Six Weird Things About Me

First time being tagged; thank you Vikas. I am supposed to list out six weird things about myself. So here they are. 

1. I love Uppittu (Upma) which most people detest. In fact it is disparaged as being 'concrete' in the gut.
2. As a kid, I never watched fight scenes in the movie (on TV) and ran out during the climax if there were fights or someone was about to die. Well, not anymore.
3. I cry during emotional scenes in a movie.
4. I can't ride a geared vehicle. 
5. I sleep hugging a pillow.
6. When I embark on something new and if someone criticises me, I abandon it forever.

Well, those are the weird aspects of me.

Visual Clutter of Mysore

Last week I had been to Bangalore with two friends and both of them were complaining of eye irritation while commuting through the traffic. As for me, I didn't experience it since I wear spectacles (as opined by one of them). Bangalore's traffic is choking the city, no doubt about it, absolutely.

Relatively, Mysore is blessed as there are no highrises and smoke, but as an amateur photographer I get irritated with all kinds of cables (electric, telephone, cable TV, etc) crisscrossing and marring the beauties of many heritage structures in Mysore. In older extensions of the city one can find that, like warp and weft, various cables have knit among themselves posing extreme risks to the neighbourhood. Add to it the modern aesthetic blunders called hoardings.

The emergence of large format digital printing at very low costs has triggered an explosion of mediocre and hideously designed posters and hoardings. Every nook and corner one can find a big hoarding carrying what seems like severed heads of local boys in bottom rows; above these a bigger row of severed heads of politicians and other prominent personalities are depicted. It looks as offerings of severed heads of buffalo and sheep to the Goddess Mariamma.

Town hall is surrounded by heritage structures like Amba Vilas Palace, Chamarajendra Circle (golden canopy circle), Krishnaraja Circle and Clock Tower. For any political rally Town-hall is the most preferred venue and eventually the two circles have to bear the brunt of these rallies in the form of buntings. Inspite of the Mysore City Corporation's rules that these two circles' beauty should not be desecrated by any person or organisation, every now and then one can see that the statues of Chamarajendra Wodeyar and Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar braving the sea of buntings that surround them.

Such things generously add to the visual clutter which is eating away at the rich and majestic beauty of Mysore.

Snore Galore

I remember, as kids we siblings were going to Gaavaacha-Amma's house at Nanjangud for a long break during both summer and Dasara-Deepavali vacations. We called our mother as 'Mommy' and paternal grandma as 'Amma.' There was Mommy's mother too and we had to call her with a different name to distinguish from the one Amma at home, so we called her Gaavaacha-Amma (G-Amma) meaning Amma from village (Gaav is village).

Well, at Nanjangud, the days were full of fun because there were tens of cousins and innumerable second cousins; we kids could wander from 7th cross to 14th cross wihtout the elders getting on our throes because many houses on those streets were those of our relatives and everyone knew all the kids. Whether catching flies with your palm or playing hide-n-seek, or carrom, or going to the water channel, or the tonga ride, everything was pure fun during the day. But the nights used to be a real torture.

G-Amma's was a big family of legendary snorers. Starting right from G-Amma, to her six sons and four daughters (including my Mom), every one snored like there's no tomorrow. Until sleep completely took me over I used to feel like I was thrown onto a platform of the busiest railway junction in the world. Like the tani-aavartana in a Carnatic music concert where the Mridanga, Ghata and Morching compete with each other, my Mom, G-Amma, and uncles roaringly competed to clinch the 'Best-Lung-Powered-Person-of-the-Night-Award'.

Every inhale of theirs was like an ascending thunder ending in a gradual exhale with a swishhh... Like London's Royal Philharmonic Society, the snorers snored in sync - if one inhaled, the other exhaled and so on. No sooner it hit sack, this well orchestrated snoring ensemble snored in all octaves. Add to this hullabaloo, the grandfather's clock ticked away as if mockingly counting each second of this audio torment. Sometimes the intensity of the snore would induce fright in me, suddenly the irritability gave way to scare and the sleep would slip away as my ear drums were bombarded relentlessly. The juggernaut of the night would eventually stop and before I knew I would be in the warm embrace of sleep.

Inspite of creating a racquet and disturbing others' sleep, the snorer himself is sound asleep. One feels like banging a snorer, I am no different and I used to resent snorers and cursed them. Also felt like pouring a pitcher of cold water on the snoring-beauty. But fate had some nasty things up its sleeve and nights took an ugly turn in my life. Few years back when I had to stay overnight at a friend's place I was in for a rude surprise. The next day as I was about to leave, my friend's Mom told me that my snoring at night was disturbing everyone. She was visibly very much irritated and it seemed like I was not welcome there anymore. I felt ashamed, angry and was in a shock.

I always thought ill of snorers and here I was, being told that I was not welcome because I snore. Well, that was not the only time I have been chastised for my ear-splitting night-calls, even others have shied away from sharing my room. Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde I transform into a roaring noice-monster in my sleep and hardly speak when awake.

So, beware! I snore.