The Woodchuck Chucks

And I thought dogs were more my type

2012-01-10T12:46:00.003+05:30

Take your hands out of your pocket. It looks like you're out for a stroll, not a walk.-- My friend's father to his daughter. (Daughter is gifted. She sees the humour. And of course, unpockets her hands).

I wrote the first thing that came to my mind. I thought if I distil days to quotes and keep my finger pointed not towards self, blogging might come easier. (Toward or towards? Out of practice, either way). Consider this, even this, all this, a warm up to keys, a prelude, a scratching of the pen, a doodle 8, my name in uppercase, then in one lower, to see if the ink still flows and as fast, with no effort. It's the new year. I need the mouthwash. And a clearing of the throat. A churning of the fluff, a candy floss machine -- sticky flies and all. Most of all though, a hyperbolic retrieval of a voice in hibernation. Wow. Shit. Smirk. Maybe, maybe. Ok:

There is an eagle at my window. (Bonnie sang the same thing about a -- dog, no -- doggie, in a window, didn't she?) But it's not so much my window as the window of the office building in which I rot. Hating work is universal. I know. I also know at the moment, if not eternally, I am my own centre of the, you know.. worse. See? The respite in office is that eagle. I don't know if this is the small town girl in me rubbing her eyes or a wild life lover cropping to the surface or just a miserable attempt to clutch at the abstract and make it seem more glorious than it is. It is an eagle. Why cage it in description.

But I will - start again. There is this eagle at a window that I can see from a staircase on the 9th floor of my office building. When I take my mug of green tea ('tulsi flavoured, 100% organic, slimming and stress-relieving') to this solitary inlet of air at that dump of a staircase and light a match, I can see its smudgy wings. Rather, its wings that look smudgy to me for I am blind. And that blindness is compounded by the lack of zoom on my camera phone. Still, I watch my actions, like they instruct you to on the soul channel. And going by them, my actions that is, it probably says something that one day, annoyed as I was at the lack of detail on the smudge, carried a proper camera and had a field break zooming into Smudge's privacy and plundering the down and detail of its wings.

I'm not going anywhere with this. There's no story coming up. It's just a bird I spotted a month ago and have clicked for many days now, despite being conscious and worried that the phone(camera) -- held as you hold a phone(camera), and no more carefully -- will certainly fall. I've watched it for longer, on different days, dank and sunny, both in winter. It isn't big on variety, not much of an exhibitionist. I don't know if eagles are moody. But he or she, whatever it is (and who I -- don't know how -- but first mistook for a vulture) just sits there. On a branch. Of a tree. A Peepal tree. The sacred fig. The Bo-tree. Ficus Religiosa. Lake Placid of the leafy kind. All very normal and naturesque. No thought bubbles or fancy acrobatics in the sky. But oh, the few times I've seen it rise and perform - demonstrating an easy languid grace, I've acted quickly. I've clicked in haste, and tone more picture, and another, and another, in focus or not, doesn't matter. The phone won't fall, I tell myself. You can't count on a bird to hold a pose and do that again. Sometimes a reminder of the moment is enough.

No way in hell you're spotting it, but if you CAN see the black dot
parallel to the building, that's what I'm talking about.
That's right, I even WATERMARKED the crappy low-res phone camera shot.

But at all other times when soaring is a bother, and any motion but an infrequent cocking of the beak a pain, eagle perches. Absolutely, entirely, and with all its weight and intent, it perches on that Peepal which throws shadows on the parking lot below. And thrill as there is in watching a large bird discount ground level parking lots and taller level trees, instead rises to counter gravity in such a fluid display of irreverence, I ask myself: what is it. What is it about this damn bird? Do I derive an assurance from its other state of being, its choice of remaining perfectly stationery for long periods with no other ambition to speak of? Does a bird know it flies well?? Or is there less value and a meh-coated contempt for something that comes, by definiton, naturally to these winged squawkers? Birds and contempt - crazy talk by the woman in the window. Why does she always stand so still, nursing the liquid in her range mug and staring me down?

Last month, I became especially friendly with a colleague who has now left the organisation for a better place at a better deal. We'd step out to the staircase for a smoke, but usually drag on for three in order to continue a conversation that would start with a fumble for cancer and a nod to the eagle, as customary as covering your head before entering a gurdwara. "Is it there?" we'd ask, searching the expanse of vertigo. Because sometimes, rarely, it wouldn't be. And while that anomaly wouldn't excessively disturb -- that would be silly, right? eagle withdrawals? -- its absence would be felt. I'd look for it. I'd cock my head.

Bird became a subtle, if distant, dogtag of my otherwise merging days. The sitting of the eagle. Rivetting stuff, I know. Eagle scoreboard: ten points for plucky consistence. Another four hundred for keeping me hooked. Customary jokes with my colleague about the bird had to be struck. About there being a connect, about it being my soul mate, about that smudge, about his -- definitely a he -- aloof winged splendour.

It doesn't have to mean anything. I'm just saying. More than his absence, his existence is felt. There's an eagle I like and it's not routine. I miss the colleague, too. Not that I feel sorry for myself standing alone (wouldn't exactly call mine aloof winged splendour) looking out, exhaling, sipping, checking phone. But I know later this month when office shifts to that other building with less foliage and a vacant Peepal, as homage to my feathered smudge and for no fault of theirs, I will scowl at the sparrows.

A birthday wish.

2011-12-06T01:45:00.002+05:30

My proxy email to a girl who turns 27 today (and talks as fast as she did at 13). This MIGHT make you feel a bit as if you're tresspassing on the lawns of some beautiful, golden friendship. But don't worry. We write for the attention. And if anything, you'll only fall a-zzz..)

Dearest N,

Yesterday I met a journo friend from Bombay at this brewery place. He was with two of his non-journo friends. All of them were in town for the wedding of THEIR friend who was obviously busy being about-to-be married to idle away an afternoon with a bunch of his school buds, whom he would anyway see that evening. Except me. But he doesn't know me.

Basically, I ended up having some pitchers with a bunch of really sweet boys, two of whom I met for the first time. One madcap event manager -- going through a divorce, has four dogs - a great dane (called Maya), a lab, and 2 small Pekingese type. The other, a lawyer who lives in London and he met his wife at an ugly-pullover party he threw that she crashed. (Great idea, huh, everyone dressed in their woolly worst.) I didn't ask him - is that why you married her - because hers was the most hideous of all sweaters? Instead, I told him, hey one of my closest friends has just moved to London. Please invite her to your next ugly woolly bash. Maybe she'll meet someone..

See, how I still look out for you? At breweries that play Celine Dion-but-also-Aerosmith-and-Bob Dylan-but no Bollywood, in strange, lawyer-involving, knitting needle ways..? So, um, if some guy with a nasalish voice rings you... thank me later..

What I will thank YOU for -- in true 'your style', of being out there and rapid fire and individualistic and mushy and all, just-say-it! -- is being this incredible (but also borderline overbearing) mix of intensity and compassion and understanding and support. I'm going to not succumb to the it's-right-there-at-the-brink-of-my-mind sitting duck well of memories from school. You are so NICE, woman! That bottle of water you actually went home to get when I, along with those two idiots, pretended to be so tired and immobile? And you saw no big deal in it -- ok, this shit I'll keep for the email. Which might fail after this paean.

Define lonely, you told me. Write about that? you asked in your rising intonation (which you picked up from god knows where). Loneliness? I'm not going to. It's not that time yet. But I did think this: if I didn't have you to write to, I wouldn't know what to do with my words.

But that just sounds good. More truth lies in that if I didn't have you, I wouldn't know what to do. when I am wrong, headed for trouble, and living on a blade, I can, with such resolute belief, rely on that YOU, if anyone, will not judge me. I don't know if everyone has that. You're a good egg, a short one. :)

Since you've been living away, you've picked up this habit of saying 'yes.., yes...' like a nodding prompter. Like what I'm saying deserves to be said. Like the opinion counts. Too often we have friends who laugh at us, in a way that just sometimes veers on cruel. It's all a joke. It's all good. Ha ha. You can't take it seriously. What I love about you is that you're so unabashedly supportive and encouraging of your friends, of me, you don't think it's cheesy at all! Not without your humour. But you don't mock. When you ask how I am, you ask to hear my answer. And if I reply with a degree of vulnerability, you keep that safe. And treat it right. I respect that. I love that. It's a trait I don't see everywhere. And you're getting better with age:). You'd never be the friend I didn't want to call back.

I'm sorry for that time in school... slipping into memory mode, but just this one? -- when I called you 10 times and forgot 6 th Dec is your birthday. You're the chick in Thornbirds. (But she was born on Dec 8th, I think. Maggie was her name?) 'Ashes of roses'.. definitely. Remember that? The colour was born for you:)

I'll do the email. If you still wanna-wanna. But while we're still rocking the put-it-out-there scene, happy, happy birthday, you nifty angel. The years ahead are gorgeous. It'll come together. For a woman of your capacity to care, it dare/can't not.

Signed,
Trust Me

I do - one for the files and two for the road

2011-11-29T15:34:00.000+05:30

Last week a friend, an otherwise perfectly able speaker of English, asked me, in a never-mind-the-pissing-off context, if I was "receptive to dialogue".

Yesterday, this interior designer chick threw prima facie at me.

Today, at a health food talk, a dietitian, sorry, wellness specialist, used "at the end of the mind". Twice. Is it even a phrase? She reminded me of one Preeti Sharma, classmate from class 5, who used to say, instead of lungs, "at the top of her volume". (I happily parroted this non-figure of speech at home, to my father, who was much taller than me at the time, and he, poor guy, had an expression that went something like "huh? whaa??")

Is it only me or are "more and more" people taking pride in sounding "less and less" normal?

Last week, I pulled off a concept I'm still big on: social experiments. I went to meet a boy. To marry. If I wanted. No pressure. Arranged marriages for the personality-less. Hawk the chick.

Yes. I did this. I said ok, I will meet him. My parents aren't paranoid. They're, shall we say, 'concerned'. You know how it is.

It was one of those what's-the-harm-in-checking-him-out kind of meets. It didn't depress me. Not then. I wore no earrings. No make up. Ok, slight mascara.

There was nothing wrong with, "my husband". Except for how lonely he seemed. And dull. And unanimated. But he was jetlagged. Benefit given, margin made. Had a thing for planes. A passion, really. You may now quiz me on Boeings versus airbuses. He said "maess", not mass. Said freeway, not highway. I didn't mind the Americanisms.

Oh, and, Katrina Kaif over Mila Kunis. Entourage over Lost. Said, so you like writing? Said, new years isn't a big deal for him. But then he displayed his isolation to me by saying he's spent a lot of his new years on board a plane, when returning to college in the states. As if the crew serving you sad little flutes of champagne is any reason to be cheered.

Again, there was nothing wrong with him. Sorry, with "my husband". He was a looker. 31. Tall. Spoke well. "Cultured", my mother said. Pulled chair for me. Courteous. Virgo, even. No sarcasm. I liked that. But I felt nothing. My friends told me: yea, obviously, man! Who in the first go feels anything? Meet him again. Yes, I might. If he calls. The thing is, I wasn't at all, even the slightest bit, thrown off. I need to be thrown off. Catch me off guard. If I can look into your nice, brown eyes and hold that gaze, I'm too confident. You need to be able to throw me off! Please? It gets tiring being the smart ass. Will it kill you to play a sideways game? To be foolish but back that with humble smarts? To know me? To guess me? To be a little playful? To flow by instinct? To vouch not so strongly for Coldplay? To be with me on the same page? To acknowledge that whatever we're doing -- this, this, sitting down, conversing, getting to KNOW each other through our parents, for god's sake -- is altogether irrelevant because it's so very surface?

What I'm scoring you on has nothing to do with your CK socks. It's never a question of making me laugh. I can do that myself. I have my people who can do that to me. But make me feel cheesy. Put a smile on my face. Not a sympathetic little upturn. Or a smirk. A smile! Then we'll talk. If you don't do that to me, you erode hope. That's depressing. Then it's bu-bye open mind. Hello wistful sighs. I become stiff. Sulky. Acerbic. I become I don't want to do this, fuck off, this can't be my story, I'm too me, still young, as yet only 27, still optimistic, still foolish, more protective of myself, and compared to a year, even 6 months ago, with a dollop more certainty of who I want and what I don't care about.

Ain't so funny when you can't remember what you forgot (..and can only remember what you wish you'd forget?)

2011-11-03T23:29:00.005+05:30

(Click on the pictures to make them bigger)

***

"There are lots of things in this life that are difficult to understand, and even greater is the challenge of putting them into words. Friendship is certainly one of them."

-- Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá, Daytripper

I read Daytrippper in the morning today before work. For the sake of perspective, and lest you be wrongly impressed, I'm not some exceptional early-bird reader - my work only begins at noon.

Plan was to save the book/ comic/graphic novel for a trip coming up. But that got canned. And this - whatever 'this' was -- turned into case in point #207 of "just..one of those days". I ended up savouring the book/comic/graphic novel at just the right pace. One sitting was needed. Just past the foreword, I knew I wasn't going to work till I finished it. Lucky for me, my boss was away, four hours behind and staring at the Mediterranean. So I wasn't concerned about receiving texts asking always the same thing: are you coming in today?

There were other things I liked about the 'book' -- other panels, other characters, other -- oh, I don't know - melancholy bits? Other lines too. But the litmus test is always: do I want to get up, find a pen and write this down? This one sailed the litmus. So I made it stay in my diary. I got up, I found pen, I wrote it down. And I forgot about it - till I got to work, that is. Because then, my palms started to itch. I wanted to read again/ remember those two lines and see the letters in my head form those two lines. But it was hopeless! I couldn't remember the line I had noted, the line about, get this: the challenge of putting to words. How bizarre is that! I was a case of desperate Alzheimers! I didn't know how much of what I couldn't remember had to do with the nature of the line I so badly wanted to get! You know? I didn't understand. I suspect there is here, still a sweet lingering irony -- is that the word? - I don't think it is, but... and maybe I'm just happy to over-think, but I went mad in office searching online for that one quote, for those two lines, trying defunct combinations I thought might get me there: "gabriel ba+ writing + friendship"/ "gabriel ba + words + quote"...

I guess people thought the line, this one, the one I wanted to leap at, was too ordinary to rave about on sundry fan sites of the Brazilian twins cum genius graphic novelists. So it wasn't there. Other lines were, but what would I do with others lines when I couldn't find the one quote that spoke to me straight? Once I got home and flipped to the page where this morning I had written it down, I felt massive relief. Like the crack addict I saw two nights ago with his nose lowered to a smoky corner of the pavement, his beggarly butt in the air, nothing comic about it. He too must have though gotten a deep satisfaction from that first, yet familiar hit.

I hate you like I loved you

2011-11-01T10:30:00.002+05:30

Good thing first: Man, this (new) Google reader really knows how to massage your ego!

Since February 22, 2007 you have read a total of 80,339 items.

80,339 items. Yea, right! I wish. Tentative titles of next two blogposts: The Concept of Skimming and The Power of Scrolling.

From your 166 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,372 items, clicked 31 items, starred 0 items, and emailed 11 items.

Wonder what that says about me.

Bad, bad thing: What the hell is wrong with them?! Anti social twerps, mad men at Google have disallowed me to see what my friends are sharing! How is one to go on?! This used to be fun. Google, you're a dim bloody spoilsport. You know nothing. You lack imagination. And obviously you don't bloody understand how important it is for me to see the quirky economicky shit one friend shares, the lol cats and bizarro nudes and food pictures another shares, the.. the.. general feeling of connected I get when I know we, my friends and I, see and like and ha ha at the same mostly stupid but not all Hello Kitty stuff. You've rubbed me the wrong way since, since, well not 2007, but whenever you went on that stupid buzz or google plus trip or whatever that was. I'm tired of you also NOT GETTING ME, not understanding my needs and my wants and my poor neglected innermost desires. Right now, I don't want to see your new, improved botoxed face minus the laugh lines I loved. So today, if nothing else comes up, I will break up with you.

Another voice in the crowd: Oh, Happy Di..

2011-10-26T01:41:00.003+05:30

There is a photograph I'm having trouble locating. In its physical form, rounded edges and all, it's not lost. Of course not. We keep our albums in golden cages. But searching for it in my head is an impractical endeavour, I know that.

I know the photo, even. I remember it clearly enough. But I want the details to be in focus. I want that sharpness. What I do know is that the photo is clicked on a Diwali night, at home in Hisar in 1986. My mother must have taken it. I'm two years old, made to wear a red smocking dress, and my hair is a mushroom helmet. My father is standing over me and his expression is gentle. He's smiling, coaxing me to hold the phuljaddi -- the 'sparkler', the bad guy in the picture. My face is blurry - in my memory, that is. But I remember the emotion in that photo. I'm hurt and scared and teary and evidently not at all enjoying this phuljaddi business. There's less articulateness at age 2. I have no attitude, no future tee shirt slogans that might say imbecile festival, down down! There's just tears. I'm scared. I don't like Diwali. Please Papa, take it away.

My colleague, rushing out of work this evening, admiring on the way the done-up entrances of our neighbouring offices: "These are so pretty na?" (The little blue twinkling lights). "My son calls them chun mun lights.."

I don't like blue lights. I like what her son calls them.

On Sunday night, after raiding but not buying a thing at the Diwali bazaar ('Blind school mela', rather - to any Delhi person) we stopped at Bengal sweets in A-block market, Vasant Vihar to have khandvi. Like pigs so comfortable in each other's slummy company, we demolished the box at the counter. Then bought some for our homes: dhokla, rasgullas and I, palanktod. I'm still amazed at how people, even Punjabis, look dazed when I saw palanktod. Milk cake, peeps, milkcake! Get with it. Also why would any bilingual North Indian (fine -- 'Punjabi'), say milkcake when palanktod has such an infinitely more evocative ring to it, why?

I'm liking Diwali this year. It's not just the mithai. This is strange for me because usually I'm an ass about festivals. I go through the motions but I don't participate. I curse traffic. I avoid markets. I stay home. I watch TV. I grumble. I never send mass messages and I never reply to texts. The use of shining/prosperous/happy/ health* all in under 260 characters? Um, I don'tthinkso.

This year's different. I don't know why its different, but I'm less ass-like. I'm not replying to texts still, and I won't send any, but I'm in this lets-call-the-people-I-love-and-wish-them frame of mind. It's brilliant. Oh and those lights? Too pretty to not click, even with a below par, without flash camera phone. Let's not even get me started on how I worship dry fruit.

I saw a guy from my 7th floor office window struggling to stuff carpets into his car dickie, first this way then that way then just, slam, any which way. The carpets were new, obviously, possibly a bizarre corporate gift. I saw a scooterist at the race course road light cock his helmet to read the label on a wrapped box of mithai he was carrying. I saw people buying garlands of marigold. I bought some too. Twenty bucks a string. And those paan-looking-Ashoka leaf necklaces for doorways.

Still Chhoti Diwali. We're sitting on the steps outside the coffee place in Vasant Kunj, a cappuccino paid for on her sudesko card and had take away. We're doing our routine, playing our parts, sipping from that micro straw, watching people in their nice silk kurtas come and go, contemplating the inane. She was telling me about what a fool she felt like arguing with a history major about Islam being the oldest religion in the world. We switch topics. The wearability of polka dotted wedge heels, how my life here in Delhi is sorted, how being single beyond three months is a drag and for us both outstanding lookers -- pause for hehes -- impossible. Micro straw. Coffee sip. Want drag or kill it? Kill it. Then to a wedding guest list. Then the plan for tomorrow. I was alternately mmm-hmming and whining about the insects biting me because I was O-positive when a a fat little mongrel (me: ole baby; she: FUCK! ) wags his tails and nears the stairs. Madam freaks out. Me: just relax, will you, conquer your fears. She, jumping up and running to the other side of me: I don't WANT to conquer my fears! This makes me laugh. Freeze frame. I love this moment. That's the line. Just like chun mun lights was the phrase. I'm full of this feeling that my life IS sorted.

At lunch, different friends, three of us, two girls, one boy, were discussing this. One of us, the NRI was leaving later tonight. Packing remains. As does the trade off; the money, globetrotting and loneliness versus the stagnant but comfortable life with enough people to call and sit with. Some of us (consultants) pay thirty pounds in London to get our eyebrows threaded by this "very good Pakistani woman", and see the northern lights this coming Jan. Some of us (journalists) put off getting our eyebrows done but have the luxury, freedom and flexibility to be staring at smiley faces drawn on foam at the Nirulas in Def Col that I earlier never noticed .That we can co exist, enjoy the pomfret and the prawns and have good conversation IS lovely, isn't it?

I made my friend, same pomfret-prawn-lunch one, read something I'd written. So she read and she laughed and she said hello again to purple prose and then we laughed and, "oh my god, this is so corny ha ha!", and moved on to mock academic discussions about how corny is the new cool. We quiz the only boy at the table. How is it that he (thoroughly engaging writer) can be corny, effortless and cool? When did we, us remaining two, get so self conscious, also in our writing? Especially in our writing? He shrugs: I don't know. I don't care about corny versus cool.. or something, I guess. Or some such zen answer. Both of us girls: Hmm. Hmm. Small unifying voice between us: what the hell happened to us then?! Was this taught, to mind our natural cheesy, to curb it?! Were we like this in school- careful?! Damn. We reflect on our corny pretentions, grow bored, give up and go have dessert. Best kulfi! Def col.

There is a guy a work I can't stand. He's not a 'guy' in the way the term sometimes means young fellow. He's this old, hobbling, grey eyed monster, if you ask me. Not that he's done anything to warrant the epithet but I just don't like him. I don't talk to him. He's senior enough, obviously, but I will never discuss anything work related or otherwise. I refuse to make eye contact and I abhor the way he continues to laugh at bad jokes even fifteen seconds after the flat punch line. It irritates me. I want to break his other leg. You know how I know I must be in an ok-mood? Because when he was limping out of office today, I sucked it up, pursed my lips and said Happy Diwali. Obviously, there's something very wrong. But I suppose, while I'm riding the wave, don't burn your hair and here's to narrowly escaping the use of trite phraseology*. May you forgive yourself calories you will stuff your face with, and the diyas all look really puhrty. Jai Ram ji ki, literally so.

The strummers, the boors, and Hey Ryan

2011-10-23T14:01:00.005+05:30

Best chat snippet from yesterday

[...]

N: p's neighbor downstairs is playing the guitar fabulously

i am going to put a note under the neighbor's door

17:17 me: saying what:)?

N: "great job with the guitar :)"

i could add "# 1049"

thats p’s house number

me: :))

N: or "upstairs neighbor"

me: sweet

N: but im not sure about that :D

17:18 shall i leave it anon?

me: leave it anon :)

N: :) okay

brb

17:22 okay im back

17:26 me: and and

17:27 N: and nothing

i didnt ring the bell but

the guitar stopped for a while and now is back on :D

me: you're so full of magic

17:28 N: :D hahaha

thats a sweet compliment

[...]

Me, I left my own anon note last night. Bastard driver of SUV in the basement had parked next to and half IN my spot, effectively taking up two places and leaving a generous three inches of useless space for me. Thank you for taking up TWO parking spots!! I wrote with my ink pen on a sheet torn out from my spiral pad, and dropped his wiper over it. I’m hoping the uppercase ‘two’ and the exclamation points – also, two -- make him skeptical of what he might perceive as heartfelt gratitude. I thought of putting my perfectly functional, marginally extensive vocabulary of colourful Hindi abuses to use, but I'm working on showcasing empathy more than attitude. Hari Om.

***

Last week, *cough*, it became kind of evident that I had put on weight. Just a teensy tiny bit. Enough to make a vain woman go ballistic. All that sooji ka halwa for dessert after breakfast. My trousers were tight. I was upset at being called 'puffy' and feeling, I don't know, blaoted, shallow, miserable, all of the above. And then, my friend P sent me this fabulous Ryan Gosling meets feminist blah. Same P, as in friend and love interest of N, anon guitar-complimentor of first para fame. I want to write about them, P&N, how they met, their story, and maybe I will, but of late and for some pleb reason or the other, too much is slipping into a can't-write-about zone. But I'll acquire pair of balls and work on changing that, too, like the empathy thing.

Labelled 'friends/ nut jobs': With you, it's always a good time to stay loose, stay foolish

2011-10-06T13:55:00.005+05:30

"Please na, let's do the lesbian thing, please please..."

Cheap hook to start a post but what the hell -

Two weeks ago when I landed in Bombay and called my friend from inside the plane to say "haan bhai i'm here", she begged me to please, please, pleeeease come out looking hot. My nose looked fatter for it but I couldn't stop grinning. Boarding pass in hand, I marvelled at the comic slight -- how she knew I wouldn't already be looking hot and felt good about the fact that some women know you like the back of their hand. And then I proceeded to the loo at the airport to sort of, remove glasses, insert lenses, flip hair, and bring on the kohl.

Once out, I looked for her, didn't find her but the moment I coincidentally ran into some people I knew from Delhi (did a mental thank god I did a quick touch up), there it was -- one tight squealing hug from behind and a failed muah-muah lesbian thing with promised histrionics. With some women, there's always magic. I think we have that. Nothing beats public foolishness. It's our thing. To make asses of ourselves, loud puckering sounds and all.

At her lovely, ridiculously expensive flat -- I'm so glad I don't live in Bombay! -- there are all these beautifully quirky clocks that don't tell the time. It's a running joke -- to fool people who come and say oh gosh, it's already 8, I better go, and then my friend and her flatmate crack up because their sucker count just went up. It's amazing how that doesn't get old! So when my friend gave me a quaint old-world-charm watch as a present -- the battery is lazy, I was still more tickled. It doesn't tell the time either but it's really beautiful. I wear it as a reminder of that foolishness. In this game of silly and sillier, the right answer to what's the time is: muffled snigger + "it's always a good time". I can't blame you for not laughing at this nonsense. I'm simply sharing the thought that has been making my mood float.

"When will you write about Bombay? Are you ever going to blog? Please na, write about me!" - same clear-hearted fellow foolish diva friend.

The one thing I was looking forward to was meeting her boyfriend. They've been seeing each other for a year (I think) and I've only heard uncharitable things about him FROM HER! So when I met him I was pleasantly, pleasantly surprised. I was also amazed by how someone, someone I love a lot, could paint such an inaccurate portrait of someone they love! "He's so ugly, so ugly.. I'll have such ugly kids.. shit! - but you might not think so because you've even said so and so is attractive." "I've told him if N doesn't like, you it's off"(!!) And then I met him. And sure, he's no looker, but I came off sounding like one of those panelist given the mike at a beauty contest who has to spout shit like, attractiveness is not about your jawline -- it's all within.

Okay, so I won't go as far as to say I thought he was attractive, but I definitely see what she might see. Great body, one. Dark, two. Patience in dealing with your stupid tantrums and shit, three. Doesn't take himself seriously, four -- this should be 'one', actually. Makes you laugh - should rank highest. And the rest of it. So what if he looks like an owl meets sherpa. I think that's cute. And the two of them still have so much to talk about, random rubbish, not 'topics' or what-did-you-do-today type strained shit, but a good ol' rapport with lightness and knowing smirks. So what if he listens to lambi-judai type crap on radio, wears those tight shirts, and his humour isn't an appetiser for me, oh AND he doesn't read - he has to float her boat, not mine. And you! Of all the men I've seen you with, this one watches over you the best. So here you go, validation on paper, in writing -- isn't that what you wanted? Marry the guy. Create your little dark sherpas. With so much good-natured foolishness in their DNA, they'll be a joy to have around. And I get to be their cool smarmy aunt.

Actually, whoever you marry I get to be that, so ignore everything I just said. I like him. It's a good time.

And... pop! goes my Murakami virginity

2011-09-13T12:01:00.000+05:30

This book sent me back into my habit of copying long, beautiful passages into my diary for later pleasant surprise reading. I haven't (been able to?) put it back on my bookshelf. It just lies on my bedside. Beauty is a disease. When I hit page 29, I changed my bookmark. Made it a plain piece of paper so I could write the lines/ keywords/ page numbers of sentences I wanted to keep.

Pg 29
What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.

Pg 103
     "Do you think it will turn to rain?" Shimamoto asked, tapping the tip of her boot on the ground.
looked at the sky. "I think it'll hold out for a while," I said.
     "No, that's not what I mean. What I mean is, will the child's ashes flow to the sea, mix with the seawater, evaporate, form into clouds, and fall as rain?"
     I looked up at the sky one more time. And then at the river flowing.
     "You never know," I replied.

Pg 133
Even castles in the air can do with a fresh coat of paint.

Pg 134
I spent three weeks scouring shops throughout Tokyo in search of the world's greatest soap dispenser.

Pg 146
     "I thought you'd never come here again," I said.
     "Every time I see you, you say the same thing,"she said, laughing. As always, she sat down next to me at the bar and rested both hands on the counter. "But I did write you a note saying I wouldn't be back for a while, didn't I?"
     "For a while is a phrase whose length can't be measured. At least by the person who's waiting," I said.
"But there must be times when the word's necessary. Situations when that's the only possible word you can use," she said.
     "And probably is a word whose weight is incalculable."
     "You're right," she said, her face lit up by her usual smile, a gentle breeze blowing from somewhere far away. "I apologize. I'm not trying to excuse myself, but there was nothing I could do about it. Those were the only words I could have used."

Pg 149
     "Lovers born under an unlucky star," she said. "Sounds like it was written for the two of us."
     "You mean we're lovers?"
   "You think we're not?"
    I looked at her. She wasn't smiling any more. I could make out a faint glimmer deep within her eyes.
     "Shimamoto-san, I don't know anything about you," I said. "Every time I look in your eyes, I feel that the most I can say about you is how you were at age twelve. The Shimamoto-san who lived in the neighbourhood and was in my class. But that was twenty-five years ago. The Twist was in, and people still rode on trams. No cassette tapes, no tampons, no bullet train, no diet food.I'm talking about a long time ago. Other than what I know about you then, I'm in the dark.
     "Is that what you see in my eyes? That you know nothing about me?"
     "Nothing's written in your eyes," I replied. "It's written in my eyes. I just see the reflection in yours."

Pg 150
... I reach out my hand to see, but you've hidden yourself behind a cloud of probablys. Do you think we can go on like this for ever?
     "Possibly. For the time being," she answered.
     "I see I'm not the only one with a strange sense of humour," I said. And smiled.
     She smiled too. The rain has stopped, without a second there's a break in the clouds, and the very first rays of sunlight shine through -- that kind of smile. Small, warm lines at the corner of her eyes, holding out the promise of something wonderful.

Pg 170
Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so unbiased, we always rely on a certain reality -- call it an alternate reality -- to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. AN endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?

Pg 180
When the trio were on their break, I went up to the pianist and told him he no longer needed to play "Star-Crossed Lovers". I mustered up the friendliest smile I could. "You've played it for me enough. It's about time to stop."
     He looked at me, as if weighing something in his mind. The two of us were friends, had shared a few drinks and gone beyond the usual polite conversation.
     "I don't quite understand," he said. "You don't want me to go out of my way to play that song? Or you don't want me to ever play that song again? There's a big difference, and I'd like to be clear about this."
"I don't want you to play it,"I said.
"You don't like the way I play it?"
"I have no problems with your playing. It's great. There aren't many people who can handle that tune the way you do."
"So its the tune itself you don't want to hear any more?"
"You could say that,"I replied.
"Sounds a little like Casablanca to me!" he said.
"I suppose so," I said.
     Since then, sometimes when he catches sight of me, the pianist breaks into a few bars of "As time goes by."
   The reason I didn't want to hear that tune again had nothing to do with memories of Shimamoto. The song just didn't do to me what it used to. Why, I can't say. The special something I'd found ages ago in that melody was no longer there. It was still a beautiful tune, but nothing more. And I had no intention of lingering over the corpse of a beautiful song.

Evidently, my taste buds are dealing with a sideways growth spurt. What we like is what resonates within -- heh, like 'twee pop'. This has to do with my frame of mind, and I need more such stuff to read.

Recommend?

“If you had had an easy childhood, darling, you wouldn’t ever have anything to write about.”-- Rebecca Wells*

2011-09-05T00:53:00.000+05:30

I wrote this last dawn. It took me a day to post because I'm toeing the sleep-over-what-you-write line. I even e-mailed a friend asking if I should post this before I decided to, so... yea, no blah-blah build-up at all! :)

Maybe not 'ever since I was a little girl', but through much of my adult life -- fine, all of it! -- I've had a complex relationship with my mother. My childhood, since they're always telling you to begin at the beginning, wasn't bad. No abuse, no contemplating suicide, no abandonment issues, nobody died; I was a laughing, bouncy kid -- like Olive in Little Miss Sunshine (see pic), only slightly more off centre and a little bit more cheeky. But when I screw up my forehead and let frown lines dig their nails into my temples, when I train the lens of my recall power to not waver, to stay, like a command to a dog, I can in a flash conjure up the days when the going wasn't Olive, if you know what I mean.

And I mean this of the last ten years -- these complexities I speak of as if complexities weren't a word arrived at consciously. Well, more than ten actually -- I turned a year older just the other day.

I'm not sure how I've gotten started on this right now. I don't write about my mother. It stays tucked in, the cosy demon scrap book of memories. But there's obviously something eating me if I'm up at 4:something in the morning and I tell myself it's to shut the windows because its raining and because I sleep with them open because I don't like what the AC does to my skin and because the consequence of all this love for nature and love for vanity is going to have me moppin' up rainwater tomorrow morning.

So yea, of course I'm up to shut the windows. Except I kind of like that its dark and there's lightning and ha ha! the crows have had it because it's wet and they have to put off their stupid cawing till the patter stops. Besides its a Sunday and I wish these birds would take it elsewhere, get out of the suburbs. (Dorothy Parker anyone? -- Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.)

So yea, here I am, sitting up in bed, my beautiful steel lamp turned down to its lowest illuminating factor, smelling my little ring of white jasmine buds for ten bucks lying next to me, and I'm constantly stopping to rub my eyes because the tear ducts are a bit scratchy from my solo sneeze festival some minutes ago. There's lightning outside too, did I mention? Net net: there's a mo-od! And what kind of half-assed wannabe writer doesn't cash in on the mo-od. Either I do that -cash in, or I go eat an apple and look out the window, be wistful rapunzel number one because damn, my hair's growing well.

All of what I've said above is true. And I did go get that apple (two apples -- I skipped din-din). And I did do the Rapunzel thing. I didn't toss the apple core out in the open, even though, I'm such a... a -- oh, aa.. excuse me! jesus! -- even though I'm such a hypocrite. I snarl don't litter to every person who I sense is about to lower trash on to my ground, and yet I've been the most guilty tosser-out of cigarette stubs from my car window when driving, and this is my pathetic new thing.

But back to the mommy issues. My mother's taken to ignoring me. I see this as a positive development (straight out of *Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood? -- "Forget Love. Try good manners"/ "The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others in our hearts?”).

I think I didn't wake up because of the rain or the window or the apple or the jasmine. Or the sneezes. Although how I would've sneezed if I were asle... anyway. I think I'm up because as a daughter, I'm telephatic. Is that a word? For someone, for a daughter type person, to wake for no reason, thanks to no outside stimulus? I just felt my mother wasn't in the house. I felt I was sleeping in an empty house. That it was dark and raining and, of course, she had to be in her room., didn't she? What else are you here for? But she wasn't. Because she'd left. She had a flight to catch. And she didn't say bye. Not last night when she could've said won't wake you, eat properly, and 'don't act too wild' -- which is what she told me last month when she had a flight to catch and I woke up for a 2-second groggy ok tata bye bye.

No okay tata bye bye this morning. She just left. And if I'm honest, I know I was up a good second before, long enough to catch her at the door, even if I had to pretend that I was woken up by all the pussy footing and quiet lifting of a puny suitcase for a week-long trip. I wasn't woken up by anything other than a restless heart. I am my mother. People ask me are you more your father or your mother? I sometimes wish I could lie. When I was told by an old friend, on the drinky evening of my birthday that there are facets of me that are my father, it topped my evening. That to me was birthday present riiiight up there with my various other thoughtful lovelies -- my baby hydrangea, a native of Nainital that survived the Delhi heat, my big ordinary but beautiful kettle with oil paints of all primary colours in it -- I've always wanted this (thank you, person reader, gift provider; you melted me), my cake, my book giftwrapped in what do you know -- olive paper -- with an orchid on it, my blue-brown-ochre hand-knitted scarf, and my birthday card in which my grandmother, who's mostly given up using pen paper, wrote to me, inscribed my card, called me a name she hasn't 'written' in years, and if this were to be the, heaven forbid, last card I ever got from her, I'll freeze it and put in a safe deposit and pretend I swallowed the key, like Jerry the mouse did in an episode you can't possibly connect with because you're normal and Jerry's a mouse.

I had a good day, sure. It was fine. There was wine. With fruits in it. Perfect prissy sangrias. The problem is I didn't spend much of it at home. I didn't see my mother, except in the morning. That hurt her, obviously. My parents were asleep when I got back in the evening. But it was something she said later, one little line, her perfect showmanship, an exhibition of the skill that is her laser tongue. That I can remember Dorothy Parker's words but at the best of times not be able to recall exactly what my mother said both fails and frightens me. It wasn't quite you're destroying yourself, but it sure as hell wasn't how was your day either.

And so it is that we're back in the cycle of sharp words and terse reactions. I don't suppose I can blame her for catching a flight and not saying bye. I am like that, too. I am her. I radiate joy like a truck expels diesel fumes, consistent yet toxic. But I can blame her for not processing that everything is a two-way street and that if I have walls that I try to festoon with humour ivy, its just my way of keeping afloat, of not becoming a sobbing degenerate with eternal mommy issues. God knows the truth is closer than that. I just wish there is a force that knows that while I'm fantastically grateful for things happening to me, including right now the awareness of a grey-blue sky, being my mother's daughter is not always one of them. And on some especially impossible days, I'd rather floss my teeth with jute than cross paths with her to say bye.

And then, in other relationship-status news...

2011-07-28T00:07:00.001+05:30

Yesterday, I finally told my parents about the break-up. (Not that I'd let a squeak out of it here, for which, am I sorry? I don't know. No, I guess. On my own terms, in my own time, all that.) My father said he's proud of me for being able to make a decision. My mother said, are you sure? And then that he was a great guy and she liked him ("I'm sure she did too" -- my father said) and that we all have our weaker moments but to never look back. Promptly after which she had a panic attack: oh my god! so you aren't getting married? I told her to cool it, to give me a break for god's sake, and so we all had another drink, another toast to my brother, the big guy who sitting by some river in Pune apparently and singing strange drunken songs while and nursing hangovers, turned 28.

So, it's over. With the pianist. With the baker. With the boy. As of last month, my three-year-long this-is-the-man-I-will marry, this is he! thing is over. And I feel old. I also felt, past tense, tired and jaded and fed up with myself for being such an ass. I knew the things that wouldn't change. I knew the problems that wouldn't go away. And still I lingered. Wet paint. They tell you to not sit on the bench. I sat on the bench. I wish I had been stronger sooner. And not just sat there thinking, aaanh, fuck it, it's only a little paint. My butt will get stuck to the bench, sure, my trousers will be fucked, sure, but after a while, surely it'll dry and all that will be left is a yellow fossil of paint on my ass. That's not so bad, is it? I mean, at least it's not, like, cowdung or something. Because ha ha THAT would be bad! This was my reasoning. Till suddenly I guess I just didn't want the yellow fossil of paint on my ass anymore, not for the rest of my life. Paint better than cow dung but who needs either.

I feel bad that after a reasonably long time (3 years, come on, long enough) my analogies have slipped so low down the ladder. Paint and ass and all that. It used to be vanilla and harmonica and freshly baked bread -- no, sorry, bakery's a sore point -- and cinnamon and dew and bed hair and all that.

Fuck it. Band-aid had to be pulled.

And I'm okay. I'm happy. I'm distracted. I'm lighter. I'm smiling. I'm single. I'm working. I'm running. No one seems to believe this. I bought new shoes to run in. Pink. I look after myself. I slip into 28 waist jeans after so long. I'm back to loving my hair a whole lot and not wanting to go bald this year, grey or no grey. And since I have a problem with being a depressed type, I haven't been. Sometimes low, but that's about it. I'm glad I don't have friends who don't do the are you okay ?drama. It's more nuanced than that. Am I okay? Yes, I'm okay. Do I think about things? Less so, now. I'm at peace. Like I used to be at the beginning of that relationship. Now I feel older. But not in a cough-cough, I'm dying way. Happier older. I did the right thing older. Yea, that feels about right older. Finding comedy in tragedy older. Oh to be this wise this young older. Why the hell did I not sort my shit sooner older. But I learnt. No regret. If relationships, like jobs needed reccos from previous employers slash lovers, I'd give my, inhale, ex-boyfriend a ten-star gold rating. He was the best. It just took me three hundred years to become very sure that there is a difference in the best and the best for me.

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Altogether awesome or what?

2011-07-22T11:47:00.000+05:30

Email from friend in Ghana that I LOVE and am living vicariously through (also WHO I love and am living vic..). Don't ask me what she's doing there. I'll only say, having a ball. This is the entire mail. (ok, fine, she's visiting for a month on some project or the other.)

had a pretty crazy couple days. got lost, thugged 4 times, rode on a bike between two ghanaians, rode in a taxi with rotting tomatoes, slept in a random hotel, ate weird food, had kids shrieking "bwana" or whatever they call white women - i'm not even white! and got hit on by: 1 policeman who asked me to marry him, 1 random dude in a mall, and a couple that asked for my number and wanted to "be friends" - a COUPLE!

oh, and set up an preliminary inventory system for my rice mill lady - rebecca.

tomorrow i'm going shopping with evelyn, the sister of one of my ghanaian buddies, and then i'm in togo for the weekend.

my life has turned upside down.

There was/ a girl/ so tall/ so thin/ so fair/ her wedding was hit by a monsoon/ yet she laughed and laughed and laughed/ and didn't worry about the frizz in her hair

2011-07-12T13:33:00.005+05:30

Three weeks ago, I got a text from an unknown number: I'm engaged!

I said: To whom? Congratulations!

This I thought might reveal who the person was.

But then the reply came: same guy, Ankit:) and I couldn't keep up the charade.

Listen sorry, I don't have this number, who are you?

You idiot, it's me, T..
Shriek time. I had to call.

Two weeks ago, the invitation landed up. People saving paper is a good thing. But I miss non e-cards. I have all my married friends non e-cards tied in a bundle, possibly for keepsake, possibly as reference for my own wedding invites.This wedding was in Mhow. I wasn't going to go.

But then ten days ago, T bride in question started bombarding me with have you booked your ticket, have you booked your ticket type messages. Couldn't ignore them anymore. Figured it might be fun. Decided. Booked ticket.

One week ago, I told my boss I'm out for the weekend. He said ok, send HR a mail. I sent HR a mail. The guy called me. Ma'am you've just joined, you can't go. But I've booked my tickets. I'm going to go. Okay, ma'am. But only on medical leave. Okay, Sandip, I'm falling sick on Thursday, by Monday I'll be flu-less again. Ha ha, Maa'm. Ha ha, Sandip.

Mhow, July 7th- July 10th

The mandap with a tin roof was drizzled on and that sounded a bit strange with the pandit chanting away, but it looked especially lovely in half an hour from when this was taken

I have to admit I felt special doing all of the following petty tasks for my now newly-married friend

Being the official brandisher of a rolled-up hand towel and dabber of T bride's forehead sweat at her mehndi ceremony,
the official answerer of calls and texts as the mehndi was on her birthday ("tell him I have three men working on me!") and
the official reliever of her facial itches and ticks and push-backer of stray hair strands that would fly on to her temples when she couldn't move use her hands -- all of it made me feel important.

Also, at the wedding (she got married at home), when she was walking from her room to the porch toward her husband-any-minute-now, he of the killer smile and firm handshake, I had chunni duty. This made me feel more special than the two-bit attention men at weddings will pay you.

So, the chunni was a big square of tube roses (rajnigandha) plucked from the garden and woven into an obviously divine-smelling net that was held up by four brothers at the four corners. Bride walked in the centre, under the net roof of tube roses. And because she's so bloody tall, me beside her, with my one arm holding up the net and the other arm lifting up my sari so I don't wet it or trip. And oh the flashbulbs! I walked beside her for all of three minutes, and murmured instructions under my breath (hopefully inaudibly to the people lined up on either side admiring her) : easy..watch your step..demure, look down woman! no, don't smile for the camera! coy, coy, fool! You're smiling too much! No wonder your bloody sister in law's been giving you dirts!

End result: giggle fest + contorted expressions of the bride from folding her anyway thin lips and biting the corner of her mouth. Can't wait for the others to share their photos.


"Three men working on me.. send him a message, no? Ha ha!"

So that was fun.

Her baby brother was more fun, in the way baby brothers, who you don't see forever turn out okay, mad even, and equipped with frequent easy laughs and a sense of humour that can swing from pedestrian-but-not-crass to very bad british accent in five seconds flat. I met this child after 14 years. We talked about school days and ugly girls and how he hated kho kho -- " ha ha ha.. randomly sitting in the sun on my haunches waiting to be tapped". No longer such a baby, though, this brother is now a graphic designer and such a talented cartoonist! At 25 and 6'2, he has a large stuffed toy called 'Captain' -- "Teddy Bear Extraordinaire". Cause of much mirth. Once again, the realisation- nothing beats self deprecation - not generosity, not kindness, not tube roses.

Baby brother also got me stoned three days in a row and one day made me walk barefoot on the road in the rain. It all seemed so funny, the talk of kho kho and the.. oh god.. T bride even had time to pester me, Marry him, no, n? Please ya, what's the big deal? I want a better sister in law than that sour puss. Me: Hahahaaaaa, he's damn cute and funny and all that but NO, stop it!! Speaking of which, this is my new profile picture on Facebook, originally the spare me look.

"No, ya.. please, ya.. my eyes look drunk ya!" (This is me).

Besides the humidity, there was an infectious hysterical dementia in the air.I loved it! I have fresh recollections of moving barefoot on the dance floor with mad Sindhi aunts of the bride and brother, in their animated voices and classy pearls and understated, non-bling clothes, passing around beer glasses, being expressive and exaggeratedly pouty to bachna ae haseeno and Raghav's oh teri baaton mein. Did I not say I had a very good time?

These women went and did the whole hide-the-groom's-shoes thing

and counted me in on splitting 6 ways the cash-for-shoes

even though I was just faffing around, shooting blurry pictures

All friends of the bride, including the just-met ones were great company,

even at the mandap when you're supposed to be serious and ideally, praying for the couple

For old time sake, I forced myself to wake up early one morning and, despite the clouds and remnants of the previous night's eyeliner still shadowed along my inner lower lid, wear my walking shoes and take a round of the teeny place that growing up, I spent a year in. And sure enough, there was the other downpour, all those memories of .. oh man, rabid barky Pomeranian of the neighbour... my new red scissors I dropped in a manhole and cried for .. going to watch Khalnayak in that open air theatre and Divya not wanting to go to the loo alone because she was scared Sanjay Dutt might turn up...some boy called Rajat at the back of the bus who was in the 9th and therefore a 'senior' trying to bully me.. fancy dress competitions at that almost second home on post office road (as Miss Universe in my swimming costume with red hearts and a silver crown made of chart paper, and as a Hawaiian girl - with streamers tucked into my cycling shorts or pedal pushers as my mother called them) -- and oh god, as always, my mental maps in how close they are to the real thing, the solid brick and mortar venues, fascinate me to a point where I want to either choke or run faster.

Those images are my thirty five decks of cards lying scattered across the living room floor that need a certain dedication to sit the hell down for twenty minutes and sort the mess. Then we might have some order. Then I might have a system. Then only can I pull out one card at a time and dealt with the inscription and colours. This attack of the random memories, as if upturned and emptied from a desk drawer, can really set me back a breath or five. I've noticed it before. It's like I'm being a prefect to myself, badge and all, enunciating all over again: can you please just form a straight line and enter one by one so I can address the postcard nature of each at my own pace, if that's not too much to ask, thank you?!

But nooo.. monsoon weed + memory deluge = as good a reason as any for a post and all these carefully-cropped, time-consuming upload of pictures. And as you can see, I'm doing a fine job of being caught up with myself. 'Sup wid you?

Day #1. New Job: death by videoconferencing

2011-06-21T00:02:00.001+05:30

I don't think it's a word even, videoconferencing. And if it is, those people getting gung-ho about slut walks (besharmi morchha - soo much more lyrical!) should instead channelise their nakedness into signing a petition to banish it from the canon of fuck-all verbs.

But who listens to me, I say..

Shall I do the pros first? -- and in a manner of speaking, have dessert before dinner? -- as literally suggested by some some sadist quote-spouter on how short life is, let the good times roll?

No. We'll appease the tradition gods.

First things first. HR people are assholes! Insufferable obsequious morons second only to the bumpkins at marketing is ore apt but who puts it like that (in a sentence). HR PEOPLE ARE ASSHOLES!

So much more punch.

I went to work today. Unemployment over. Day one, all monochrome and small pearls, leather bag, shades duly taken off once indoors -- classic good child behaviour, well on the road to being a people pleaser on my first day in the new office. None of the shy-new girl in school act I wondered if I might do. Now I figure I can't anymore. It's the wrath of the grey hair. The attack of the 27s. Shyness goes. Smiles stay. I love smiling. If you be sweet to me, I will smile at you and feel happy. Then you will pat yourself on the back. For getting that smile.And feel happy.It's an excellent balance of glee. Refer last line. But nothing like that happened with the stupid dimwits at HR.

So like any journalist true to his profession knows, nobody in the newspaper business reaches office at 11 a.m. The floors are just about being swobbed. And you can just about smell the extent to which the phenyl poccha has been diluted. Except if you're new, told to reach at 11, reach instead earlier at a quarter to, all prepared for some hours of excruciating idiocy, courtesy hired gadget loons who can hook up these camera conference things.

I should probably say here, since I haven't bothered to announce officially, that I remain a newspaper girl, in all my new-day punctual monochrome glory at the new office, new job, new people, new template, new new new new new! I even got a window seat (new). More of a view of wall and wires but at least if it rains, I can announce it in office to my new colleagues and they can say accha? and go back to scanning newspapers/ gtalking.

The real mood kill was not so much the people -- all of whom were warm to me. It was the damn induction programme they had for the new recruits.

Reminds me of the universal OST for such deathly mock scenarios.

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly... with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly... with his song

They KILLED me! They told me about sales figures. They said things like learning curve. They threw marketing fellows in my face. They spoke of challenges in the next quarter. They got an IT guy to make a PowerPoint presentation. There were charts. There were tables. They spoke of break even and profit and quarterly basis. One chap dropped a bomb. And before it evaporated from my ears, I quickly wrote it down in my new notebook: The finance vertical organogram. Ha ha! Organogram. I thought of friends I'd tell that to. Oh and about my new notebook: office supplied, love it! It's basic, sure - if I paid for it. But as far as office stationery goes, definitely a notch higher than cheapest available. It's one of those literal India shining motifs: orange with little golden elephant motifs.

(Do non-journos know that about journos? That the organisations give us scribble pads and pens? In the same way I guess that courts have a store room for those curly lawyer wigs and doctors their scrubs. I'm sounding vacuous, I know. But I've never gotten excited about that before. Old office = v bad stationery. Orange elephants = mostly happy joinee.)

But the orientation. It was a national thing. Clueless freshers in whichever city, hooked up through wires and dial up, seen through somewhat slow motion-y pixelated images. It was a crashing, crashing bore! You're lucky to not have bee there. I was so angry! Especially since I am interested in the price of newsprint and what's up with it. I do want to know basic circulation figures. And yes, I do have a question for the seemingly-likable chap in marketing (shocking, I know) but I'm afraid Yes/No is beyond him for the love of his voice that I don't share.

SO this droning on and on was like spitting on my patience and smearing it on my innards. Something like what I'm doing now to you. Except I didn't have the option to close window and get on with life. There, in that room, my threshold for absorbing information was getting raped, repeatedly, like those ads between cricket matches that are shamelessly replayed so you learn to recognise even the tics in the actor's abdomen. The marathon induction session, HR-brainchild of course (11 a.m-6 p.m) -- one hour lunch break, how kind -- was a battery of my senses. I didn't think this soporific chant was fair. In the daylight. When I even went for a run in the morning to stay alert and fresh and generally energetic! So when the marketing -- or was it sales? -- chap asked me Hullo, Delhi, are you feeling sleepy?, I wanted to set fire to his teeth and call him some names in Hindi my mother would flinch in horror cum agony if she heard me use. Like that time when.. never mind.

I mean, of course I was awake! It's my first day. And you have a fucking camera aimed at my chest. I'm not about to lean to you and doze off. Iss not what we prissy Indian girls are taught best to do! Although.. hehe, second invocation of the convenience 'never mind'.

Although... I did have my book. Under the table. The last Don, Mario Puzo: "Like my mother always said, life is a box of hand grenades. You never know what'll blow you to kingdom come". And really, you'd want to know what Pippi De Lena did next too, more than stare at a screen frozen at a point in a PowerPoint that says so captivatingly, List of Functions. So when, sitting at that table, I'd look down, even slightly -- I thought I'd positioned myself really well; all those years in futile post grad teach you something of adjusted reading on the sly - the smarties on the other side of the camera would catch on. Remaining entertainment = text former colleagues. But even they work on deadlines.

Today was tough. HR is cruel. Videoconferencing needs to be contained. I was the horse whose will they were breaking. And they came damn well close. The good thing is that it's over and tomorrow I can just look out of the window. That's my plan.

'Hi, I'm a journalist..' *brilliant smile* 'And you are? -- disarmed?'

Becoming superstitious

2011-06-13T16:11:00.000+05:30

Yesterday we were fighting, the usual khit-pit.

Things like

You don't spend enough time with me!
What're you TALKING about - we just met yesterday!

That's not the point!
Look, I don't want to watch Kung-Fu Panda in 3D! My head hurts!

What about 2D, what's the excuse there?; Mall? Sunday? Crowds?
You know what..forget it...
Bye!

Half an hour later he calls me back.

Hi..
Hm..
Do you want to watch a play?
Which one? Do you have tickets?
No, but.. The Woman in Black, epicentre, we'll get tickets..Gunjan's idea
Whose??
Ankur's fiance..
Ohh. How come? Well whatever. Ok. What time.
Pick you up at 7.
Bye.

Altogether less yelling. Good sign. When the three of them arrive, I'm late. I've kept them waiting. He said seven. They're here at a quarter to. I'm annoyed. And only half dressed because I'd wanted to fit in a little exercise before the play, and this moving pick-ups forward has derailed my intentions to properly sweat. Anyway. Quick bath, stairs flown down, hair uncombed, I'm panting but sat in the car and apologising to this never-met-fiance of boys friend. Usual introductory backseat noises made: Hi, hi! Congratulations! For? Ohh, Thanks! Ha ha...

The play started at 7.45. By 7.50 I was freezing and wanted to kick myself. I know from experience and previously worn layers that I freeze in movies/ plays/ auditoriums at large. Going to a movie dressed under is like going for a haircut without lenses.You'll put your glasses down. They'll chop your ears off. And you won't be able to tell how much they're taking off from the back.

Anyway. There I was, at epicentre, in my red t-shirt and shorts, sinking further into my seat, shielding myself with my useless leather bag and being too much of an icicle to focus on the actors.

The Woman in Black (They called it The Lady in Black -- 'adaptation') was without a break. And hour and a half. I got used to the cold, re-learnt my lesson - be warm or incur the wrath of the AC gods -- and started enjoying the drama, the spooks, the imaginary marshes, the sound of horse hooves -- old horse carriages and accidents key to the play -- the spray can rolling mist effects, the possessed rocking chair, the shadows to create ghosts - altogether nice-'oh look!'-theatre props.

The interesting part came at the end; curtain call, the two actors and the woman who plays the ghost bow, chap introduces the small cast, calls the light and sound guys to come on stage and everyone has to clap again -- all that was routine.

My this semi-cultured, semi-well-travelled boyfriend tells me that in the performance of The Woman in Black that he saw in London, the ghost lady was not introduced like the rest of the cast. She doesn't come out to take a bow (nor does she wear the uncool Halloween-style mask). When the cast has been lauded and is returning to the wings, the lights and focus on the faintest shadow of a rocking chair in the corner and there she is, barely.

I loved this nugget!

What I loved more was, back at epicentre, when the lead actor got done introducing and 'giving it up' for production guys, he spoke of the jinx. Or the curse. Or whatever -- the 'untoward incidents'. How whenever this play is performed, there's always a 'mishap on set', where ever it's performed. An in fact, just three days ago, they had their own experience with this ghost of a scorned woman -- at rehearsal, one section of the set just came crashing down, broke, had to be rebuilt. Nobody got hurt. It was just odd. He told the audience to google it. I made a mental note.

We walked out of the play, four of us, comparing little notes -- were you scared? decent acting, huh? -- before conversation veered to where to have dinner. One of us was fasting - Gunjan. So we were headed to a place she could have fast-friendly food: fruits and potatoes and milk products and or tea/coffee. Sunday night meant every place was packed to the gills. But we found a spot, parked and were crossing the road when all of us found it strange that there was a horse buggy right there, in front of us. Oooh! Just like in the play, hoof sounds and all. Two comments of a how strange! and wow man! nature later we're eating inside. Soon, we're done. We're stepping outside. Someone wants ice cream. We're waiting, general chit chat. It's past 10. Another horse carriage crosses. Not such a coincidence this time. But registered nonetheless. Maybe it's just a day for horses. And for what it's worth, one guy's brought his camel, trying to make a buck offering rides. So there ARE other animals in sight. And it's not like it's snowing and this is England a century ago.

I'm dropped home. Byes said, with promises of lets do this again really soon. I don't climb the stairs but take the elevator. Desperate Housewives should start any minute. At night, whoever gets home lasts texts/ calls to say hello, home. Twenty minutes is too soon for him to be home. My phone is on vibrate. Samsung is no Nokia. It's a miracle I heard it. I answer. He's speaking in the tone he speaks in when there are people around. It's not a leisurely hello. It's a "Hi ba.. there's no need to panic but we've been in an accident... relax, we're all fine... I'm just updating you, Ankur was driving.. we were going slowly, at the u turn an SUV spun into us.. I'll call soon. We're all ok"

I'm not a panic master. But accident is accident. I 've heard the details. I am calm. I call him back to remind him to take pictures of the "totalled car" for insurance and to hear the background sounds. He does sound fine, flustered, high strung, abusive of two cop-cars that didn't stop but still, FINE.

From then I call every ten minutes. I ask if I should drive there. He says no. He's dealing with the crowds and the other car people. He'll call me back. It's under control. His father's on his way. His phone battery is at 10%. Ankur and Gunjan are okay, shaken, not injured. There's no blood. The right side of the car is badly damaged.

The next time I speak to him, the development is that it wasn't the SUV's fault. A speeding black santro shot out of one of the village roads, hit the SUV and threw it off course. The SUV then hit their car, the red hatchback, that Maruti Getz. The black Santro had driven off. No damage to the SUV, the right side of the Getz all mangled, steel in the tires.. waiting for the crane to come pick it up.

The accident was around 11 p.m. They got home a little before 2 a.m. When I speak to him, I tell him the spooky thought -- the black car, the accident.. the play.. the mishaps.. That unnerves him a little. But he can handle stupid girlfriends with nothing better to do than connect the macabre. He doesn't say anything about it to the other two.

This morning I called Gunjan. Asked how she was, made light about the fact that she must have been ravenous after her fast when she finally got home. Ha ha, she said. No, she was fine. Shoulder bruised. Couldn't sleep. And was going to work late, but was thankful that no glass had shattered, nothing major except crumpled car. Felt lucky. Said something about the apathy of Delhiites who don't stop at accidents. How she's ashamed of her city and how she's pucca going to the temple to say a thank you and offer something -- Is that superstition, too, or just gratitude? Couldn't ask if she thought it had anything to do with the play. That's just silly! Besides, the rest of the audience apart, the four of us saw The Woman in Black. In the car they were three. They're over and saved and thank god for small mercies. But now, just a little teensy weensy wimpy bit, I feel like I'm up next, like the one pending delivery report. OMG!

'How I spent my summer vacations'. Single spaced and gushy-gushy.

2011-06-11T16:11:00.004+05:30

I got back from Shimla a couple of days ago but I've been shying away from writing this post.

I have a mental stutter when it comes to gushing. It's easier to bitch than gush. Quote me, please. Gushing is a disease. Enthusiasm its sibling. And who wants to further perpetrate such mass folly. If a holiday's been good, which is has, there's little to bitch about. Blessing or curse, you decide. Also, and still on shying away, I had the post all mapped out - say four pics, bullet points, a carefully careless tone of text, you've been there, I've done that, same ol', same ol'.

Anyway.

My lovely holiday-
Which really was lovely-

I ate lots of fruit -- khurmanis (apricots), strawberries, cherries, and sweet wild orange-yellow berries (see pic) my grandmother said back in the day they called akkhas. The thing I didn't have was a non-fuzzy tennis-ball-sized green and pink cross between a peach and an apple. My loss.

I did however, break my I'm-not-drinking rule for the Himachal holiday and had, in order of consumption:

a beer in the garden the afternoon we arrived and after completion of first hill walk/ baby trek
red wine that night after round two of hill walk and right after declaring myself ruling scrabble champion in the family
red wine the next night. (I finished that bottle and also knocked it accidentally so the last bit spilt on Masi's (my aunt's) precious carpet. I was terrified my aunt would see the stain so I ran to the loo, threw a wet hand towel over it and dragged a table closer. Lots of sudden motion flurry for a heavy-eyed wine drunky. My tickled older cousin was hissing at me hysterically to take it easy and that if her mother/my aunt said anything, she'd take the fall for me. Nobody noticed the stain.)
bloody mary the next afternoon after the puja/prayers for my grandmommy (she had a few chugs too) and
champagne, white wine the birthday night

So fine, I'm going to delude my calorie meter and put the count at four drinks. Five, okay. Not a drop more.

And even if it was an extra swig here and there, those walks undid all damage. The walks were my highlight. I walked, rather, we -- my cousin and I -- like long locked up mountain goats let out into the wild. Fiends, us both, proud descendants of our now wistful grandpappy (especially when he sees us tie our shoelaces) who used to be such a walker - Kailash Mansarovar twice in his time, and an evening walk come rain or roaches. Now he's old but we tell him his genes live on.

His grandkids, us, are still greedy for the sweet pains you get when you've been out in the sun, with umbrella/ walking stick, sneakers, patience and a common love for nature -- did you see that bird? what a gorgeous red!; look at the puhrty purples!; Careful, here; No, no, fuck the shortcut, it's not dark yet.

Twice a day, an hour and a half two hours each time. Long, uphill panting walks on what we believed were vastly undiscovered forest paths. All this for and in reverence to our beauteous gluteus. Retarded conversation while endurance training + pine air = recipe for glowing skin and perfect ass.

That I've come back the colour of lightly brewed tea is then a bit incongruous and not so nice. Sunscreen fail. (Biotique carrot lotion, SPF 40 is now relegated to limb protection)

My little neice, happy to be my mountain guide..

and take me berry-pickin'

Lingdi-Lingdi!
Now this next part - I can't say was the best thing about my holiday; that would be uncool even for a semi-closet botanist. But these edible ferns, that which iin singularity looks like the worm who poked his head out of Cinderella's apple! This clash of cultures! This harmony in the universe! This ease in gushing once-warmed-up!

Short version: Shimla has these ferns. As do lots of damp hilly places, sure. These fern heads are called Lingdi. Novelty factor for me - I didn't know people cook lingdi, make them like beans, serve them at dinner, be normal about it! That's what I get for being an under-exposed Delhi-ite - the tendency to celebrate a vegetable you don't get in the plains:

But the similarity between what's called lingdi in the hills up north in India -- imagine my amateur linguist excitement and my amateur anthropological thrill to find a wiki entry of Lingdi ('Diplazium esculentum') overlap with the sweet-named koru, a famous New Zealand icon found in Maori greenstone jewellery, on their stamps, on their cakes -- everywhere! It's as common to them as the ambi/ paisley is to us Indians.

If I get a tattoo, it'll be a toss up between an ambi and a koru. Or maybe I could keep twin Great Danes with those names to throw people off.

I also found some fascinating jargon on the morphology of the edible fern ampelopteris kunzethe, excerpts of which if you read out aloud under five seconds after a few humble shots of tequila, would make a great party game.

Sole rule is to be a train. You have to be like those rapid fire radio announcers who read out caveats like they're on fire- 'insurance-is-the-subject-matter-of-solicitation-please-read-the-offered-document-carefully-before-investing!'

Now swap insurance talk (and pace!) with ampelopetris kunzethe, bottoms up, and off you go:

"The rhizome is dichotomously branched, short creeping and nearly naked except at the apex where it bears small basally attached, gland-tipped paleae bearing deciduous acicular as well as glandular marginal hairs."

Drink up. Time yourself. Tell me how it goes.

FYI. Headed to the hills. BRB.

2011-05-31T01:44:00.002+05:30

LOL@ da attack of cyber shortkts?

I'm going to Shimla. So you won't hear from me for a week or so. More a village-district-settlement or whatever the correct term is, 40kms north of Shimla than Shimla-Shimla, but as far as Airtel is concerned, it doesn't matter. They couldn't be bothered to grant me roaming-GPRS. I couldn't be bothered to call them. Net net: I will not be around to watch the dip in my post a week average. But some stats are more important. Like a grandmother's 90th birthday.

She was born near Shimla. Now her elder daughter lives there. That's where the party is. That's where we're all headed, woollies and all. Family reunion. I'm all set for irrelevant memories to flood back and take up more useless space in my head. I haven't been there since college first year. This from going every year, and living there for two.

Shimla-aah! Or like the Brits say, Simla. The 'h' is a problem. Shimla is where I first saw a guy shirtless. Reuben. That's where I was when Raveena Tandon and Akshay Kumar were grinding to tu cheez badi hai mast mast, if that step of theirs was the grind- was it? That's also where I was when the schools shut because (I want to say in bold) rats ran amok and the plague hit -- '93? (and pre-eyebrows-threaded Shilpa Shetty was wearing nikki nikki i.e teeny weeny animal print frocks and prancing in snow/white sand with Akshay Again --- a befitting sequitur to the plague, if you ask me).

Shimla is where I went to an all girls boarding school. And ticked off stupid toothy Utsah Sharma for arguing with me about the pronunciation of the little Swiss girl. Me: It's Hei-di. She: It's Head-I(!). [Me now: I wish I'd said something wicked and clever, the memory of which would make me swell, but I doubt I did anything more sparkling than a poor imitation.]

Shimla was where I 'learnt' about sex. (I feel the need to put that in quotes. Don't look at me like that!) Where the nuns counselled a red-hair-dyed girl called Swati for spending the night in a hotel with a boy. They didn't expel her because her mother had died and her father was an alcoholic and she was automatically a poor thing to be made exception of. We, in the 'shoe room dorm' must've whispered awe-struck inanites of how cool we thought Swati was. And gutsy! And grown up! We wanted to be Swati. Spend the night in a hotel with a boy seemed like something grown ups did. Grown ups didn't hatch plans to cheat for the Sanskrit exam the next day.

Shimla was where Renu Narula counselled me when I burst out crying after a Math paper thinking I'm going to fail the seventh standard and effectively be a loser for life. Renu was my Mother Teresa that day. She took my question paper, sat me down near the basketball court, cross checked my answers with her and assured me I'd get at least a 40. My report card came home a month later. I flunked Sanskrit. I passed Math. I loved Renu. Oh, the kindness of classmates who didn't go home in the holidays because the Phillipines were too far! That was Renu. Home away from home. What a long plait Renu had. Oh, Renu.

When I left that school -- I was pulled out -- and went back three years later to visit the girls, my old friends, who were still there, the shy one with a broken nose but most exquisite handwriting and now a mother of a 3-year-old said to me: you have boobs. I think I was always conscious of wearing that particular blue, collared stretch tee again. I never want to be 15 again. Not in Shimla. Not in a boarding. Not with numbskills who instructed you to on the light and off the light instead of PUT on the light or SWITCH off the light. This would bother me even back then. When we didn't have boobs.

I don't remember being particularly happy in Shimla. Not in the boarding. The nuns were nuns. My classmates were a stupid excitable bunch. Except for Woven Suri. And that was her real name. She was just Woven. She told me once if I pull my hair it'll grow faster. She even offered to pull it for me. Maybe I'm carrying myself away. But I forget how that ended. There was a broken bed, yes. I jumped on it repeatedly to check for springiness. I know this contradicts my Oliver Twist tone but all these rubbish conflicting fragments come back to me at a pace faster than what my fingers can endure. (So I'm not illustrating further lest I start spouting shit that didn't happen like this friend of a friend my friend was telling me about who makes up stories about sleeping with Ryan Gosling...)

Sometimes we had a deal, Woven and I. I would write her English essay. She would do the beading on my compulsory needlework. Then the deal got called off. Maybe it was the bed. Ultimately her parents were summoned because sweet Woven turned in a recipe for tea instead of an actual essay. The recipe involved adding ice cream to boiling tea water. She didn't come back the next year. But nor did I. True story. Possibly the one hysterical memory in that land of passive horror.

But the school was pretty. My mother put me there because of those wild pink rose creepers on the wooden facade. I'm pretty sure. Can't blame her. Now when I think of it, maybe all that place gave me was a love of hydrangeas. And pine trees. Oh, and those wooden roses! And, well, boys who called me Ma'am.

In spite of which, I'm glad I got the hell out of there. My parents didn't think I was studying hard enough to warrant the fee. So, of course, they uprooted me. I would uproot me! I was made to study harder when I was with them, under their noses, uh-huh, absolutely. My brother was in the same boat. I don't remember what he was flunking. I imagine we were the shameless duffer siblings giggling over whose single digit result was more brazen. Yes, I know how that sounds. But even though being pulled out was, some might argue, a hindrance to our growth as human beings or whatever -- they say continuity is good for a child -- but if it got me (can't say 'us') out of an unhappy environment, I think flunking Sanskrit might have been the biggest bloody blessing of my academic years.

So now, all these years later, and with all this time on my hands to replay flashes that I sent to the back of class, I'm curious about returning to the place where so much happened that I remember but so little for which I feel anything. Other than a detached vividness and I'm not sure 'detached vividness' is an entry in any dictionary of feeling.

But I'm all grown up now. Like Swati. I could do hotels and boys. I could switch those two words, replace a preposition and make that a spiffier line. All because I'm older. With longer hair. With grayer hair! With opinions worth a year's cross stitch syllabus that Woven Suri could have taught very well. And here I am, with my pen and paper, looking for clues thanks to my Nancy Drew mentality. Nancy wants to dip her toes in the water, a pool of the dumped and the recollected. I want to allow myself as a grown up, to trace the memory of how cold it was back when I was The Case of a Fat, Shivering, Bespectacled Kid with a Mushroom-cut, and see how that coldness shaped my true colours.

Next post can be about the 90th bash. I'm sure it'll be a goldmine of stuff worth reporting. Right now I have a bag to pack and a song to hum. You know the one.

I know you didn't ask to be pimped, but I'm a doll and you like vadas, so... you're welcome?

2011-05-30T13:36:00.002+05:30

A very ugly friend of mine moved to Tokyo a few weeks ago. Ugly is a scientist but he thinks he's a Bullet-riding Adonis -- for the teensy percentage of women who give him a point or ten for "unconventional looks". I think they're just being kind. Still. This isn't about deriding close but deluded friends out of sushi town. (That happens anyway). This is about food. And the price they pay.

Recently, Adonis (I'm being charitable, hoping karma kicks in), like a self-confessed ET-look alike meets regular-Indian-at-a-disadvantage, did some currency converting that left my jaw further sublaxed. Adonis is a tam bram -- a Tamil Brahmin -- a good south Indian boy who used to date a good Polish girl. Then something happened and that's not my story to tell. He once wrote me a How I Met My Friend-themed guest post to kill time at an airport 2 years ago.

But back to generic CV descriptions of Adonis Muscualris, Ph.D - the boy likes his idli-dosa-sambar-vada, presumably on a banana leaf, but he's no purist. His years in Germany and France and now Japan have ensured as much and altered more than just his accent. The curious factoid though is brought to you by saved google chats and with only minor edits:

[...]

M: and i found a south indian resto nearby
me: vadai everyday for you now?
11:04 M: no no.. just once. goin there saturday with heart-throb of
yesteryear
1 vada = 500 yen
= 5 euros
= 7 USD
= 300 rs
me: who eet ees man
hai hai
are you serious!
M: yes yes hai hai

[...]

Its a pity vadas -- even the ones for Rs 300, rather especially the ones for Rs 300! -- as opposed to the ones back home that cost, what, Rs 35? Rs 50? -- make me vomit. (Something about my childhood and the smell of.. I don't know, never mind.) But if cheap food that was a staple and a favourite cost me that much in a country that was making me study overtime, I might need to abandon ship and scurry back to the kitchen at home. Then again, there's a term for this -- aah, cognitive dissonance a.k.a sour grapes. Just a nugget you can now throw about and enhance your cool.

Back to my intention of pimping my uglies, here's the deal. Vada boy has started writing again. And I am very happy about his renewal of blog-a-vows. It's nice to have friends around here. And sometimes I'd rather see pics of this outrageous vadai hot spot in Tokyo than hear his two lines about it on chat. Are you a listenin', M? Write! (so I don't rob your 'necdotes).

Closed for stocktaking. Come back tomorrow.

2011-05-24T01:57:00.002+05:30

We had a talk last evening. In the kitchen. My father and I. I was back from not watching a play. 'Banabhatta ki Atmakatha'. Stupid listings had the show timings wrong. The parking lot at Kamani was dead. The weather wasn't. All lovely, breezy, non-rainy-but-could-be-rainy so we just 'hung' - went to Wengers after 4 to eat mushroom patties fresh out of the oven, and before taking the metro back home, I climbed a park fence to take my yearly photos of Amaltas - that if you notice, are getting better.

Anyway. We, my father and I, had just split a profusion of tomatoes on a brown base i.e a home made pizza created by my mother. Are you going to eat the WHOLE thing? No, no, here, take half. After which I was in the fridge looking for a square of non-fattening dessert -- the dark chocolate, 85% cocoa (Lindt has a deal on at Le Marche -- all dark about-to-expire chocolates are two for one). I offered him a piece and he said no, that's too much and I said just eat it, it's low sugar.

So it's like this. I'm in my kaftan. Chilled water in a green ex-wine glass bottle in one hand, tip of the chocolate square in my mouth, whole chocolate in other hand, nudging fridge door shut with my foot, when he says, what's plan C ?

Note: context = employment. Plan A and B = newspaper and magazine respectively that I should hear from shortly. Whether or not they hire me remains to be seen.

Plan C.. plan C.. hmm... I don't know... cliff?

Now, my father is supremely indulgent of my nonsense. Neither is humour wasted on him. I believe I get from him my ability to stay unruffled if we're going to miss a train or are already missing a wallet. That and my powers of self deprecation. Who else do you know who cracks jokes about how only a total sucker would read his book?

Things like that.

So while generous daddy DID smile at my inane reply, I sensed he wanted me to stop and think. So down we sat, chocolate and all. Opening lines were spoken. He said sensible things. Somewhere he added, I'm talking to you like a friend. That was a new one. There were others, too.

You might want to think of a plan, child.. cliff no good...

... look outside, why limit yourself to the industry you've been exposed to?

... I know you'd like to stick to writing.. why don't you work on a short story? More freelance?

... may not be a bad idea to study... don't worry about the money.. I'm not saying do an MBA... finish your masters... no? Alright alright! Start from scratch.. chose a subject you're more comfortable with..

... just as a matter of conversation, where do you see yourself in five years? in both your professional and personal life... sometimes it helps to think aloud...

I didn't think anything aloud, but what Sonia Gandhi called her inner voice, was mumbling something about FIVE YEARS?! I have no bloody clue! Next month is looking desperately wan at the moment, ne'mind unimaginable time frames right now!

I did though say, yes, OK, I'll think about it, g'night, pa and then put on Desperate Housewives. But obviously something stayed.

Five years.. five years.. I should have a better camera in 5 years. Especially when, really, what's the point? Amaltas will still be Amaltas. Pretty is pretty. So maybe only a marginally better camera. How can this be all the depth I am capable of?

Five years, job wise? - something writerly enough, impressive enough, stress free enough, free time enough. I'm not worried about getting a job. It's what I told my father. I'll get a job. Income will resume. As will mediocrity, says the joker in doubt's clothing. Skies will be pink again. My worry is more, what I do in the free time, post job, when the bell rings and freedom is mine to embrace. Refer 'writerly enough'. But first things first.

My personal life, as my father calls it, is, let's be honest, in a flux. Marriage? Toss a coin. Babies? Toss them. It's difficult to remain certain for too long. Doubts abound. Then they disappear. Then they return. I play hide and seek with my doubts. We're friends, really. Table for two. Still or sparkling? Regular, please. Thanks. Why order fancy when what you want is to drown your companion?
I have no bloody idea what I want for myself in five years.

It's like being sucked back in time. I'm wearing a brown uniform and am in the ninth standard again. N and I are sitting outside class on dusty cement thereby dirtying our skirts in the most passive way conceivable. We have a free period because the history teacher, Mrs Wilson, has finally, for once, hallelujah!, taken the day off.

As always, we're carrying our ink pens and school diaries. For emergency scribbles. We're discussing a supposedly more mature version of what do you want to be when you grow up. N says she wants to go study at LSE. I have no bloody idea what LSE is. In her slam book under ambition, I have written journalist/ wildlife photographer. (Not bad self actualisation, we agree now). Where do you see yourself in twenty years, N asks me. I don't know, I say. I want to have really nice plates and be able to cook in olive oil everyday. This is my answer. I'm 13.

Fast forward to school, college, work, brown uniforms, history teachers. I'm 26. I don't know if I think all that differently -- olive oil? ceramic plates? Still pretty high up on my list. I don't know if late bloomer means developing something that resembles ambition in your early thirties. Does it? Maybe. Who knows. Conversely, in five years, plan C might still be a cliff. Maybe. Who knows.

'According to a recent study in the Journal of Endodontics...'

2011-05-18T15:08:00.003+05:30

'... coconut water is even better than milk for keeping a tooth viable'.

Whatever that means.

However what didn't find mention in this journal of rotting tooth pulp, endodontics (say it twice, spell it once, you'd have learnt it forever) is that in the name of health, vanity, and a lot of time on my hands, I have, of late, cultivated, a keenness on this magic coco fluid.

What's wrong with you? Why? What for? Well, because my research tells me it's similar to plasma. No, that's not it. But did you know that in Vietnam, there was such a thing as a coconut-water IV?! And because I am someone who will drink/eat anything if it's good for me, if it's good for my insides -- if they say your skin will shine, your hair will be glossier, your waistline will attract -- I will eat, I will gorge, I will apply. I will tell my sometimes rebelling taste buds, shut up! You don't exist.

In keeping with my non-existent tee-shirt that says Little Miss Disciplinarian, I've developed a little routine for myself.

Whenever I drive out of Gurgaon, or rather, drive to the metro station in Gurgaon to take the train to Delhi -- which is at least every second day -- I take this 'slip road', a dicey, somewhat desolate stretch not far from where my parents bought a flat years ago.

If, say, the next season of Dexter were to be filmed in India and the producer got my number from who cares where, and randomly asked me what's a good crime scene location, I'd take him/ them/full unit to this road.

Then the place would be marked on Lonely Planet, people -- because you can't put anything past them -- would pose kissing the melting tar. Facebook Apps would have tear-shaped balloon markings for the star stretch. And there might finally be more cops around the area. More cops and less creepy shadows which remind of crimes like, hey, remember this?

In the day though, it's a beautiful, creature-infested territory carved out from the Aravalli Range. (I didn't make that up). All trees and rocks and beauteous hypothetical picnic spot. Except, at night when cars slow down, I hope the equation is as innocuous as no cops + zero street lights = field day for frisky couples.

Apparently, I'm not the only uneasy commuter-resident of Gurgaon fame. My parents insist that when I drive back 'late at night', I am NOT to take that road. Understood?

Yes. But because they say so and I turned 12 last month, I take it anyway. But only every second day, to prevent dehydration and cultivate habits like Madonna who loves, drinks and owns stock in companies that make coconut water (and hum in a cutesy Hulu skirt improvised lyrics to the beat of Barry Manilow's.. coco-coco kabbalah...)

The options are my oysters. There are 2 nariyal pani guys on this side of the road and 3 nariyal pani guys on that side of the road. But my guy, on this side of the road, has got his location, location, location down pat. Which is why people such as myself stick to him. He's the first one you see. This is unfortunate for the guy further down the road. Happily for me though, my chap's begun to recognise my car.

So the routine is this. I brake in front of his shed and usually that's all I do. No need to honk. Service at your door. Sometimes, like yesterday, I'm ready to shout BHAIIYAA JI! But since it's not exactly a crowd puller, this shack of Bhaiiya Ji - shed-shack, callitwhatchuwant - I don't need to exercise my lungs. He sees me, acknowledges with a brief smile/ salaam to indicate he's coming, don't drive off. Because the road is so silent, I then hear a khatch, khatch sound of his khatri (sickle) lopping off the head of the coconut -- really, too much C.S.I, Dexter, Godfather in my system -- and there he comes, taking big, hurried steps, bearing a pani-wala nariyal with a straw in it.

Education for you: there's two things on the menu: pani-wala nariyal: the all-water one for Rs 25 and the pani+malai wala nariyal; the water+ creamy innards for Rs 30.

First day, nariyal pani guy didn't return my change. Second day, he didn't return my change. Third day, I gave him ten rupees less and he laughed. Smartie. Yesterday, nariyal pani guy had tourists over. A big van of white peeps with their backpacks, zoom lenses and appropriately skimpy clothes for the 44 degrees C heat -- not so much for the perennial leeriness that is the National Capital Region -- were soaking in the Indian experience, looking left, right, slurping away.

Besides van of tourists, there were 3 other cars with Haryana number plates. Some BPO types on bikes had materialised. Forget lonely stretch, today was houseful! In a twisted-empathy sort of way -- poor guy, he has only two hands, but at least he's making money, ok I'll come back later -- I was all set to skip my let's-be-Madonna act. But just as I was about to turn the ignition key, he gave me this pleading, be-with-you-in-a-sec look. So I waited. In the meantime, one office vulture in striped shirt and caterpillar ear piece pulled up near me, got off his car, and was executing a slimy queue-jump. Nariyal pani guy came running to lazy me, in my car, window down, AC up, took my 25 bucks, flashed quick grin and ran back to serve the cantankerous roasting folk who were there before me.

I loved the prioritising of me over other plebians. I think since I clicked his picture, I'm his favourite. Or maybe he's amused that I've told him twice now that his straws are useless. Too narrow, the sun has cracked into them and in the non-idyllic Aravalli range world, it really doesn't look nice to have coconut water sputter down the fabric on my thighs. Either that or this excellent service, cracked straws-apart, is my karmic reward for shunning the sanitised, packaged, supermarket versions that is the lot of Madge and Co.

Seatbelt, please. Claws up ahead

2011-05-06T16:13:00.001+05:30

Scene: I'm in my pyjamas. I've got on my glasses. My hair is pulled up. I'm piercing my fork into watermelon balls -- shape as you scoop -- and spitting the seed long range into a bowl, not bothering about the ones that spill. Baah. Later. I'm Homer. I'm cleaning my (feed) reader. I'm clicking on links. I'm checking the pulse on blogs to see if they're really dead. I'm rediscovering ones I thought they were, really, dead.

This one, for instance.

El/ Pringle Man. I forgot all about her curious poetic soul! Turns out it's alive and kicking, under a different url. I spent the whole morning catching up. It felt good. I like very much the observer in you. I'm intrigued by your fleeting references to sex. Those are new. I smiled to myself. Your devotion for a writer who was once my boss leaves me tickled. He's everything you imagine. But Bengali men are Bengali men. Know that hurdle. Given a chance, they'll intellectualise a yawn.

While reading her lovely post Jugni, I clicked on the Punjabi folk songs she'd so kindly linked to and I got reminded of my brother and his love for all things Punjabi. It was my intention to paste the link on his facebook wall and maybe write an arcane one-line reference to some childish inside joke, a brother-sister thing.

I type s-a-h in the search box. Three namesakes pop up. I see the common surname and the bone-chilling profile pic. It's him alright. Bone chilling is drastic. I'm sorry. You know what else is drastic? The extremity of my disdain for the girl in half that picture. Again, I'm sorry but what is wrong with women (www?) who insist that half a boy's profile picture should be their face?! Is it insecurity? A message? Other women stay away? My man, my territory, look world, we're in love and can't see a break up coming?

Of course, I could be wrong. But I refuse to believe a normal guy would deny his polygamous nature and put up his mug surrounded by just the one woman. And for god's sake, this is my brother. I know his instincts.

I click on his wall and get further put off. Why so public with the baby talk?! Is email dead?!

I hear myself. I judge me. This is terrible! I'm beyond being proud at the nastiness I'm capable of. Plus my cool is poof! I'm sounding like an ass. Groan. I just wish she weren't so transparent, so clearly stupid. I also just wish she weren't so young and hopeful and in awe of this boy. I bet when she saw this ad, the one with the cute but dim witted Captain Avinash Rathore (haha@ ek soldier ki nazar kabhi neeche nahi hoti), she thought their romance had been endorsed.

I wish more than all of the above that I weren't so affected by the mismatch that is them. Mismatch.. no, maybe they deserve each other. Ha. Perfection in the perverse. I was so put off I let the jugni link go to hell.

I need to get over my condescension about brother's twit girlfriend. It's becoming a problem. I talk down to him because of her. I crack my jokes. I think I'm so funny. I obviously don't understand.

She's not evil, not conniving, not manipulative, not a nag. All those could be worse. But I don't get that vibe from her. She's just a girly girl, a pretty fool, a sweet thing. She wants to be liked. A petunia in need of protection. God knows men like that shit.

He gets that. Then again, I don't think he does. How is that possible?!

I have a month before he visits and by extension, the airwaves are are dominated with her vacuous giggles. A month. A month. Is a month enough time to master a gag reflex for said giggles, that is the question.

Ode to Royal van Grump

2011-04-30T14:53:00.001+05:30

"Unimpressed: Three-year-old Grace van Cutsem fails to join in the excitement"

Exorcist child
Unfortunate soul
She even got called a
Monstrous troll

Two bits of peace
And a slice of quiet
You wanted silence
Nor could you buy it

Imagine the irony-
Grace turns deaf
Or better still
Joins the RAF

As for the ears
Mum must be red
Daddy nerves shattered
Family ego bled

Not your fault
Poor little foal
Good lord skipped
Even the Crawford mole

Other midget angels
Can't help your cause
They looked pretty
You needed gauze

Butt of jokes
No looking back
Doomed to punchlines
Waiting to be cracked

If I were Grace
I'd cry till dawn
Wake up in May
Get my head shorn

To you, lil girl
Even if you're shaven
I say, be brave
The opposite
Of craven

One other thing-
Work on your smile
Rear the bucktooth often
So complainants
Won't file

If they file anyway,
Throw 'em off guard:
I'm a living Lucy,
What's your trump card?

Love in the time of PDA

2011-04-27T19:05:00.002+05:30

I wrote what I thought was a minimalist love letter. Then I read it again and realised the inaccuracy of my attribute would put our hot art teacher to shame. So maybe it's not a love letter. Too.. not-vulnerable-enough? But in parts it sounded to me like a decent build up to one.

(P.S: At least it doesn't start with Dear fatso comma. And I don't have a pillow I can push behind your neck to make you more comfortable but here's a thought: let the manly la-la-la-laa! play in the background and tell me if the song - let it buff - finishes before the post does.

Tide's turned. Tide different from tables. You became accessible. I became a doll. You seem to have noticed that I am, once again, energetic and stupid and jovial and unafraid of being an ass in front of you; pushing your chin up with my palm to irritate you so you can't see straight ahead even though all that is straight ahead is a crappy outlet of Angels in my Kitchen.

I hadn't done this in a while because I became allergic to you. You became my beetroot. I started wanting to spend time away. I didn't want to make a plan. All I wanted from you was to be left alone.

And you were patient. I still think you were off the mark assuming this is what happens when people don't channelise their energies into finding a job and instead chat shit and act superior ALL THE TIME. So no thank you for that.

And because every pro has a con and I cannot let you remain a hydrogen floating balloon, you were also insufferable and dour. All your bread-anda-cake talk still makes my skin break out into hives. I still can't deal with you being so serious when discussing a fucking piping bag! We have to do something about that. My patience has been running thin and I know you want the curves back. But how about you hang on to me (till I say otherwise) for the simple rationale: there's trash out there. Out here we have a history of bad jokes and milestones of issues gotten past.

I have no idea how you and I have tolerated each other. Maybe I was terrified of not finding anyone as tall as you. Maybe I was scared at the thought of starting from scratch. Maybe it was the jinx of the last post I did on you -- you know, the anniversary one. The oh you're so sweet, arent' you one, the one I'm not linking to, the maudlin-filled, pass-me-the-puke-bucket one.

But you are so sweet, aren't you? Why else would people who I am friends with but you've met only twice call to ask you (and not me) about a good dentist in Gurgaon. You have that karmic, helpful vibe: I'm the man. Ask me. It works on you. It works for you! You're too earnest to be cool but again, maybe that's not a total washout.

The last year has been horrendous. I have been horrendous! And unfair. And in the wrong. I have wanted to hit you. And run away. You probably have, too. Thank you for not whacking me when you probably should have.

I have made so much fun of you just because and for no other reason that AT LARGE I am better and quicker and smarter at making fun than you are. This is nothing to be proud of, you say; no, actually, sometimes it is a bloody handy skill! I am nasty and belittling and I'm sorry. But - important- I don't want to pretend I don't know what happened.

I didn't know it would make such a huge difference to me and my attitude towards you and this rickety bloody relationship, but, gasp for air, it feels better. I feel better. I am happier. I am especially light. My prized metaphor -- the istri (iron), the dictionary and the brick on my heart? -- it's relevant no more, okay. All gone. I have had a face lift of the innards and you are my good surgeon!

All I'm (also) saying is thank you for not being a dickhead.

Thank you for making me my origami frog. Now give me back my coloured chart paper back (at Rs 5 a sheet, what kind of economy are we running?!) so I can make nothing more complex than cards out of them for people I care about because as established, you're the artistic one. Not me. Yea yea. I should stick to spouting gibberish and correcting your English. I even got over myself and re-subscribed to your blog, c'mon!

As much as it is my turn to start accepting you, the only pound of flesh I ask in turn for this glorious public paean is that you get all that obnoxious air drumming immediately out of your system for at least the next eight months. But do it behind my back. Please! Then we'll talk.

Love,
La-la-la-laaa..Ulysees

Republic of potassium

2011-04-26T15:46:00.001+05:30

I did no such thing!!

No, wait! Let me put that on my face!

I didn't say these words. But if you looked deep into my eyes this morning at the breakfast table, you'd have heard my soul cry out for a beggarly bit of a sloppy fruit.

Breakfast time. We're at the table.

My grandfather and his knife were slowly, slowly ensuring slices of a wobbly, blackened banana (that I wanted to slather on my face as a pack) were landing right in his bowl of porridge topped with strawberry flavoured god awful Kellogs cornflakes.

Who eats that?!

HE eats that.

He even eats dessert in the same bowl as his dahi/curd and I don't judge, I don't pooh-pooh. I don't judge or pooh-pooh because it's um, rude plus something I've picked up. He's a foodie. From the school of thought called why waste it. Why dirty another dish. Why waste more water. The strawberry and porridge and rotting bananas -- it's his happy place. Mine descend from there. No poohing.

Granddaddy seemed to think banana episode was needling me. Maybe he thought I didn't want him to eat a dirty black b'nana, when really, all I wanted was a little piece of dirty black b'nana to massage my face with.

He: Rich in nutrients, Swami ji used to say -- and eat only the most sada hua kelas, the blackest of the black.

Me: Yea yea, very good. Now are you saving me the last bit of the rotten fruit or not?

Nope.. Swami ji tales continued, entire banana sliced, nothing for my face.

I just hope these sacrifices being made in the name of respecting elders isn't going unnoticed by the big fruit fly in the sky.

Note to self. Next time, swoop and snatch, baby, SWOOP and snatch!

Just.act.natural

2011-04-25T14:02:00.000+05:30

I don't want to be like this
avoiding more people than I like
liking fewer than I want to avoid

Thought #1: I could be a song writer. Thirteen year old girls could shriek when they saw me get off my car, my black stretch limo, at South Extension, outside Planet M.

Thought #2: These are what my day dreams have been reduced to. Strategising ways to avoid people and coining gibberish for entertainment. In my head, I'm a Hrithik Roshan dance move, fluid in my monkey thoughts as he is in his water steps.

Ye'see?

Last week, I was at the Alliance Française (third time this year) for the book launch of a friend's first book. His invite said if you can't find place to sit, hang by the bar. So that's what I was doing, hanging with friends at the bar, waiting for the beer. (I don't drink rum and that's all there was on offer, which is fine too, because I'm worried my vodka tolerance has gotten pretty good even though the trouble is always bloody wine).

Anyway.

There we were, doing the book launch routine -- wishing the readings would end, the liquor would start, the trays of food be brought out, the hullos be said, when one by one, we -- us three hangers-by-the-bar -- started avoiding people.

Not just hoping so-and-so doesn't see us. Not just living the no-eye-contact-means-didn't-see-therefore-not-guilty. This was full on changing direction, standing behind one another, answering imaginary calls, counting leaves against the sky, quickening pace, and cutting into little circles people form so to leave behind that guy you can sense is about to butt into that last circle you scrammed from.

This routine, smooth as a scene out of Catch Me If You Can, was a great practical demonstration of world weary and about as mature as a 6-year-old screaming at a Mother Dairy outlet for an ice cream preference: almond chocolate not cookies and cream!

The Hollywood fun element at a book launch apart, I felt my people-to-avoid ratio tipping over. Oh dear. This is not good. A social gathering as a crystal maze. I've already had a few of those this year (not all at Alliance, at least). And I feel I can't do it anymore. The inward groaning at the sight of yet another vacuous entrant, the plastic up-turned corners of your mouth -- as if no one can tell grin from grimace, stupid woman!, the getting more refills than wanted -- what other respite is there for people who don't want to deal with other people except to have another glass of rocks and pretend: no, I don't think we've met.

Between the three of us at that launch, we avoided a stalker, a woman spurned, a former work colleague and five other shadies. Some stories blur. You don't remember why so and so is being avoided. But when you've been ducking at the sight of someone for a while and a long while passes, you tend to let norms be norms (and pathetic be pathetic).

And then audacity finds a voice and makes sure you hear it, via, what else, facebook mail.

Hey there, saw you at Samrat's book launch, recognised you but thought i didn't (don't ask me explain that). Came up to say hi but it's difficult saying hello to a turned back :) Anyway here's saying hello. Hope we are cool.

Thought #3: If only there were more messengers left to shoot. Or would that not be hint enough?

Bu-bye, yak cheese and other landmarks

2011-04-21T16:23:00.010+05:30

Lots of pictures. Keep scrolling.

My mother, her sister and both their husbands are leaving for Bhutan tomorrow. It's a ten day trip via Siliguri, Gangtok, and sundry army stations. Holiday time. I wanted to go. My camera could take some very upload-able photos. My ticket was blocked. Then I changed my mind. Now I feel bad about the obscure cantonments I won't see. Bhutan, I tell my sour grape self, is like any Tibetan market with a mountain range as wallpaper. As if I've tick marked many of those.

Late discovery. Forgive me. But for the last few weeks, I have been taken in by Post Secret (full posts turn up on reader)- an ongoing community mail art project, created by Frank Warren, in which people mail their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard.

I told my gay bff about it a few weeks ago. Sounds good, send link was what we left it at.

I didn't send him the link. In true impersonal fashion, he'll see it here.

I wonder what it says about me that I left out the suicide, prison, and incest-related confessions. That heartbreak is more catchy for me, duh-uh?

Still on the bff

Monday, on our impromptu brisk walk around the colony (me in slippers and a swimming costume (under my casual tatters) that I didn't get to use because the pool was closed, and he in his Hush Puppy Loafers -- that's how impromptu), I was telling him about something else; about this documentary I had seen just that afternoon, Children of the Master Race -- the secret breeding program, Lebensborn, of this vile Himmler guy to have blue-eyed, blonde-haired peeps take over the world, and how the surviving children (now old people) 'have lived their lives in the knowledge that they were bred to rule the world'. He's nodding and going "right, right, hmm hmm, sure.. yea". But after a polite five-second gap of me having stopped sounding semi-passionate about "those poor people!", he says, Yea...very sad; now what is going on with you and your depressive postcards and your non-fiction and these nazis?!

That's the good thing about friends. They tell you when to shut up.

Like every good, self-absorbed blogger, I check my stats often -- once, twice a week, maybe more when I'm lonely. I especially like to tickle myself with the 'keyword analysis'. It is an education for me that 3.64% land up here by searching for cheesy studio portrait of couple and another 3.64% percent by searching for bib she's my ba.

Fascination with all that apart, my archives tell me that as of April 24, my relationship with blogging would have outlasted my relationships with some boys. This was my first post. For someone who didn't collect a masters degree even after toiling, if just commute wise, for 2 years and who left a perfectly decent job because she couldn't deal with a bitchy boss past the bitch's second month, who also couldn't cope with moving to Bombay past the fourth month, I think I outdid myself with this blogging thing. This week is 5 years since I've unabashedly been responding to Nimpipi.

Just e-mage.

Thus spake the movie critic

2011-04-19T23:41:00.006+05:30

Have you seen The Accidental Husband? Don't. Uma Thurman, Colin Firth, and dead Denny from Grey's, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who's suddenly everywhere)? Despite my intrigue over the A.R Rahman soundtrack and Uma Thurman running to the beat of Rani Mukherjee's wedding music in Saathiya and other scattered Hindi film references, it is not a movie I'd recommend to a friend.

I saw it on TV and felt good about not paying for it. What is the matter with Hollywood?! Even that rubbish Cecelia Ahern book turned into a movie, Letters from a dead husband or whateve.. (sorry, P.S I love you) starring man-woman Hillary Swank and not-dead-enough Jeffery Dean Morgan was better than Uma and Jeff. Don't they have ridiculously well paid people advising them against film pairs that have zero chemistry? Send them to me! I could do that job!

Except today. When I saw somebody did do their job. Like Shahrukh and Kajol of the west -- enunciate this carefully -- Matt Damon and Emily Blunt fit beautifully! Despite the odd premise and odder still end, you have to watch The Adjustment Bureau. It's a sci--fi thriller even but I loved it! I loved how they took themselves so lightly - unlike, say, The Matrix (of boredom).

She's asleep on a bus. He climbs on..., spots her, thrilled but restrained, sits next to her. She wakes up, airily calls him a pervert for staring at what she calls her skirt. He says it's a belt. He spills his coffee -- on her belt. He says he'll pay for the dry cleaning, drop it off and later come pick up her skirt. Smooth, she says. Why don't you let me spill some on you? And on goes the banter. Their laughter, recklessness, impulse, spontaneity, a middle finger to the world and the calf muscles on that Blunt! What's not to wish for.

Who says board games are for vegetarians?

2011-04-15T00:40:00.011+05:30

My mosquitos bite less if I think of them as mine. When one flits past and doesn't break journey on my flesh, I think he's grown tired of the flavour of my blood. Like how I've grown tired of stuffing my face with sooji ka halwa - out of necessity, for pleasure, (in small portions, sure) but like the other day, at breakfast even. What good manners we have, the macchar and I, neither exploiting our innate potential to toot pado, to descend upon our respective dining tables, eating instead like human beings who have been taught to blurt no, thank you.

I should've seen it on the board. We were playing scrabble. This 6"foot tall cross legged boy in his shorts and his white-tee with a green animal on it and across him this undecided-about-what-to-do-with-her-altogether-lustrous-hair peacock. I, peacock, was too busy flipping through this literal heavyweight -- Playboy's Bedtime Reading that we picked up at Nehru Place for Rs 150, second hand -- to bother paying attention to the start of a scrabble game, which in any case, is deadly similar, excitement wise, to the first few overs of a cricket match.

Nadine Gordimer wrote for it, this Playboy's Bedtime Reading thing. Zapped me. Also John Updike and Ray Bradbury and Saul Bellow. Nadine, I remember My Son's Story - that pink textbook we studied in college. I remember her from Beethoven was 1/16th Black, lying on my friend, P.Singh's bookshelf since her birthday two years ago. The others I don't remember from as long back.

And except for some colourful illustrations, the book's not what you think.

I should've seen it on the board. I should have registered that he made 'mage', as an opening word. I saw it. I know I did because I thought how stupid, make damage, make image...make *begin distracted thought* heh.. "Just image"... I don't know when we started saying just image (/e-maij) as an exaggerated, mocking, all-rounder exclamation for any and all developments, relevant or not. For example:

I haven't had dinner.
Just image!

I found great parking.
Just image!

Auto complete says How to buy a Canadian..
Just image!

This is all Mudita's fault. Mudita was 16 and in school with us. Us. Our royal combined highness. So this Mudita, lacking even the slightest awareness of anything but the swish of her ponytail, would express her genuine, pouty, honest-to-goodness surprise at, again, any and all developments. Except she'd go with the original: haw, just MAGINE! And this magine was said like the/your regular imagine without an I.

Just magine caught on very quickly with my one best, most gossipy friend from school and I. We were 16, too. But even back then we had little baby claws. Meow. Magine!

*end distracted thought*

Scrabble. One alphabet tile slipped through the bed crack. But before packing up the alphabet tiles and outsourcing the retrieval of tile to 6 foot loser, I saw the board, and said, "MAGE? What is MAGE?!" Only to be told, "Ha! You know our 'baulk' type words, I know my words for sorcerers and magicians."

Congratulations to me, I guess. Today's the first day I've seen those giant science fiction books come to any use, assuming that five points on an A4-size scoreboard for 'mage', despite getting thrashed for the first time by vain girl peacock -- as good a chat room name as any -- who you've been a relationship with but not lost to, still counts as use.

Maybe the words on board will get more piquant when at least one of us is done with that book of Hugh.

They are, therefore I am

2011-04-13T22:25:00.005+05:30

"The band ir playing all our favarouties numbers.pl dnt ha ha at splngs."

It must have taken my mother eight minutes to type that on her phone. She's from a generation that refuses to give T-9 / swype a shot. Refuses to is one degree more pathetic than tries, tries, tries but fails every time, which is more my father's beat.

To be fair, he does sometimes, if I'm not back by a certain hour in the evening, send me a perfectly keyed in 'all well' in lower case, with question mark and 'luv, p' (as if I don't have Papa stored, under speed dial even!). Especially since for them, as for the majority in their -- as the joke goes -- 'retired and retarded' friend circle, composing messages are an oh-dear, what-now affair requiring concentration, reading glasses and a persistence of thumb.

Got to give it to her though for second guessing my reaction 'exactly-right'.

That my mother sent me a laboured, abbreviated, typo-laden text instead of bombarding me with calls is in itself a miracle. Must be the theme for the evening. The two of them are, after all, out to dinner to celebrate being married for 35 years.

35 - 40, vot's da difrnce! :)

A day in the life of gung-ho woo-hoos -- a.k.a social activists

2011-04-08T11:03:00.003+05:30

I understand navratras are on. And everyone's on a seventy per cent fast for 9 days. But I've never been to a party where for that reason they serve shakarkandi/ sweet potato as appetisers. That too each morsel of the foul stuff poked with toothpicks and spread out to look like there's plenty so eat, eat.

I have also never been to a party where they serve french fries for snacks with the majority of fries struggling to stay afloat in the thick of ketchup.

This is what happens when for a change you go with the boyfriend to birthday dinners of his school friend from section D -- or no, wait -- 'D group', a short, stout member of the Jain clan who could've left his shirt's top button undone. But like the one well-dressed woman said, "For a Jain household in the middle of navratras, I'm impressed they're even serving alcohol."

Was I not well dressed? Not really. Let's just say I was in a frame of mind to remind Delhi that casual -- or 'cadge' (with a 'z' sound) as some say -- doesn't require you to throw on your latest boutique purchase and pair it with mall-bought chandelier earrings. And so Snoopy-T and jeans it was, with um, kohlapuris. (Since Wikipedia doesn't have an image attached, look which shaven-chest hair inheritor of a brewery and an airline is wearing them). Were anyone to (dare) question my unremarkable turnout, 'I was only dropping in on my way back from a swim'.

Outcome of Jain dinner despite the nonsense chatter and ubiquitous potatoes: support garnered for Anna Hazare, the 78-year-old Gandhian, writer of 5-point letter to the PM, fasting unto death till an anti corruption law, the Jan Lokpal Bill, materialises.

This was being talked about -- how is a fast going to help?, isn't it blackmail? Everyone tossed in their two bits, from not knowing who this Anna (/Un-na/, like elder brother, not /Aena/ like anglicised girlie) person was, to having rigid views on NGOs: they make as much money as any one and what guarantee can there be that an anti-corruption committee wont be corrupt? and so on.

One other member of this D-group, a sailor in the merchant navy, an amateur 'shayar'/poet is the one friend of whom the boy says however infrequently I meet I "guffaw with". It makes boy-f happy and he doesn't think I'm going to run off with him just because his light heartedness is in such refreshing contrast to the heavyweight dullards I sometimes find at these D-for downmarket group gatherings. So that's nice.

Now Shayar and guffawer, Vivek and I, two non-office bound people with a tepid social conscience in a fit of ya ya we must!, our-nation-needs-us, we-mustn't-sit-silent, India!-India! decided to go beyond Facebook likes and turn up the next day to support Anna H.

I thought it was just talk, some party josh/enthusiasm and we'll see in the morning. What I didn't know: this Vivek would turn out to be such a good follow-upper and take my number from his friend, my boyfriend. So my phone rings. Unknown number. It's 10.am. Hello? Helloo..? Hellloo???! No hi/hello/good morning/ am I disturbing -- straight, he bursts into a comic sher/couplet! Nothing like humour to kickstart another possibly wasted day.

Stupid tequila laced conversation came back. We decide almost mournfully there's no backing out. The done thing is to see this through. We must partake of this cause. What example will we set for the next generation?! Yes, yes. Good speech. Plan is made. Place is decided. ETA: 15.10 -- We will reach the grounds of the hunger strike "in the after lunch session". Boyfriend says he'lll see if he can come but he has meetings and a bakery to run and in the real world, cakes trump corruption so maybe not, but you guys go ahead.

Others chicken out too. So Vivek and I were the only cartoons who met. He confessed to having assumed I'd show up in salwar kameez and whether I thought this was a fashion parade for turning up in capris and a well-ventilated sleeveless thing; he, on the other hand, nailed the the man-on-a-mission-kurta look. I said I didn't want to be dressed predictably -- also, hello, I'm spending a few days with my grandparents and didn't exactly come prepared with modesty in my overnight bag. I justified my somewhat improper attire (2nd time in 12 hours, keep count) by reasoning that if men are going to pinch my ass at a hugely hyped protest to weed out corruption, this country deserves to go to the dogs.

We reach Jantar Mantar. But were still looking around, feeling a bit foolish asking for exact directions to a site we're technically already at. We stop to assess the situation, reflect on our respective joblessness and comment on the favourable weather conditions. For the rest of the evening, we talk like newscasters. We concur that wandering must cease. Let's stop and plan how to go about this. To help this indecision, we veered towards nearest panwadi for a smoke. Just to help us think. Baby steps. After all, neither is a pro at protesting, not publicly, not like this, with slogans and you know, fervour!

It doesn't take time to figure out where the action is. We follow one sari wearing determined type who doesn't smile at us. There's an unfortunate voice belting out tragic bhajans -- ae mere watan ke logon. Vivek and I, good jingoistic youngsters, both know the song and that Pt. Nehru bawled when he heard Lata M croon this. Our parents taught us well.

Onward ho! In the direction of loudspeakers and bad crooners then. People were wearing white and sitting under tents. There were clever kiddies carrying slogans -- teacher, teacher, we can't do our HW(homework) for we need to work for the nation first. (Honest! it said something like that, I took a photo for you but along with reduced modesty in overnight bag, I didn't carry my camera cables. I 'pologise.)

Like the page 3 sections says, 'spotted:' lawyers in black, en masse, eating away -- chhole kulche, rajma chawal and kachoris. School kids in uniform, plenty of journalists -- but, of course -- and doctors in white, roaming around looking for weak people. I spoke to one from Apollo Hospital and was told they're there in case any of the fast-unto-death peeps faint/die. The orderliness of the affair was impressive, especially when my last comparable memory is of sugarcane farmers not too long back on a vandalising spree, protesting price rise.

Vivek was impressed with the number of people I knew. What he didn't know was that the five six people I said hi to were from my former office. Didn't want to tell him but I did. Now he thinks I'm less popular. I wish I had kept shut.

We spent over an hour at the site, listening to mediocre orators, gauging if Anna's looking weak or what, and saying Jai Hind! whenever the tempo got going. Comrade shayar was even accosted by a Hindi TV channel to air his views. They caught hold of me first. But I being unsure of my ability to convey my views (what views?) in unfaltering, shudh/pure Hindi, and a bit not-comfortable with mikes in my face white-lied my way out of it saying, I too am the media, oh but here, talk to him! The TV channel seemed so bloody B-grade, we didn't bother to ask what time they might air Vivek's screen debut.

After we'd had our fill of the tamasha (see video), and assuaged our collective social conscience, we went to have cold coffee at De'pauls and find him a copy of The Secret since he'd promised his pro-positive thinking aunt he'll read it. I had work too. I needed me a copy of The Vedas. My grandmother has been on my case to pick one up from not any publishing house, 'a' particular publishing house. We got neither. Must've been the vibes we sent out in the universe. I told him to put it back, The Secret. We'll buy a pirated copy from across the street.

Despite his skeptic view of the effectiveness of The Secret, I thought it was sporting of him to give the twaddle a shot. All he wanted to know: will it help me control my thoughts? I said it er might - for a week. But if you can laugh at them, not let them get to you, surely that's a move up from all consuming self pity, no? He looked indulgent but unconvinced. Why else would his reply begin with, 'All that is ok, but..' Fine. I lost that one. In the larger scheme of an activist day, my only victory was that no one pinched my ass.

Andy, you're a star

2011-04-06T11:16:00.004+05:30

Five years ago, I thought my brother was going to die. He was in intensive care, paralysed. More technically, he had an acute inflamation of the peripheral nerves and was therefore immobile. Three years ago, he had a relapse but since he got okay the first time, I mostly believed he'd pull through.

One evening after work when I went to see my brother -- routine -- the nurse told me to wait outside because he was getting his injections or the doc was examining him or the catheter was being adjusted. I don't remember what but the message was 'wait outside'.

So I waited outside. I remember sitting on a steel chair and feeling sorry for my brother and trying to not cry because if I cried my fat nose would swell and then when the nurse said I could go in, my brother would know I'd been crying and his facade would collapse and then we'd be desperately trying to not live a film scene - from Kal Ho Na Ho or something.

So, all this maudlin behaviour was happening. I don't remember if I was even trying trying to pull myself together. Then Andy saw me. I hadn't met Andy. I didn't know who he was. But he told me to not worry, that my brother's a brave chap that they were friends and course mates and that he would pull through. I was embarrassed he saw me cry. But grateful for his having come up to me and saying, hello you weepy sister of my friend, please don't cry because you know what, he'll be fine.

And he was. He got out of it. Pulled through just fine. When the hospital days were over, I had a birthday party and invited Andy. I didn't mingle with him much, but he stood in the balcony a lot and I remember him being quiet. Maybe I asked him why aren't you drinking anything.

I didn't know Andy had a bad leg. I didn't know the bad leg had a bad tumour. That the tumour was being cut away and kept coming back and suddenly he was going for a lot of chemotherapy.

My brother told me some months ago about how Andy's girlfriend, daughter of a doctor couple, who had stood by him through all the hospital visits and the cancer, had decided to call it off because her parents wanted for her a more secure future than Andy.

My brother and I spoke about this. He was very bitter. How can she do this? Always the devil's advocate -- but in this case I think 'devil' is a bit harsh -- I told him that it can't have been easy for her to decide and yes, all sympathy with the cancer struck but she's entitled to want a husband who will live!

Andy died two days ago. The day after the world cup. He couldn't take the chemo anymore. I hadn't spoke to my brother for many months. He was sounding like a feeble mouse, trying to keep it together but I could hear his tone, the fever soaked in sadness, I haven't slept tone. He joked about someday getting even with the bastard for having ruined his Goa trip.

Then he changed the topic. No more Andy talk. He asked how I was, if I was worried about not having a job, if I missed journalism...

Fuck that.

Have you spoken to Andy's parents? No, I'll write them a letter..
Is he an only child? nai..younger brother..
How did he go? ... *silence*
How did you get to know..? Apparently he had been calling and Andy wasn't picking up the phone, a message came with time of death..

He said he'd talk to me later. Ok bye..

I log on to facebook later and and see my brother's status in uppercase.

A TRIBUTE TO ANDY SIDHU... A TRUE FRIEND AND COMRADE... WHO LIVED LIFE TO THE FULLEST AND IN HIS BRIEF NUMBER OF YEARS DID AND ACHIEVED MORE THAN WHAT MOST OF US WILL IN AN ENTIRE LIFE TIME... 107 COURSE SALUTES A SOLDIER AND BROTHER WHO FOUGHT HARD AND GAVE HIS BEST TILL THE VERY END...

There were the usual string of comments saluting his spirit.

What broke my heart was I think the 26th-27th comment addressed to my brother on the lines of sorry, sir, I know you were close. That was the only one that my brother replied to:

@ Dey: you know, when andy and i had our respective attacks the first time around in 2006, we were in it together... when i was paralyzed and he was better, he used to push me around in the wheel chair... similarly, when i was better and he'd be badly off after his chemotherapy... i would help clean up and help out when he'd be puking all over... it was an absolute symbiosis... we made it through because of each other... i knew it back then... i realise it all the more now.

I wonder how his ex-girlfriend took it.

We'll be singing when we're winning!

2011-04-03T21:29:00.006+05:30

The first half was a deathly bore. The Gymkhana -- yeahaa, went with A -- was living up to it's reputation of being a geriatrics hub. Oldies everywhere, fighting sleep, not even getting off their arthritic asses to go grab some tea/coffee/samosa type item and thereby scoring a 10 on 10 for being 100 per cent lost in lethargy -- although soporific was the word used by us, young English-speaking-but-so-easily-switching-to-Punjabi-and-gibberish-therefore-trilingual-watchers-of-The-Match.

Then it was our turn to bat and the weather changed. Venue moved from the arthritic ambience of the soporific ball room to the lawns with Oscar-like round-table seating. Grab a chair.... borrow that one... who wants what?... beer?... chilli paneer?... roomali roti?

What atmosphere -- the smell of tandoori meats in the air, the breeze, the hint of rain, the make shift vuvuzelas, teenage girls in their teeny shorts yelling repeatedly: "Indiaaaa jeetega .. Sri lankaaaaa ko peetega" !"

For a while we may have wanted them to SHUT UP! and SIT DOWN! but if you're singing along to ads -- De ghuma ke, ghuma ke! -- you kinda lose right to judge 'em teenboppers.

Other sing-song slogans* shouted hoarse:

humara captain kaisa ho.. M.S Dhoni jaisa ho!
Indiaaaa--Indiaaa! *clap clap clap*
Sachiiiii-in, Sach-innnnn!!
And to cheer the gymkahana, just to play the fool: DELHI-G- IN-NIT?! followed by many chants of
Gautiiii--Gautiiii and then my favourite:
Ma India nu jitaa de halwa baantungi!

*There is just no sensible translations for this mad, perfectly Indian drivel.

Oh, it was a blast! I have never whistled so much in -- and I feel the need to add needless words otherwise always omitted -- in my life! I have never been told by strangers: I admire your lung capacity. I have never winked at women in sleeveless dresses the shades of the tricolour and shown them the thumbs-up (and later met them in the loo and laughed for no reason other than you-love-my-spirit, I-love-yours so woo hoo! India!) I have never had my face -- ok, left cheek -- painted orange, white, green. I have never seen my mother dancing on a table waving the flag and yelling out my name so I turn back and look at her and say: very good, Mama, now (you also) sit down!

When Dhoni hit that last six, the drum roll was unbelievable! Shirts came off, champagne got sprayed, chairs were fallen off, tears were seen and it rained a little. Again, I whistled like I never have in.my.life. Cricket bores the day lights out of me. But this, the tamasha the buoyancy amidst strangers, the oye-hoye through sun roofs at 2 a m, the Gurgaon liquor shops in front of which men in their undies were brandishing bottles and dancing on one leg; may just never see the sight again. My favourite facebook feed says "Thank you my soldiers in Blue!"

But speaking of which never-seen sights,
Question 1: I'm with the crowds, where the hell is sworn-to-strip Poonam Pandey?!
Question 2: Don't you love that Dhoni shaved his head in the middle of the night in his hotel room to keep his end of the deal with the gods?

Question 3: And, erm, I take it you saw the match? Really, where?:)

Not about the cricket

2011-04-02T00:31:00.002+05:30

Cricket is secondary. First I need to know where to watch the match. Venue dilemma has blown into a giant caterpillar of a crisis. The end is nigh.

Shall I:

A. Watch the final in the lawns of the Gymkhana on a big screen with many a screaming revellers, including my parents, ex boyfriend cum childhood bum chum, and extended junta-at-large working up a tidy carnival ambience?

B. Watch the final on the projector in boyfriend's living room with a bunch of his school friends, family and possibly insightful commentary going?

Or

C. Escape both scenarios and watch the final at my grandmother's place with her squealing and clapping and saying things like 'I miss Sreesanth' ?

Wherever I go, I will want to whistle like an eve teaser who started young. (Because I can, okay?!)

I need a decision, please, a sign, a resolve, an answer, a clean chit, anything! Where should I go? What should I do? Jump the gun and pop the cyanide? This is not about the cricket world cup finale with a possibly historic ending for us 'enthu cutlet' supporters of team (light)blue. This is about not getting yelled at for my crap choices.

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Yes, I realise nobody's reading this because of the biggest bloody life-stopping semi final India-Pak cricket match EVAH but...

2011-03-30T12:47:00.004+05:30

...there's two hours to go for the toss, so pipe down.

And now that I am unemployed and not always 'actively seeking employment', I need ways to fill in the hours. So I go to the boyfriend's bakery, poke around, flip through recipe books, try my hand at making sugar roses, learn the difference between a cupcake and a muffin -- rising agent + muffin = cupcake? -- nibble at freshly baked bread, use the baker's Wi-Fi, tidy up my Google reader subscriptions and reach home in time to watch CSI. This is my life. Not THE life, just my life. For now.

I think of organising a yagya to change the flow of my lazy river but I'm too busy taking mediocre pictures of dough to bother winning over the gods of luck. I should reassess my priorities. It is they, the gods, after all, who might, without me having to lift a gluten encrusted thumb, forward my CV to a high net worth individual, my daddy long legs with a nice laugh who will see the potential in me, my fat nose, my wit and excellent writing and put me on a magazine cover for July, and er, subsequent great things.

On Saturday, I went with baker boy to put up a cake stall at the day long festival at the Alliance Française (whose awful canteen food I have cursed before). It was supposed to be fun. Just like selling cakes for nearly 2 weeks at St Stephens' College was fun. I didn't write about that when it was the most bloggable thing to do and I sometimes justify my sloth by quoting Robert James Waller in my head -- the chap who wrote Bridges of Madison County -- who said analysis destroys wholes. It's a convenient truth. One which, over the years, I have kept close to my heart and when it suited me, contradicted finely. You should see the hairs I split in my dear diary.

Anyway. Selling cakes at Stephen's in February was -- I want to go with enriching, but terrific time pass better captures the mood of gainfully employed beach bum. Selling cakes at Stephen's in February was terrific time pass. Enthusiastic clientele. Lovely trees. Hungry hounds. They loved us, we loved them. It was.. enriching. Did you know you could buy the affections of 20 year old college boys all by purring, would you like sprinkles on that?

But Alliance: Less fun. Too much sun. More mature crowd. (A target audience not made up primarily of college kids has its drawbacks). I was bored. My job was front desk. Strike up conversation, smile, make them feel comfortable, don't push for the blueberry cheesecake if they seem to be want a chocolate fudge muffin -- all rules I devised on the job. (So now, it's fat nose, great wit, excellent writing and above par innovation-meets-adaptation entrepreneurial skills!)

Crowd was scant. We were at a disadvantage on account of our location! location! location! My enticing the crowds wasn't working. I became a slacker. Baker and I started fighting. It was horribly dull.

And then I saw a middle-aged guy in the distance. He had beads around his neck. I in my uncouth best yelled to him, you look like a Hollywood actor! Obviously, he came over. He asked for pani. Then he asked me my name. Then he gave me the meaning of my name! No, he gave me the meaning of the opposite of my name. But still, impressive for a foreigner who one doesn't expect to be fluent in hindustani.

Which actor, he wanted to know. I couldn't get the actor's name. But I didn't want him to think I was picking him up/ chatting shit just to get him to buy a slice of vanilla chocolate strawberry cake on a slow day. He wrote down his email address and said, whenever you think of the actor, do let me know. No one has ever, ever called me an actor before.

I wracked my brains. I googled two movies. Was he one of (so hot in the film!) Matthew McConaughey two friends in Failure to Launch? Ha! My reporter instincts kicked in -- if that's what you can call desperately imdb-ing movies on a whim. But this I needed to know. Sure enough. If you put your mind to something, you win, blah blah. Here was my answer. Bead man looked like this guy. I sent him an email with Hollywood actor in the subject field. His Facebook page says he's the CEO of some telecommunications company and enjoys eastern philosophy, Chopin and Bach -- much like the baker boy, I told him -- and has been living in India 10 years. I thought it was big of him to reply to my email admitting that he did, yes, unfortunately look like said 'Hollywood actor'.

He wants me to take him out to some, wait, let me copy paste the mail..

You are living in Delhi, right? Won't you show me some nice, not very noise, just very nice hangout around? I basically never go out... We can talk about movies (Hollywood, ha-ha), music, fine articles or something like that.

I think it's a damn pity that I'm worried he will chop me up into little bits and throw my body into a Hauz Khas swamp. What a cruel world. He was beginning to look a lot like my high net worth godfather.

Women + history+ neurosis + genes = dining table of familiar commotion

2011-03-26T23:28:00.009+05:30

My grandmother told me this morning, as I was about leave the house, that I'm becoming increasingly self-centered.

What? Why?!

Apparently I'm not spending enough time with the family.

"Nonsense", I said, "I came for lunch yesterday when Charu called". (And so basically, bye, I'm not having lunch at home.)

And that was that.

As consolation, I had dinner at home and went neither to the gymkhana with boy and friends, nor to Smoke House Grill with college friend in town for a week and her husband and his friends whom I've never met. Can't say either was such a sacrifice. I'm happy to be home and listening to my Nani talk about fat pink peaches she ate in Peshawar. No, not Peshawar; Quetta, says my Nana. This any day over fragments of jejune conversation that would have stuck to my ears, like last night, had I gone out with either bunch.

So Charu who called is my grandmother's only other grand daughter and therefore my cousin. When she called for lunch means, when she had descended on the grandparents for visit plus lunch along with her daughter, aged 7, and rung me up to move my ass and come join in the fun and games. Generations merge and age no bar.

She's in her 40s and I talk to her as an equal possibly because I haven't grown up calling her, my 'older sister' i.e didi. Charu is Charu. Age difference be damned. Even though, growing up, some thought it was a bit off that I don't do the didi thing.

Back then, I would look up to Charu who would send birthday cards and include the dog's name in the sign off under lots of love. Charu bought me, from the book section at Modern Bazaar that hasn't existed in longer than I haven't worn braces, a hard back edition of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Charu would let me sit in the room when her college friend, the one with long black hair and dreamy almond eyes -- Roma -- and she would do their girly lets-wash-each-others-hair thing. The good cousin had time to ask us kids (my older brother -- not bhaiyya either -- and I ) how life was. Then Charu got married and I seemed to have taken it a bit personally for I wept like a loon. No, don't go! There'll be nobody cool left in this family!

Of course I didn't know then that I'd see her the next day and be her little helper in opening wedding presents. If I was a cool kid, I might have been less cute kid. Good things got waited out, I suppose.

So lunch, yesterday, the one I used as a trump card to redeem my always-out-of-the-house-ness, was, you know, 'fine'.

It amused me a little to think that Charu's daughter, age 7, might be a leetle bit in awe of me. Technically I am her aunt. But even she, to the slight dismay of my grandmother, and her great grandmother -- how cool is that? -- doesn't do the didi thing. We're a wayward family. I am my name. And the kid has this unnerving way of saying it in a really sweet, shy voice that catches my mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, and me, all off guard: Nivtee, you want water? Makes me reconsider having children. No, wait! Checking myself. But you know what I mean.

So this child, this loaded with personality dark-haired, dark-skinned thing with hair as curly as her mother's, (but like my grandmother and I agree, way too long for her height, age, proportion), said 'thingy'. And I sat up. Thingy. Smart, growing up too fast, born when I was in college, child, said thingy. Surely when a kid starts being cool and saying things like thingy, the cuteness is gone. I thought this. And momentarily felt sad, because I haven't, to use an MBA-type word, 'interacted' much at all with this, this child when child was cute and free of cool-isms.

I used to fumble around kids because doing ooozzziieee wooozie *cheek pull* followed by more sundry gargling, puckering and cooing would make me incredibly self conscious. It was/is, easier to treat them like people. Maybe take it easy on the big words and not say, it's been a pleasure interacting with you, but if I don't say that to adults, why would I unleash those demons on little people, related and much dearer.

So, my niece, because that's who she is, right?, is pretty smart.

We needed to break the ice. I refused to do it, figuring that when she's acclimatised to my presence, she'll do it on her own if she deems me cool enough to talk to.

Didn't take long. I have respect for little person-for coming up to me at the dining table three seconds after she sees I've finished my lunch and asks, smiling away, but not meeting my eye: will you play with me?

Me: disguising my melted heart - Um, sure. What do you want to play?

Hockey!

Me: Um, okay... where are the sticks?

I'll go find!

(Charges into my grandparents' room / her great grand parents room -- again, how lucky is that child to mingle with her great grand parents? -- and drags out one number walking stick, triumphant grin and all)

Me: What will I play with?

Child panics. There's only one walking stick. I tell her to take it easy, I'll, er, find a makeshift hockey stick somewhere in this house. All I find is a folded newspaper -- The Economic Times, I must show off here, with an old attempt of mine at the cryptic crossword. I figure I could play with a newspaper. Child not convinced. Abandon show off prop. Enter random twig. Yaay! We'll play with this.

Off we go to the veranda, 7-year-old and about-to-be-27-year old, niece and aunt, armed with one plastic golf ball one walking stick and one random twig. I am explained the rules of hockey, and most generously, offered the walking stick, because the upturned u-handle will make a better end to whack with, if you can picturise what I with silly words gesticulate to explain.

She to me: This is your goal. This is my goal.
Me to she: Yup, okay, got it. Start.

We play for maybe nine minutes, squealing, running, dodging, whacking the ball against the peeling paint on the veranda wall and, what do you know- breaking the ice. So much for letting little person win. The child thrashed me. I was impressed. I was also thinking good deed for the day over.

Turns out, we were just warming up. Back inside the cooler environs, little one looks up at me and blurts: ask me anything about South Africa!

What?! Er, okay... what's the general um complexion of people there?

Child looks lost.

Okay, okay, forget. What's the er, population of south Africa?

Child looks lost still.

Obviously I make a crap child interviewer.

Then I say, okay, why don't you just tell me whatever you know about south Africa.., yes?

Thrilled kid starts of, and here's where I could have just done a separate post called

Why I think my 7-year-old niece is smarter than I was at 7

Because she said thingy. I never said thingy when I was 7. I never said thingy at 20 even!

Because she asked me to quiz her on South Africa and supplied me with the following:

Africa has 54 countries
The smallest country is Seychelles
The largest country is Algeria
The capital is Pretoria and
Sudan is divided into two parts

And also because when I taught her to play Name Place Animal Thing, for an animal with I, I went with Iguana and she wrote Impala (!).

When she got stuck at animal starting with U and asked me for help, I said underdog but it wasn't funny, not to her but her mother and I giggled.

Somewhere in that afternoon is the beauty of sisters not planning their families. I don't see how else women of ages 90, 62, 45, 27 and 7, who live in different homes, can sit down together to lunch and pretend it's an everyday thingy.

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Holi -- be that as thy name -- go lightly on our clothes*

2011-03-17T13:57:00.016+05:30

*Geddit -- my Christianity meets Audrey Hepburn headline puns? Ha, ok, go on.

So, I texted my old boss asking if his ex girlfriend's rumoured new boyfriend is gay. He replied: Maybe. Why? I said: Who cares. Just checking if you're back in town. Then he called. I was at a south Indian eatery with a friend.

Ha ha ha, he laughs. That's him alright. We had a 5 minute 27 second chat (the intrepid reporter in me checked call log) about how things are. Me to him: how was ~~Mumbai~~ Bombay? (Excellent! I'm going back), how was Goa? (Even better, went to Candolim again), how's the book doing? (Sold out at most places but restocked at very few, damn publishers), how're the women doing? (more gorgeous, in their plurality) and so on.

Him to me: Where are you? (Hauz Khas village), what are you doing? (drinking rasam), have you found a job (no, find me one), what are you doing? (I just told you), No, I mean for St Patrick's Day? (Since when do we do anything for St Patrick's day?!) and then woh sab chhodo -- forget all that -- what plans for Holi?

And that's where the spinning conversation top spins to a halt, or rather stays aspun in one place, er, spinning. Holi is like new years. Everyone must have a plan. Unless someone died in your family. In which case, indoors and mourning is the respected order of the day. My friend and former boss, freshly returned from Goan decadence, wants to go to a large yet exclusive gathering of rich people and hot chicks. The plan is being worked on.

I have mixed feelings about Holi. Nothing, no festival, nothing about Diwali even, beats the 9 a.m anticipation of a Holi morning. Digging out tattered full-sleeved cottons to wear, preparing ammo -- the water pistols, the packets of colour -- and rounding up the gang, doing a demonic jig to the beat of the dhol in the distance of the destructive morning it will be; all brings back memories of growing up surrounded by relatively simple, small town madness.

Tractor rides down tree-lined roads, trees that were painted rust and white to ward off termites in Army cantonments barb-wired from the rest of the world, bottles of sand piper beer and bhang ladoos, entire regiments and drums moving from one mess to another to wish equally drunken comrades, their wives and happy-to-squeal kids holi mubarak...

And then there were my Holi hangovers more recent.

Do I hate Holi? I definitely hate gujiya. But let's put it this way, before contact lenses, I loved holi. But then I couldn't see. Now that I'm a blind hag, I whine about people using too much permanent colour that gets into your eye and not enough of that herbal shit that can at least be washed off. I worry about looking like a troll and being attacked by them in hordes. Holi = best day to get touchy feeling, rubbing down the opposite sex with a bit of coloured grease lightening and pass it off as the spirit of things. There will be egg-throwers, balloon pelters, hormonal wolf packs singing comic versions of rang barse, dying for the girls to get soaked, splashed, stained and pink -- of course, I have mixed feelings!

Bata chappal is blue
Holi is pink
If you wear kurtis
Kurtis will surely shrink

If you're wearing white undies, it's even more pink. Fingernails are pink. Ears are pink. If you work in heathen offices, jungly co workers will rough house your white keyboards to make them pink. Stray dogs are yellow and pink. The bhang you drink in the lawns of affluent farmhouses amidst strangers with grinning rainbow faces who, as a way to initiate into party proceedings, toss terrified you in a frog-evacuated pond, with zero regard for your comfort level because presumable everyone is smashed and no one minds, is pink. The tint water balloons acquire is pink. The car seats on your way back home despite your plans of newspaper as protection, are pink. If you're foolish enough to not stash your phone away on Holi, your LED screen is now PINK. They may call it a festival of colours, but you never see green finger nails on the morning after. It's always... fill in the blanks... go on... starts with a P, ends with an ink.

So far, with three days to go, my plan is to sit in my ivory tower, with my clean hair, and my clean skin, and protect the honour of my white undies.**

**the writer is a fickle minded being, with an inexplicable love of jungly coworkers and heathen strangers and often friends, who have in the past dunked her, in her tattered cottons, into muddy waters that -- what do you know? -- were once pink. Seen as she has been splashing about doing this giggly wobbly chimp traipse, her word is anything but absolute. Her blog, only less so. Yet in her wishes to you, there is warmth, goodness, and at the thought of the first balloon strike, loudly she squeals to all the water-shy namby-pambies such as her 40 per cent alter self, happy, happy Holi!

Last winter lunch at the home of friendly (and loaded!) old-timers

2011-03-14T11:21:00.010+05:30

Chandeliers in the bathroom, marble flooring, a grand piano dwarfed by the size of the rooms, a home theater in the basement, a shallow pool with a Buddha bust on one end that was a house warming gift from the daughter and husband of Oldies, a large 7-year-old grand kid who offers you a ride of the estate on his beach buggy and points out to the least affluent vehicle in the garage -- the Mahindra Scorpio -- and says, "that one is for vegetable shopping".

The hosts of the lunch, have in the last decade, hit the jackpot, thanks to a boom in the construction industry. What remains, and this I hear from multiple sources, things like affability and humility and generosity and zero chip on shoulder.

Looking at his friend's grand kid, my father says he's reminded of a scene in Richie Rich where he has to recite a piece on poverty. And the genius goes: The driver was poor, the gardener was poor, the maids were poor, the security guards were poor, the nannies were poor...till the teacher tells him good lord,, sit back down Richie Rich!

I had a great time taking photos of lunch yesterday. Hosts: friends of my parents from 38 years ago, when they were newlywed youngsters in the army and twice neighbours with a single wire as fence to separate the houses. They were laughing yesterday at the memory of borrowing two-two-three-three onions from each other and barging into each others homes. No formality, nothing.

Except that the tense bothers me, this picture belongs in My Parents Were Awesome.

All hail the return of familiar demons!

2011-03-08T23:45:00.002+05:30

He finds their mediocrity unbearable.

A friend of mine, lets call her Little Assam, hit the nail on the head for me. We were on g-talk. I wanted to know how she liked the cake she picked up from boyfriend's bakery so I 'pinged' her.

Cake was good. Divine Chocolate. Very nice. Husband liked it. Except, the cake wasn't the problem; the company in which it was cut, was. LA started telling me about how her husband (who called an Assamese friend of LA a 'stupid whore' on new years' eve and got slapped by LA as a consequence; plates were broken, cold war was on, etc etc) still couldn't deal with most of her friends from back home, the Assamese. He finds their mediocrity unbearable, she typed. The Delhi ones, it seems, are alright. I'm a Delhi one.

Husband sounds like a stuck up kill-joy with an ego up his arse, I know. And he, no entertaining circus clown himself, can, yes, come across like that. He's not social. Rarely steps out. His forte is not communication. But he likes me so I'm biased. And anyway this isn't about my friend's husband.

Where do two non entities, you might ask, such as reserved hubby of LA and myself get off passing judgement on perfectly normal people? Who the hell do you think you are to call anyone else mediocre?! Sure, I hear these voices.

But here's where I do a non-Houdini and make this about me.

In the way Husband has a problem with LA's gang from back home, I have a problem with my boyfriend's gang from right here. I'm not saying I have a right to have this problem. Just who the hell... yea yea yea.

But this has to be in the top three things we fight about (the other two for another time, another blog).

-- If I can get on with your friends, why can't you get on with my friends?!

-- Because my friends are more fun and easier to get along with than the people you call your friends!

It's an ongoing row. I come up with excuses to not go for some of his friend dos. The ones I go for -- and I feel bad typing this knowing these sentences will be fed to his Google Reader shortly -- are sat through. They're gotten past. Survived. His family, I like. His friends, my head hurts. I get bored. We tried separate socialising. Didn't work. It doesn't help that he feels I find (some of) my ex-boyfriend's friends wildly sociable and have a better time, eating, drinking, going to the Gymkhana for Bloody Marys with them than with his gang of mutant turtles.

Fine! I'll try to not flinch is the horrible, hurtful thing I said last time he asked me to make more of an effort with his people.

But it's not always just mediocrity that's unbearable. Sometimes earnestness can thrash mediocrity and bring it down to two on the victory stand.

You can't make an effort, is what my chant has been. You either have a rapport or you don't. Most contrived thing, this business of trying to build some magical banter with slow pokes who are dreadfully nice but pitifully lacking in humour and charisma.

And I must defend myself. It's not that I don't like his friends. Or that I can't get along with them. I do my bit for his sake. Except for the stupid cows who use him to outsource their boring computer problems that he happily solves, all the while being completely oblivious to the manipulative streak in them, they're nice enough. Honest. When I meet them, I smile. We hug. I do and say all the right things. But the fact is I never have that sense of oh-look where the time went that I am guilty of sometimes when laughing like an epileptic hyena with some of my friends.

So, they're not my type. Big bloody deal. They're not my friends. I'm not theirs. And I've repeated this to death and it should be fine. Or am I wrong? They like me enough.I like them enough. But there's no sparkle in my memories and associations of time spent with them. Yes, it's inconvenient and depressing to look at socialising with your boyfriend's friends as a good deed/ an opportunity to observe the behaviour patterns of high street yuppies. But does not wanting to go out of my way to spend time with them necessarily spell doom for a relationship? He seems to think so.

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Toecastrophe strikes the deaf. (Not sung by U2, no)

2011-03-04T02:33:00.004+05:30

Three jacket potatoes. That was lunch. I made. Seasoned - salt, pepper, mustard, droplets of chili sauce and smeared with cream cheese. It sounds more appetising than intended but there was an already-cooked alternative thawing outside the fridge that I chose to pooh-pooh. Because the alternative i.e. biryani, like the music in my boyfriend's car, stirs nothing in my soul. Implication: I had to fend for myself. I even, like it said on wikihow to bake a potato, preheated the microwave. So of course I later reeked of accomplishment - post wiping clean three portions of carbs with soft innards, nutrients-laden jacket and all.

But the sad story of why princess had to fend for herself.

This is Bahadur.

Surely, you agree he has a Miss Universe smile?

Bahadur means brave. Bahadur came to us -- we think of him as manna -- as a car cleaner in 2001. But he's been our cook now for ten years. I can't say domestic help because it sounds fake. It's like using 'differently enabled' instead of handicapped. If I'm not saying retarded for handicapped, I'm not saying servant for cook. It means the same thing. But class arrows everywhere will pin you down.

Brave Bahadur is not from Nepal. Don't let his features fool you. He says his village is in Bengal. He's not sure which year he was born in. All he says is he's worked in the house of the British, which is why when you yell Bahaduuuuuur, and if he hears you, he will answer back: yus!

If he hears because, as it happens, Bahadur is deaf in one ear. When my mother, about to pull her hair out, brings up the topic of a hearing aid, Bahadur sulks. Vanity before convenience -- he doesn't want strangers from afar to be able to tell ki kaan ka problem hai, that he has a problem with his ears. End result: more screaming happens.

Whenever he gets fed up of my mother, Bahadur says he's off to the village to see his mother. Earlier he used to say he's off to meet his wife and kids but that story changed.

As is not unheard of in these parts, Bahadur, as if we were toddlers still, calls me Baby and my brother Baba. Baba doesn't live here though, so it's just Sa'ab - my father, Memsa'ab -- my mother and Baby -- me.

On the times I have had to ring Bahadur at home to tell him I am not having lunch/ dinner, I have to yell to make sure he gets me: Bahadur??? Baby bol raha hai, I'll say.

Which actually just becomes: Ba'dur?baby-bo'lai! Which then goes on to become a sort of hello, can you hear me five minute deciphering drill.

Bahadur will either put the phone down or start shouting back, yus? yusss?! hullllo!

Exhausting. He drives us crazy. We drive him crazy. I suspect neither can live without the other.

Today, I've been googling Dr Scholl's and toe gels a lot because Bahadur is in hospital, just out of surgery. Thanks too three teaspoons of sugar in his every cup of chai, he has diabetes and a diabetic foot; gangrene. His toes turned blue. He didn't show it to either of my parents because, as he later said, he thought blue was the colour of socks that transferred on to his skin. Never mind that the rest of the foot too would have turned blue if it were the dye, stupid stupid man!

Then one day, Bahadur started limping. This 'one day' was last month. Since then the doctor chukkars haven't stopped. Yes surgery, no surgery, much dithering. Finally, they said it had to go, the foot.

And so today, poor Bahadur's toes have gone. My mother returned from the hospital and told me she had to scream into his ear for him to thank his stars it was discovered when it was discovered nahi toh pura pair jata -- the whole foot would have had to be amputated.

After she heated up biryani for herself (I might've made more novice potatoes had I known she'd be back for lunch), she rung up my father from the land line and I heard her give him the update. 'He's looking okay...They'll keep him for another couple of days.. N's looking up some silicon toe things on the net.... tsk, don't talk nonsense, how can he wear slippers? haan, yes, those ones, yea...closed... raining in Delhi, I came back... (softer voice)... you think he'll be fine?'

And then the line to her husband that got caught in my ears:

'remember how he'd go like lightning to get my paans from downstairs...?'

I remember this. His slippers, his blue chappals would make that phat phat sound, rubber on cement, what Karan Johar might concede to be rapid fire rounds.

Blah blah, the unsettling ways of the world and all that maudlin classist bull apart that I get tired of even phrasing in my head, I was uncomfortable today. Mildly, mildly depressed. It didn't stop me from tick marking social agendas, the movies and the weddings. No, of course not.

He's our servant. We'll take care of him when he gets back from hospital. Bland tea from this day forth, yes yes, all that. But you know what made me squirm? Natalie Portman. The ballet shoes, the bleeding toes, the Black Swan. I saw it today. It wasn't psycho scary to me in the way my connects were scary. Ballerina stands on toe. Servant, no ballerina, no toe. Actor and true life. That crackling sound, the camera on her feet, the gorgeous shade of pink satin, how delicately but firmly she ties the gossamer sheath versions of shoelaces. And then , my god, how concave the sole becomes with the plink plink piano tunes, and my inferred double meaning in those bloodied bandages. The focus on the feet made me sad. The movie made me sad. I enjoyed it. It was totally gripping. But the goosepimples I had were not so much for the gorgeous Oscar winner, as much as they were for the now twice-handicapped rubber chapppal-wearing man whose potatoes beat mine hollow.

Blind corner up ahead

2011-03-01T15:23:00.006+05:30

I wrote my first rejection letter yesterday. More of a rejection tweet than a letter, really. Didn't end with sincerity or warmth or regards or even my 'best'. Just the one line , the mildest, totally acceptable form of bugger off.

As if walking out of a newspaper job last month -- no, month before last, hello March! -- without another in hand wasn't harebrained enough. Now I think these people who tried to hire me -- remember that interview I went for? -- don't deserve me. Even before yesterday, even before I read their email with the insubstantial offer, sitting outside a trial room at Zara, in front of a mirror, two brown bags at my feet, waiting for my best friend (in town, on holiday) to finish trying on dresses and skirts and pretty polka and olive tops so she could finish buying the shop down -- keep the blue back, not worth it -- my gut was nudging me to fly away, little birdie. Vanish right along. These ones aren't for you.

It didn't require more thought than that. And so, on the train, in the ladies compartment, on my way home, after the mall crawl with my friend who agreed the offer was an insult, I sent them the prompt reply they had asked for.

No formal letter of appointment needed, thank you. The offer doesn't work for me.

Mainly, the offer doesn't work for me because of the chicken poop disguised as salary. But silver lining wise, I'm glad it was so easy. If it were a generous offer, I'd have to have said yes to something my heart wasn't in. I don't know what it was. All I have for a basis is my two meetings with them. And I'm not even sure it was the moustached guy on the panel, one of the three interviewers, who sent me a text afterwards congratulating me on my 'enthusiasm'.

The older I get, the more people I want to thwack on the head. Maybe next month this time I'll be in a more beggars-can't-be-choosers frame of mind.

Meanwhile, 'rofl'?

If you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it, if you're happy and you know it... hit PUBLISH?

2011-02-23T11:48:00.008+05:30

I'm so happy today, I could take Govinda out for coffee!

I don't know why my happiness analogies often have to do with taking some outrageous person on a date but it's possible I think outrageous = funny, funny = happy.

Or, forget coffee, I suppose I could go cycling with him. After all, health is wealth, never mind the stealth.

I'm also totally chuffed and looking forward to to wearing a sari tonight. It's been months! And if I wear a sari today I will be EVEN happier! Such is my conviction. I want to splash in a pool and fling frogs on the face of some nervous type who's just learned how to swim. Paddle paddle with a floating tube and paccchik! Croaker in your face! That's how happy I am - to be evoking Nanette the gorgeous leap frog in Gnomeo and Juliet. Evil happy. Lily pond happy. Photo caption to read amphibians and self circa 2011 happy. Then go to jail because PETA don't like me happy.

The sari doesn't really have anything to do with happy. But happy happy + sexy sari = unbeaten allure. And then they pay you compliments which is happier still. Compliments because there is this wedding thing I have to go for in the evening to which I'm wearing that lovely sleeveless green and gold brocade blouse. I think it's the Sangeet --- music, dancing, alcohol, people who've seen me as a baby -- what's not to look forward to?

Rajiv is getting married. You don't know Rajiv. But Rajiv always reminded me of Joylon Wagg in Tintin. Remember him -- the salesmen who comes to Marlinspike Hall in The Seven Crystal Balls and drives everyone mad?

Once upon a time, I was supposed to marry Rajiv. Our parents would have been happy. I can hear the voices in my head:

He's an investment banker in London, marry him!
No!
Why?
He's not my type!
Then how do you explain BEEP-BEEP?
That was an ABERRATION, not a mistake!
Yea well, you're going to die an old maid.
*Gobsmacked*
The end

So, anyway. I'm not marrying Rajiv, because, you know, it's too late now and even when it wasn't, our energy levels were mismatched. He's too... enthusiastic. His life is brimming with exclamations and he's great fun for five minutes and I HAVE always loved his name and if he were a different man, in the way if a washing machine were a toaster, or Jolyon Wagg was Captain Haddock, I'd marry the barnacle.

For now, I'm just happy to go to his wedding and be exhausted in the twelve seconds it'll take to say, Hiii!! Muah, muah! Congratulations! You look sooo good! Ha Ha, no, I don't want to dance, I'm going to the bar... no.. no..noo...Rajiv, stop, halp!

Ladies and gentleman, the magic of a sari.

A, u! Practice your vowels and I'm yours forever

2011-02-21T11:16:00.005+05:30

When we started dating, Boy Wonder wanted me to fix two things about myself.

Be less defensive
Be less sarcastic

Being less of both is a work in progress and I hope I'm reasonably well-behaved and a more tolerable girlfriend than what comes naturally to me. In turn, all I asked from him was to fix his language. Not so much the horrendous Hindi swearing with a rustic tenor that totally blows the cover of his Joe Cool jazzy piano persona. That too but more... like you know, never use LOL, like ever, and talk less like this coz I'm not like the biggest fan on earth of breath-wastingly obvious superlatives or anything. And coz, jeez, how and like why is it so difficult, for like, you know, peeps to polish their klutzy bad ass phrases and drop this totally and completely unnecessary affliction to like employ truck loads of tautology and bullshit verbiage?

See what I mean?

I cried. I cringed. I longed for a companion who didn't have a flair for retarded syntax, for someone who would speak freely, with minimal self censoring, and say what he meant without resorting to excessive descriptors; like, you know, ugly and typical adjectives. Bad enough to keep it ugly or typical, but the redundant duality of both is poison. Learn that, already, I'd SOL - SCREAM out LOUD.

Embellishments of speech take away from sex appeal. This is common knowledge, right? RIGHT? Doesn't he know that by now, after being with me all this time? And then the light bulb shone. It dawned on me that he doesn't! That the reason why this bugger utters excessively long, redundant, multi-syllabic sentences, often of deliberately peculiar length is because of his voice! Which he thinks is sexy independent of the words it hosts! Of course!

Concession: He, boyfriend in question, does truly, have a sexy voice. It's deep and full and kind and warm. Nature has given him the gift of zero shrill but kept it balanced with zero wit. If I give you his number or you meet him somewhere and you're a hot, chirpy sounding chick, he will lower his jaw to sound like Amitabh Bachchan laying it on.

I'm tempted to, if he were game, embed an audio clip with him reading out some really nasty convoluted phrases in his baritone and you'll see why my brain goes into overdrive and my patience snaps like a beautician's thread, over and over again because how is it fair that someone can sound so good but chat such shit?

When people say to us things like, gosh you guys are so different, what do you see in him -- ok, no one says what do you see in him, but if someone were to -- I'd say he's taller than me and he has a deadly voice. Meet my boyfriend, my prop, my crutch, my spokesperson. (Just don't expect any fun or spontaneity from him, but other than that, nom nom, he's my everything.)

Sometimes at parties, when I hover near his elbow and he's dressed well and smelling good and talking, seriously, to a small audience about the virtues of aluminium or why circular polarisation in 3D glasses is bad, I moon out. I look, I glaze, I tee hee inwardly and let him talk. Because even though it - this talk, and often he - bores me to tears - circular polarisation?! FUCK! -- at least he knows his shit. In those moments, at such parties, I'm the prop, the crutch, the vapid butterfly, the arm candy, the rapidly chasing vodka smiler at the inane dumb fuck audience that cares about aluminum.

It's the curse of our relationship. He sounds good when I'm not interested. My ears perk when the matter gets personal and gripping. But by then he knows he's got my attention and -- here's the irony -- falls back on potty thoughts and cluttered speech.

Because he sounds good, he deludes well. It's like the time in school when I thought my running handwriting was round and curly and fabulous. To remind myself just HOW fabulous, I'd write on the last page of my notebooks, as one long word, over and over again: thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog. JUST to admire the loops on my q, my j, my y and my g.

Useless analogy, but as far as narcissism went, I knew where he was coming from. And from knowledge strengthened my resolve: Arrogant bastard, I'll teach you.

And so, for the next two years, I proceeded to make the poor guy's life hell. I corrected his pronunciation. I mocked his sentence structure. I laughed at his lofty phrases. I made him squeal for Mummy!

All of this, I still do. But I like to believe that listening to him talk has become more tolerable. His words are clear and flowing. His stresses still need work -- there is a noun-verb difference, for chrissake, between when you say pro'jekt and proj'ekt! -- but overall, the beauty in the voice has been restored. There is appeal. Baritone is back. I can sit back and smacking my lips, revel in the sound of vindication -- or does contentment make me sound more humane? -- as the ice in my glass lands on my acid tongue.

This haphazard realisation came back to me yesterday. We were at a photo exhibition at IGNCA of Raja Deen Dayal.

There is no conclusive answer whether this photograph indeed shows a fakir who walked Deen Dayal's Studio to be photographed or if this was a 'commissioned' fakir whose photographs would later be sold by the Studio and advertised as 'native characters' in the Studio catalogue.

Sahibzadi Ahmad-un-Nisa Begum Sahiba (1910-1985) one of the several daughters of the VIIth Nizam (of Hyderabad) is seen wearing traditional pajamas under her western-style puff sleeved frock. By the early twentieth century most children in royal families were seen wearing western-style clothes combined with a few Indian elements for purposes of modesty.

We were a group of 20. The curator was showing us around. He said the tour would last an hour and a half. If there were questions about the photos, in the course of this sepia picnic, we were not to hesitate. Ask right then, he said, because at the end, and after having seen more than 200 prints, it "becomes a bit overwhelming".

This sent me back ten years to an old habit.

I don't usually ask questions, not in front of crowds, and not about topics I haven't been paying attention to and, consequently or not, know nothing about. It embarrasses me. I am shy to the point of being someone else. Right from the days of math class when the sum would be on the board and the teacher would towards the end of a lesson, put the chalk aside, dust her palms, and ask, any doubts?, I would always, always look thoughtful and slowly shake my head, because I needed the pretence of smartness. But more than that, oh god, please don't let her (i.e. the math teacher) see through my convincing nod!

Doubts were always for later, if at all, to be asked of a trusted source, a smarter friend, someone who understood the intricacies of simultaneous equations or the crappy calculus on the board. Putting my hand up in class, to a teacher, a voice of authority, in a glaringly public space, to ask a question? God, no.

This has stayed. Boy Wonder, on the other hand, is a lot more confident. He's a performer, really. All these years of being on stage paying tributes to his pals, Chopin and jing bang, have stripped off him the self consciousness that mortals such as I still very much reek of. He's a natural. When in top gear, there's no... um-er, you know, like feet-shuffling or stuttering or groping for words or anything as lame.

Yesterday, when I looked at him be the smart ass curious-minded enthu cutlet, much more than the 19 others in the group, asking all those clear, well-strung sentences lending voice to doubts about 'the scale of photographs in the 19th century', 'bromide ink', something about lighting and motion and 'glass print negatives' -- concepts, phrases, word combinations that never occur to me -- I felt very proud of him. This was new, this beading coherent necklaces of measured words and thoughtful content and coupling with a humble delivery.

The inward tee hee was, famous last words, for once, not mockery-based. Despite the bickering we've done this week and the damaging verbal crossfire notwithstanding, I felt comfort in the confidence of his fine grammatical constructs that don't make sense to me but only because as one of those couples with few overlapping interests, bromide ink doesn't push my buttons, and not because he lost me at word eighteen of sentence twelve of a line of thought that was headed off a cliff.

Married couples coming to photo studios for formal portraits were a rare occurrence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However the status of Raja Deen Dayal & Sons was already established by their royal clients and the local landed gentry were quick to follow with their own patronage.

Well Spivak-a-lula! She’s my ba-by!

2011-02-14T22:56:00.015+05:30

Monday morning, 9 a.m

Says the grandfather to the granddaughter: Arre, you’re up early…

Replies the grand daughter to the grandfather: Yes, I’m going for a lecture.

A lecture?, like it were so unusual

Mmm hmm, I say, acting nonchalant, tying shoe laces.

Delivering or listening?

Stumped, amused, but truthfully and out of respect: Listening

Imagining the alternative though sends me out of the house a bit giggly.

Mayonnaise Toss rung yesterday to ask if I wanted to go for Spivak’s talk at the university. Mayonnaise toss = school friend, fellow blogger, chronic whiner – no wait: chronic whiner, school friend, current pursuer of a Masters in Lit and fellow blogger. I hadn't met her in a while. Spivak = Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, born on my father's birthday but five years earlier on Feb 24 , is a professor at Columbia University in New York, has very short grey hair -- kind of sexy, and is a voice of authority person when it comes to big deal things like post colonial theory and deconstruction. Never met.

No sequential logic, but of course I wanted to listen to Spivak talk. I even read her interview in The Hindu. The link was on a former colleague’s Facebook wall. I had to skim a lot because parts were boring and the other parts required a re-read to fully grasp, but surely clicking on the link qualifies me as as a curious kitty if not a literary heavy weight. Besides, I had nothing else to do and what a totally intellectual note to start the week on!

Plus, importantly, and to redeem my blonde-ness, I remember the name Spivak as a blast from my glorious academic past. She was someone we had to quote heavily in our under grad papers if all we girls -- and we were all girls -- were going to get anywhere. Ask anyone.

When friend and I walk into the Vice Regal lodge – the interiors of which, even in all my then seemingly-endless years at Delhi University I hadn't seen -- it's packed. Friend is not as jobless as I, but nonetheless, on leave on a Monday.

Vice regal interiors; same number of people behind me.
Trivia #1: Place is done up with Bose speakers
Trivia #2: Nehru delivered his Tryst With Destiny speech here.
(Remember, 'At the stroke of the midnight hour when the world sleeps,
India will awaken to life and freedom...')
Presumably though, the Bose speakers are less historic.

Unintrusive back-of-head shots of Spivak-attendees

Once we're in and leaning against pillars because we're late and there's no place to sit, I get a text from Mayo: I saw you come in. Who are you with?

I tell her the name of person I am with and add, ‘friend and fellow intellectual’ (plus the necessary smiley, because even though she knows me well enough, imagine that being taken seriously.)

Later, after the lecture, Fellow Intellectual and Mayo pull my leg about this idle daily blogging – I send them both email alerts and am always, always conscious about how indulgent that is, but then like today, despite making fun of me, they plead Tech Retarded-ness and say aww, blog, blog, and just as well the alerts comes in our inbox since (we’re so stupid) we don’t know what for is a feed reader, oh and ha ha, since we’re all friends here, I’m saved the ease with which I would otherwise get a tad defensive.

Spivak was spunky. Twice, at least, she called herself intellectually insecure. I liked her without understanding her. That’s allowed, isn’t it? She wouldn’t drone on like some of the newbie lecturers we suffered back in college, one or two of whom were in attendance.

With that powerful voice and changing pitch and cadence and things, it wasn’t easy to sleep when Spivak spoke. Just as well for when it comes to teachers, surely keeping the masses up and blinking is a massive prerequisite, more so if their sentences, like the Speaking Spivak’s, start with “If capital is the strongest agency of validation into modernity…”

I took notes – Compulsively! Copiously! Continuously! Ever since I hung up my journo spurs, I’ve been itching to take short hand. So I took notes. (Like a fiend on a sugar high, if I were to go about this ‘analogically’) And when I didn’t take notes -- compulsively, copiously, and um, continuously -- I took photos. How long to keep up with this validation into modernity crap after all? But Fellow Intellectual, you know the guy with whom I came to listen to the lecture – not deliver it – would glare at me whenever I’d click. Later, he called me an intrusive photo taker: you can’t DO that!. But at least he called me an intrusive photo taker after the lecture and when I was done taking photos, so for a while, I put my camera away, and also my pen.

This was like college. Remember college? God, what was I thinking? Literature ruined me.

“Left vocabulary, the abdication of an epistemological task…”

Maybe I should have done Philo.

“I cannot declare a rupture with femininity…”

It’s amazing how many of those cows did better than me/ I did

“The vanity in being feudal urban radicals needs to be undermined…If I am not interchangeable with a Hindi-speaking Delhiite, urban subalterns aren’t interchangeable with rural subalterns…”

Heh. I think I’ll adopt that as an insult. Done. Subaltern is the new plebian.

I want to share this. I look at my friend, my Fellow Inn’uhlegjuual, rebuker of my reckless camera usage, slinger of jute bag, wearer of kurta pajama, carrier of DU look, mocker those all over, as the crow flies, in red, on Valentine’s, Day and, hello, he’s awake. He looks like he’s paying attention, even. He catches my eye; so much for attention. I silently enunciate: ‘Are you hungry’? He shakes his head. We go back to Spivak, her epistemological this and her teleological that and the rest of her impenetrable sentences that in spite of themselves don’t put us to sleep.

I dare not tell her that though, witness as I am to her firmly but not rudely slamming the question-asker who started with “Hullo ma’am, myself so and so, that was brilliant talk, ma’am, thank you, even if I am subaltern and I did not myself understand all…” – and she said, "I’ll take up your very good question, but I want to first say, if you didn’t understand me, you have no right to congratulate me.”

Ooh! Ni-ce! Touché! Now on, till the last question is answered, goose bumps for all!

P.S. I have a job interview tomorrow. (To clarify grandfather-like doubts: I’m the interviewee, not the interviewer). Must decide what to wear. Something that doesn’t say 'tried too hard', but nothing that shrieks… ‘subaltern’.

If laboured comic timing be the fruit of love...

2011-02-12T23:47:00.002+05:30

Hunky Ash-win, gay Ash-win, Ash-win wearing a leather jacket and talking to plants Ash-win.

Aren't you already sick of Ash-win?

Ashwin is the name of a character in A Perfect Relationship, a play that has five actors who won't say Ushwin like they're supposed to. I don't see why. They're all Indians with names like Sameer and Sukhesh. It can get on your nerves, this Ash-win situation, especially when the duration of the ordeal from an hour and a half could be brought down to 45 minutes. Either chop the crap or funny up the script. Right now it's an anecdote parading as an epic, a piddly ball of dough stretched into pizzas for the entire cast. The name sounded so inviting. What a waste.

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When out of 800 misspelt things on the menu, only the cold coffee doesn't make you gag

2011-02-12T00:24:00.002+05:30

Dear Alliance Française, New Delhi,

I don't know if you've seen Greenberg. It's a movie in which Ben Stiller plays a carpenter cum recovering schizophrenic house sitting his brother's mansion in LA and looking after his brother's dog, a German Shepherd called Mahler, while his brother and family vacation in Vietnam.

To entertain/ distract/ keep from shooting himself, Greenberg writes letters of disgruntlement to Starbucks and, I googled this, to Hollywood Pet Taxi.

Nobody wants Greenberg's life.

Today, I was sitting in your cafe when I had a Greenberg moment. There I was pecking with my fork at your day's special, the penne pasta in red sauce, the noodles and chilli chicken and the honey chilli potatoes, and thinking, what parallels can I draw? What was your food tasting like? Why didn't I like it? What was so wrong? Why did I come here ? What is with your red sauce tasting like sambhar and detergent and vinegar?

I wanted you to know I'm never coming back, not with expectations. I'll give you the cold coffee, which the second time around, the guy made just as I told him I like it -- less sugar, crushed ice, more coffee. Other than which, your Max Caterers people need to up their ante, their socks, and maybe call in the proof readers, the spell checkers, the army, for at a language school especially, 'baby fitters' priced at anything is a bad joke.

Thanking you,
Just some visitor chick who can't speak french but has taste buds and wanted to get this out of her system.

P.S: Chilli chicken isn't tandoori chicken with ketchup on it.

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I don't want you to age gracefully anymore. I want you to not age.

2011-02-11T01:31:00.008+05:30

My grandmother's making faces. She's wearing her favoured tattered shawl -- grey with that ancient red Himachal border, looking at the TV, shelling her peas and making faces.

Shelling her peas... sounds off. Surely, she's chheeloing matar. Yes, much better -- that's what she's doing. Every now and then, she'll give me the small, sweet ones to pop in my mouth. Besides the shelling/ cheeloing, she's also looking at some crap movie on TV -- Barsaat Ki Ek Raat -- featuring Amitabh Bachchan, Rakhi, Ajmal Khan and tackily picturised songs.

She's still making faces. She's still chheeloing matar.

Tacky

Chheelo

Tacky

Chheelo

Annoying before-dinner rhythm we've got going. I'm eating the matar, popping them in my face, also chheloing the matar, tossing the chhilka aside on a steel tray.

Again- faces! Now she's making faces at me. No -- TO me. I don't understand the look and it's pissing me off. And what's this wink thing happening? I say, irritably: kya-a-a-a? i.e Why are you winking at me, Nanu?!

Nanu starts nudging me to look in the direction of Bawa, my grandfather. He's sitting next to her. She doesn't want to say look! look! out aloud because hen he will hear her and be conscious. But really, WHAT am I supposed to be looking at?!

I break the whisper-wink one sided conspiracy, and say in a perfectly loud tone: WHAT is it, Nanu?

Bawa, dekho, tv dekh rahein hain, she says softly, i.e look, Bawa's watching telly.

Yea, SO?!

So he's usually not interested in anything.

Ohhh..

I look at my hunch-backed, wavy-haired, grey tracksuit- wearing grandfather sitting frozen and compact in a red plastic chair that's too small for him -- or is it that he's gotten too fat for it? Which is it? And is he watching or just looking? Looks like he's watching, alright. I excuse myself from the rhythmic peeling of peas and and go get my camera. It's a hobby, this constant chronicling of the long established body language of my favourite goldies. I need to remember their wrinkles. Photographs are the preservatives you can't dunk in jam.

This afternoon, he, my grandfather Bawa, couldn't remember who called five minutes ago. Nanu gave him hell for not trying hard enough. My mother, like all daughters in this family, took her father's side, saying, let him be etc. I was with my grandmother on this. Shout more, I wanted to tell her. Pressurise him into racking his brains. This not remembering nonsense is too easy. But he I'm not sure, gives a damn about the nagging of the domestic queen. And I'm sure he's not trying to depress anyone by being extra slow but it's no virtue and nothing he will get credit for, not from me.

Of late, at meal times, on the dining table, everyone else will be talking, and my grandfather, the old pilot, Bawa, in this classic way he has of resting his temples on the bent wrist of his not-eating-with hand, will just stay shut and chew and chew and chew. Which is fine, as far as digestion goes. But it worries me how much we're lowering the bar for him -- Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, really? My grandmother was watching it for him. He likes this shit, not her. She wants the 9 o clock news. Hence the faces. But she'll bear bad cinema if it means her husband and childhood sweetheart will look up and alert and interested and participatory. All the while, I'm imagining dramatic scenarios in my head, the inevitable ends, the future without them and and feeling angry that they're shamelessly deteriorating. Never mind the stupid fox and his unreachable grapes, it's the matar that's never sweet.

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Wriggle wriggle, my thumbs a twiddle

2011-02-08T23:14:00.004+05:30

I should, I tell myself, get off my ass, and DO SOMETHING. Be a power puff girl. Take charge of life. Tweak my CV. BE the CHANGE. Get motivated! NETWORK! Meet people and not run out of steam before I put my shoes on because, well, I do that a lot and I don't, after all, have a job and I can't forever be selling cakes with Gupta ji -- what everyone in my family calls the boyfriend -- so, what's it gonna be?

I'll have a comic silence with no income on the side, please.

Like a best friend and I used to say in this one phase of ours:

Point to be Noted

And in not a bad way, is that I am amazed at my parents. They don't seem to care whether I'm working not, going to office or not, trying to get hired or not. Forget pressure, all I see on their faces is happiness presumably because I'm around more and sometimes, gasp, even smiling!

Maybe the smiling bit is from this humility thing that comes when you have scraps of rupees in the bank. I'm eating at home. I'm saying yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. I'm picking up after myself. If I get out of the house, I'm back home for dinner. When I'm out, I sometimes check if anyone wants anything from the market. I'll turn to my mother and ask, soya milk? She'll say no, you don't know which is the good one. And the love will continue to flow.

My father? All he wants in this sabbatical of mine, as he calls it, is that I get more exercise and more sunlight. Really. It's his two-point agenda for me. This is the man who when I was finishing college, told me: Thank goodness you aren't like these focused 21 year olds. They scare me.

Sunlight and exercise, fine fine.

Back from my little blood donation outing today, I, boasted to daddy dearest about what I thought was a brilliant my hemoglobin level - Papa! Papa! 12.7'. He looked worried, almost admonishing that it wasn't good enough (!). What sort of man doesn't care about what I do 'in life' as long as it makes me happy, but I should always come first in haemoglobin?!

Curious man, my father. I'd like him even if I didn't know him.

On Saturday, I even went out to the Gymkhana with my soy milk drinker mommy and lover of sunlight daddy. The entire evening, I hung with them and our thoroughly entertaining house guest, a friend of my mum's, had three Bloody Marys, and after the third, reached the conclusion, that when she's in form, I don't know a more lively soul than my mother.

In hours more sober, I'm less generous about her virtues but nowadays the fad is for me to try and throw in a kind word or two. It won't last. But for now, as far as the 'rents are concerned, my unemployment rocks.

Filed under: Job, What Job?

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Anything to distract my she wimp self while the vamps suck out my blood with promises of parle-g biscuits and frooti afterwards

2011-02-08T12:04:00.001+05:30

Drama queen? Present ma'am!

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How was the festival? What, you weren't there?!

2011-01-30T21:05:00.031+05:30

MUSTARD FIELDS FOREVER

Sarson, i.e mustard, i.e pretty yellow flowers, i.e playground of atleast the one legendary Bollywood rom com was my obsession on the drive to Jaipur last week for the lit fest.

The Hunchback of Akshardham and I, the Bendy Yogi

Never mind authors I was perfectly amenable to listening to at the festival. Sarson -- ‘sar’ like dur in Durham and ‘son’ like no nasal equivalent in English -- was my muse for the four-hour drive to the crummy little pink city with camel shit for local currency.

I’ve been to Jaipur earlier. Yet my role was chosen. I was the tourist. Everything was new. This was my camera and ooh, aah the smell of rural India!

Less taken in by the bright-smelling rustic surroundings was the person on my right - driver and lover of Beatles-covers who doubles as Boyfriend. He’s also, in my humble opinion, winner of person-most-easily-enraged-behind-the-wheel-award. If he had three wishes on the road, I bet they’d be a very focused:

Let no one ever again cut me off
Drive in your lane, bitches and
Less road kill for all

Well, maybe two of those and one wish more risqué, but poor chap, in his determined, let’s-see-how-much-the-new-car-can-do mode, would push to 180 kmph and then have to slam the breaks to deal with my STOP! STOP! Hark! I-see –yet-another-totally-similar-mustard-field nonsense.

He: You’re like someone with Tourette's syndrome – every three seconds: click, click, click!

Me: That’s not a nice thing to say about people with turrets.

He: Good thing that’s no one in this car then.

Me: *Click*

WHO NEEDS PEOPLE WHEN I HAVE MY MACHINE,MY ASS!
On nearing Jaipur, my STOP! STOP! Mustard! chant became Slow down! Elephants!

By now, driver boy’s patience was running thin because he wanted to be directed only by the GPS on his phone. And I had switched roles, now playing the lead in Mean Girls.

Me: Screw technology, why can’t we just ASK someone, ya?!

He: Shhh, one second...

Me: Fine! Do what you want.

All I saw were arrows and lines on his, at that moment, not very smart phone. Saying such things aloud, did you know, does not help soothe tempers? Aah, enlightenment on a crisp, winter, choked-with-rickshaws in this small town Marutis-honking-everywhere day.

The shhh, one second worked fine because, yes of course I’ve seen an elephant before, but what is anyone else’s problem if I want to zoom into its snout today in the middle of a busy intersection?!

GPS was being a slow tease. I felt I won this round of our constant debate -- efficiency-of- people-versus-machines -- because asking a local for directions finally bloody got us to our destination.

Amer Fort -- not 'our' destination

THE MOB OUT THERE

It’s fatal if you start thinking about what people will think. Readers are abstract. You’ve just got to press on.
– Martin Amis discussing Memoir-writing.

The lit fest was like a mass wedding. Yes, there were authors and quotes and listeners and questions and answers and panel discussions every hour on every surface of lawn under beautiful tents done up in lovely pastels, but I’m not sure that’s what draws us people in.

It’s free, it’s accessible and you bump into the world. You can walk up to Coetzee and meet Rushdie at the bar. Some long lost college friend will be found floating near the fringes. What are you doing here? will not be said as much as When did you get here?. New people will be met and remembered for a firm handshake, others for impressions less complimentary. Young novelists with whom you have eight mutual friends on Facebook will lend you their delegate’s pass against which you can get a beer. Same young novelist will recommend the session on Kashmir. And because he facilitated free beer, you will nod as if militancy is a subject totally up your alley and to which you can of course, totally, uh huh -- contribute.

At the counter for tea that they hand out in mud-kulhars, shoulders will be rubbed with college kids, grey-haired professors, sari-wearing theatre-types and peach-complexioned nymphs sneezing but dressed for Goa. Old colleagues will tell you Kiran Desai looks damn young and everyone’s running after her. Photographer friends will light your cigarettes. Female groupies will flock to your boyfriend and introduce him to their other friends as a pianist genius. He, on his birthday eve, will blush. You, with no ready gift, will smile. Someone will say, where’s the loo? Small blue doors will be pointed to. All the while, you’ll be checking out the crowd, the hot women in abundance, the too few attractive men and the idiots who, by the looks of it, made it big.

CAMELS AND E'PHANTS
SOLD FOR A PENNY
ALL THE PETTY THIEVES
ARE SO MANY

On the way back from Jaipur, so after the lit fest, I lost my slippers. This would, of course, have been more of a problem if it was on the way to Jaipur, and before stepping foot into the lit fest. I had left my shoes back in Delhi and thus had zero back up. (So much for jibes directed at smart phones and their android owners, I’m supposed to be a smart person, also owner of an android device, but this round of machine versus man argument, for me, was obviously advantage out).

It was bad enough to parade about in worn out pink flip flops instead of tapping around in boots and saying to Pamuk Hello, sorry I couldn’t read The New Life and nor do I have it with me for you to inscribe and, like Amis, call me your beloved with an accent on the ‘e’ even though your lady, Kiran with a K, might not like that.

Plan wasn’t working. Now even the worn out pink flip flops had, as Rowling likes to say, apparated. I was the slum dog, naked ankle down, feeling not bohemian at all -- unlike arty Hussain, the eternally barefooted brilliance in exile.

Turns out a camel walker had whacked them. Yes, I know, it’s a difficult-to-imagine, somewhat embarrassing story of absent mindedness, but stay with me.

I wanted to stand on the roof of the car to take a picture (Tourette's, Tourette's!) of one stupid fort in the middle of a lake – Jal Mahal? But this boy was not letting me stand on the roof of his car, reasoning that tin roofs are not made to withstand such weight. (Such weight?! What weight, I’m a lithe, bendy yogi! See above picture of me in sarson ke fields forever!)

But maybe he’s right, I thought. Fine, I won’t climb on to the roof. Next option, as per He-man’s suggestion: balance on the window of my zippy little Volkswagen. Slippers removed (aaah! you see?), I try to get up there but realise quickly this is not happening and so I semi-pout and say, forget it, start the car.

He: What, are you sure? Do you want me to take a u-turn so you can take a shot from that side?

Me: No, no, drive. It’s fine.

Within five minutes, I’m saying, STOP! STOP! I want to get off and take a picture of the great wall of Jaipur! (Ooh, plus one number coloured tusker!)

So he stops. I feel around for my chappals. Obviously, they’re not there. Makes no sense, up until the second after when – aaah! -- realisation dawns on I, the cluck.

Me: Sweetheart... do you think we can go back...?

End of nail biting anecdote: I left them on the side of the road when I got off to want to climb the roof. Maybe they’re still there.

U-turn taken, I see them from this side of the road. But now that we’re on the Jal Mahal side, I may as well get that one damn shot. Slippers aren’t going anywhere. Who knew that in the few moments it takes to manual focus on the distant fort, they’d change their mind? Not I, the cluck again.

Imagine my surprise, my confoundedness, my complete dismay at the repeat absenteeism of the only footwear at my disposal. But they were just here! We just saw them from that side! How could this be?!

Driver boy thought this hilarious -- not just ha-ha-hilarious, but laughter that gets shrill and sadistic hilarious.

Shut up and chase the camels, you ass!

And so we pull up next to two camel men with their two camels, on whose, er, two humps were seated two tickled oriental tourists, aiming their two big digital lenses down at -- dare I imagine it – one bare-footed cluck?

Not the time to be conscious, I yell out to camel-man 1 asking if he’s seen a pair of pink chappals lying around: Bhaiiya jiii, aapne koi gulabi rang ki chappalein dekhin hain yahan?

Camel man 1 looks at me, then to his friend, Camel man 2, says haan ji, madam, rukiye. And so I wait and watch him pull out from the secret compartments in his camel’s saddle, my two tattered babies. Never have I been more relieved to see a pair of slippers. And how sweet of the guy/ thief to return them! He could just as easily have said, I never saw no slippers, lady, check ahead. And I would’ve reconciled myself to the poetic if corny justice of losing my pink slippers in the pink city. Just as well the charm and honesty of kindly Rajput gents saved me from such schmaltzy justice.
Slippers retrieved, camera put away, and before I polished off a bottle of wine on my own, I ask birthday boy as he zooms ahead making up for time lost time, do you think I should have given the highway robbers a tenner? Naah, apparently -- decency’s not a money thing, even for a finders-keepers sort of pilferer. I did though take the cheap way out by saying an enthusiastic thank you and baring my teeth like I do when I’m drunk and there is a camera around.

Cheap kick at lit fest

2011-01-27T22:08:00.004+05:30

From Mail Today's Tuesday, Jan 25 coverage of the Jaipur Literature Festival

QUICK-WITTED AMIS

WHEN it comes to ready wit, you can’t fault Martin Amis. At his book signing, a cocky journo asked him to autograph a copy of The War Against Cliches with something unconventional.

“Please don’t sign that with ‘warm regards’,” she said. Amis obliged by addressing her as his “beloved” in the inscription. The journo has been showing the book off & Amis achieved what he set out to do: keep her friends “guessing”.

Having my cake and beating it, too

2011-01-19T18:57:00.007+05:30

My boyfriend -- we’re still together, dragging our feet, assuring each other: don’t worry, I won’t marry you, your life is not doomed, hang in there etc – has a bakery. It’s in Gurgaon, five minutes from my house and called Cake Away.

It’s a delivery only thing. (You get the idea of sounding like ‘take-away’. Bit forced, but bit late. Send the bouquets to me. I came up with it.) It’s not a retail space like an Angels in my Kitchen or a Bagel’s Cafe, so you can’t sit there, sip coffee and feed on brownies but you can order the brownies and the brownies will come to you, walnuts and all, secured in a humongous thermocol box with ice packs and gun men.

Kidding. Ignore the gun men line.

*cough*

The bakery has been up for a year and for a year I have had a problem with it. Refer gun men jibe. But whenever I’m asked, ‘What is your problem with his bakery, woman?!’ I mumble, make rude dismissive sounds and give caustic, nonsensical replies. I say things I don’t mean or believe. How does an engineer and a musician bring himself to care about the fluffiness of flour? See? Not nice. Especially not to someone you care about and date and of whom one is sigh 'posed to be encouraging and supportive.

It gets ugly. He gets hurt. I get vocal. Nothing helps. If and blah we split, he will attribute my whole hearted lack of support as one reason why the deal soured. I won’t blame him.

Imagine:

Hey, why d'you guys break up?

Oh, we couldn’t see eye to eye on the divinity of the chocolate cakes.

I judge me. Look at it. I have a problem with a bakery, a bakery – it’s not like he’s an arms dealer or a contract killer and I want him to give up his sexy Sopranos act so we can settle into domestic harmony. It’s a bloody bakery! Eggs and cocoa not grease and crime – hardly the stuff break ups are made of. Seeing the light, and staring it down, I say to myself, shut up and let him do whatever the fuck he wants. That is the trip I’ve been on for some months now – do whatever you want. Hardly supportive but it’s a step up from downright nasty.

What IS my problem?

It bothers me that he sits in his not-even-retail kitchen the whole day, takes orders, fusses over the execution of those orders, supervises icing, and talks shop. It tests my patience and I consistently fail. He’s his own boss, sure, lucky guy. On some days, he goes to meet people in corporate offices so they can buy cakes from him. But usually, there is no connection or chit chat with similar, able-minded people. This gets to me the most – these hardly stimulating influences. Of course the comeback is perfectly just: Oh, you think you’re always surrounded by superior life forms, is it?

Answer is no, but at least there’s a variety. I’d go mad if I were stuck with three of my dumbest colleagues, and names, I assure you, spring to mind IMMEDIATELY.

But in words that could be his, I feel there is a glaring dearth in the calibre of human resource around him. It’s just him and his bakers who call him sir. I find it perverse that his people interaction is restricted to four servile people. I wouldn’t give him street smarts. His earnestness makes me want to choke on one of his beautiful butterfly muffins. And at the best of times he has the naiveté of an 11-year-old. But it so happens that this boy has the intelligence and sincerity of no one I know. This is a compliment and mostly a good thing. But it’s tiring, showing him what for I don’t like the idea of a bakery, and especially him running it. Conviction: it’s a waste of his IQ and I feel of his time. If you want to be an astronaut why settle for star gazing and insist the apron is your space suit?

Fully endorsed: the banoffee pies at Cake Away

But now that I don’t have a job – quite the news, huh; papers finally put in, after months of shall-I-shouldn’t-I -- I have all the time in the world to criticise people who are actually doing something, such as the space cadet of Cake Away fame mentioned above.

He even asked me, the hitherto-ex-journalist to join him. I said ha ha, not a chance in hell. Meaning, of course, as any fool can see: I’ll help you, I’ll give you all the advice and feedback you want, I just won’t take orders/ a salary from you.

To which, and filed under touché, cupcake, came this golden nugget from baker boy: “Okay, since don’t want to do anything with your life, why don’t you just concentrate on becoming a professional bitch?”

What can I say? I deserve all the love I get.

I can haz half muffin, pwease?

2011: so far so good, gorillas and all

2011-01-03T12:01:00.005+05:30

I lied -- about the sitting home and sulking on New Years Eve. True that as of 6 pm the other day, there was no plan. I was at work, as was my ever-resourceful friend and colleague Apple Bottoms (AB) who had carried with her a bottle of white wine, which is the flavour we stuck to for the rest of the evening.

The drinking started in office, in coffee mugs, on empty stomachs and not entirely surreptitiously. Moods changed, as they often do when you’re pumping yourself with the good stuff and there's not a morsel of food in sight. Enter the giggles and the restlessness, followed by the beep of a text message.

What’s the plan?

Erm, well, now that you’re asking…

There was mention of a terrace garden and the possibility of a small fire. Small fires lead to cosy gatherings. Throw in two more bottles of wine -- both white, one whiskey, nice whiskey glasses, doritos, sour cream, Chinese take away, galauti kababs, those deep fried sweet paranthas the name of which dodges my mind, freshly baked dark chocolate cookies, and there we go -- just the degree of social that was acceptable to me, and just the sort of new years eve I was game for.

People in attendance: five – AB, with husband, Rosy Cheeks (RC), my (boy)friend the pianist – it was his terrace garden, my gay BFF, who deserves a more becoming epithet than gay BFF and says about which most blithely, "Let's face it, who else is competition?", and well, I.

The 'bar'

Conversation topics, among others:

The killer doctor dad in the news -- about whom the CBI-covering journo, RC had some inside news
How to start a fire without blowing ash in people’s faces -- the deft pianist
The clingy gay dermatologist who sent gay BFF a follow up text to a skin care routine he recommended that, read Are You Shining?
The envious friend of AB who said ‘I thought my life would be like yours’
And about four rubbish hypothesis and male female perspectives on the acceptable degrees of infidelity. Like I said, four rubbish hypothesis

At one point, I was told to put my camera down because I was being antisocial. I did my usual: ‘you mean asocial’ and followed that with an, "Antisocial would be if I went about smashing window panes". And as is also usual, I was given the look that meant cut it out, grammarian hag.

The fire was started with the help of broken wooden chairs that our workplace had dispensed with and hence lugged up by AB. Like I said, resourceful. What better utilisation of redundant office seating anyway than to see it turn black, red, nails and all, and finally go up in smoke, just like, oh do let me say it, the decade soon to be kissed bu bye?

Office furniture in the 'tasla'

Fireworks courtesy the neighbourhood Sardar

I had a nice evening. I wasn't bored as I might have been had I gone with the alternative of being by myself, sitting home, remote in hand and snacking on health food because from this day forth, I swore to myself yet again, no more liquor and no more drags. Only yoga and cucumber, green tea and running. Okay, so there was no cucumber. Big deal. The yoga continues. The liquor is reduced. The drags were never so many. The TV is usually neglected anyway. I'm hardly bad!

Now all we needed is a little focus and some ambition sung to the tune of Ha ha said the clown. Sincerity can't harm either. And if along the way, maybe in the course of this year, if an interest/ passion ambles along, I won't be a cocky good for nothing.

And with my feet up, shamelessly encased in toe separator socks, being warmed and pressed by the fire in the tasla -- thank you, piano man, I did NOT know that's what the non-cauldron was called -- I sipped away at my wine, in the company of my conversant yet tee-hee-getting-there homies.

I loved that I didn’t have to wash my hair or bother about my clothes. I didn’t mind, in my depressive colours, being called the shadow of death because with the people I was around -- these four tee hee dements -- I didn’t care. My icing was that when I finally stumbled home, I didn’t have to hunt for cotton balls and cleansing milk to remove from my eyes smears of clogged mascara. Sure the lenses had to come off and be put to bed in their circular coffins, but the minimal effort needed to hit the pillow was the cherry. We even had a fantastic view of a 10-minutes-long fireworks show for free, kind courtesy a sardar down the road who seemed to have a few lakhs in black money to light up the neighbourhood skies with. As far as I was concerned, this was the party. I might even have been happy.

I know I sounded it when at 3.30 my friend in Toulouse, the good doctor dement, who was spending new years with red heads in a French villa, woke me up to share some truly awful jokes. I don't remember the conversation, but 18 minutes and 52 seconds, as my call log tells me, is a long, expensive time to be cracking up over inane yet specialised figures of speech we create by blending German accents with Punjabi intonations. Really, we must acquire a taste for more refined amusement. Next year maybe. To quote him though, "bwahahaha, issogood isss leg-en-dary!"

As for New Years Day, do you imagine it would be fun to carry a paper cut out of a monkey and take pictures of it with recognisably Delhi/ India sites in the background for a little niece of your alleged other half? Yea, well. As far as novelty went, click the gorilla didn’t seem like a bad idea. Besides, it had to be done. Little niece, you see, is in school somewhere in the States and she was given 'travelling with a gorilla' as a project, the deadline of which was close and boyfriend had promised to deliver.

So armed with his Nikon, pianist boy, Koko the Gorilla (irately also known as 'the damn ape'), and I set out to get this photo shoot done with backgrounds as attractive as possible so little niece could be graded an A. Lets avoid the discovery channel brand of tourism India, we thought -- the garbage and the homeless kids. Even yankee toddlers, cocooned as we take them to be, in their own world, are probably sick of imagining India as the centre for flies and feces.

Remember George Clooney in Up in The Air? On his trips across the States to sack people, he had to carry with him a cardboard cut out of a couple (his niece and her fiancee?) and take photos of the cut out so the couple in recession could’ve been to all those states on honeymoon without actually having busted savings for plane tickets to those places. This was like that. we were being George.

And so we went, us two ambassadors of project show the chimp a good time, to hunt for typical India minus the filth.

Qutub Minar would've been nice but crowded. Also, it's out of the way. Metro station that says New Delhi? Possibly -- an indication of developing India and all that. But then we decided to sham a little, and just drove past Teen Murti, clicked that, on to the president's house, down Rajpath and finally, India Gate.

Koko looked happy. Onlookers were curious. Two cops laughed. But the work got done. Promise was kept. Photos were sent. Karma is in place. All that's left is for little niece to give a kickass commentary of the well travelled monkey. Unless that needs to be outsourced to someone who would be happy to oblige, say, for example, this Indian blogger chick I know who writes nothing about woodchucks.

One pose wonder: Koko the gorilla

Notes of a nomad

2010-12-31T18:05:00.004+05:30

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.

I want to be a long-eared bat*

2010-12-14T12:39:00.006+05:30

Or whatever it takes for Christian Bale of the hotness and Batman fame, in a rarely smiling picture that is to follow, to notice and gradually adore me.

But really, this is a more, erm, academic post.

Last Monday, I bought On Writing Well by William Zinsser. Since then, I have been recommending it to people in my daily circle -- You HAVE to read it! The book's been around forever -- 25th anniversary in print -- but to me it was a new discovery. So pardon me if I sound like a 12-year-old who’s been given a book to review for English homework but it was easy to read, neither preachy nor instructive, and stayed clear of anything grammar-related. I liked the subtle humour, the anecdotes, the tips, the examples, and especially the pieces and authors Zinsser quoted from.

Zinsser says his favourite definition of a careful writer comes from Joe DiMaggio, “though he didn’t know that’s what he was defining.”

DiMaggio was the greatest player I ever saw, and nobody looked more relaxed. He covered vast distances in the outfield, moving in graceful strides, always arriving ahead of the ball, making the hardest catch look routine, and even when he was at bat, hitting the ball with tremendous power, he didn’t appear to be exerting himself. I marvelled at how effortless he looked because what he did could only be achieved by great daily effort. A reporter once asked him how he managed to play so well so consistently, and he said: “I always thought there was at least one person in the stands who had never seen me play, and I didn’t want to let him down.”

The book has these interesting, quotable tit bits in abundance on topics apart from Jazz and baseball – the subjects of Zinsser’s other two books.

I made notes and wrote page numbers in red ink on a slip of paper I was using as a bookmark. I made notes even when I got to Zinsser’s chapter on Science and Technology. Ordinarily, to stay awake, I’d skip anything on science and technology. Just as well I didn’t.

In that chapter, Zinsser talks of the importance of ‘writing like a person and not like a scientist’.

A tenet of journalism is that “the reader knows nothing”. As far as tenets go, it’s not flattering, but a technical writer can never forget it. You can’t assume your reader knows what you assume everybody knows, or that you still remember what was once explained to them.

After hundreds of demonstrations, I’m still not sure I could get into one of those life jackets that airline flight attendants have shown me: something about “simply” putting my arms through the straps, “simply” pulling two toggle knobs sharply downward (or is it sideways?) and simply blowing it up – but not too soon. The only step I’m confident I could perform is to blow it up too soon.”

Don’t you love what he’s doing? Somebody tell him he touched a chord.

“Look for the human element”, Zinsser says.

Use your own experiences to connect the reader to some mechanism that also touches his life...

...Just because you’re dealing with a scholarly discipline that’s usually reported in a style of dry pedantry is no reason why you shouldn’t write in good fresh English.

Amen.

And then he quotes an article by Diane Ackerman.

Most of us know only three facts about bats: they’re mammals, we don’t like them, and they’ve got some kind of radar that enables them to fly at night without bumping into things. Obviously anyone writing about bats must soon get around to explaining how that mechanism of “echo-location” works. In the following passage, Ackerman gives us details so precise – and so easy to relate to what we know – that the process becomes a pleasure to read about:

It’s not hard to understand echo-location if you picture bats as calling or whistling to their prey with high frequency sounds. Most of us can’t hear these. At our youngest and keenest of ear, we might detect sounds of 20,000 vibrations a second, but bats can vocalize at up to 200,000. They do it not in a steady stream but at intervals – 20 or 30 times a second. A bat listens for the sounds to return to it, and when the echoes start coming faster and louder it knows that the insect it’s stalking has flown nearer. By judging the time between echoes, a bat can tell how fast the prey is moving and in which direction. Some bats are sensitive enough to register a beetle walking on sand, and some can detect the movement of a moth flexing its wings as it sits on a leaf.

That’s my idea of sensitive; I couldn’t ask a writer to give me two more wonderful examples. But there’s more to my admiration than gratitude. I also wonder: how many other examples of bat sensitivity did she collect – dozens? hundreds? – to be able to choose those two? Always start with too much material. Then give your reader just enough.

As the bat closes in, it may shout faster, to pinpoint its prey. And there’s a qualitative difference between a steady, solid echo bouncing off a brick and the light, fluid echo from a swaying flower. By shouting at the world and listening to the echoes, bats can compose a picture of their landscape and the objects in it which includes texture, density, motion, distance, size and probably other features, too. Most bats really belt it out; we just don’t hear them. This is an eerie thought when one stands in a silent grove filled with bats. They spend their whole loves yelling. They yell at their loved ones, they yell at their enemies, they yell at their dinner, they yell at the big, bustling world. Some yell faster, some slower, some louder, some softer. Long-eared bats don’t need to yell; they can hear their echoes perfectly if they whisper.

*Long eared bat (courtesy uglorable.com)

I love that paragraph, the yelling, all that yelling! I didn't know bats were like family. This book has me feeling like Buddha.No, but seriously, I’m considering using the last two lines as my email signature. I think it might work.

Love,

Long-eared bats don’t need to yell; they can hear their echoes perfectly if they whisper

Who's your daddy? Coz, like, hello, mine is an author

2010-12-10T22:31:00.003+05:30

My father’s completed his book, scattered chapters of which are in my gmail account. I haven’t read even one. Military fiction doesn’t interest me. (I don’t know what does, as I was telling a friend over grilled chicken and rocket salad over lunch yesterday at Watermelon in Khan Market, but that's another story).

In the past year, my father has sent me these chapters for “feedback”, and general catching of errors. Long sentences plague the man. But other than Papa, cut out the commas and bring on the full stops, I’ve had nothing to offer. I did give him the email address of a publisher who then got caught in a sex scandal but that amounted to nothing.

When he sent me the synopsis, I felt weighed down. Bloody hell, what should I tell him?!

So I sent the synopsis to my one smart friend. (Really, I have just one).

She read it, this New York finance banker something or the other (or whatever it is you do, love). And she, speedy Gonzales, replied fatafat as they say:

He's trying to be Robert Ludlum?

Or a highbrow version?

Who does he want reading his book?

Is this to be a mass market thriller?

I had no such questions. They didn't strike me even. Glad, relieved, thrilled to have all of hers, I promptly forwarded them to my father. He thanked me. I thanked her.

I'm telling you, this being the only fraud journo in a family of total non-literary types can be a problem. People harbour expectations. My mother can’t spell ‘colonel’. She asks me to repeat very slowly -- "c.o.l - what?". My brother rings me from obscure cantonments with oddball queries on the etymology of sesquipedalian; "HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW?!" is my standard reply. Doesn’t deter my thick-skinned sibling from calling me right back in the next hour – have you found out?

Aarggghh!

Back to the book: Papa's been collaborating with an old Army-days friend of his who now lives in Seattle (with a black guy who has for a dog a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Jazz). Pushy Uncle went back to college in the states to study communications. I think that was brave of him.

Years ago, when he was working in Dubai -- strange, itinerant life he’s led since prematurely retiring from the Army -- he would write letters to his friend, my father, two three times a year on handmade paper and include in it a paragraph for the three of us. I’d love seeing those thick rectangle envelopes, detailed address written in blue calligraphy on the top of which would be glued big, exotic Arab stamps. When the mail would arrive, I’d announce clearly (yelling, actually), PUSHY UNCLE’S LETTER HAS COME, as if my family was a bunch of uneducated villagers and I was clapping for them to gather around to be read aloud this this letter from the lands of Alif-Laila.

I love Pushy Uncle. I love that he still writes with an ink pen. I remember the doll he got me one Christmas. She came with three changes of clothes. I love that he calls my father by his full Punjabi name, not the strange anglicised cowboy nick it’s come to be thanks to the Brit boarding school in Mussorie he was sent to as a boy. When Pushy uncle's wife took off with all his money, he wasn’t bitter. Or at least he didn't show he was bitter. His two sons are all grown up, and, as far as I’m concerned, totally useless for siding with their mother and never visiting their father.

One awkward evening the year before last, when Pushy was in India -- he comes down once every two years -- I was introduced to his son,“just in case you want to marry him”, my mother said to me. To this end, but mostly to entertain herself I suspect, my mother invited Pushy Uncle, his wife and the one son in town over to dinner. I was told to come home early. I did. I cut my swim short. My hair was damp when I entered the house. I performed my usual exhibit-A routine: say hello, smile, shake hands/ peck cheek, throw in the bit about being a journalist, then flee.

Throughout the evening, there was this strange pass-the-salt kind of silent dynamic at play, and not just at the dining table. The son -- my ‘intended’? -- drank three bottles of beer and only once went to the loo. The next day, Intended sent me a couple of long, polite wordy texts -- ‘if I may be so forward as to ask you to join me for a drink or a coffee, as you see fit’ or some such crap. I snapped at my father for giving him my number. I hated being put on the spot and having to type some inane reply: gee, umm, flattered but I’m seeing someone. What I didn’t say: You’re a short, fat, totally unimpressive, gone-on-your-mother kind of chap likely to get hernia/ cirrhosis and I don't like your hair.

Thought for the day: If Hernia and I had got married both our fathers-in-law would be authors. Enter the laws of que sera sera. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Two weeks ago, Pushy uncle was in town. My father and he were sitting in the drawing room. Pushy uncle, smoking his Marlboro lights (?), drinking his whiskey, was telling my father about some GPS system he must get his hands on.

Enter the daughter with legs of jelly (me, me) for it is she who dragged her fee to the finish line of the marathon.

Hiiii uncle!!

He’s a perfect hugger, this Pushy uncle. He will exclaim out your name, stub his cigarette, stand up, give you the tightest, most vigorous shake and look so full of joy at ‘how grown up these kids are’ and then clasp you entirely in his smoky sweater.

With this man, ‘how are you’ is a deadly serious question. And unlike with most people, thought has to go into the answer. A flippant, fine, thank you simply won't do.

Tell me, he said, how’s the journalism coming along?

Um, you know, I said, it’s okay, a bit boring if anything.

Really, why is that? Show me what you’ve written of late.

Define 'of late'.

Ohh come now, have you begun to specialise?

Specialise? Haha. No, absolutely not. I don’t have a sustained level of interest in ANYTHING. That worries me.

Sweetheart, that’s alright. You take your time. You do what it is that you like. Because, I’ll tell you one thing, it's perfectly alright to be a generalist.

Haha. I like that. A generalist. I'm a generalist. (I repeated this to my friend at Khan over lunch and we laughed). Hmm. Where’s your drink?

And so, like always, I wriggle out of tough spots. I change the topic. I get him to talk about the book. Your father’s book, he corrects me. Yes, but you had something to do with it.

Have you read it, he asked me.

In bits, yes. Why, what did you think?

Oh. I thought it was umm, ‘crafted in a lot of detail’. (I have the knack of talking a lot of crap with a lot of ease but I'm unsure of how well that cloaks my ignorance slash blatant lies). Why, I asked him, what did you think?

I’ll tell you something, he said. When your father emailed me the finished thing last month, the whole bloody completed chunk of it, huh, I took a print out of all those six hundred bloody pages from office and I took it home. I took it home and I thought to myself, let’s see what this is about, what he’s done with it. Let’s just flip through the first couple of pages, get a feel of it..

He talks like this, Pushy uncle. He’s talking to me and telling me how he felt when he read the first draft.

...and my god, I stayed up. I tell you I stayed up the whole bloody night reading. The next thing I knew was it was 4 in the morning and I said to myself, I must call my friend. And I did. I called him, and I said to your father – I have just stayed up the whole night and read the entire manuscript and I thought to myself, you’ve got something here, my friend. You’ve definitely got something here.

Then snapping out of recall mode he said to me, of course, your father being your father was on the golf course and couldn’t hear me, but the bloody chap did good...

Jelly legged me, with a train to catch, getting impatient with all this my god, bloody chap talk didn’t have time to soak in the compliment my father’s oldest friend was paying him. But it's been playing on my head -- how over the last year, I've seen him typing, cutting out newspaper articles, and staring over lampshades mulling over his plot -- he has this look. I've had nothing to do with his writing process, naturally. My contribution has been minimal. I've answered questions about MS word, key board shortcuts and line spacing.

Sometimes, I've indulged his amused frustrations. The good thing about this man is he laughs at himself easily. Gentle ribbing at his expense is part of a routine. He's confessed to character development going nowhere, pace dragging, chapter names becoming dramatic -- all with a certain amusement at this self inflicted plight.

I'd make slight soothing sounds. Don't worry, I'd say to him. It'll turn out fine. Then we'd joke a bit about it being a bestseller: that even if no one reads it, even if it doesn't sell, hell, even if it doesn't get published, you'll be the only one in our family to have actually written a book! That too at 60! I'd tell him about Frank McCourt and to not worry about age and the first novel. He'd tell me to not wait till my hair goes all grey and my memory starts wobbling before I embark on such a maddening exercise. I'd say yea, yea, in my inherited-from-him way of being amused at small circle of life truths.

I've been impressed with his speed, his discipline and how busy he's kept himself. I need to tell him one of these days, preferably after I read the book that well done, Pappy. You did good.

Strain lies in the eyes of the droid-blogger

2010-12-06T19:46:00.001+05:30

I can't. The thought, just the thought of putting down events of the past two weeks puts me in a state of mental disorganisation. So no doing the 'I went here, I did this, I met so and so, I ran the marathon, I went to Pilibhit for a wedding, I froze in a black crepe sari, I met the Dalai Lama, I had my tarot cards read, I gave the kindle back...'

Oh yeah. That. I'm going to hell.

We haven't reached closure. The kindle is our albatross.

Rewind- Aquarian boyfriend gets his virgo girlfriend a kindle in the belated month of scorpio. Virgo doesn't want it. Aquarian reads her blog, is suitably annoyed by the callousness of this cow he's dating. Aquarian cools down, says whatever, do what you want, takes it back, says lets buy you shoes instead.

We live in messy times. Except I fling my own mud and dig my own pits.

So anyway the kindle's in joint custody. Tomorrow, armed with the device, we're going to meet a friend of mine studying for the civil services, taking exams left and right, who wants the kindle to download journals on but needs a regular, non tech opinion.

Friend's a smartie. I hope to dispel his doubts in the first five minutes of the coffee, so that I can spend the next 35 mins being enthralled by a sharp, funny, well read guy.

Of course, if you tell an Aquarian that, you can't expect to get anything but a, 'Sounds lovely. Why don't you get it on with him?'

'Maybe I will'.

'Maybe you should'.

'Shut up'.

'You shut up'.

Thus falleth another crumb off the relationship cookie.

Thus also endeth the first post of yours truly typed siting in a car, listening to real estate ads on radio, waiting for kindle-givers to move their ass so some of us can pee.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.3

To run from the thing or to embrace the thing, that is the question, m’lord

2010-11-16T12:27:00.003+05:30

Conversation between friend who is driving and and blogger who is, well, chatting shit.

'He got you a Kindle. You got him balloons. Can you see the discrepancy?’
'He loved the balloons! I didn’t want a Kindle. What about that?'

Yea, so it arrived, finally, my two month overdue present.

The love of my life, who will assume I am being sarcastic in calling him that, bought me one for my birthday. The positive: I love the leather cover. It's a green -- grass, not olive -- and reminds me of Moleskine stationery that I don't buy because it's too expensive and I'm too cheap. The Kindle is, well, lovely too, sure.

So far, there are three books on it.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This boy has been trying to shove Douglas Adams down my throat forever but I've been holding out, even though I’ve been told by multiple people that it’s funny and clever and sarcastic and supposedly all things up my alley. Someday, after a huge fight, I might read it to win him back. Who knows? Till then, sorry, cannot and will not deal with science fiction.
Timbuktu, Paul Auster
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne

I gave him a list – all Muriel Spark, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen even. He’s uploading more books on it. I should be more excited, he tells me. But he told me that even when I was ho-hum about seeing that F1 race thing in Singapore last year and he was dying a little that he couldn’t.

Stop acting all cool and indifferent, it’s okay to be excited, no one will think less of you!

In simply owning a Kindle but not reading any of the stuff on it, it strikes me that every year my pretensions grow. Look how big you’ve become, I will say to my darling pretensions on my 32nd birthday. I might by then have been gifted a scuba diving helmet. It would lie in some corner of my house and I would look at it and be inspired to create untrue memories of being under the sea for curious guests who over the course of dinner might ask me why I have a rusted scuba diving helmet lying in that corner.

I haven’t started carrying the Kindle in my bag. I’m happy to flip pages of actual, physical paperbacks. I’m happy using bookmarks. I’m all on the side of the old book versus Kindle argument -- you need to feel the pages and smell the words. And I feel awkward at the idea of reading on a Kindle in the metro, which is where I usually read, en route to work. I will be totally conscious of curious kittys peering over my shoulder. It’s not polite to say shoo to human beings.

I don’t have an issue with the expensive gift. We’re past that. What I resent is the forced upgrade and the expectation that I should now switch full time to reading on a device. I resent the idea of pressing a button instead of turning a page. Also, and I thought about this, I’m somewhat overwhelmed by the increased number of gadgets in my possession since we began dating -- to say nothing of my awfully passive word choice in that sentence.

A pepper spray that I have never used doesn’t count. But I have a camera, a netbook, an android phone, an ipod touch (ok, this had nothing to do with him), and now a Kindle, in addition to a whole bunch of mangled wires – all because I’m influenced by the geek. All have not been presents, lest you take me for a greedy cow. Resistance might stem from the fact that I used to be the kid who didn’t want a TV in her room because it looked ugly.

Do I deserve a slap for being an ingrate? Probably. Do I even deserve a present after doing full break up drama right before my birthday? Probably not.

But given that he got me a camera for my last birthday, I’d have loved a non-tech present this time. Book ends? Bath salts? Something on the lines of earrings and that pendant like the year before last? A bare-your-soul letter written in the calligraphy you’ve been practicing? (in a meek voice: all of the above?)

Evidently, I’m not over the moon; right present, wrong person. Still. Maybe I should shut up. It is totally plausible that this yet-another-gadget just takes getting used to. And I do like the green cover. That was a good call. You’re right -- I could not have done pink every day.

Here’s the tricky part though. And if gadget guru didn’t want one, this dilemma wouldn’t exist. But the question is: does one return the Kindle to the boy since he is who wanted one for himself, and will hands down enjoy the damn thing more than I will (in which case, do I put in an application for a substitute present or let that pass because I’ve been a bitch, a thankless, callous, and altogether calculating one at that)? Or does one keep the Kindle, even though I might always prefer a book and a nice glass and wood book case, simply because it is after all a(n expensive) birthday gift from the alleged love of my life that might yet turn out to be the coolest gadget I own?

Mommy, do you see you in me or is this a one way street?

2010-11-07T21:28:00.014+05:30

"You know, your motherrrrrrr...”

So many stories about my mother told to me by her friends start like that. And even though I bet they’re all watered down versions of richer anecdotes, they make me proud.

Which is quite in contrast to the face I make when I’m told god, you look just like her! Whenever, whenever I meet a friend of mommy’s who says you are your mother 40 years ago, I wince. It’s out of habit. I see the compliment, because she was -- and I do recognise traces of it -- a stunning, spitfire of a woman. Yet I make a face.

Thought bubble reads Oh, Please!

It’s one of those kiddie things that just stick, I guess -- like if you were taught to count on your fingers – one, two, three, four, five; the way I was, the long way -- and not dabbing your thumb on the natural three markings on your fingers way – to me that looks stupid and earnest, you’ll count like that all your life. In something of a vague parallel, I will forever take with a pinch of salt, the line; you look just like your mother. It’s just how it is.

Faces or no faces, I love listening to what she did. It helps me piece together my tendencies. Would I put pepper in a pilot’s oxygen mask? I’m not sure.

I met a 94-year old lady on Friday, the morning of Diwali, the mother-in-law of my mother’s school friend, Meera.

We’re in Meera’s house. The excitement of hi-hullos-Happy Diwali to the peeps we’ve come to see – Meera and Mr Meera -- has piped down. The come, sit motions are happening. As I walk in, I see a frail white haired figure in a pink chiffon sari. She’s in a wheel chair by the giant window overlooking a perfect lawn, devouring a paperback.

I go across, bend a little, fold my hands, and assuming she must be deaf, say loudly - ‘namaste’, and then softly – ‘aunty’. You don’t usually see such perky faces in wheelchairs. She smiles at me and gives me a kiss. Ten minutes from then, in beautiful, clear diction, she will take to asking me questions and calling me girlie. But right then, she’s already made my day because I’ve seen what she’s reading.

I repeat the title to myself a few times. I’m tickled. I'm surprised. I want to be her. I want a bouffant, a silver cigarette holder, a Chanel accessory, and most definitely an exciting, horse-riding conversant gentleman friend who will refer to me as nothing but darlin' – or in keeping with the morning, I guess, girlie’s okay, too.

Anyway, so I went to Meera and her husband’s home with my parents to wish them Happy Diwali. I couldn’t tell if Meera was calling him Dev or babe – ‘babe, babe, not Dev’ my mother told me later.

Meera apparently had a very sad childhood; both parents dead, older sister and brother-in-law would not always want her to come to their home for her holidays, so from boarding school, she’d sometimes go home with my mother. Their stories are fun to hear. I can just my mother doing the things Meera said she did – telling an auto driver at India Gate in the 60s, inko seedha station le jao. Yeh Bombay se aayi hain. Inko kuch nahhin pata -- take her straight to the station, she’s come from Bombay, doesn’t know a single route in Delhi!

My grandfather remembers Meera as a little girl always scratching her lice-infested head. She in turn dotes on my grandparents -- all talk that warms my innards. Meera – or aunty, I guess, if I must show conventional respect -- said I look just like my mother in her younger days. I told her not to say that. She laughed, said okay lets go in and have coffee. I like her.

Meera’s sister, or even the nuns who took care of her, didn’t want her to become an air hostess. It didn’t matter because she joined my mother and they flew all over the world possibly driving unsuspecting men around the bend.

Sitting make-up less in her fabulous, spacious bungalow, she’s pouring for everyone in yellow square cups on white saucers strong Brazilian coffee and serving plates of sweets -- ladoos and homemade chocolate -- she’s made them -- bitter with roasted almonds, and doesn't buy the market ones anymore. “Aren’t they the best?" For my father, our hosts imagine, doesn't have a sweet tooth, there's even giant mathri, to go with, "does anyone want pickle?”

Then, in my rough direction, “Your motherrr and I... “

There’s the line again.

“God knows what we used to do but we were forever in trouble with the nuns for giggling.”

That sounds a lot like a different set of nuns who 40 years later gave me much grief for pointless, out of turn laughter in Convent of Jesus and Mary, Shimla, 1997.

In the living room, there’s her husband, Babe, wearing a Harvard t-shirt and shorts, counting a neat mountain of coins from the previous night of gambling. He asks me what I do. I deliver my practised line. He tells my mother, good looking kid you have there. I revel in that for a second and quickly get distracted by the old lady. Since I can’t get over it and I don’t want to forget the name of the book, and suspect that’s exactly what’ll happen if I don’t write it down, I enter in my phone memos:

Led Astray by a Rake.

Thought bubble reads Tee Hee.

The mother-in-law’s maid has wheeled her into the informal circle of conversation. She wants to speak. My mother beats her to it, says, aunty, you look lovely, how come you don’t have a single wrinkle?

Of course, she has wrinkles, a warehouse full of them, but to my mother’s way of thinking, this excessive, unbelievable, way out flattery will make her day.

Would I say this? Maybe not. I might’ve complimented her earrings or something as unremarkable. Another mommy dilemma pause; I’m having a pepper in oxygen mask moment.

“I try every new cream in the market”, says the old bird.

Everyone laughs and says things like what a spirit, what a woman. My mother told me that at the last dinner party they threw, she was dancing in her wheelchair. I should find out, to what song. Implausible as it seemed, she’ll win hag of the year if it’s my new favourite.

The Woodchuck Chucks

And I thought dogs were more my type

A birthday wish.

I do - one for the files and two for the road

Ain't so funny when you can't remember what you forgot (..and can only remember what you wish you'd forget?)

I hate you like I loved you

Another voice in the crowd: Oh, Happy Di..

The strummers, the boors, and Hey Ryan

Labelled 'friends/ nut jobs': With you, it's always a good time to stay loose, stay foolish

And... *pop*! goes my Murakami virginity

“If you had had an easy childhood, darling, you wouldn’t ever have anything to write about.”-- Rebecca Wells*

And then, in other relationship-status news...

Altogether awesome or what?

There was/ a girl/ so tall/ so thin/ so fair/ her wedding was hit by a monsoon/ yet she laughed and laughed and laughed/ and didn't worry about the frizz in her hair

Day #1. New Job: death by videoconferencing

Becoming superstitious

'How I spent my summer vacations'. Single spaced and gushy-gushy.

FYI. Headed to the hills. BRB.

I know you didn't ask to be pimped, but I'm a doll and you like vadas, so... you're welcome?

Closed for stocktaking. Come back tomorrow.

'According to a recent study in the Journal of Endodontics...'

Seatbelt, please. Claws up ahead

Ode to Royal van Grump

Love in the time of PDA

Republic of potassium

Just.act.natural

Bu-bye, yak cheese and other landmarks

Thus spake the movie critic

Who says board games are for vegetarians?

They are, therefore I am

A day in the life of gung-ho woo-hoos -- a.k.a social activists

Andy, you're a star

We'll be singing when we're winning!

Not about the cricket

Yes, I realise nobody's reading this because of the biggest bloody life-stopping semi final India-Pak cricket match EVAH but...

Women + history+ neurosis + genes = dining table of familiar commotion

Holi -- be that as thy name -- go lightly on our clothes*

Last winter lunch at the home of friendly (and loaded!) old-timers

All hail the return of familiar demons!

Toecastrophe strikes the deaf. (Not sung by U2, no)

Blind corner up ahead

If you're happy and you know it and you really want to show it, if you're happy and you know it... hit PUBLISH?

A, u! Practice your vowels and I'm yours forever

Well Spivak-a-lula! She’s my ba-by!

If laboured comic timing be the fruit of love...

When out of 800 misspelt things on the menu, only the cold coffee doesn't make you gag

I don't want you to age gracefully anymore. I want you to not age.

Wriggle wriggle, my thumbs a twiddle

Anything to distract my she wimp self while the vamps suck out my blood with promises of parle-g biscuits and frooti afterwards

How was the festival? What, you weren't there?!

Cheap kick at lit fest

Having my cake and beating it, too

2011: so far so good, gorillas and all

Notes of a nomad

I want to be a long-eared bat*

Who's your daddy? Coz, like, hello, mine is an author

Strain lies in the eyes of the droid-blogger

To run from the thing or to embrace the thing, that is the question, m’lord

Mommy, do you see you in me or is this a one way street?

And... pop! goes my Murakami virginity