Global Cooling, Y U NO START ALREADY?

It's 8.26 am as I start writing this. 8.26 am and 32°C or if you prefer, 90°F. Chennai is hot. (If you're expecting me to rant and rave about Chennai Super Kings knocking the socks off of Delhi Daredevils in last night's Indian Premier League cricket playoffs, this one sentence is all you're going to get *whistle*)

It's hot. No, hot doesn't come close to conveying the sentiment I want you to feel. It's so hot that the bottle of water that's been sitting in your fridge for 12 hours warms up in half an hour, and then starts heating up. It's so hot that it burns your eyes to look out your window. It's SO hot that your tiled floor, despite it being one storey up, is warm. All of this at 8.30 in the morning.

I hope you get the picture. It is UNBEARABLY hot.

If that wasn't bad enough, owing to the vast and immense population of our city, (Wikipedia tells me that as of the 2011 census 46, 81, 087 people are residents of the city, while 86, 96, 010 is the population of the urban agglomeration comprising both the city and the suburbs), we not only fall short of water, but now with the daily 2 hour power cuts and once a month 8 hour power cuts, we've even started falling short of electricity. As if that wasn't enough to bear in this woe begotten tale, last night, most of the city faced a low voltage scenario. If you're wondering why I'm wailing over all of this, let me remind you that it is NOT fun IN THE LEAST to wake up at 3am every morning, sweating so much that your pillow and mattress are damp, open out all the windows and then get yelled at for letting all the mosquitoes in. HOW do mosquitoes survive in this heat? PEOPLE die from heat stroke, but mosquitoes, THEY will survive anything. Reminded me of this weird fact from my senior year at school where we learned that a cockroach can live upto a week without its head. Heat resistant mosquitoes and headless cockroaches are going to rule the world when the apocalypse comes. I can feel it in my bones.

It was supposed to rain in April. We're 5 days short of June. So NOW, it's not just unimaginably hot, the so-called April showers that were supposed to come down, never did. To top it all off, even the mangoes weren't sweet this year!!! Do you know why? I'll tell you why. IT WAS BECAUSE IT NEVER RAINED. The local shopkeepers told us that unless it rains, the mangoes won't truly be sweet. I'm going to go with this guy's views, okay, because our learned scientists keep changing their minds about other things ( like how GOOD cholesterol isn't good anymore!! WHY IS IT STILL CALLED GOOD CHOLESTEROL?).

It's so bright outside that everything looks over exposed. Everything looks like it's from an old parched newspaper, yellow, jaundiced, pale and sickly. It's so bright, grey cement blocks look white. It's so bright that the sky looks white EVEN WHEN THE CLOUDS AREN'T THERE.

If this is what Global Warming is bringing, what happened to all the talk about Global Cooling? What happened to cloud seeding?

How to be an Exceptional Troll

Think you're an effective Troll? Think again. DO you know how to successfully "infuriate and induce inflammatory comments"? DO you push yourself to break all boundaries between reality and virtual space by taking the art of successful trolling to all new heights? DO you know how to induce exasperated sighs, frustrated screams, muted groaning/ grunting sounds in your friends even through your Facebook pages?

If you answered yes to ALL of the above questions here's to you. *Chink* (read : sound of the glass of your preferred beverage clinking against mine). If not, here's how to make all the Internet/ Real-Life trolls proud, in an easy-to-understand step-by-step process.

STEP 1 : IF IT'S STALK-WORTHY, IT'S TROLL-WORTHY
Consider this everyday virtual situation. You check your notifications on Facebook and find that two of your friends are having a very serious conversation on each others' walls about Japanese Manga. (For those of you unaccustomed to the previous capitalized words {LOL AT YOU}, Google it.) A good troll would not just read and follow every single one of those posts, but also engage themselves in the conversation, whether replied to or not.

A brilliant troll however, would say something like - I like Alphonso Manga more than Japanese Manga - thereby not just getting a few likes for effective trolling, but also achieving the satisfaction of enraging and annoying Japanese Manga fans.

STEP 2 : IF IT'S GETTING A LOT OF VIEWS, YOUR TROLLING SHOULD TOO

Ah yes, the YouTube phenomenon. That virtual space where anything and everything can be viewed, liked, disliked and, you've got it, trolled. This is where rookie trolls learn from the masters. It is on the most disliked videos that the treasures of ultimate trolling come to light. Phrases like - "Here's proof that the Apocalypse is nearing" and "I knew Friday wasn't the worst thing out there" - are examples of good trolling. But what makes an exceptional troll?

USING a video like

in real life TO troll someone, in this case, YOUR MOM.

Yeah, we trolls be cool lyk tat.

(And the above sentence is a flash in the pan tutorial on how to get all those Grammar/ Spelling Nazis trolled)

STEP 3 : TROLLING CAN GET YOU INTO AWKWARD SPOTS, ALWAYS KNOW HOW TO APOLOGIZE
There's a fine line between trolling and just being a downright annoying abomination. Take for example, this video of The Annoying Orange

Now, I like Annoying Orange, just as much as the next troll, but too many Annoying Oranges around you CAN drive even the Dalai Lama up the wall. For all you know, the person you're trolling, was in fact trolled way too many times that day, and hence is venting out on you. In such situations, calm down, apologize and run away. Far, far away. You don't want someone capable of trolling you at epic proportions.

And so, here ends my tutorial of How to be an Exceptional Troll. Happy Trolling!

Next time's post will be about How to Meme Your Friends, because Epic Meme is Epic, provided I get enough views for this.

To The Light Behind Our Halos

For a change, I'm going to succumb to social protocol (yes, I do indulge my weaker self in a few of its whims and fancies) and base one of my posts on an upcoming tradition - the celebration of Mothers' Day. To top it off, I won't even be sarcastic about how commercialized it's become. No siree, I won't.

BAZINGA! I will!

DOUBLE BAZINGA! No, I'm kidding. I won't.

Got your attention with a catchphrase from a popular (and BRILLIANT) sitcom have I? I'm glad.



Mama. Ma. Mom. Mummy. Mum. Mommy. Ammi. Amma. Amme. Amamalu. Ambula. Mother.

 A lot of m's in that line, huh? That's alright, I've (hopefully) got you to at least smile by the time you got to the end of that first line.
It's a well known fact that I'm not all that great at PDA (all you troll faces out there, yeah, I know, "you don't say"). Hugs are awkward. Kisses are just embarrassing. Holding hands is just too sweaty, to be quite plain. So, typing this post out, filled with gush-worthy ooohs and awwws is just not my cup of tea, implying that if you find this post pretty crappy from a sentimental point of view, the previous few lines should tell you why . FYI, you've just read my disclaimer to you about reading this at your own risk. I cannot guarantee a mushy post. Yet.

Mama. I don't know about yours, but mine is awesome. Awe-frikking-some. Hugs me when I'm low, shoves an over-the-counter paracetamol when she's exasperated with my attempts to let my body get over whatever sickness I have, tolerated my over-enthusiastic ups, melodramatic downs and my unimaginably obnoxious phases, stayed up with me and let me scream into her shoulder watching Paranormal Activity, wrestled with my hair for the better part of my 20 years, cleared the black from the white even when all I saw was gray, taught me how to push myself to be better only compared to what I was a day back, taught me to be independent, came for every one of my swimming classes even when I failed miserably at them, pushed me to stick to the things I loved doing even when it got exhausting because she knew I'd never forgive myself for giving up, signed answer scripts I've done horrendously at and not said a word, listened to me rant and vent, offered advice (that I didn't heed, to my unfortunate capability levels of idiocy) when she knew I needed it, woke up with me through my senior years of school to ensure I kept awake through my physics and chemistry Pradeep textbooks, talked me into giving a new city a chance even when I thought I'd hate it, took my side when everyone was pulling my leg, taught me patience, taught me how to move on and not dwell in the past, taught me how to bake, LET me bake, drilled into me that if you think you've hit rock bottom then there's nowhere to go but up, taught me how to laugh at myself, let me fiddle around with MS Paint when I was 6 years old even when she had work to do, taught me how to love, squeezed my lethargy out of me for good to a point where if I have nothing to do, I drive her mad, taught me how to listen with my eyes, gave me faith in myself when I thought I had none and finally, showed me how it's okay to get angry, but never EVER harbour resentment.


If your mother's anything like this, do add a comment with what you and your mom have in common. If you miraculously find yourself in agreement with this post (or parts of it), share it around too if you can! Maybe it'll bring a smile to your face, or even her's.

PS - Happy Birthday Mamatti. I will always love you, even when we're disagreeing and I'm steaming from the ear.