Showing posts with label strange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strange. Show all posts

Sunday, February 7, 2010

How can you be optimistic?





What a question to ask? I like to think of myself as an optimist
because most of the time when things are at their lowest I like to think "OK not much we can do here, let's see how we can move on"...because if you keep viewing the glass as being half empty, that seems to be an awfully dreary way to go through life.
K however has another opinion. She's just a kid, 2 years younger than me but only a year junior in college...as Tranquil Roomie's cousin, we get together and bug my poor TR for her various amusing foibles. She's a sweet thing, all rough and tough on the outside but a real marshmallow when it comes down to it. She runs. Whenever you see her, she seems somewhat furtive, always running away from some one, trying to blend in to the background despite distinctly fair skin and dead straight black hair. And she runs. Fast. out of our hostel. To the gate, For the food. Away from the food. She's seated with me on the ledge today...and we're talking as usual about our different views on life, she being the eternal hard-as-nails pessimist. You should not be optimistic she says, because there's nothing good in life! Ah but there is I say! No there isn't says this budding Bhuddist.
I tell her that people like her build walls around themselves so they cna't get hurt and she retorts with somehting very interesting...they get hurt too, may be even more so that others. But they don't want to get hurt further so they shut off. And she runs she says, to escape...because she has something at the back of her mind which says that if she runs fast and long enough, she'll find a place where all her problems disappear :(


Friday, August 14, 2009

Ye Holy Date

Trust my dad to know any Priest within a 5oo mile radius of himself. He told me during a Skype session recently that he'd got in touch a with a priest from Banaglore who was doing some time (ha ha!) in Colombo but would be returning soon.
Obviously the "daughter in India" was spoken about, the number was given etc. And of course I was told to "call him no putha when you have time".

I have to say the reason I called the priest (henceforth knows as Father) as fast as I did was because my good dad had told me he headed a Senior Citizens Home and I needed to get some elders to fill in a couple of questionnaires for a Psycho project.

Anyway, Father sounds very sweet on the phone and all that and we set up our "holy date"-I'll go to his church and from there he'll take me to an Elder's Home he knows(he does not head one, MY father as usual got his well-meaning wires crossed!)

After an amusing Auto ride during which I got semi-lost (I don't/can't do directions/roads)and spoke to my non-Hindi speaking Auto guy in broken Hindi, I reached.

I have a little game I play as I wait to meet someone for the first time. Based on what I know, what they sound like etc I build up a mental image...so that I can see how wonderfully off the mark I almost always am!

And boy oh boy! Father was not late 30's, stocky, close-cut haired or adult-acned!
Here is this tall,highly presentable, earl-30's guy in civvies!
So, Father says we can take off for the Home now...hang on he'll go get the bike.

BIKE?!

Holy Cow!Because,

a. I have never ridden a freaking bike before. and
b. Ride on the back of the bike with a Priest?!!
c. in Civvies?!

Father is now aviatore-d and helemt-ed and on the freaking bike. Oh get on he says, in a kindly pastor way. I explain that I have never done that before but it doesn't seem to bother him overmuch...so I eye the seat behind him and think that may be I should sit side-saddle, this might be more demure right? It's a PRIEST for God's sake!
Then father very helpfully says no I think you should sit astride...OKAY THEN!
i swing my leg over the seat and settle by bottom behind the clergyman's....And oh god I was sure I was going to fall off, and if I do what do I hold on to? I can't exactly wrap my arms around Father's trim waist!

I grope around behind me and find some wire-rack thing to hang onto finally and WHOOSH! we're off! And the mortification,the sheer, unadulterated mortification, the momentum of the take-off makes me semi-grasp Father's shoulder!
I heave a deep, internal sigh.

Poor Father suggests that i can hang on to the wire rack. i die.

So Father and I on our mo-bike speed away across the crowded streets of Bagalore to the Home...I spend the first few minutes cringing...My God what if someone sees?! but Father is a real sweetheart and gets me talking about school and family and all that and soon I'm enjoying my very first bike ride...with none other than the freaking clergy!!

Beat that :D

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