No manjhe naahi

Time: 11:30 pm

Location: Comm. Street signal (seems to be a jinxfully eventful place for me)

I'm on my bike w/family. Cops doing their drunken-driving-check routine. I was clean, so didn't have much to worry about. One cop stops us, comes near. Of course he doesn't have the breathalyzer. Gets kissing distance to my face, and asks

'Alcohol?'

My bravado of having nothing to fear turns to adventuresome. Mustering up all of the 3 and a half Kannada words I have learnt, I decide to give it a shot. And utter one of them.

'Beda.'

Cop sniffs; grins a bit, shakes his head, and walks away.

I immediately realize what I just said. And ride away without telling the wife what (really) happened.

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Kannada speaking readers have got it. For the rest, here's what it is.

In Hindi, the word for "No" and "Don't want" is effectively the same - "Nahi"

XYZ liya? Nahi.

XYZ chahiye? Nahi.

Same with Gujarati. "Na" does it both.

Kannada, however is more like Marathi

'No' is 'Illa' and 'Don't want' is 'Beda'

Just like 'Naahi' and 'Nako' in Marathi.

Now, when I (try to) speak a few words of Kannada, I always try to overlap what I know with a language I really know. The decrypting language I used to use was Hindi. Since that night, I changed it to Marathi.

The Curse of µ

I used to be a keen believer of the permanent age theory; having nicely settled into the late 20s for long. Turns out, it was a myth. Ceaseless erosion has caused the brain to lose a few wrinkles (only to reappear under the eyes). The attrition has had less to do with declining intelligence, rather lesser fuck-giving.

Gone are the days when I can incessantly argue on a point I rightly or wrongly believe in. The transition from ‘I believe, so should you’ to ‘I don’t give a damn’ happened pretty swift. The willingness and ability to continuously pursue a redundant objective has past its fountainhead, and is now on its weighty journey back down the parabola.

A few passions comatose’d on the way too. There was a time when I could rattle out band members, song names, the album from which the song was, its track number and what not. Today, ask me not a single song from any Top 100 charts.

Reading, exploring, the pleasure of learning something new – everything has given way to a meek surrender to the Maslow’s triangle. Instead of the Discovery Channels and NatGeos, I now gorge on dinner slouching on the couch and devouring Big Boss. Bring out the bloody pop corn.

It probably isn’t bad as it sounds. Maybe I’m mistaking focus for abrasion. But the deviancy was much more fun. Probably. Maybe regular updating of the blog isn’t as significant to life as buying diapers for the baby; or not as life-altering as forgetting to pay the power bill.

The thing with cerebral wear-and-tear is that I can't comprehend the difference, or even acknowledge its futility. Damn you friction.