Ironical

This week marked my successful maneuver, beating Nintendo and their artificial "always in demand" status of Wii. I'm importing, (Yeah! Import!!) it from the land of the jalapenos, ara-nijaar wearing desi makkal (read mama and mami's) and of course, where my man (Barack Obama coems afetr this guy, really! :D)lives. The doode is of most nicest person I've come across and has bought and shipped it through someone I know. I'm scheduled to get it on Saturday morning - Can't wait to lay my mega sized hands on it!!

This marks my completion of all the acquisitions which I had in mind when I graduated - a new car, iPhone, Wii and a collection of Ray-Ban shades. The post is titled ironical for the fact that the one thing which I wanted to buy when I landed here in the US - a memory foam mattress does not figure in the list anymore. I remember the times when I used to skip visiting any relatives where I had to sleep on any other surface other than a mattress - my mom's parents house comes to mind first (they had some kind of joint family system and so, me being the oldest kid on my mom and dad's side had to be the sacrificial goat - sleep on the floor, eat last, act mature (!!!!) pondra pala kodumaigal!) and then our native place near here. The annual trip was a great ritual in our family - as per our family kadhai, my great grandfather found the moolavar and utsavar moorthy's of Maha Vishnu, Boodevi and Sridevi while supervising ploughing at his fields. He waged a long battle with the Sarkar (no, not Amitabh Bachchan!) and the powers that be and with his influence with Chakaravarthi Rajagopalachari, my great grandfather got to build a temple for Varadaraaja Perumal at our village. My grand father, in spite of his busy official commitments made it a point to see that the temple never passed into the Hindu Aranilaya Thurai and our family has been maintaining the temple through annual family visits and post my grandfather's death, my dad making a bi weekly 1000km trip to the place to remodel, rebuild and keep the temple running. And really, of all the disappointments I've been doling up to my dad since long - IIT Oothals, 12th flop show, SVCE Fiasco and failing to get a call letter in CAT inspite of seemingly eye popping percentile scores, his biggest grouse has been my agnostic attitude and stubbornness in never going (coming?) back to India, for good. This aversion to taking responsibility of the temple stems from the fact that I had to make do with no mattress and live in (to me) inhuman conditions of taking bath in the river which flowed in the kollaipuram of our veedu and with no TV beyond DD and of course, sleeping on the oonjal or near the miththam with no mattress or AC made me loathe those annual trips, which invariably happened during my and my sister's annual holidays meant those trips resembled a trip to prehistoric times - with over Bhakthi makkal at home, no fan and near frying temperatures. The only fun thing was the evening swim in the temple pond - which was racistically named "paapar kolam" (rough translation: Brahmin Pond) as my great grandfather funded the digging, it was called as it is.

With such a love for mattresses (my room back in India was characterized by a 4 feet high bed - because of the fact that there was 3 twin mattresses stacked for comfort), it surprising that I've ended up sleeping on the couch - almost every night these days end up with me sleeping after watching this or this. No mean feat given the fact that fitting my extra large frame in to a regular couch requires some talent. Its a different story that each and every morning, its a struggle once I wake up - with stiff neck and back and cramped legs! But still I think the mattress is nowhere on my list of potential takeovers for now. Such is the vagaries of time! :P


P.S: Task List for the long weekend is to play the guitar solo of this and score a 250 plus score in the bowling game in Wii. I know getting to 200 in the real deal is a difficult task for me with a penchant to gutter every turkey opportunity. The last task item would be run 15 miles in 3 days - the rough equivalent of a half marathon which this guy, also called Math Pult from Michigan - Ann Arbor inspired me to attempt