Written on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 by Rohan Koshy
This list by no means complete or exhaustive but for now these are few things i can remember.I think ill add to it as time rolls on
* The Death of two loved ones(2 years apart)
In death, life becomes clear. The sudden death of a loved one (twice) has shaken me beyond belief. The fragility of life has dawned upon me. It makes me cling to the ones i love with all i have now.It truly has changed my life.
* Love and pain
The first relationship is always a roller coaster. It sure was with me. Simultaneously being the most beautiful thing to happen to me and one of the most painful, it was an exquisite mix of emotions for 18 months.I have never learnt more than through the terrible pain and incredible joy of those days.
*Unrequited Love
The Second time.Mature Love this time. Unrequited. wow it hurt.
*Google
Knowledge is power. Google is power. At your fingertips.
*My Splendor (Technically my friend's bike)
Ill never forget that motorcycle. The freedom. The feeling. I love it . Eternally indebted to my best friend.
*Running
My heart pounding and thoughts overflowing. Rhythmic motion and Motionless at the same time. May be the best thing about myself I've discovered.
*The matrix
My favourite movie of all time. Smart filmmaking. I'm a fanatic.
*Books.
No not the stuff i learnt in school.The books i read out of self interest. Any page can change your thoughts for ever. Happens to me every second book i read.
*Coldplay
Favourite Band. Just awesome. The music that fixes my mood whenever i need to. That's powerful music.
*The Beepers.
Most people have 1 best friend . I have a whole gang. I consider myself lucky. Really lucky.Also included are my 2 best friends in Melbourne
*Getting 55 p.c marks in 6th semester.
Life will teach you the same lesson over and over again until you learn it. You can't move on to the next lesson until you've mastered the one you're presently taking.It taught me to get rid of the excuses.
*Manchester United and Real Madrid
My teams. i can see why guys would rather watch this than hang around with chicks sometimes. :-). No ..wait a tick.... even the chicks enjoy it now :)...!!
*Orkut and Yahoo messenger.
All my friendships have strengthened through these portals. One special friendship has started through orkut. I'm grateful.Whether my friends are in Pune, Australia or in the USA, they re never far away.
*My family.
Funny to say that my family has changed my life. It's the same for everybody i guess, but even so....a totally cool and relaxed family is a rarity nowadays.
*Living away from parents.
It's a lot of fun. It also gives you a new sense of respect for your parents. You realise what a pain the a** you can be to them sometimes. They don't even say anything.:). But seriously living with 3 other guys is just fun.
*Computer Games
Maybe the most time consuming activity in my life, I've gotten countless hours of enjoyment from games like Diablo2, starcraft, warcraft, Quake 3 (DM17!!), Unreal, half-life, Grand theft auto, Deus Ex, Splinter Cell, NFS and Half- life. Consider me a Gamer 4 life .
Written on Monday, May 21, 2007 by Rohan Koshy
My post bachelorism received a good response. So i thought I'd try and write a few more instances which showcase the apathy with which bachelors live sometimes .The perfect day was this last Saturday.It all started on Friday night when me and my roommate decided to go watch spider man-3 once and for all. We hadn't gotten tickets for the last two weeks and decided to be "Proactive" and do something about it. So we decided that come hell or high water we would watch the web-slinger on the big screen.So we go to sleep on Friday pretty proud of ourselves because of the fact that we actually made a decision.We would leave the house at 12 noon( in Chennai heat no less) and catch a 2.30 show hopefully.
Well Saturday morning came and we got up at 9.30 cos it got too hot to sleep. Now for the first time since we moved to Chennai me and my roommate decided that we'd go for a haircut just after we got up. We've NEVER ( i mean that) taken a decision that fast. We get up and realise that there is NO electricity. The heat has already started to irritate us now and having no fan is making me sweat like i was working at a blast furnace.Undeterred by the bad start to the day, me and friend go off and get a haircut . We're back home at 11 now and 1 hour to go.We decide to have a bath. There's only one problem. There's no water in the overhead tank!. Oh crap. Even so, all we have to do is switch on the motor which pumps water to the tank. But there's no God damn ELECTRICITY!!... so now we've both had a haircut and we're getting that feeling which you get just after you get a haircut and before having a bath. YUCK.Plus we're sweating in the heat... Now I'm really ticked off not to mention itchy.. it's 11.30.
I'm hungry too. So we decide to have something to eat so that if we're stuffing our faces we won't be cribbing so much. There's no milk, no bread and no damn BUTTER. i mean Come on! really. All the planets have really aligned today. We're really lazy i know but do we deserve such a magnitude of punishment?? :P. Damn you Murphy and damn your laws too.It's 12 now.
We decide to have lunch. We use a 20 litre can of water that we buy for 25 bucks for drinking purposes. We realise that today there's almost no water left.(of course there's no water TODAY) So we ask the guy who helps us to get another one. He says there are NO cans left. This pushes my mental state from "Ticked off" to " Really Pissed off". In case you can't keep up with all the tragedies till now, here's a recap :- we're itchy cos of the haircut, sweaty because apparently the Electricity board wants to show us what the stone ages were like, we're hungry because we're lazy and we have no water to either EAT OR BATHE. The best part is that if we hadn't had a haircut I'd have just gone for the movie without having a damn bath. But now i can't do that. So much for being PROACTIVE :P
My room mate decides that he'll make some Dal. But in keeping with the theme for the day we don't have enough water to actually make the Dal or any rice. We're almost going mental at this point. Suddenly a light bulb glows above my head and i realise we have 3 eggs in the fridge. Oh yeah. My roommate proceeds to make the omlette look like a masala dosa but who gives a crap. We eat like cavemen eating for the first time. We don't even have enough water to wash our hands properly.Then like the light at the end of the tunnel our helper guy shows up with a Can of Water!! oh yeah i almost decide to give him another 10 bucks. Yeah well almost. So now we have water to drink so we drink a lot just in case we wont' get any later. You never know ...the way this day is going.
When the options run out, everyone comes up with solutions. That's what happened. Now we've at least taken care of our food and drinking water situation partially. But we cant get to the movie till we have a damn bath. It's 2 now. We can still catch the show at 4 if we leave now. For the first time in my life i haven't had a bath even FOUR hours after a haircut.So i come up with a solution Einstein would be proud of (hehe). We buy ANOTHER CAN OF WATER FOR 25 BUCKS SO WE CAN BATHE WITH THE WATER!! How creative is that??? I swear we couldn't believe we're paying 25 bucks for a bath. But NECESSITY SABKI MAA HOTI HAI.So we did. I take the sanitized, triple purified( or whatever) water and fill one "balti" full so i can have a bath. I've never had a bath with such "pavitra pani" but now i feel as fresh as i can ever feel.I Check on my roommate and he's taken our creativity one step further. I had commented in the morning that freezer had so much ice formed that we couldn't put any bottles in it.So he decided CHIP OFF ALL THE ICE AND PUT IN THE BUCKET SO HE CAN HAVE A COLD WATER BATH.!!!That way even the freezer is clear or ice!. Damn. That really was something to see.So we were ecstatic. We went to see the movie. I didn't like it at all.. The review is maybe the next post.
Anyways that was really the day... i don't really know how to even end this.
Posted in
Necessity.
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Written on Monday, May 14, 2007 by Rohan Koshy
Over the last 2 years i have managed (somehow) to lose about 12 kgs of weight doing regular exercise..I have also managed to keep it off for the last six months not having exercised at all. While I'm not close to my ideal weight and still plump I'm pretty fit. A few friends have asked how i lost weight. They commented saying that "You have a lot of discipline".
The word discipline has got me thinking a lot. Over the years the word discipline has been battered into our brains by every adult figure that we know. The word suggests that you become adept at doing all those things (on time) that you actually don't want to do. I think of myself as lazy and indisciplined to the core. This is why when friends tell me that i have "discipline" i laugh straight back at them. I feel discipline (as it is perceived now) is an ugly word. Achievement has precious little to do with discipline and a lot to do with enthusiasm. I never go running or to the gym because i want to but because i LIKE to. That's it. That's all. That's the only reason. I don't get up and force myself to go. I look forward to it. Some people call that discipline. I call it following your heart. I'm not going trekking everyday to lose weight because i don't enjoy it as much as i do running.
This extends to all the areas of life i guess. The ones who study a lot may seem to have discipline but really they are doing what they WANT to do. It's not that they don't want to party away their lives, but that they want to do something and achieve something MORE than they want to party all the time. Ironically the only place u have to force yourself to do something is at school or college where your forced to learn some irrelevant subjects :-)
The thing is when some friends ask me what sort of exercise they should do to lose weight i tell them to do something they like. Play badminton or basketball or something. Sounds simple and it is. If someone doesn't like the gym why do they persist in going? You only end up quitting and feeling worse. I'm not really an achiever but I'm blessed to have some very ambitious and hard working friends. As i look at them i realise that they re good at those things which NATURALLY appeal to them. That's it. They all have off days but what gets them back doing it is just the fact that if they don't do it they can't live with themselves.
So i guess if u don't LIKE it, don't do it.
Posted in
Why Can't i?
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Written on Saturday, May 05, 2007 by Rohan Koshy
Ahh yes i feared that someday my present living conditions would reach the those shambolic levels of laziness that i would find it really funny to write about it. I live with three other bachelors. Maybe that's enough information for anyone. In case you don't read the rest of this post you can be comforted in the knowledge that all the cliches about bachelors that you've heard are all absolutely true. All those who are intent on wasting their life's moments can read on.
Hmmm where does one start. I think ill start with the fact that the house in a 2BHK row house with a multiple level terrace. The terrace allows for very relaxing beer drinking sessions on Saturday evenings. Usually these nights entail four bachelors venting their frustrations at generally everything that goes on in their life. That's the good news. Now comes the bad news. Well we can't start the bad news without a special mention to the ants and the dead cockroaches that inhabit our home. They live amongst us and enjoy a very nice comfortable stay while we pay their rent. The water we drink very often has ants (and their families) taking a nice swim
to save themselves from the heat. Dead cockroach wings can be found in many places since we kill the cockroaches and the ants eat everything leaving the wings. In essence we have a symbiotic relationship with them.
On every window and door we find that cobwebs have found a comfortable home, one they know will never be disturbed. Even the bedsheets that now serve as curtains have learnt to live with the cobwebs. Dust and dirt are everywhere, most notably changing the colour of the fan to what maybe now an indescribable colour. I'm not sure what the fan colour was originally.
The TV lies on the floor in a pocket of dust which of course will never be cleaned because we only clean dirt which is directly in line of sight. The washing machine has a unique position right next to the kitchen sink. So the same water that we use to wash our 'bartans' is the same that washes our clothes. The water after washing proceeds to directly flood our veranda. This has had a unique effect that plants i.e. weeds have started to grow right in the middle of the veranda thanks to the detergent rich output from the washing machine.
The switchboard for one the bedrooms lies out of it's socket exposing wires to anyone who doesn't like his life anymore ( i just sweeped of four ants off the computer table..). I've failed to mention that clothes lie everywhere since that is the only way we can keep track of where they are. So now my pants lie right next to my books for easy access. All the shaving equipment lies right on top of the fridge. I did buy a bulb (in January) because my bathroom light was out. I haven't fixed it yet...so i just have a bath in the dark at night. Next to my bed lies a bottle of water which was filled the last time when my old roommate moved out in November. I'm still not lazy enough to drink that water though.One of the bathrooms is dirty as hell. Thank god i use the one that's pretty clean.
Beer bottles lie in most areas of the house particularly on the roof. The only thing outnumbering it are the number of milk bottles. No wait the plastic bags and associated kachra outnumbers that too... We try to shove the all of it under the stairs...unsuccessfully of course...
Well that's as much that can really be said about home sweet home. Thank god nobody visits.
