This is the way we laze all day, laze all day…

“Excuse me! Is the white BMW parked outside yours?”

My mother and I, the only customers in the store, were thrilled at the assumption. “No such luck, but we love that you think so.”

The white beemer fellow was apparently blocking his car but mother and I didn’t let that distract us from shopping. She was comparing prices of candles and asking me if we should get the plain tall silver ones or the tall silver ones with the spiral. Plain, I said. “We have too many of the spiral”. So she instructed the shop keeper to kindly pack the plain. At the next aisle, I was thinking Rs 225 for Christmas-feel earrings was an unnecessary expense. The candles, at least, were for the dinner party tonight. The earrings served no such purpose. Except right when the cashier had put the candles in a brown bag and the bill-machine was making those khatch-khatch-khatch printing sounds, mother changed her mind. Now we’re back to the spiral candles. Apparently, they look more Christmas-y. And I still didn’t buy those earrings.

Having taken 2-weeks off, I have all the time in the world, to be my mother’s sounding board and dissect all such non-events. I have as much time to sit in my balcony and look for split ends all day – legitimate hobby as far as I’m concerned -- but we don’t get too much sun out there. Besides, I had my hair trimmed yesterday -- by a hairdresser called Barbara, to whom women in my family, for the last 20 years, have been loyal. Me, I’m just starting out being loyal to her, because I feel I’m done with my fancy yet impersonal salons where they charge more than I want to pay just because the people wear some sort if a uniform. Not Barbara. Barbara’s disorganised, but she’s good with scissors. She knows the gossip. She knows everyone’s names. She knows that you soak your dry fruits in two bottles of rum and then “just sort of r-u-n the cake through when it’s ready.” She knows these things. These things are nice, and they remind me of Steel Magnolias, which used to be my favourite movie much before I grew to love Julia Roberts.

So instead of the balcony, I’ve been vegetating indoors in my tracks and geeky glasses, leaving my hair uncombed, drinking hot water, and applying Bariederm lip balm all day. It’s the good life, I tell you. Nobody should have to see the insides of an office if they’d rather laze about at home, nobody.

But given my somewhat natural tendency to be social, I have, though, stepped out of this beauteous, slothful comfort a few times. To a friend’s cosy birthday party on a rooftop (with lots of good tandoori food), to a gathering of old fogies disguised as the (debut) book launch of an already-famous young author, to my boyfriend’s home (theatre) for a private screening of Away We Go, to the office of a friend who everyday devises new alibis to get out early (and comes with me shoe-shopping), and sometimes, to weekday lunches of appam and chicken stew, and to markets all over town with my mother, in our non-BMW, to pick up groceries and cold cuts, soda and knick knacks, for the 16-people dinner party that will start as soon as the doorbell rings, and those silver candles we bought, are lit.

Me, I think I’ll watch Paa today.