Monday 13 July 2009

Push me into a corner, why don't you?

Confusion has been widespread re: my physical location.

Questions such as "Where are you?" abound - questions that I interpret as deep philosophical conundrums and answer, in brief, in my characteristically succint manner, with something like:

"Well, see, back in January, right after the Mumbai (Half) Marathon, we moved apartments in Mumbai. Mostly because I was sick of my 10 minute commute. I could then walk to work. Monster could walk to school, accompanied ably by me. Then I had typhoid. It was a surreal experience. When February came and when it went I know not, as a consequence. March brought with it March heat, which, on hindsight, is the type of heat you have in hillstations in comparison to what I am facing now. Which brings me to the fact that, back in May, we moved again. This time across the breadth of the country, as opposed to the January situation when we just crossed the road. After a night spent in the outskirts of Hyderabad, we found ourselves in Chennai. Which essentially tells you that right now I am in Chennai. And that its hot as ever here. Last night, after a bout of cooking, smoke was coming out of my ears literally, egged on by the fact that I cut some chillis and possibly rubbed some chilli-skin on my ears. So, to answer your question in about two hundred words, I am in Chennai. See the blog name above?"

"Why?" is another question that is asked often.

"I moved to Chennai in order to solve The Hindu crossword"

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I already knew all that!
I am good at following stuff.

PSS; You forgot to add.learning Tamil(why you call Tamizh is there a difference, Chennai speaks Tamil or no?) in addition to doing the crosswords

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

asaaan, thanks dear. i am just making a post out of nothing, as usual.
tamil is actually tamizh meaning that the last 'l' is a different letter that is (as far as I know) unique to this language. does not matter much, its one of those things i do, like I write it as colour and honour and dont own a microwave oven.

Anonymous said...

whoa! what's with linking up all the way to the marathon...

shoudn't you warn us non-exercising blokes with an alert or something...

*am already outta breath*

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

MiM :-) Stop it. The year has been just so crazy so simple things make me go a long way back in my head. Plus I dont have the pithiness gene you see.

wordjunkie said...

Also the Hindu is supposed to have the best (read toughest) Sudoku. And this decent monthly literary review.Good enough reasons to move to Chennai, methinks.Now if only one did not have to meet aunts and such..

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

WJ,
my mother was allotted the Sudoku. but now i can take a shot at it I suppose. Lit. Rev. is a nice one. I like Young World too (the one who is actually young is not that keen on it, however).
Thankfully, no aunts. :)

Choxbox said...

me too - dont own a microwave oven. mebbe its the mess grub kenny - it altered some genes.

and you get hindu in bengalooru too. we have a whole pile of the last n months young world. it is re-read when all books have been read the n+1 th time.

net net shift the campus here.

Choxbox said...

when you move back to mumbai, will you call the blog
'the blog formerly known as the blog formerly known as musings from mumbai'?

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

by rights, i should name it a symbol next.

bengalooru. hmm. its a tough one. there *is* a campus there, but one balks at the thought of working there, unfortunately.

Serious Lounger said...

err.. hindu is basically Chinese Times.. and yeah, the their crossie was fairly okay, but i guess in editorially quality it has depreciated significantly... and there is only one Hindu and that is in Chennai, all other editions are cheap imitations :D :P..

Preeti Aghalayam aka kbpm said...

sl- i go straight to the crossword and ignore all other parts of the paper so i am good. as many read-ons and anagrams as fifteen years ago when i last used to solve them.

dipali said...

Kenny, I took the Chennai edition of The Hindu for nearly three years after moving to Kolkata! Kolkata recently started its own edition, which is depressing because it doesn't offer all the lovely supplements the Chennai one did.
The only disadvantage was that the Chennai paper would reach us a day or so late, which meant one remained in a happy Chennai-centric time warp.
But, in the interests of our retaining a wee bit of synchronicity with the news in general(which we read very little of, sadly), we shall not revert:(

Some year you had, babe!