Don't Mess with Me, I Am Too Smart!

Oh, no! Blogger hasn't come out of beta, at least, for me. My blog is too big. Being claimant to the title of the "Longest Running Blogger" in the Limca Book of Indian Records, I have almost 450 posting over the past three years - that is more than some collablogs - starting from August 2003.

That makes my blog too big to be transformed in the Blogger scheme of things. So they have deferred it. Waaaaah! Instead of making my face droop, I should make my New Year resolutions.

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There is a lot of staring in the train on the way to work. I don't like the way they stare in trains. I guess people hate each other and tempers are at the boiling over point. A man objected to another man leaning against him.

"I am only taking the support of this seat here."

"Why can't you stand straight like everyone else," this with a Telugu accent.

"If I lean on you, you would be like a football," this with a thick Malayali accent.

"I am saying why don't you stand straight and read your paper? Your paper is tickling my nose."

"Why don't you take your book away from my face. This is not your train, if you want to be comfortable take a taxi, understand this before opening your mouth."

The other man is quite and they glare some more at each other and resume their journey. A man is listening to music on a mobile phone and talking into another. A man is fiddling with his laptop. Another is chanting some mantra from a small pocket-sized book, another is koochie-kooing with his beloved. That's my daily commute.

"Hell is the other man," said Jean Paul Sartre. Yes in the first class compartment to work, it really is. It never was this way before the bombs went off. We were a nice bunch of friends, casual acquaintances who would say hello when we met outside. No more. We are rivals, enemies, staring at each other, murdering each other with our eyes, hating the man who pushes us even a little, and woe to the one who step on our toes, we go all out and demolish him.

Kilos of flesh, there are kilos of flesh, fat, overfed, tumbling from belts, packing the jaws and necklines, the stomach and the backside, flopping, flipping, in this very Indian ethos of the middle-class, wage-earning, degree-holding, software-MBA-BPO-ized humanity travelling to work and back. And they are smart and competitive as hell. "Understand this before opening your mouth," that is like a Malayali, sharp-tongued and not to be taken for granted.

It clearly says this, "Don't mess with me, I am too smart."