Pieces of the Puzzle

Every single day I wring the telephone cord around my neck and choke myself. I don’t really do that but I do something even worse. I drive everyday to work and back spending net worth of two hours. I have given myself 15 minutes slack time for all the accidents, tickets, gas-burnouts, battery downs, locking-myself-out scenarios that take place (once in a while) to combat monotony. Two hours of my life just passes by mundanely in the traffic with no notable achievements to report. The rest of day (when I am not driving), I have no motivation to achieve anything! I could have found the anti-virus for HIV in those two hours.

So here I am wasting the formative years of my life in a car when radio gets cheesy, music gets repetitive, sceneries don’t exist and I can’t sleep (why would I say that if I haven’t tried?). So to amuse myself, I got hold of Books on CD from my local library. You have got to try out new things, however preposterous. It worked out real well for me as I heard through Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter, Passage to India and many other such books that would intimidate me under normal circumstances. The books were classics of course (books that usually are prescribed as a supplement reader in High School), but the narrators are awesome and I didn’t contemplate about the HIV virus even once. Destination would appear sooner than usual as if I had suddenly discovered a shortcut route. To finish the particular chapter that held me in such gripping suspense, I would have to go around my office parking lot a few more times. Taking another long journey back home in the evenings delighted me immensely and I was quickly saddened as home approached. I just couldn't switch the book off. So I'd go back to the library and borrow the same books I was listening to so that I could continue reading from where I had left listening. (erm..complicated sentence that!)

Once I had exhausted the fiction titles (the library needs desperate improvement, darn those rich patrons!), I walked skeptically over to the non-fiction part and picked up some self improvement CD on finances. I knew this would be the end to my CD career and I would have to revert back to making risky phone calls while driving to keep boredom at bay. But no, I was hooked and excited to know that I was putting myself to better use to mankind (only my household) by knowing my finances. It didn’t help me in becoming the millionaire I had set my standards to be, but it did make me less apprehensive about another self-improvement CD. I enthusiastically picked the one on Hinduism. Might as well understand my religion better, especially now that I am in a foreign country.

I have lived to regret that decision. Hinduism, taught by an American professor with a southern accent, was akin to understanding the phonetics of a ‘bray’ from a coyote. It was like a guessing game; ‘kashatriyas’ was the easy one.

‘Jetti’ (underwear in Tamil) had me palpitating by the time I figured it was jati (caste). All the God/Godesses names were a holy mess. Couldn’t tell from Varna and Varuna, Somwar and Soma, Arien and Aryan… till I gave up my quest in seeking the ‘Way of Devotion’ and decided to personally meet up with Professor Mark W. Muesse, and ask him to send some fiction CDs to my library.