Friday, December 31, 2010

Notes of a nomad

Yesterday, I had so much crap in my car that Japanese tourists started taking photos. They were in a cab next to me at a traffic light when they began their clicking spree. Startled, conscious, amazed, amused and embarrassed, I covered up the crap lying at the back with more crap lying at the back. Crap slid off. Damn. Nothing to do now but visualise their photo captions: Indian girl smiles through tornado that hit her car.

I, the nomad, was on my way to the grandparents’ house (in Delhi only) for the weekend. I do this every third week. Move bag and baggage for the weekend to the grandparents'. My parents would fetch up too since my mother’s logic was ‘I don’t want to leave them alone for New Years’.

And so, in my car at the back and on my way to theirs, lay the disgraced subjects of oriental photography.
  • A suitcase fitted diagonally behind the driver’s seat – clothes for the weekend
  • A bunch of pink and white flowers of the chrysanthemum family from the mandi– sweet gesture for boy type person least expecting it
  • Two shoe boxes – with old shoes in them that should be thrown, donated or repaired
  • Alcohol and mixers – four maybe five maybe six small yet empty bottles and in a black bag that surely they, my Japanese friends, couldn’t see but surely, I still need to get rid of so to feel better about my ways.
  • Red yoga mat – nicely rolled but mostly flung at the back
  • One laptop bag – nay, netbook bag -- with wires and cables and sundry black snakes coiled over half my entry level Maruti.
  • Two green cycling helmets – that look like watermelons from the day of the cyclothon that was in August.
  • And one obscenely wide orange and black striped tiger balloon – or “flotation device,” according the boy type person for whom I took flowers, bought from a homeless kid at yet another traffic light.
Hardly the neatest, but my car nowhere resembled the infinitely more photo-worthy scene in The Hangover with Mike Tyson and chickens and a true blue tiger -- more roaring, less floating. Really living up to their image of clicking any old crap, these Japs.

In other news, I'm wearied by the thought that another December is over and tomorrow the blahg archives will have another year to drop down to. What's that song Celine Dion sung to people who have a really long relationship with their URLS: "We will be together now and always..."

P.S: I'm not doing anything tonight. At 6 pm on Dec 31, this is my firm belief.

PP.S: But happy new year, love! May it shine, shine, shine.

PPP.S: Here's a photo of me sniffing Nargis/ Narcissus/ daffodils with a prayer to whoever's listening:

Hello you,
Let 2011 be a better year, please.
And give us all better smelling things to shove our noses in.
Big hug from small fry.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

balls to you, I have a 21 year old 800, it has a spider web (with spider) and red ant colony in it. before a tragic clean up that occurred a few months back it contained moldy shoes, vile unwashed socks of a pre-2000 vintage, monthly phone bills for the last 5-odd years, all of them opened and scribbled on, plastic bottles sufficient in number to earn me a decent monthly wage from those plastic bottle buying people, complete cricket kit (none of it mine), books from school, college, other college, notes, photocopied notes, money (I think), burst tennis balls, uh... leaves, other plant matter, insulting banner made for rock show years ago, and... uh, parts of car that have fallen off, and... well that's it. also people have gotten naked in the back seat.

Anonymous said...

and it also tells you why I was spending my time commenting on blogs on the 31st of december.

The Unbearable Banishment said...

Yes, I agree. Good riddance to you, 2010. It wasn't quite as awful as 2009 but not much improvement, either. Happy new year. More writing, please. I'll send American dollars.