Tag

The Sac has put off the tag. In response, here are eight things about me. Some of these are from an email I'd sent around to a few people last year, though I have no record of this email anymore, so I'm typing it all again anyway.

1. I did my kindergarten in a girls' school in Pondicherry. This explains why I'm such a ladies' man.
2. My earliest memory is my father and me standing in the driveway of my grandfather's tea estate in the Nilgiris, watching the hail falling, my father carrying me in his arms. I must have been about 1 and a half or 2 years old. That memory always makes me feel good.
3. I used to be a fat kid between the 4th and the 7th grade. This was when I lived in Abu Dhabi on a steady diet of chili chips and 7Up. Had my fair share of fat-kid-jokes and references to pigs and elephants. Then I came back to India and someone gave me a hockey stick and made me join the school hockey team. I was thin in 6 months. I make fun of fat people, but only, and I mean only, when I know they can take a joke and won't get hurt. All this drinking is now make me fat again.
4. I was rather a teachers' pet in high school. Some may even go so far as to call me a nerd. I maintained a good reputation mainly by staying under the radar and getting good grades. My reputation in college was very different. Despite my best efforts to stay under the radar, I soon acquired a bad rep just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anything went wrong anywhere in the campus, I would be one of the guys summoned by the chief warden, usually to be slapped silly. I was responsible for several bad (and by bad I mean bad like Jesse James) things during both school and college, but I never got caught for any of it.
5. My dad once told me the hardest thing to tell someone is to break the news that someone dear to them has died. Being a surgeon, he's done this a few times. Once, I tried saving the life of a guy who'd fallen off the fourth floor of a building in Chennai. He'd suffered severe head wounds. I happened to be passing by. The ambulance was taking too long to arrive, and there wasn't a car in sight, so I carried this guy to the hospital in an autorickshaw. He died on the way. The doctor pronounced him dead on arrival, and refused to do anything more. Covered in his blood, I had to break the news to his wife and 3 year old kid. Personally, it wasn't that hard. I found it harder to break up with an ex of mine.
6. Whenever people ask me what my passion is, I say ‘music’, for want of a better answer. If I were truly passionate about music, I would be able to play the guitar really fucking well by now. Truth is, I don’t give that much of a shit about anything.
7. I am agnostic. I have not always been, but I am now. Some people have told me that it's just sitting on the fence and not being able to decide between theism and atheism. To quote Neil Peart 'If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice'. I've made a choice. Get stuffed.
8. I have been referred to by various names over the years. It appears that my real first name is not good enough for people. Even my dad refers to me mainly as "Chief". In no particular order, here is an incomplete list - Charlie, Dunston, Damien, Chief, Devil, Satan, NonBass, Junster, Urgee and Rael. Of these, Rael is the only name I gave myself.

There you have it. Now, whom to tag? Well, here goes. If you haven't already been tagged, then Geek, D&C, Naaz, Me-Moi-Myself, Rat and Penny, you are now. (That makes 6, though I'm not sure if some of these people are blogging any more, or even if they're reading mine.)