Please DO NOT Piss Me OFF!

When it had been a few days after I moved from my beloved home (I very badly miss it, for I have many reasons for it…(1) My family still lives there (2) I had lived there for 18 years (3) I hate Chennai. It’s just an opinion I hold of the city, please do not take it personally. (4)I despise my new ‘temple of learning’ as my math professor always quotes, to an extent beyond imagination simply because learning is just not interesting anymore…to my parents who might read through this, I still study because I have to, you do not need to worry! I could proceed with a (5),(6),(7) and (8) but then I would just be drifting away from the subject..you DO NOT want that now DO you?), my aunt had mentioned with all humor, that I would be learning patience and tolerance through my four years of living in this place. Well, if you WERE her niece, you WILL be learning that, because she can cook up remarkably long lectures on God’s existence, devotion, prayer, tamil movies, actors, soaps etc.etc. which I have to listen to even though I am not even a bit interested. I love her but I really cannot pay attention to stuff I think is ‘crap’ and has nothing to do with my life or existence. And yet I do lend an ear to all of that simply because I am trying to imbibe patience into my system or whatever:S. But when my aunt had said that I would be learning those qualities, she did not mean I’d be learning them because of certain characteristics of her nature but because of certain traits in my uncle’s personality! She was very, very true too! My uncle was probably born with the sole reason to test other people’s tolerance. With every sentence that I ended my conversation, he would come up with a question that would demand an explanation for a certain occurrence of events or why a certain event should occur. Most of the questions are plain rhetorics and yet just to mock you he would do that!…Why, Why after a long day in the college do I need to deal with something like this!!!!!

Just yesterday, I had gone to meet a really good friend of mine. We had a nice conversation about undisclosed personal issues. All was fair, till we parted our ways at the bus stop. There hasn’t been a single occasion when I have got into the bus 5E (travelling from Besant Nagar to Vadapalani), and it wasn’t crowded with a bunch of men almost falling off from the entrance. They do get down to make space for people to get in but you can imagine how difficult it is to squeeze through the crowd! Every step through them is painful and can literally cause you to shed tears. It IS that terrible. But you really have no choice. If you wanted to reach home and avoid remarks from your guardians, you better forget the pain and move on. That is the strong will I hold on to while travelling! I was already starving, and the journey had caused my stomach to almost tear apart!..I did this..breathe in, breathe out..the eternally suggested pranayam thingy..to keep my mind off the misery. But the passengers always tried so hard to keep you pissed:P. The conductor so comfortably relaxes on a seat while the money is being passed along from the other end of the bus to his end! Now to mention the worst part of having to stand!..The money is thrusted right into my palm!...(For the love of God, leave me alone! I can scream that at the top of my lungs within my head and if I said it out loud I’d probably never get down from the bus alive!) For the good human being I am, I pass the money on to the conductor, asking myself to relax and also pretend that it is not that big a deal. The situation keeps repeating itself infinite times before I get down from the bus and heave a huge sigh of relief.

I have to walk home from the bus stand. It’s a fifteen to twenty minute long walk…but that is not the problem. And there isn’t just one problem. There are many and they all drive crazy, always on the wrong side of the road and give you ugly looks when you stand in their way. WTF dude! I am trying to walk! YOU are on the wrong side of the road, driving as if the entire road belonged to you, not having the slightest of concern for pedestrians; all the drivers here seem to be on the road just to send you to the afterworld! The anger just keeps flooding through my system…I did not even have earphones to plug into my ear, did not have my i-pod to listen to the rock and metal that has always kept my mind deviated from things that so easily get me freaked and frustrated. If you have been on the road after 7 p.m. you know exactly what I am talking about!

So, when I go ease my heart and let out all the piled up frustration by relating the incident to my aunt, you might as well guess what I received as a response..” Even Chennai is trying to teach you to be tolerant!”…UGH!..Yes, dear aunt, it is teaching me the one thing I lack! Maybe it WILL improve my ability to be patient!...Who am I kidding?! I am still a mess, still wishing that I didn’t have to learn it this way and still swearing each time I think about the crappy ride back home yesterday:P.