Runaway train

A lot has been happening in my life lately, and at the same time a lot has not been happening too. I ace my driving road test in snowy conditions but following that my search for my 'dream' car continues to frustate me. The 'dream' for now is to get a car within my extremely limited budget which I like but every time I narrow my search to one, I find that it has 'just' been sold! This has happened so many times in the past week that it is beyond belief! I have given up trying for a couple of days to get rid of the bitter taste of frustation in my mouth, but hope to get back on the search soon. Meanwhile I have outsourced that job to my cousin who has picked it up with a vengeance. I hope he has better luck than I do!

Instead I watched Gustave the Giant Crocodile on YouTube about 3 times already. A bigger waste of time I can't imagine but it's way better than to cycle through dozens of cars, look up their maintenance histories, estimated prices and then hit the stone wall of rejection. I'd rather watch a huge crocodile in East Africa, reputed to have killed 300 people fall into a trap designed for him and then make a miraculous getaway. It's similar to the feeling you get when you see Hannibal Lecter get away in "Silence of the Lambs", except that in this case Hannibal Lecter doesn't spout psychology and then eat people. This Dr. Lecter is 25 feet long and just eats people up-front without engaging in any kind of conversation.

I also re-activated my Facebook account thanks to the stubbornness of my American friends who refuse to use anything more practical like Orkut. The interface of Facebook has to be the most unattractive display I've ever seen with that sick pale blue colour and an aesthetic look like it was designed deep in some laboratory of communist Russia. And then there is the inexplicable requirement to be friends with someone before you can browse their profiles. Hey, I don't want to be friends with someone without something to jog my memory about who they are and why they want to network with me. On the other hand, thanks to the "Are you interested?" app on my profile (Don't ask me how I signed up, it's for another day), I get a list of 5 matches daily whom I might be 'interested' in. By the logic of their software, I ought to be a good match with Pratibha from Hanumangarh never mind the thousands of miles in between. The distance is immaterial in case of true love. If Facebook profile photos is any indicator, 99% of the girls in India are beautiful and the rest are not on Facebook. Oh, Facebook now also thinks I'll take a liking to Ishita from B'lore, or Satarupa from Calcutta and XYZ from ABC (I am sure I am the ONLY guy who has all these 'interesting' girls lined up for me)... It's a whole world of beauty out there and here I am hiding away from it all. What is really hard to tell is that which fear is holding me back- the fear of failure or the fear of success.

So you see there is a lot on my mind and if I give this post a little more time, there's more to disclose. But it's time to go to work and knock this runaway train off the tracks for everyone's well being.

Mixed nuts

The full moon has to have something to do with madness because there is no other way to justify our actions. We had an invite to an American pal's house on a Saturday night party. The invite didn't give any further permissions to take our clothes off and roll about in the snow which is what we proceeded to do. Alcohol might have been one of the minor reasons but it was mostly the (hopefully temporary) upsurge of abnormality that pushed us off the edge.

We arrived in the most traditional fashion with a pack of 12 Sam Adams longnecks to our friend Mark's cabin in the woods. Located somewhere in the woods of Freetown, Massachusetts, this was how the house of a outdoors man like Mark should've been. It was old American Indian territory with snow encrusted huge trees and frozen lakes as was expected at this stage of an especially bitter Massachusetts winter. The snow of the past few months lay in piles all around.

We walked into the cozy pinewood cabin you can imagine with a stove for extra warmth, a golden glow I had only seen in houses shown in the movies, Pink Floyd themed decorations and classic rock throbbing from the army of speakers. A few beers and a couple of shots of tequila later, we were prime targets for the casual inciter. Before we understood the implications of our public announcements, we were already in only our shorts and a towel on our shoulders. There was no turning back now.

Walking out into the yard semi-naked as we were, there was a spring in our steps. Like I said, it must be the moon playng its strange tricks on the mind without which there were no grounds for excitement. We were about to soak ourselves in a hot bubble bath in the centre of the yard and then flounce about in snow at least 3-4 days old. In the yard of a little house on the back of beyond, nothing was too much; nothing seemed to faze us any longer.

So we did do the incomprehensible. We drank beers and smoked in the supreme comfort of the bubble bath and then proceeded to wiggle about in pretty tough snow. Thrice... So what's the out-take of all this apart from bruised knees and elbows? Well, for one there is the wicked sensation of pleasure and pain clubbed together quite sado-masochistic in nature. As for why? Someone once asked George Mallory, the famous mountaineer why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest. Mallory's reply was brief but complete. He said "Because it's there."