Tamil-English Part 1

Thanks to my friend, Mangai, I no longer have to struggle to figure out what to write on this blog. Fungi-Mangai, for that has been her nickname since the time we first met in the dusty classrooms of Alagappa Chettiar College of Technology more than 9 years ago, has a blog: http://rainbows-ahead.blogspot.com/

She's got into the habit of blogging once in a while in Tamil. I've got into the habit of reading, very laboriously, these Tamil blog-posts. Why do I love reading her Tamil blogs? For one thing, it is the type of Tamil I more or less understand, rather than the high falootin', literary type of Tamil in textbooks. Plus, she uses English words once in a while, which I grab on to with the fervor of a novice swimmer being thrown a lifeline while swimming in deep waters.

Anyway, the first post I read is called "Chennai". Lovely! Land of my heart (and pools of my sweat!), how I miss you! I know why she wrote about Chennai. There was a reunion of our batch from the above-mentioned AC Tech on the 15th of August this year and she had attended it. When I say "our batch", I don't just mean our class of 50 from the Biotechnology course. I mean, our batch of more than 200, who belonged to Leather Tech, Textile Tech, Chem Engg and Biotech. We had classes, all 200 of us crammed into one large (and dusty, as previously noted) room together, in our first semester. What were these classes, you ask? How could all these disparate courses have anything in common? Well, you're right. They don't. That's why we took classes in subjects that had nothing to do with any of these subjects, but that were considered mandatory for anybody graduating with an engineering degree. Weird, no?

These core classes were: Engineering Mechanics, Engineering Drawing, Physics, Advanced Mathematics, Technical English, and worst of all, Workshop, which consisted of 1.5 months each of Filing, Welding and Carpentry. Well, to be honest, Workshop was kind of fun. It was the viva-voce examination in Workshop that was truly terrible. I was rather good at filing, welding was a piece of cake- the instructor would come and hold your hand (if you were a girl, that is) and do the welding (he liked holding girls' hands.... we didn't mind, since we could get out of the class quickly. Boys had to wait in line, till we girls finished "welding" and then had to do the stuff by themselves. It was not easy being a girl in Chennai, but there were advantages)- and carpentry was the worst. You had to pick a piece of wood, saw it to the right size, file (or something like that) THAT to make it look neat, and then saw it to make all sorts of joints- T joint is the only one I recall. Anyway, that was not fun. A classmate called Mohammed, God bless him, helped me do all my carpentry- "help" meaning that I would pick my piece of wood and struggle with doing anything with it for the whole hour of the class, then he would come by, and do whatever had to be done with it in 15 minutes and hand it in under my name. Nice of him.

In addition to these classes, we all had to choose one of the following- National Social Service, National Cadet Corps or National Sports Organization- to be a part of, for one year. Most of us lazy buggers chose the NSO, since all that meant was you had to jog every day and participate in some kind of activity that passed for sports. Earnest, hardworking folk joined the NSS and truly macho chaps (and tough gals) joined the NCC. I believe Ram, as a student, had joined NCC. I would have been totally impressed by this, but somehow I cannot imagine him shooting at anybody or following orders, so I think he must have, somehow, talked his way out of any hard work.

So anyway, that was what we all underwent together and I suppose it created a good sort of bond.... that after 9 years, there was a reunion, which, going by the pictures, looks to have been fairly well attended.

Long intro to what I actually wanted to talk about- which was Mangai's post. Let me get to that in Part II

Godawful waste of time

That, in a nutshell, is the movie 'Dostana'.

Why do I watch movies that are
a)at least 3 years old, and b) have already proved to be huge flops
and then curse the movie for wasting my time and then, waste some more time by writing a review on it that nobody will read?

I do not have time for this. I will shut up and head back to lab.

But really man. What a horrible, terrible, awful... wait, let me make this list alphabetical.... awful, atrocious, horrendous, horrible, silly, stupid, terrible movie.

Why did I watch it? WHY???

NO MORE HINDI MOVIES..... until Aamir Khan comes up with his next one. Which, come to think of it, is today.

Hmmm...