Shortlisted!

Sachin Tendulkar

A.R.Rahman

Jaya Bhaduri

Yasser Arafat

Napolean Bonaparte

Margaret Mitchell

S.K.Sowmini

Can you spot 1 "unique" but common feature among these celebrities (including the ultimate one… i mean the one at the end of the list  )? Come on guys, think.. think.. think… till ur thinking hats catch fire!!

Puzzled?? Dumbstruck?? No clue?? OK… to all you dumb fellas out there.. the mystery unveiled:

Though all of these stars have reached great heights in their own "Centres of Excellence", each one of them scored really low in terms of their own physical height!! Yeah, all the afore-mentioned dudes & dudettes are/were pathetically short!!

One secret dream that i have nurtured, ever since i was a toddler, is/was to grow up as highhhhh as the Bachchans!! But, what to do…God moved in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform!! I sometimes think, is it 'coz of my name that nature has restricted my growth beyond the "mini" size?!! i have been eating loads & loads of chalk pieces since age 8, bcoz somebody told me that Calcium plays a vital role in enhancing one's height! I have tried skipping, hopping, jumping, hanging from the Qutb Minar & even drinking Complan!!! But nooooooo….. not even the remote signs of growth in the vertical direction  I even started climbing banyan, mango, jackfruit, palm, coconut trees in a desperate attempt, to climb err.. grow higher!! But, the corollary of all these efforts was me establishing cordial relations with the monkeys, squirrels, sparrows & crows residing in these trees and they offering their deepest sympathies for my dwarf-like stature….

To say that Julie, my labrador, is of the same height as self, when standing on four legs… would give you a vivid picture of my terrific build! She too, sometimes insults me, by standing on two legs!!  To add on to the sorry state of affairs, i am quite on the plumpy side (or shud it be quite plumpy on the sides??!!). Great researchers at Harvard & Texas have been spending sleepless nights trying to ascertain whether my exact shape is spherical, cylindrical, cuboid or amoeboid!!

During my school days, my class teacher never noticed me standing up & frantically waving my hand, too eager to answer the tough math questions she shoots out at the class. During college, i used to blush with shame, when the professors ask me to explain the electromagnetic theory, Planck's law or Maxwell's equation (hey guys, you dont have to give me a standing ovation here…. i perfectly understand that you guys are awestruck at my profound knowledge… but please guys control urself  ) on the board…. the fact remains that my hand has never graced the upper half of a black board & it NEVER WILL… in this lifetime  Whenever i stand in a queue, be it at the Cognizant canteen, EB office, Tirupati darshan, railway reservation counter or the like, i can hardly see the proceedings in the front, unless of course, a equally short person stands before me. On the day of our marriage, my husband had to bend down sooo low, to fit into the photographs… that many people mistook him for playing cocoa (or is it koko??) in the marriage hall!! One of the prominent "allergies" that i have is – i just cannot "stand" tall people! they bring out the dozing devil inside me (my infy compex  ). So, the moment i see someone tall (even if it is Big-B or the giant Khali) approaching me (of course for an autograph of mine), i dont stop to shed a smile… i just flee the place in a my-pants-are-on-fire pace!!

Hmmm… Now coming to corporate matters, I often peep into the next cubicle (of course to discuss the effect of Service Oriented Architecture on Entreprise Application Integration and XML/WSDL usage in a heterogenous computing environment… pheww mummyy!! what else did you think,eh?   ) by placing one foot on the chair, the other foot firmly rested on the ground, my torso leaning against the cubicle, my head dangling in front of his monitor…. And despite this elegant posture, all my friend at the other cubicle says is "Sowmini, i cannot make out whether you are sitting or standing! When will you ever grow up?!!" hmmm… a cruel world!! What more can i say? i try to tell these people "Attitude is what matters, not the altitude!!"but, they just dismiss it as one more of my usual ramblings…. and continue to make fun of my "short"comings  , little realizing the fact that dear Sowmini is a living example of the phrase "Good things come in small packages" 

Of late, some of the readers have been complaining that i write very longgg posts, that consumes a hell lot of time to read…. So, friends this time… you would be overwhelmed to find that i have taken care of your concerns  Now now… please stop scrolling madly up & down the post!! Read the post once again & note the number of times i have mentioned the word "short" in this post!! (psst… those of you who are weak in counting, can take the help of dear ol'Goofy, who spent one whole day counting the letters in my name, just to ascertain that his name "Seetharaman Trichur Narayanan Iyer" is shorter than mine "Sowmini Sankarapillai Krishnamoorthy"  ) Coming back to the point, the count is 7. So, dont you think this is an amazingly "short" & sweet post??!! blink… blink…