Melancholetta!

Did you think all I had for you on the halloween eve was a post to let you all know that I had made a century for myself? On the D-Day, we -- a group of Bloggers -- got together and decided we'd pull out a pumpkin out of our hats for you folks. What came out of the hat was better than a pumpkin! And today we gleefully present to you a cool new way to flaunt the poems that you read way back in sixth grade and thought were brilliant. What' s more, you get to rate them and review them. If you are still expecting more, you will be able to have your blog linked to from a public forum. We present to you our cool new idea that will revolutionise blogging. We present to you, Melancholetta!

Reads like the hyperboles you find, to your consternation, everyday on the Blogger Dashboard, doesn't it? (Couldn't prevent myself from taking a dig at that :) Apologies!) Well, if anything, it cannot be more inaccurate in its description of the actual subject matter! In BITS, a handful of us interested in poetry had a group by name Melancholetta running. It was a mailing list to which we often sent the poems that we had read and had liked. Sometimes, we also wrote in a couple of lines about the poem -- usually what we liked about it or what we like about the poet and his verses. The group drifted into disuse as members passed out of college. And all of us had almost forgotten the existence of the group when, a couple of days back, we received a very enthusiastic request from a gentleman who wanted to join the group. It was then that we decided that we would get down to relaunching Melancholetta, this time as a public blog, where everyone interested could become members and start posting poems they had a heart for (and commentaries/discussions too, if they wanted to).

The group is strictly non-elitist, for there are many cliques available on the World Wide Web with the intent of remaining elitist. We are ourselves no accomplished critics, in the first place. Anyway, if you liked a poem but thought commentary is not the thing for you, you could still send in just the poem. And there will be no moderators; each man for himself. The administrator's job will be to merely add members to the blog as and when requests filter in. Of course, I am secretly hoping we will receive some requests; a couple at least :)

So for a start, we have set up the blog at http://melancholetta.blogspot.com and have transferred our existing archives (around fifty poems and some discussions) to that blog. If you think you like the idea of sharing poetry and airing your views on anything related at all, and, more importantly, if you think you liked the archives and want to contribute, please don't hesitate to leave a comment on the blog or email me.

Any comments/feedback/suggestions will be mighty helpful. Whether Halloween will see the spirit of the Melancholites rise from the dead remains to be seen!

- posted by Dileepan @ 12:54:00 am

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One for the Century

As all people with literary pretensions, I too belong to the earthly lot of people who yearn to exhibit their latest works of art, ramblings, logs to all and sundry and feel a queer thrill at just having shown to the world what they can (or cannot) do! ...

Those lines -- the lines that raised the curtains and opened my blog to the world -- are now one year old (I realised yesterday). I suspect I shall not echo the same thoughts today. For, one year and ninety-nine posts later, I harbour no more literary pretensions; I would not, in any exaggerated imagination, call this a work of art; and I am reasonably content now after having shown to the world my stunted capabilities. That I have managed to eke out approximately two posts a week for one year should tell you the amount of joblessness I preoccupy myself with. I am certainly wiser these days!

Let me proceed to quickly make a few jots that I, during the past year of blogging, had mentally made:

I gather that this blog does receive some readership. I really appreciate it, and I do admit writing to the gallery on quite a few occasions. I should tell you that I was glad to receive quite some feedback via the Comments section, emails, Messenger alerts (!), and, at times, even through the telephone or the person from known people. Some were motivating and a handful few, not quite so motivating. Anyway, I am, for my own sake, glad to receive feedback.

Over time, based on some feedback, I have put in conscious effort to make my blog more readable. More specifically, I have tried to simplify structure and avoid bombast. Regarding this issue, before I point all my fingers at myself, I will also tell myself once that earlier, when this blog had few or no readers, it was merely a rostrum for my experiments with wordplay. Things are a little different now, with a few more people stopping by for a little longer. For me, now the whole purpose of this endeavour has taken a less flippant turn. You might find the more recent articles more readable (I hope!) than the earlier ones.

The past year, I found that were quite a few writers and books that periodically influenced my attempts at writing. While the samples I churned out in those periods are not egregious by themselves, I was not completely happy when I re-read them. In fact, I avoid re-reading my articles these days; they leave me discontented. Anyway, not digressing, those were periods when I was reading a lot. I do not read much these days. In fact, it has been some time since I touched a book. But, I find it easier to blog these days when I am not influenced by another's style or content. On the other hand, I find that I have developed two or three styles of my own -- styles for different moods and genres. I am finding it increasingly tough to break the stereotype that I have subconsciously set for myself. Anyway, I hope I continue to believe that style is but a floating characteristic; a function of space and time.

I find that quite a few people subscribe to my blog now and then. While this motivates me to write more, there is also the self-imposed pressure of having to fulfil myriad expectations that just might exist. So these days, I try and write only when I have something substantial; else I try not to write at all. I think I have been reasonably consistent with this policy that I have adopted.

I also find that more of my friends, and more people all over, have taken to blogging in recent times. So, these days, blogging (and reading other blogs) has been all the more enjoyable. A lot of my friends maintain blogs on a wide spectrum of issues -- political blogs, daily journals, technical blogs etc. I think my blog will continue to remain what it is -- trivial!

I think there is still some time left before I will be done with blogging for good. So till then, I shall hope that all of you continue to stop by for those three minutes of hyperbolic balderdash!

- posted by Dileepan @ 9:03:00 am

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The Badminton Shoulder

Things are not going too well. My Badminton Shoulder has hit me in its worst possible form. If I haven't told you already, I have been down with a Badminton Shoulder for the past few days. If you are still grappling with the newfangled condition let me warn you that afflictions of this genre are strangely contagious. When I had last looked up Cricinfo, Sachin Tendulkar was down with a tennis elbow after having played more cricket than was good for his body. And it generated an incredible amount of hype. I then decided that I too should be conditioning myself to some ailment of the sort. After all, going with the fashion is almost mandatory these days. Providence did not play spoilt sport this time. God generously acceded to my pleas; I was bestowed with a condition of the kind (I am still waiting for the ensuing fame). During a round of frenzied badminton I tried to smash one so hard that the birdie would drill a hole right through the opponent. Instead, it now looks like my shoulder ball has come out of its hole. Occurring just before my mid-terms, the fortuitousness is as timely as the Chepauk rains, and as rare too. But that does not make me toss and turn in my sleep anymore (not that I can really afford to, given the nature of the physical damage). I have begun to sleep blissfully these days, half comforted by the fact that at least I did not play golf and land up with a Badminton Shoulder.

- posted by Dileepan @ 1:51:00 pm

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The Hypocrite's Oath

When gentle cool early-morning winds brush past your face and caress your hair, fluffing them upwards, they make you want to perform extraordinary deeds of valour during the day. When a fair breeze creased our shirts at 7 AM on a pleasant Saturday morning, we -- all of us -- felt impelled towards more epoch-making pursuits than oneiric. We had feeble idea of what those ennobling endeavours were, but we were sure we felt that fire burning within us. And we felt invigorated.

One fellow suggested that we go canoeing, to which another pleaded that the very sight of water reminded him of his Fluid Dynamics assignment. Another fellow cried that he was afraid of water in the lakes. He said the lakes reminded him of his aunt, placid and cool but always waiting to swallow you; he concluded that they made him 'hydrophobic'. His vehemence was, well, rabid. And canoeing was vetoed. One guy said that it was very obvious that the weather gods wanted us to get along to the adjoining park and play. Moreover, he asserted, it is high time we teach the yankees that football is to be played with the foot. We did not quite see how the divine ordainment was obvious but we relished the prospect of teaching the Americans a way of doing things. We proceeded to the park.

A group of Indians were playing cricket. We stopped to see them. It is in our culture to go and join in if cricket is played in the street, in a stadium, in the park, anywhere at all. That was exactly what one of the guys echoed. A couple of Americans passers-by stopped beside us to watch the game of cricket, their curiosities kindled by a game that seemed to resemble one of their own but did not quite. “I can’t see any bases!” one of them remarked. “Where are the bases?” he sought an explanation, indignant. The irreverence to cricket must have irritated the guys. For a piqued fellow in our group shot back, “Look behind your selves!” We decided cricket was not the game we would play here.

The fellow who had initially exhorted us to play cricket now said that he wouldn’t dream of playing cricket in a land of base people. We decided we had had enough, and if we had to play anything, it would have to be football (with the foot).

The next fifteen minutes we were into serious football which all of us played with a zealous commitment (apart from playing it with our feet). I passed the ball to the left flank, who dashed forward with a savage energy. He dribbled past a couple of people until he was almost face to face with the goalkeeper. He then tried to kick one so hard that the ball would drill a hole through the goalkeeper and crash into the goal. Instead he ended up kicking over the ball, his leg kicking thin air. He ended up getting on top of the ball and executing a balancing act, before nose-diving into the ground with a ‘thud’. The ball rolled out of the field of play slowly, nonchalantly.

Outward nonchalance often sheathes in its cloak of assurance imminent catastrophes. I went up to the fellow to clarify if he had been tutored anytime by the person who performed impressive pyrotechnics in the local circus. But something else caught my attention. I saw him wincing in acute pain, clutching his left ankle. It was only after an excited crowd had gathered around him that we managed to find out that he was seriously injured. His ankle had swollen to the size of brinjals -- I mean the ones you get in the US -- and he had to be carried away to the hospital. He couldn’t walk!

The four of us who had bundled him to the health clinic dropped him in a chair in the lounge and screamed, “Emergency!” (The lesser said about the baby in the perambulator nearby which began to shriek in excitement the better. Even lesser said about the mother who woke up with a fit, swore at us most unchristian expletives and collapsed back into her seat, even better.) The nurse at the nearest desk motioned us to come over.

We seated him and shouted in a chorus that the case was an emergency. In response, she handed out a sheet – a questionnaire – to him. He let out a sound that I thought I had heard more often from puppies when they suffered from tummy-aches. The first question read: “Rate your pain on a scale from one to ten.” He seemed to just lose it there; he was flabbergasted. He thundered, “What do you mean! On a scale of one to ten! What the hell is ten?” She elaborated slowly, unruffled, “Imagine the greatest pain you have ever felt.” “Hark,” he cut her short, “imagine I were to pinch you till two layers of your skin peel away. Do you imagine that?” The nurse shrieked in alarm. “How would you rate that, on a scale of one to ten?” “Maybe six!” she gasped, trying to regain her composure. “What! That would be SIX?” he thundered, “My foot!” (“Hmm. Actually looks like the ankle,” a wisecrack from behind reparteed.) “Well, then I shall rate my pain,” he vengefully declared. He snatched the paper from her, thought intensely for a moment like only engineers can think, and furiously scribbled down his rating. The nurse stole a glance at the answer and, in a fit of disgruntlement, almost tore up the paper. I am sure she felt the pinch; the paper read 8Pi/3!

The nurse refused to lend his pleas her ear until more questions from the questionnaire were read and all of them answered. The fellow wrote down his answers in a tired scrawl, allowing himself the luxury of the odd grumble. The nurse took the completed questionnaire, surveyed it briefly (for more quirky answers, I thought) and took a deep breath. All of us heaved sighs of relief. He was breathing heavily.

“You are all set now for an examination,” she assured him. “But wait! Before we proceed for an examination, I just need your name and names of two emergency contacts. Okay, first, what’s your name?”

“Subramanian Shivaramakrishnan,” he replied.

“Shoe-bra-what?” she stopped and stared at him suspiciously.

“It is Subramanian Shivaramakrishnan.” he reiterated, in pain.

“Could you please spell it out for me, slowly?” she began to plead, by now desperate.

“S-u-b-r-a-m-a-n-i-a-n S-h-i-v-a-r-a-m-a-k-r-i-s-h-n-a-n”

“S-u-b-r-a-m-a-n-i-a-n S-h-i-v-a-r-a-m-a-k-r-i-s-h-n-a-n. Is that right?” she counterchecked, biting her pen-cap. She read it once, choked on the pen cap and made a snatch at the glass of water on the table.

“Whew! That is some name! Now will you please give me the names of two of your friends as emergency contacts?”

The poor fellow, by now, did not have to be told that his fate would have been better at the hands of the wrestlers in the local wrestling arena, who had no necks.

“Anand Thiruchandhoor Venkatanarayanan,” he feebly mustered.

“I don’t need names of three of ‘em,” she interjected solicitously, “give me just two.”

“Oh! That is merely the full name of the first person,” a fellow from behind grinned, “Oh, it is spelled A-n-a-n… Couldn't you please take it down faster?”

She was staggering back onto her seat, apoplectic.

***

And I would rather not tell you that it was twenty more minutes before my friend’s leg was so much as given a look. When he came out of the examination room, with crutches, his feet plastered in a cast and left shoe hanging from the waist, he looked a crippled wreck.

The cast, crutches and all cost around a fortune. He thanked God he was insured, but momentarily found out that he would still have to shell out a sizeable fraction of that amount. And he had to have an X-Ray taken after a week.

The X-Ray suggested that his bones were intact. It also suggested his fortunes, especially with the dollar, were not particularly good. The injury was merely a swelling and needed no cast or crutches. No bones were broken and he made no bones about it. He still claims that the nurse did not exactly relish the thought of his pinches and hence made sure that he paid for his meanness. Literally. But we have not given our ears to the nurse's version. We must leave the matter open.

But, often, issues of the wallet get to the head. One of these days, you might just chance upon an unshaven ragamuffin standing by the pavement of Oak Street with a tattered cloth-bag, using a pair of crutches, his left leg in a cast and the left shoe hung around his waist, and using them to a good effect...

- posted by Dileepan @ 3:29:00 pm

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