Nasty lazy-ass habit of not giving up

Hi!

I disappeared.

Then I figured I wanted to post last day of the month, and notch up July entries to TWO...

I could stop here and this could be a very short post, but that will make you suspect I have run out of steam.

Not true.

I have mangoes to write about. I eat one every eight hours. I’m sure I could go on a lets-romanticise-seasonal-fruit blog post, but humidity tries patience.

Last couple of days I had a friend staying with me. She arrived for a brief visit, got me a year’s supply of make-up, tipped our cook hundred bucks and made a grand exit -- trolley bag in one hand, two buttered toasts in the other. Very quick re-connect. She’s given up smoking after seven years, is running every day, is eating full healthy meals and it shows. I have never seen the woman’s hair look glossy.

Running the risk of romanticising nicotine over mangoes, I tell my friend Cinna the poet this. That we must give up. But we reticent bloggers like to ignore the voice of reason. At work, we go down every day for one measly cigarette sometime early evening. Stroll out of office to get some relatively fresh hair and harass the panwadi for two Benson Lights and some gum. Panwaadi junior will hand over loose change and often reply in English. Panwaadi senior gets very rattled when we change brands. He’s old. He feels his memory is failing when the usual Classic Mild becomes a Marlboro. We’re mean. This is our entertainment. If only we could remember though to carry matches, there would be no hankering after some dude also taking a break who might have a light.

Rain, Shy and the Macdonald's prostitute

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.

-- Andre Dubus

A quote on the front page of The Times of India; “allegedly” India’s largest selling national daily.

Brilliant, I thought. And true. I didn't think of that. I googled Dubus and Wikipedia says his surname is pronounced “Duh-BYOOSE”, with the accent on the second syllable to rhyme with the noun “excuse.”

Turns out he was some super short story writer who was paranoid about the safety of his loved ones because his sister got raped as a kid. Also, later in life, he had a major car crash, in which his legs got amputated trying to save a motorist duo. His loss of mobility drew him closer to God. And his third wife subsequently left him.

And to think, just till this morning, I had no idea who Andre Dubus-like-excuse was! No more shyness for me, I say! Only open declarations of appreciation henceforth. Blushing be damned. Friday night, we dance on table tops!

Meanwhile, I love my office. I love it even more when I don't have to go in to work. Fabulous weather yesterday! Monsoon hit. The roads were flooded. Traffic crawled. We had to pee. Home was nowhere in sight. So we just drove into a hotel, parked, got out, and walked up to bespectacled receptionist and said, Um excuse me, where is the washroom?

By the time we got out, traffic had cleared. The sudden plan was as stroke of genius, I thought. My boyfriend is less generous with his compliments (possibly more shy). But I could tell; we were happy peeps, who suddenly were capable of talking about other stuff.

Then, on another note, we ran into the Macdonald’s prostitute again. This here is a different we. My friend Sancho (not her real name) and I, from work, along with our one-time-boss, went to get an afternoon drink at a bar. It was a new place for all three of us. We liked the look of it. The place that has fosters caps on kingfisher bottles. But that couldn't just have been the reason why we sat there for 4 hours in broad day light knocking back beer, vodka, beer, vodka...

By the time we got out of, we were in a fairly wings-a-flutter state. Buzz a doodle doo, can't stand straight, please help me, all that. In this condition, we run into our boss in the parking lot. If it were a normal corporate office, you’d probably say oh shiiite, but no such thing. Sancho and I were happy to see him. We grabbed the man by an arm each and insisted he come with us to Macdonald’s to lay eyes on the creature we had seen go in. This creature is the Macdonald’s prostitute.

Of course, I’m not being very correct. And of course just be a regular customer. But using our advanced powers of deduction, and judging by her consistent dress code -- we've seen her before -- you can just tell she's not there for a Big Mac only.

Who at fifty plus with sagging skin, bleached hair, kohled eyes and smeared mascara wears bright printed mini-skirts with sneakers, and walks with a hunch? She’s not a tennis player. Her reflexes are too slow. She’s not a mother of two who has to rush home to her husband, and elderly in-laws, because the man she was with was an alert, grey-haired crow who wears collars and knows exactly who’s looking at them. He has seen us ogle before. We’ve ogled before. But this was after the beer, vodka, beer vodka. We especially wanted to know what the deal was.

But apparently there is such a thing as not being sloshed enough. Or I was still shy. Because in spite of 4 hours of nonstop drinking, we didn’t have the balls to go up to her and say I beg your pardon, is this seat taken? Nor did we get the fries we’d gone in for. Our boss fled. She sat there. Pimp looked up. We doddered out. Bought gum, lingered, got sober and missed an adventure that could have made a terribly fun story. If you’re ever at the Macdonald’s in Connaught Place here in Dally; the one on Janpath, risk it. Go say hi.