehensible to the present generations and even with footnotes will take a while to absorb. Prof. Rottenhead and his team have taken it on themselves to translate this into the more user-friendly iLanguage. “We aren’t doing a complete translation,” says Miranda Fizzo, Rottenhead’s assistant. “We obviously want some of the quaintness of the old poems to be retained. A rough translation of the poem for a present day card would be:

2: Bff / 4m: Bff

Rse=red/vlt=blu/sgr=swuit/u222!

hpy fraanshp day!

Rottenhead’s team expect to finish their research by next May and will have adequate data to prepare humans for the renewal of their ancient custom. “It is going to be a lot of hard work,” says Prof Rottenhead. “Translating the documents, retaining their message and popularising it within a year is not going to be easy. But we are ready for the challenge. We are excited to be part of this process that will allow us to reconnect with our culture.”

___________________________________________

And that is a LONG overdue post. I’ve had blogger-itis and a sad lack of inclination to update. I will get better though, promise!

=) peace

Except it didn’t work out. OKAY CALM DOWN. I said attempted. And though the way I tried was innovative, it probably would never have worked. Maybe I should backtrack and expand so everyone comprehends and no one tries to clap me in jail.

So, it was a bright sunny morning and 3 year old me was strolling into class and enjoying the sunshine and the rainbows (the metaphorical ones) that hang around the kindergarten block. It was a normal day and we were all laughing and hugging teddy bears (again metaphorical) and drawing random stuff on the floor. And that was when my teacher decided to explain about the importance of fire in cooking or some such twisted thing. Now its sad that adults assume that 3 year olds can’t comprehend a scientific explanation and resort to telling stories and drawing strange figures on the blackboard. But thats what adults do. So thats what my teacher did.

Erm.. yeah. So I may not possess the same artistic skills but that is pretty much what she drew on the board. And we didn’t really get where she was heading till she told us the beautiful story behind it. Apparently some dude and his wife owned a hut filled with potatoes (refer Part 1) Then the dude accidently rubbed two stones together and a spark flared between the stones. And the dude threw the stones at the hut accidently and it caught fire. (refer Part 3) Then the hut burnt down and along with it the potatoes. Except the potatoes got COOKED. Because you know, fire cooks stuff. And thats when the dude and his wife discovered the joy that we call baked potatoes.

And that is a pretty tall story to feed 3 year olds. None of us believed rubbing two stones together produces fire.(I still don’t FYI) But we nodded knowledgeably and got back to finger painting. And the finger painting and the strange music had pretty much lulled me into a comatose state when S decided to prod me and have a conversation that went thus.

S: Pssstt… She’s lying you know.

N: YEAH. Rubbing two stones together does not produce fire.

S: Why do they think we’re dumb enough to believe it?

N: I don’t know. We have to prove her wrong.

S: Yes. They can’t get away with telling lies.

N: But how do we prove she’s lying?

S: By rubbing two stones together of course! *looks amazed at my stupidity*

N: Ah! Right.

And so during snack time, we found two stones each and rubbed them together over and over again in the hope of either proving her wrong or setting fire to the sandpit (thats the attempted arson part) When the latter didn’t work out we figured we had substantial evidence that the teacher was lying to us. She was kind of freaked out that we were trying to set fire to the sandpit and told us that fires were caused only when certain stones were rubbed together for a long time in a certain way or some such thing. And then made us promise never to attempt to set fire to the sand pit. So there are two things to be learnt from this story a) Teachers lie. Not very well. and b) I was an awesome 3 year old.

Speaking of trigonometric functions and school stuff reminded me that I have not blogged about probably the most important part of school life- all nighters. Everyone pulls all-nighters. To study, to err.. not study, whatever.

>>and there I stopped typing and went to actually study<<

But, I digress. Back to actual all-nighters. My vast experience with them coupled with my overactive imagination have helped me identify that all-nighters have eight definite stages that all victims experience.

Stage One: Premonitions

One can usually feel an all nighter coming along 12-17 hours earlier. It’s this gut feeling brought on by an overload of work and a feeling of desperation coupled with excitement. Usual symptoms include moaning about the quantity of work while simultaneously stocking up on caffeine and food ‘just in case’ of an all nighter. However the victim usually blocks this out and goes about his normal routine.

Stage Two: Denial

The victim refuses to acknowledge- even to himself- that any incomplete work exists. To compound this belief, the victim may go out for dinner, have a long phone conversation with a long lost cousin or cut his nails. This is usually accompanied by toneless singing and/or cheesy dance moves. In severe cases, the victim may go as far as to indulge in meaningless small talk with normally hostile members of the family.

Stage Three: Agitation

At around 9 pm realisation hits and the victim starts to panic. This may result in throwing of pillows on unsuspecting pets and mild hysterics in the arms of parental figures. The victim has to make a quick decision at this point of time- feigning a mysterious sickness to avoid school the next day (0.007% success rate) or actually getting down to studying. Most victims choose the latter and after attempting to tear the phone directory, settle down with their books.

Stage Four: Studying

Contrary to popular belief, most of the studying takes place only in the first 2 hours of the all nighter. The victim is motivated by fear and anxiety to rapidly complete a large amount of work. It is in this period that the victim works efficiently and is usually able to complete as much as 67% of the work before the next stage hits.

Stage Five: Self-satisfaction

The victim is unduly pleased with his progress and decides to take a short break to celebrate. This time is utilized in foraging for food in the kitchen, drinking previously prepared cups of cold coffee and almost always- logging into a social networking site of choice. The last causes the victim to communicate with other sufferers and compare notes about how much work is done, how the latest power couple in doing and what movie to catch the next saturday.

Stage Six: Anger

At this point of time the victim gets upset about having to have stopped chatting with friends and casual acquaintances and usually starts swearing about how work completely ruins a perfectly good all-nighter. (“Why the french toast must I finish this french toasting assignment anyway?”) At this point of time , anger about the depletion of food combines with the anger about work and the victim uses a few more choice epithets before settling down with his books.

Stage Seven: Bargaining

As the victim’s work progresses slowly he starts bargaining with himself about how much work to do. He compares the amount of sleep he’ll get with the amount of trouble he’ll get into. This bargaining goes on for about 2o minutes till the victim is too tired to do any work and decides to catch some sleep while promising himself to wake in two hours to finish the work.

Stage Eight: Oversleeping

Invariably, the victim sleeps through the shrill cries of his alarm and wakes to find his work half done and the prospect of missing the school bus about to become a reality. After a bite of breakfast and rushing into the bus, he attempts to formulate an excuse for not having completed his work while congratulating himself on a successful all- nighter.

=) peace