My New Life's Philosophy

Hello again ! I am back !! Now before all of you start jumping up and down in glee, and dislocating your knees (or jump off your high rise apartment to plummet to your deaths as the case maybe), let me assure you that I haven't the faintest idea if this lame attempt to recussitate my blog, which sadly has been in a comatose state for a while now will bear fruit. It will take a ginormous effort of Munnabhai MBBSeque proportions to get this thing back and running.

Anyway before I begin recounting the sorrowful trials and travails of my life for your enjoyment, let me, as promised thank a certain Ms.Divi Nair who implored, begged, bribed and threatened her way into getting me to 'write something'. This post would still be silently gestating (without causing much labour pain may i add) if I wasn't convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that Divya's very existence depends totally and entirely on the words that flow out of my 0.5 Staedtler MARS777 (doesn't say much for Divya does it?). And the words aren't really flowing out, they are spluttering out in stops and starts accompanied by constant head tilting and 'hmmming' and 'haawing' much like a cross between a badly maintained Bajaj Chetak from 1975 and an aged horse on it's last legs (which funnily would be the same legs it started out with as a strapping young pony, but you get my point. I hope.). So I write this not as Descorpio86, he who shares mundane drivel from his oh-so-normal life but in essence as a life-giver, as Brahma if you will. With this newly acquired status conferred upon me by none other than myself I have decided, as the first act of my glorious existence to anoint the aforememntioned Divi Nair as my 'Fan No.1'. Which is a pity, because what I need right now is not a fan, but an air conditioner.

Since moving to Noida (Yes, my dear sympathisers and point-your-finger-and-laughers, NOIDA. If you think that's bad here's more. Noida is not some cute name for the place. It actually stands for New Okhla Industrial Development Area. Yeah, that's right, I am not staying in a city, town or even a village, but in an 'area'), it's been a long, hard and energy sapping struggle against the heat. Heat here is not just a feeling (as in 'I can feel the heat'). Here, the heat is alive! It can kill, moving silently among us, much like the 'monster' in Lost (ok...too much drama you think?). I can still clearly recall my first encounter with the NCR heat, mostly because the memory was seared onto the side of my brain, the side that stores painful memories, as I stepped out of the Jet Lite flight S232. The heat came rushing up and gave me one huge sucker punch smack in the middle of my already distorted face, blowing me off my feet and set me tumbling face first down those unbelievably rickety stairs-on-wheels thingies which are deemed safe only at airports. The wind was blowing with full gusto, but it wasn't a cool or refreshing wind. It was hot, dry and very likely to cause a sunstroke. Appropriately enough, this dastardly phenomenon is called the 'Loo', because it does make you feel absolutely 'shitty'. The shuttle ride from the plane was funny in a tragic sort of way in that the seats were too hot to sit on and the plastic from the handles was (or is it 'were'? I am confused..) slowly but surely melting and forming little yellow puddles on the floor of the bus. There was no point opening the windows and the air con wasn't working. A little part of me just died, or evaporated.

After this initial 'warming up' to the situation I basked in the lap of luxury for the next two weeks. An air conditioned car would take me from an air conditioned guest house to a centrally air conditioned office and back. Enquiries regarding my well-being and my coping of the heat were met with cheerful responses, no doubt tempered by the air, which at 24 degrees had been cooled and dehumidified for my thermal comfort. I was oblivious to the fact the Sun had declared jihad upon me, indeed as it does so annually in this region between the months of May and September, and was quite intent on boiling me into oblivion.

Then I moved into a PG. For those who use the words 'my life is a living hell' way too often, I prescribe a short stay in Noida. It will shut you up, or kill you (which should in all probability shut you up as well). Residents of Noida visit Hell to cool off ! ( Thus, saying 'go to hell' to a Noidawalla results in much mirth and merriment for the latter) . The Uttar Pradesh Electricity Board obliged in giving me the 'fultu summer effect' by outing the power for the better part of the night. A severe case of shallow water drowning might have been registered with the Sector 56 police if I hadn't woken up just in the nick of time to find myself bubbling into a puddle of my own perspiration, smelling a lot like how I felt (kindly refer to earlier passages related to 'the toilet wind'). If this indeed had become a police matter, 'foul' play would definitely have been suspected. It gets so hot here that the air you breathe out is cooler than the air you take in, and post 6.00pm breathing feels more like eucalyptus steam inhalation therapy! With a tiny tweak. The eucalyptus is replaced by oil of the transformer variety. (Edit : So hot in fact, that my blood boils by the mere mentioning of it..hehe..)

A UP summer it is not without the almost suffocating prescence of the ubiquitous 'cooler'. You can buy one, rent one or lease one but steal one seems to be the preferred mode of acquiring possession. Names such as Polar, Icy, Artic, Snow, Freezy and MahaKool (yes, with a 'k') do the rounds, all of them conjuring up pictures of polar bears gracefully doing the ballet in slow motion on the Arctic Ice Cap while penguins gently serenade them. The name belies it's true purpose as an instrument of torture, and this indeed has confused very many UP bhayyas. What this 'thing' actually does is when filled with water (which has to be done every three minutes), heats this water up and then tries to fling it at your face hoping to cause at least Level 3 burns. So, now my room is not just hot, it is also humid. That does have it's positives. You know those television ads which ask you to 'feel' the experience? Well, thats exactly happened yesterday, while I watched some mindless Chuck Norris nonsense on HBO, Braddock : Avenge of The Some Shit or the Other (Part 3, no less). As Norris, sweated bullets to find his illegetimate son and wife and save them from the Vietnamese tyrants, all the while being chased by the CIA, I felt like I was in the trenches too searching for my own ba*&^rd child as my 'cooler' recreated to perfection the hot and humid climes of 'Nam, complete with an all pervading sense of death and decay.

Given these circumstances, can you be surprised that there's been a change in the philosophy by which I live my life ? It happens to all of us at some point or the other. A moment that makes us see the light. Such events act as a catalyst for a catharsis. I've seen this sea change in many of my fellow Paying Guests (unfortunately, you'll shortly find out just how unfortunate). This new outlook on life is best described by that great American poet, Nelly :

Its gettin hot in herre (so hot) { Note the 2 'R's}

So take off all your clothes (eh)
(Background voice: uh uh uh uh uh)
I am gettin too hot, I wanna take my clothes off

(repeat, many many times over, till the power comes back)

[Edit : There! I hope those words randomly strung together tickled your funny bone. Don't forget to leave comments with raves or rants!! ]