The Pepper Spray Story...

Yesterday's topic at RJ Kanmani's show was "Should we use pepper spray in Chennai?" - Well good question. I didn’t really listen to the answers but immediately drifted away into my own Pepper Spray Story! I used to carry Pepper spray in my bag when i was in the US.
I was staying with a couple of girls in a shared apartment and had my colleagues staying in and around the same area. One of my friends who helped me find the apartment was finally wrapping up his tasks at work and was getting ready to get back to India. In order to give him a good farewell another common friend invited both of us for dinner. In the evening after work, we walked to our friend's place and settled down when suddenly he remembered that he had to pick up his last set of clothes from the nearby laundry. He promised to be back in ten minutes ..sharp! All of us started setting up the dinner table and waited for him to arrive. 10 minutes became an hour but no sign of him. His phone was not reachable and we waited impatiently!
He came back after 2 hours, sick! His eyes swollen, wounds on his cheeks, his stomach was hurting bad and his cuts on the face were bleeding! He was MUGGED! The laundry was in the parallel road and 2 huge guys had attacked him while he was returning and tried to take away his purse and cell phone! He started screaming for help and the more he screamed, the more they punched him. Finally somebody spotted him on the road and called 911. The 2 guys fled after they got what they wanted and left him stranded on the road. The Cops and ambulance arrived soon and he went through emergency medication and filed a police complaint.

All of this happened at the door step of my friend's house and none of us heard it or saw it!

We freaked out and were in a state of shock. We lost our hunger and all we could think of is his safety! We booked a cab from her place to his place (which is the parallel road again). We had no courage to walk on that road in the dark again! Everybody around us looked suspicious (the Cab driver included)! I dropped him home and went to my place, Shivering with fear in cold weather!
We went to the nearby hospital next morning, got him checked and confirmed no severe injuries and bid him farewell at the airport! I must mention, the entire team in the US called and checked on him (Including our CEO). It was heart filling to see the care people showed around us.

I was strictly instructed with the following things after this incident:
- A pepper spray in my bag ALWAYS
- Nothing more than $5-$10 in my purse.
- When mugged, don’t scream - just surrender and give money or spray the pepper!

A lesson learnt and an incident which can never be forgotten! RJ Kanmani is surely reminding me of a lot of things through her not-so-commonly-spoken-about topics :)

Steal from your own house?

As I was getting ready for work today I tuned into "Radio Mirchi" to listen to some new Tamil tracks. The RJ Kanmani was talking and calling out the question of the day to all her viewers (actually hearers? Whatever!), and the question was "Have you ever tried to steal from your own house anytime in your life?" – First, I found this question a little silly, why would anybody in their right minds steal from their own house, and second, if they did, why will they confess so publicly? But hearing the number of people calling back and answering made me really think about the question! One girl called and said " I needed pocket money and I stole Rs.500 from the rice box" and another one, "I picked up the change from the dining table" and many more such callers! So I started to think, did I ever steal anything from my own house? For some reason, I immediately remembered one of the stories Mom had narrated to me, an incident which happened when I was small.
I was a small kid, probably still wearing diapers and chewing toys! My sister was a little older and was probably in her kindergarten. Mom used to store all my diapers (remember we had cloth diapers those days) in a small aluminum box. One fine day, Mom dressed me up after a nice bath and in few minutes I was crying. Crying really bad. Mom had no clue what was going on! (I wasn't the crying types apparently). To her surprise, she spotted ants on my clothes! Red Ants! The ants had bit me so bad and I had no choice but to just keep crying. She did some investigation and found that all my clothes in that aluminum box had red ants and lots of cashews!!! Cashews?? How did it get here? My sister then confessed that, she loved cashews and she used to keep the extra ones for later. All those extra cashews she hid in my beloved clothes box and finally forgot to eat them! My Parents appreciated her "storing for future" idea and gave her cashews as a prize :)
This is no way the answer to Kanmani's question of the day, and I was surely not going to call her and narrate this either. It just struck my mind as I was thinking of my own stealing moments.
Enjoy the story as I still think on what I stole from my own house..

Pleasant Surprise

My day has not been one of the best ones today. I have been a little low on mood and gloomy as the outside weather for almost 24 hours now and don't know what else to do to cheer up. Loud music, browsing old photos, Facebook-ing, playing TT or having numerous teas - none of them have helped. And suddenly, I get a pleasant surprise from Mr.Krishnan :)
Krishnan and I know each other for more than 6 yrs and have had a similar career so far. We joined iNautix together and never looked back. I am not really close to him and we have treated each other as acquaintances and the only time i would see his emails in my inbox is either when there is a Sev-1 ticket on me or it's my birthday :)
But today, for a change, he sent me this email which brought a big smile on my face (imagine my grin from left to right ear). It was the least expected email but the timing was just so good. I am telling you, this guy is gonna be a big blogger someday ;) (I have been paid for advertising about him, don’t get carried away ;)..) Jokes apart, I really loved this email and with his permission I take the pleasure of pasting it below:

Subject: Revelations from a gtalk status bar msg..
Message:
A hectic day at work... thanks to the benevolent folks at the Electricity Board, for switching off power in the middle of the night and giving the mosquitoes an opportunity to sing me a lullaby... dozed off at around close to 3 AM in the morning, after battling with the test environments and doing deployments and configurations and even designing a pet rocket to be launched into space on the day of 2012 (lol.. just kidding...), woke up to the distant voices of mum.. who yelled.. "Kannaaaaaa time's 8... get up.."... dad timidly walked into my room just to re-iterate the fact that i was running late... finally after playing the waiting game for the Rain Goddess to be kind enough to cease "fire" (if you can call it that way, that is...) walked into work at 11 in the morning... then the work starts.. you bother developers.. developers bug you... help people with scripting.. clear doubts.. take unofficial project requests from people and get their work done as well... decided to take a break... (nope the smoke breaks werent helping either)...
logged into gmail, to check out what the spammers had to say to me today.. (they are the only ones who very caringly mail me everyday....) saw a link in your status message.. which said... "http://sak365.tumblr.com/" decided to check it out...
I must admit.. am impressed.. from an ordinary spilled over tea cup, to a fruit being voraciously gobbled up by a friend.. to a match box (yup the dil matchbox).. to the sign boards on your apartment entrance. .which said... "Stop complaining, someone stole the complaint register..".. lol (I found that really amusing).. you seem to have captured it all.. almost all of the funny moments of life.. which go so unnoticed thanks to the so called busy hectic work schedule... you seem to be getting better at it by the day sakina !!
Now that's made to start thinking as well.. have you just now switched on the "Eureka Eureka" bulbs and showed me a new hobby... lol.. will ponder over that for a couple of days, before i eventually bore myself out of the contemplation and decide to either take it or ditch it... hehehe..

Kudos !! That was a nice relaxing 30 mins of album walk.. if I could say so, that is...

Thanks & Regards
Krishnan Mahadevan

Thanks Krishnan, am flattered and honored and what not...You made my gloomy day bright! :-)

You!

YOU guide me and confide in me
YOU motivate me and irritate me
YOU let me BE, and be to the fullest.
YOU allow me to make mistakes and help me correct them.
YOU stay at work all night when I need to do a night out.
YOU drive me nuts and you drive me around the city too.
YOU are an indispensable part of my life and you complicate my life too.
YOU let me listen to my kind of music, even if its something you hate listening to.
YOU take away my troubles by just making that funny face.
YOU are my weakness and my strength
YOU add logic to my senseless emotions.
YOU are a pain and the medicine to a lot of my pains!
Being with YOU is like being with a Best friend.
I love YOU!