It's over, and my eardrums rejoice!

Hindu gods are deaf as posts.

No, think about it. You have the Easters, the Ids, the Christmases, the assorted Guru Purabs, but do you ever, ever hear them make such an infernal racket the likes of which the Hindus do?

(And you’re not religionist if you’re bitching about your own religion. Or the one you were born into, at any rate)

A festival (and we goddamn NEVER run out of those) just has to peek around the corner, and we’re at it. Bhajans at fucking full volume, fireworks – at ear-splitting decibel-levels, processions that block traffic for miles around.

What is it with us? WHY must our all our celebrations entail behavior the barbarians would have frowned upon? Come on people, thirty-three-million gods – surely ALL of them can’t be deaf??

***

It’s…let me see, sixteen days since diwali and this weekend, this is the first weekend since the goddamn beginning of November, that I have been able to sleep.

And sleep deprivation does not a happy Chronic Skeptic make. I mope, I jump at loud noises (and since there are so many of those, I’m pretty much jumping every five minutes), and when I can’t take it any more, I lean out of my window, shake my fist and yell at the sons of Satan. Of course, since there’s no chance they can hear me from eight floors up, I’m just shaking my fists and screaming into the night. Which does nothing except worry the neighbours. There’s a reason why their children shrink away from me if I happen to meet them in the elevator.

I hate most Hindu festivals. I hate them in the bitchiest, most horrible, the-bloody-natives-are-at-it-again way. But diwali, now there’s something special. I hate the noise, I hate the pollution and there haven't been religious reasons for a long time now. Lakshmi - the moolah, the dough, cashola - has always come and gone as she liked and Ram, Mr. Maryada Purushottam himself, was too much of an asshole to have his return celebrated.

The sweets are too sweet (and there are too many of them), you have to smile at complete strangers and your goddamn inbox overflows with mass-forwarded diwali greetings (there are few things that piss me off more than mass-forwarded greetings. Honestly, is there a better way of telling me you couldn’t care less if you tried?).

Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta...it doesn't matter where you go, It's hell everywhere.

But I remember a couple of diwalis spent in Delhi. Oh they started off just the same. The kids would start lighting their phuljadis at around seven, and then the adults would join in, getting progressively noisier, drunker and more competetive as the night wore on.

"Achcha? Unhone do-hazaar-ki-ladi lagayi hai?? Hum paanch hazaar ki lagayenge!"

And they'd go off to collect all the ladis from the neighbouring houses, twist them into one massive string, and then light the fuse.

It would go on forever. The noise, like machine-gun fire.

But sometimes, if you stayed up long enough, till they ran out of their hazaaron-ki-ladiyan, and bombs and fizzy rockets. Till their savage children tired and trooped back into their houses, leaving the streets looking like a war zone. Till the silence slowly settled along with the fog and the smoke, you'd see what was the beginning of winter. You'd see it as it breathed into the night, cold, soft, misty around the edges. Sharp in your lungs, a slight sting your nostrils as you breathed in. You'd see it surround the diyas, the candles or the fairy lights - the ones on your balcony in sharp focus, the rest, fading into smaller and smaller circles of downy soft light.

Jab bhagwaan deta hai...

...chhappar phaad ke deta hai.

I was, I think, about 7 years old when I first heard this phrase. The mental images which came with it were fascinating because I hadn't a clue what a chhappar was and had promptly mentally substituted it with the similar sounding chappal. The picture in my head therefore, was that of a benevolent (if slightly batty) god, who stored a goonie-esque stash of loot in the soles of his giant Kolhapuris (they were thick-ish soles). On days when he was pleased, he'd rip the insole (upsole? what do you call the upper half of a Kolhapuri chappal?) in two and tip a cascade of treasure into your house from his giant slipper in the sky.

I remember finding this system a little odd, but who was I to argue? He was god, he moved in mysterious ways.

And that phrase (with the chappaR as opposed to the chappaL) pretty much sums up what all of October has been about.

So first, there was the Series of Mysterious Ailments in which a bunch of dastardly viruses decided to make my body their own personal island of fun. My temperature would zip from one end of the thermometer to another, leaving me struggling to either pull on three blankets, or weakly kick them off. Most annoying it was (although for a couple of delirious minutes, just before the shivering set in I'd think, "Ooh...winter! In Delhi!" and get all happy).

Then the fever came down and the deafness happened, only it wasn't real deafness* - just a sort of internal deafness which blanketed all outside sounds but magnified the inside-your-head noises ONE HUNDREDFOLD. To get an idea what I'm talking about, plug your ears with your fingers and chew on a piece of toast. I swear to you, you will never see toast in the same light again. I spent a good three days listening in wide-eyed wonder, to the sounds of my mastication (which, I know, sounds terribly dirty but isn't).

THEN there is employment. Full time, five days a week, with a pretty paycheck at the end of the month thank you very much. It is with a division of the Big Bawa Company (henceforth referred to as the BBC) and so far, after eight days of being an employee, I can say that it's been good. Day 1 went by mostly figuring out the most essential things: where the loos were, what kinda food the canteen served and how many cups of coffee I could drink before people would start looking worried and back away slowly when I started to talk to them (for the record, it's four), and the subsequent days have just been packed.

Employment has come with it's own bunch of insights which have, more or less, nothing to do with the job itself.

Insight 1: Andheri = Hell. Allow me to recount a conversation I had with an auto-walla, one rainy day in August. The autowalla, his auto and I were stuck in knee-deep water (this is 2007, mind you. NOT 2005), traffic hadn’t budged an inch in the last half an hour and horns were blaring all over the place.

Autowallah: (In a voice dripping with weariness) Madam, aapko maalum hai yeh jagah kya hai?
Me: Er...Andheri? Aapko nahin maalum kya??
Autowallah: Madam...yeh jagah...jahannum hai, JAHANNUM!!

(Fierce blowing of auto horn)

Insight 2: Your mother (by which I actually mean mine) was right when she told you to be picky about the boys you chose to play tonsil-hockey with. Because many years down the line, when you find yourself working with one such boy, while on the surface you may be discussing things like lesson plans and scripting and enterprise application training, the one thought running around in your head will be OH MY GOD THIS MAN'S TONGUE WAS ONCE IN MY MOUTH. Disconcerting, girls and boys, is the word we're looking for.

Insight 3: I have turned into my father. After making a career of being a directionless drifter, I have turned into one of those people who *thrive* under pressure and boy, is THAT a shock for MY system. In the last week and a half, I've had deadlines that would normally have me curled up on the floor crying, but the newly-employed me? She is calm and collected. She is going in to work early, making lists (the ailments have obviously affected a chromosomal mutation) and positively burning with a quiet efficiency.

You know you fight it. You're rebellious, you drink, you (try to) smoke, you get tattoos, piercings, and a collection of exes that make you cringe and still, one fine day you will wake up and find that you have turned into your parents. That life, she's got a sick sense of humour.

Oh and by the way god / giant slipper in the sky? Since this is officially the end of October (AKA the Month in which It All Happened at Once), you can go easy now. No, really, I wouldn't mind. NO. SERIOUSLY, STOP IT!

* And smartypants family shall refrain from commenting about how ‘You can’t lose what you ain’t got’. You're all deaf anyway. And maybe I'm not deaf, maybe you just all need to be more interesting? Y’ever think of that?

I Aten't Dead...

...for all of you (lovely, lovely people) who asked. Just *incredibly* busy. I post tomorrow, god promise (and you know it doesn't get bigger than that. Except for maybe if I said 'mother swear' [which by the way, mine totally does. Like a sailor, when she's in one of her moods]).

In the meantime, read this. With the deal under discussion, it's (just a little, sorta) relevant.

And oh so quixotic.

'Not Cricket'? Is too!

I remember a time when cricket meant watching 22 white-flannel-clad men do nothing much for hours on end. You could wander away during a match, take a good long walk around the neighbourhood, and come back a day later to find that somebody had made two more runs. It was an age of leisure and the teams believed it too, standing around on the field, adjusting their cod-pieces and occasionally, very occasionally tapping the ball so it calmly rolled about ten feet away. On good day, there even used to be some running.

Now I wasn't much of a sportsperson even back then but I had a feeling that if something is called a ‘sport’ there definitely ought to be more activity happening than in say, Embroidery 1.1 – Lazy-Daisies Made Easy.

So you can understand, perhaps, why I – fresh from a country where football was the dominant religion – didn’t quite get it. Where was the excitement? Whither the adrenalin? Why was nobody screaming at the television screen? The most excited I ever saw people get while watching test matches, was when someone in the Indian team bowled a wicked yorker - there would be genteel applause and murmurs of ‘good ball, good ball’. I’d seen more excitement on my granny’s morning walks.

So for quite a long time, cricket did nothing for me and since the male-female ratio in my household was roughly 1: 50, no-one really cared.

Then, about two weeks ago, a sports-crazy BIL visited. He, of course wanted to watch the match and by dint of living in a 1 bhk, I was forced to watch it along with him. Only this time, after the first over, I was hooked. For the first time in my life cricket was interesting and more than that, it actually made sense. People were running around, that cork ball was hit to within an inch of its life and it rained sixes and fours. This? This was edge-of-your-seat stuff! Bite-your-nails, pray-to-gods-never-believed-in stuff!

Cricket purists complain that 20 / 20 matches are pale, watered-down versions of the game. “It’s ‘not cricket’!” they collectively moan.

Me? I’m going to fetch a chilled beer, a bucket of popcorn and cheer till my throat gives out.

Shoot Ban the Messenger.

With reference to the Karnataka state government’s ban on mobile phone usage by children under 16, Vani Surendra, headmistress of Jnana Mitra School says “It is good. Nowadays many students are losing interest in studies as they are busy using the mobile.”

Now I’m not in favour of having classes disrupted by shrill ring-tones – it is very annoying, especially when you’re trying to sleep - but I can’t help feeling that this poor, delusional headmistress has completely missed the point. Blaming mobile phones for students’ lack of interest in their studies*, is as daft as blaming them for the increase in under-age sexual activity.

I blame the decadent west! Corrupting our good Indian values like that. Tsk!


*And of course, the hideously outdated curricula with teachers to match, have nothing to do with it at all.

In the Middle of the Night

It’s been a week of crazy dreams and two, TWO of them have involved me being preggers (and I’m not). The first one was where Bipasha (yes, Basu) and I are in the maternity ward of a seedy little hospital in Hyderabad. She’s slim as ever, yet mysteriously having contractions, and I am one-month-pregnant (though how I know that is a bit of mystery. I mean you hardly ever hear women saying they’re one-month-pregnant, do you? It’s almost as if they go from zero to three overnight). The two cots next to mine are occupied by women who look like they could pop any minute and one of them has an outie that looks exactly like a miniature wiener (ugh! creepy). The one next to her has a five-month-old baby playing at her feet and I’m wondering if she got down to action the moment that kid popped out (I did the maths later – when I woke up that is - and no, it’s not possible. The baby is obviously someone else’s). All of us have identical bright orange felt-sheets to cover us.

So yes, Bips’ friend walks into the room all breathless, slim, flat-stomached, bonsai-assed and she’s all, “My friend! She’s in labour!” and the rest of us exchange looks which very clearly say, ‘Yeah? And what do you think we’re doing here Bambi? Partying?” (Apparently, in my dreams I am quite a bitch.) Friend insists that the doctor be called in and the grumpy mid-wife (played admirably by Sangeeta Ma’am – accountant at PG College) brings in the physician on call and guess who he is? No guess! No? Alright, it’s A.K. Hangal. Yes, Ye Olde A.K. Hangal of ‘Itna sannata kyon hai bhai?” fame. Mr. Hangal has evidently been hitting the gym quite regularly because though his face is still the same - balding, toothless, wrinkled – he is filling out his ancient cotton vest quite nicely. He doesn’t actually say ‘Itna sannata kyon hai bhai?’ but that is possibly because there isn’t any sannata what with women in going into labour left right and center.

Clearly my subconscious has dismissed my freelance-writer-hood as inconsequential, one of those oh-she’ll-grow-out-of-it things and decided that I would be better suited to be either a) an item girl (or two) or b) the person who dodders in after a climactic scene and asks uncomfortable questions.

And if anyone so much as *breathes* the words ‘biological clock’, I am going to be very nasty to them. Even if it is only in my dreams. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Hey Sister, Go Sister

If there is one festival/institution that has been abused to the point where it has trust issues and thinks everyone is out to get it, that festival/institution is Raksha Bandhan.

According to my extensive research there are three kinds of Rakhi sisters.

Type A: This type usually *has* a brother (or possibly two) and while she has conscientiously tied/sent him a rakhi every year, she has never quite understood what all the fuss is about. This type does NOT go around be-sister-ing every alternate male she comes across and thinks that one (or however many she has) bother brother is quite enough, thankyouverymuch.

Type B: This type of RS has no male siblings. Which means she has never had her dolls dismembered, her clean sneakers muddied and posters of her favourite cine-stars decorated with speech balloons which say, “I’m such a girl! Where is my pink tutu??” This type of RS, for reasons known only to herself, usually wants brothers. She thinks that they will be all protective (if they’re older) and adoring (if they’re younger) and usually picks one relatively sane boy (ha!) to whom she will unfailingly tie/send a rakhi every year. This type of enforced sibling-hood usually means that both parties’ feelings towards each other are severely-platonic-bordering-on-repulsion (which, in any case, is what *true* brother-sister-hood is all about anyway).

Type C: Then there is the Type C Rakhi Sister. This type of girl is frequently named after one of the more annoyingly pious women in Indian mythology, such as Parvati, or Mamta or Shraddha. She hails from a small town/repressed family where hormonal stirrings are frowned upon and can lead to only one of two conclusions: artificial siblinghood or prompt matrimony. (Cue memorable dialogue from Maine Pyaar Kiya – “Ek jawaan ladka aur ek jawaan ladki kabhi dost nahin ho sakte!”) As a result of following these bizarre practices all her life, this girl has no idea how deal with an actual crush on a member of the opposite sex and will promptly be-sister him. Come Raksha bandhan, and with great ceremony she will tie a rakhi around the hormone-affecting boy’s wrist which will enable her to do everything but err…any actual doing (until much later, anyway).

Now apart from the disturbing Freudian fallouts of such a relationship (enforced sibling-hood, i.e.), the Type C Rakhi Sister is a thorn in the side of the Rakhi brother’s hapless girlfriend. No girl is apparently good enough for her brother and while she’s too gentle and *pure* a soul to say anything against the girlfriend (god forbid!), she will drop subtle hints. In her I’m-your-loving-sister-way she will mention how “entertaining” the girlfriend is, such a barrel of laughs! And how she’s still friends with AAALLLL her exes, amazing na? She will give him missed calls when he’s with the said GF and text him endlessly till the girlfriend begins to feel like there are three people sharing that chicken-roll (or sundae or food/drink item of choice).

Initially, the girlfriend will brush it off thinking, ‘Naah, she’s just affectionate, is all’. But one day, she will walk out of class see the boyfriend’s head in the RS’s lap while she (RS) plays with his hair. Her brain will wrestle with her heart and the argument will go somewhat like this:

Brain: ARRGGGHH!! Are you bloody blind?? Don’t you see what’s happening here?
Heart: Well, uh, yes. He’s lying down with his head in her lap and she’s uhh… playing with his hair. Her hand is uhhh…inside his shirt?
Brain: You’ve GOT to be kidding me. Tell me, when was the last time you did this with YOUR brother?
Heart: Euuww!! That’s disgusting! What the HELL is wrong with you, brain!
Brain: (pointed silence)
Heart: (stunned silence)

At this point, a wise girl will realise that if she were ever asked for an example of a lose-lose situation, she would not come up short. Dumping the boy will inevitably lead to the RS ‘consoling’ the boy with many “Koi baat nahin bhai, aisi ladkiyaan bahut saari mil jaayengi”, and asking him to choose would be viewed as colossally stupid (even if perfectly legitimate). Even killing the RS will not be a solution since she’ll just have to live with the ghost of a sister past.

And when many years down the line she will go through the boy’s orkut profile and see a photograph of both of them titled ‘me and my best FRIEND (emphasis, mine) in the whole world’ she will thank her lucky stars she got out in time.

Vijayi Vishwa Tiranga Pyaara!

Ae mere pyare vatan, ae mere bichhde chaman
tujhpe dil qurbaan
Tu hi meri aarzu, tu hi meri aabru
tu hi meri jaan.

Tere daman se jo aaye un havaon ko salaam
choom loon main us zubaan ko jispe aaye tera naam
Sabse pyaari subah teri, sabse rangeen teri shaam,
Tujhpe dil qurbaan.

Tu hi meri aarzu, tu hi meri aabru, tu hi meri jaan.

My favourite deshbhakti song. Gets me all choked up despite the fact that I'm neither fervently patriotic, nor, in any way, bichhdo-ed from my chaman. Also, in the film, the song was sung by a wrongfully-convicted Afghan trader, who was pining for his country i.e. Afghanistan.

I think my patriotic beliefs can safely be defined as 'schizo pick and mix'.

Yah Number Abhi Uplabdh Nahin Hai!

Dear blood-sucker money-grubber pathetic wanker Sunil Bharti Mittal,

By the time you read this I’ll have switched service providers faster than you can say “Madam main Airtel ki oar se…”. I’m sorry for doing this…oh wait, no I’m not! I’m thrilled to be doing this. So thrilled, in fact that I just dialed 121 and laughed like a maniac at the poor sod at the other end. There might have been some ‘nyaah nyaah! I’m switching networks!’ thrown in, but I’m not confirming or denying that.

I know this might come as a bit of shock to you since you’ve been so busy managing all the IV tubes that directly connect our (and by ‘our’, I mean the zillion gullible fools – myself included – who use the airtel network ) veins to your coffers, but I’ve had enough. I am done with frantically running around my house and leaning at precarious angles just to be able to complete a five-minute conversation. It is frankly embarrassing to have to tell everyone who calls you to ‘just give me a minute while I get to a window’ and have them worry about whether they’re unknowingly fuelling your suppressed exhibitionist fantasies. Especially when it is a potential employer on the line.

But you don’t know what frustration is until you’ve been disconnected five times in the span of two minutes, in a conversation with an automated switchboard, where you had to dial your card number, your T-pin number, your date of birth and the date of your last transaction, three times. Only to have a rather tinny version of Für Elise* played back at you on loop.

I think you’re a slimy bastard with a moral fibre which is more frayed, rotting wisps of thread than fibre swell guy man, but I don’t think we’re right for each other. You think it’s fun to con people into giving you more money by swamping them with marketing calls when they’re on roaming rates, I get all warm and fuzzy when I think of the things I could do to you with a pair of industrial pliers, some copper wire and an electric socket.

Anyway, I want to switch to your immediate competitor, Hutch. But you know what? We had some good times, at least until the marketing calls started coming in and your entire effing network died on me. And look - I won't even make an issue out of the money you conned me out of, or the fact that so many of my days were made hellish by your underpaid call-center executives.

So take care of yourself - (if there is any justice in the world) you need to be strong for your years in prison.

With sheer loathing utter contempt a burning desire for revenge,

Your totally-pissed-off-EX-customer.


* Poor Beethoven's probably got friction burns from spinning in his grave so fast. Such a pity the dead can't sue.

Chunnu Munnu di Gaddi

So, Chunnu and Munnu, (by which I mean the SB and I, just in case you were wondering) have gone and got themselves a car. She (the car) is a pretty silver thing and looks like the result of a one of those socially frowned-upon unions (an inter-car marriage?) between a beetle (beetles! I love beetles) and ummm…a bigger car (which also, is the length and breadth of Munnu’s automobile-knowledge. There are beetles, and there are bigger cars).

Chunnu - who used to be a biker and hasn’t really driven cars much - took practice driving classes for about a month before the car was delivered to them. Munnu credits this sensible move as the reason that all three of them (C, M and the G) are alive and undamaged today.

Munnu, however, in all her years, has never seen cars as anything more than things that get you from point A to point B. She has always been supremely unconcerned with things like navigation, traffic rules or even other cars on the road, because you see, it was never her *job* to know these things. Sure, there were the family cars but their ownership was ambiguous; they were never Munnu’s property. Also, there was always a responsible adult (or two) around, who a) drove the car and b) ensured that Munnu got to wherever it is she was going.

As a result of this sheltered upbringing, Munnu is magnificently ill-equipped to deal with the reality of owning a car. When she is strapped into the passenger seat, the responsibility of it all overwhelms her. Her palms go all sweaty and her heart skips a beat every time a BEST bus drives by. She is sorely tempted to jump out of the car screaming and chase all the other vehicles off the road. Or at least out of a five-mile-radius of the Gaddi.

Parking however, is what Munnu finds most stressful, even though she is not the one doing it. Munnu’s job is merely to ensure that the car does not inadvertently snuggle up too close to other cars / pavements / pillars while Chunnu backs it into place. Munnu is frequently convinced that the three feet of space she sees between the Gaddi and the neighbouring car / pavement / pillar is a trick of the light and that any moment, she will hear the not-so-gentle scraping of metal against the relevant immovable object. Every parking episode results in two more of Munnu’s hair turning grey.

Munnu remembers a story she was told as a child, about an aunt who was learning how to drive. Now this aunt lived in Kanpur, which, for some inexplicable reason, had a very high population of pigs. Pigs in general, Munnu’s aunt had no problem with, but apparently Kanpuria pigs were blissfully ignorant of traffic rules, not to mention the law of physics which states, ‘If big metal monster comes in contact with small piggy, small piggy becomes pork chops’. The aunt however, was vegetarian and against the killing of animals (however annoying) and so came up with a solution – she would take the car out with the chowkidar’s seven-year-old son as her only passenger. They would then drive around peacefully until one of the suicidal pigs showed up. The boy would then get out of the car, chase the animal off the road and get back into the car to continue his joyride. It was the perfect arrangement – the boy got a ride, the aunt her driving-practice and the piggy, his life.

Chunnu has suggested that Munnu learn how to drive, to which Munnu cryptically replies, “Our watchman has no sons.”

My eyes! My poor eyes!

Gentlemen, the world does NOT need to know which way you dress. For the love of all that is sacred, WEAR LOOSER JEANS.

Restless

It feels like a fizzing, spinning, burning catherine wheel, right in the centre of your rib-cage. Its heat runs through your veins, making you want to rip out these lifelines, just so that you can be rid of it. You can feel it throbbing in your fingertips, lump in your throat, well up in your eyes. And then you feel like a fool.

Because for heaven's sake, who cries out of restlessness?

We do. We even have a name for it. We call it the COA keeda*. All three of us have had it, and continue to have it. It isn’t always bad. Most months it lies low, occasionally erupting in an urge to ‘do something different’. These are more easily dealt with. A good play, a new hobby, a get-away-from-it-all-trip, they work. There is calm, even if it is uneasy. But you know you’re only suppressing symptoms, rather than curing disease (which is the most perfect word for this sickness. Disease: dis + ease). And you know, that like anything held in, when it explodes, there is havoc.

We know better than to offer solutions to the stricken. Suggestions will not, cannot be taken, opinions will be feverishly sought, then ignored, kind words will only lead to teary breakdowns.

So we listen, patiently, as people who have been down that road. We listen to the raving, the longing, the agonised debates, the justifications. And we empathise, but can do little else. It’s like a fever, it will run its course and only then, burn itself out.

All we can do is hope that we survive the fire. Or failing that, that phoenix-like, something beautiful will rise out of the ashes.


* Keeda: bug / worm.

Tagged again!

By this gentleman, so any questions or protests on the lines of 'Did we *really* need to know that??', and 'Overshare! Overshare!!' are to be directed straight to him.

So, eight random facts about me.

1) You know that idiotic make-a-wish-on-a-fallen-eyelash thing that girls in Hindi movies do? Yeah well, guess what. I know, I know, totally pathetic. But look, I shook off some nineteen years of extreme religion - I'm entitled to one tiny equally baseless belief? Think of it as a nicotine patch of sorts, it might seem a little more tolerable.

When I was a kid, I had a mental picture of this silver-bearded old man, sitting on a pile of clouds, hunched over his worktable, prising open eyelashes with a pair of microscopic tweezers. The eyelash would then roll open scroll-like, and written on it would be the wish you'd made. I have no idea who I should blame for this.

2) I hate long nails. On myself, that is. I completely envy women with slender hands, tipped with perfectly manicured nails (the bitches), but it drives me nuts if mine grow long enough that I can feel the edges.

3) I once dated a neanderthal who said - "मैं चाहूंगा कि मेरी बीवी मुझे कम से कम एक वक़्त का खाना बना के खिलाये" - I was horrified, and argued till I was blue in the face, but I did not dump him. Well, not right away at least.

4) I people-watch to the point where the watchees begin to worry. It's not deliberate - I don't mean to make them uncomfortable, but the thing is that after a while, it's just my eyes that are focused on them; my brain has run off to pick daisies. When the brain comes back from her flower-picking, we have a good laugh about it. And then they (the watchees) worry even more.

5) I hate being tickled.

6) I cannot smoke. I've tried to, oh about a hundred times till date, but I always end up coughing and wheezing like a chain-smoking asthmatic. Oh and pot? Same difference.

7) My second toe is longer (taller? higher? faster? stronger?) than my big toe (on both feet). Superstition says that a woman with this particular toe-configuration will lord over her husband. Superstition is a lying bitch.

8) I think boobs are a bad design feature. Really. I think I might've even been lesbian if it weren't for boobs.

Done! Now I'm supposed pass on the tag to eight people but I'm fairly sure that only four out of eight will do it, so here goes:

Izzy (who I think has done this before but so what, tell us eight more things)
Revealed
Beth
The Ideasmithy

This 'n that

The rain has stopped, finally. Not that it was affecting me much; it would take a lot more water to flood an eighth floor apartment. But there is the wind. I have to keep all the windows (but one) closed because the moment I open them a crack, it's like I've let a typhoon into the house. Papers fly around, curtains billow dramatically, doors bang, empty water bottles get blown off kitchen counters. So I keep them closed, only, even though they're the sliding glass type windows, they're never *completely* closed. And you know what happens when gale force winds try to force their way through teeny tiny slots?

Banshee karaoke.

The first time I heard the wailing, I thought a bat had flown into the house. After a rather jittery search revealed that it was only the wind, I tried sealing off the windows by jamming in newspaper. It didn't work, at least not in the way I hoped. All it did was lower the pitch. So instead of soprano, my window banshees now wail in a soft contralto.

I should sell tickets or something.

***

On a completely unrelated note, a lovely poem I read over the weekend. Author Anne Lamott calls it a wonderful use of paranoia as material. I agree.

We Who Are Your Closest Friends

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

- Philip Lopate

$0.70 richer than I was three months ago!*

So, it's been about three months since the day when I - in an uncharacteristic fit of a) optimism b) insanity c) technological curiosity d) all of the above - signed up for google's adsense thingy. I think it is now time to ask the question:

Does anyone know why the stupid sole banner I signed up for, is half-hidden under the half-inch wide blue line that runs across the top of the page? The one that has all the 'SEARCH BLOG', 'FLAG BLOG' and the (modestly title-cased) 'Next Blog' links? Anyone??


* And if THIS doesn't tempt you, I don't know what will.

Normal Programming Resumes

Despite my incessant kvetching about my parents’ looniness, I had a relatively sane childhood. No, really. I was fed (rather well, for which I blame them to this day), clothed and not forced to break rocks in the burning sun for not doing my homework (an incident which occurred with distressing (for them, that is) frequency).

It was only during my adolescent years I realised, that all this endless parenting (have I mentioned that I’m the fourth of five?) was making the needle on their sane-o-meters oscillate dangerously. The following incident will illustrate how.

The parents had apparently, early in their lives, nursed in their hearts the desire that one of their children would grow up to be an engineer. Not just any engineer, mind you, an engineer from IIT. Their first three offspring being more inclined towards the life sciences and art, the mantle was passed on to me – their one child who showed no inclination towards anything in particular.

The father is an engineer. Now you may assume that this would qualify him to decide whether or not I had an aptitude for the profession, but you would be wrong. Apparently, when you become parents, things like logic, and the ability to see what is staring you in the face, take wing and fly out the nearest window. And so it was with my parents. It was decided one cold day in December, that I, their one child who showed less of a talent for mathematics than your average amoeba (actually amoebae are better off, they can multiply without help. Get it? Get it? Ha ha ha!), would become the next engineer in the family. And this despite the fact that I had, in all my years of primary education (save one - the year of my grade ten board exams), displayed a lack of left brain activity that could only be described as uncanny.

To be fair to them, I did, in the eleventh grade, confuse them a little. I signed up for that deceptively named subject – Engineering Drawing. “If that isn’t the sign of a future engineer, we don’t know what is!” thought my parents. What it was, was a simple case of selective vision; they saw Engineering’ and went “Aha!”, I saw ‘Drawing’ and went “Oo fun!” So while I drew three types of rivets and the occasional cross-section of a crankshaft (without knowing how any of them actually worked), my parents smiled at each other knowingly and dreamed.

As a result of this dream, after I completed the twelfth board exams (with abysmal grades in maths, mind you) I was signed up for those IIT entrance preparatory classes. “But I don’t want to be an engineer! I want to do an English honours course.” I said to my parents. “No,” they replied, firmly yet lovingly, “there are no jobs for English honours students. What will you do once you graduate?” Being, back then, of the species known as Teenageria Cluelessium, I had no answer to that and agreed to the classes with the warning that they were wasting their money. As expected, it fell on deaf ears.

Typically, at this point in the story, the girl’s left-brain awakens with all the force of an active volcano and dazzles all with its brilliance, proving to the world that all parents are always right and gosh! The world might just have its next Einstein! To which I will only say, “Right. And life is a Karan Johar movie.”

I realised after about a week of attending though, that these classes weren’t quite as hellish as I had thought they would be. I still didn't understand a word those teachers said, (except for that one jolly old Punjabi gentleman, who would upbraid his students with a cheery “Hiyou bilaady fooool!”), but I did understand that in a class of twenty-five odd (and some of them were very odd) boys, H and I were the only girls. H was already seeing someone, which left me with sole ogling rights to Jaspreet Randhawa.

Jas, in that entire class of twenty-five young men, was the only one who did not wear glasses, did not dress in clothes his mother might’ve bought for him, did not have his oiled hair in a neat side parting and did speak in grammatically perfect English with all his articles ready and present (ref: grammar, you pervs). It also helped that he stood six-feet-two inches tall, had the softest brown eyes I had ever seen and a smile bracketed by dimples you could drown in. Pretty as Michelangelo’s David, but alive and umm…more substantially clothed (which was sad, but you can’t have everything. Also, Delhi winters, ‘nuff said).

So Jas and I got to doing what awkward teenagers did back then, which was, avoiding each other like the plague. This continued for about two weeks until one morning, as I was walking from the bus stop to class, he stopped his bike and offered me a ride. From then on it was but a small step to chatting in all the breaks and drinking chai at the tapri around the corner.

It would be nice to say that we walked off into the sunset holding hands (no actually, it would be crap. And a bunch of lies) but soon I got into the College of Art and we fell out of touch.

So, although nothing ever came of it (the pretty boy and me, i.e.), my parents did learn that attempts to play puppet-master with my academic/professional life were more likely to backfire. Their subsequent tries at spreading the loony were limited to showing me resumes and photographs of eligible (by their standards) men who were all, by some bizarre coincidence, very religious, hirsute and balding.

Now? They just bug me to make babies. I’m not sure if that’s an improvement – the sane-o-meter self-imploded at grandkid number 3.

So, what was I saying again? Oh yeah, parents. Don't you just love 'em?

Rain*

Rain should be seen in silver beads,
threaded on soft, dark hair.

It should be breathed in, off skin,
in the nook of a neck.

It should be felt, fingertip to raisined fingertip
Its trail, tracing furrows down a chest.

It should be tasted, teased,
sipped off smokey lips.

Heard, whispered,
against the sound of your name.


Addendum: It should be banned, for moving souls like me,
to poetry.

*Ladies and gentlemen, exhibit (a) of GP. And you can't say I didn't warn you - that profile's been up for ages now.

Television - How much is too much, Part II

In other news I have realised that being a freelance writer is no less fraught with danger than say, being a crocodile psychotherapist.

The thing is, when I was gainfully employed with a legitimate company, I stuck to office timings. Which meant that my television watching was seriously restricted to about one hour in a day, if that. Now, since I work (using the term loosely) from home I am forced to watch more television that I could ever be comfortable with. (And yes, I mean ‘forced’. YOU try ignoring it when you have to walk past the damn thing fifty thousand times in a day). So yes, I watch a lot of television. Some days I watch so much of it that by the time the SB gets back from work, the couch and I have moulded ourselves around each other and the only movement in the room is that of my thumb, frantically pressing buttons in the forlorn hope that one channel out of 99 will play something that can hold my attention for a whole minute.

It was during one such day that I came across Shekhar Suman’s debut album. And I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen.

It starts with a man’s torso silhouetted - framed lovingly, so you can count every muscle - in a window. The camera pans around and it is Shekhar Suman! In possibly the most self conscious ooh-look-at-me-wake-up stretch ever to be seen. SS scans the horizon, looking for, we know not what. But wait! His eyes narrow…he’s spotted something! And the camera sweeps to the beach, where lies a mysteriously abandoned guitar! SS looks around – after ascertaining that no one’s watching, follows the finders-keepers principle and filches it.

He’s dreamily strumming a few chords when suddenly! There is a bikini-clad woman! Lying languorously on the rocks, letting the waves wash over her! As SS blinks in disbelief, she walks towards the camera, then does the standard break-surface-and-toss-hair-backwards thing. After a few more babe-on-a-beach moves, the camera cuts to SS, who has changed out of his pyjamas (but stuck with the vest) and is now wearing jeans. He sits on a rock, strumming the guitar and singing, vanishing and reappearing alternately with the beach-babe until the last frame, where there are two SS’s a strummin’ an’ a singin’.

Babe does some more babe-on-a-beach things.

SS has now ditched his vest for a shirt and a jacket. And put on a pair of I’m-so-cool shades. He sits on some stairs in the middle of nowhere and plays the guitar, while a bunch of random children gather around him. The beach-babe has, in the meantime, put on a pretty summer dress, got herself a bunch of flowers and is running, o’er hill and err…around/away from a church.

Babe finds the aforementioned random children and hands each of them a flower. The children smilingly accept the flowers, probably worried about what the crazy-smiling-lady-with-the-flowers might do if they refuse. SS wipes his hand on his shirt and asks her for one too. She simpers, and obliges. This is obviously a sign that they can now wear colour-coordinated outfits because in the very next scene, SS and Babe, clad in matching-matching pink, are running around trees. Babe decides that she wants to go solo and waves around a couple of yards of diaphanous-pink-fabric.

Swirl, swirl.

It is now night. And SS and Babe are doing the salsa. Or something like it. Only, since babe’s dress has no pockets, she has hung her keys on the back of it. (Not too smart I think; they’re bound to fall off with all that twirling). They salsa for a little while then retire to a bonfire (see? Told you she’d lose the keys) which obviously warrants another change of clothes.

They clink their glasses together and kiss and this is where it goes from just ‘icky’ to the code yellow of ickiness. SS runs his hand across babe’s collarbones and round to the back of her neck, while his elbow rests comfortably on her chestal region (eeuw). His gaily patterned Hawaiian shirt vanishes as though it never was, and babe snuggles up against his bare chest. (Code Orange! Your toes are refusing to uncurl!)

SS wakes up hugging a pillow and wonders where babe went until he realizes that she was but a dream. He sits up in bed and sorta laughs to himself then walks up to his window and lo! There in the distance, is the guitar that started it all! He runs towards in slow motion, picks it up, gives a look-over (decides that well, whaddya know! This one’s filch-able too!), turns to the camera and winks the creepiest, crawliest, make-your-skin-want-to-get-up-and-run wink I have ever seen (Code Red! Code Red!! Someone send in the Haitian!!).

Do take a look.*


*Why should I be the only one to suffer?

Thanking her Lucky Stars

At a recent drunken gathering I was asked what my will-he-make-it-to-a-second-date tests were. (Which probably just goes to show just how drunken the gathering was, because asking ME for second-date-tests is a bit like asking a kake-da-dhaba-da-butter-chicken eater, whether they want their beluga caviar on crackers or plain chilled. ‘Pointless’ is what I mean). So anyway, I thought really, really hard (I was drunk too) and came up with this:

”He shall not be queasy about street food.”

And then I thought about it some more and I realised that I’m probably at my wisest when drunk. Because you know, not-queasy-about-street-food says so much about a man. No, seriously. I will not date a guy who goes all ‘organic aloos’ on me. A man who is NQaSF is a man who is not afraid to take chances. He’s been there, eaten that, had the jaundice and risen like a phoenix from the ashes. What has not killed him, has given him a stomach of cast-iron and an immune system that pooh-poohs at sissy amoeba.

The NQaSF guy is not just tough, oh no he’s not. This man, much like the perfect vada, is all crispy crust and soft insides. You might not think it to look at him, but ladies and gentlemen, he’s a romantic! This is a man who knows the joys of eating roasted bhutta while walking along bandstand, and the comfort that comes from conversations punctuated with the silent, contemplative munching of corn-kernels. He knows the sense of community that comes with standing around the paani-puri-vaala’s red-cloth-draped matka and struggling to finish the paani-puri in your plate before the lightning-fast vendor starts his second round. He knows the stomach-flipping way of using his (clean) handkerchief to wipe off that dab of imli-chutney from the corner of your mouth (which might sound gross but is actually all awww-inducing when the hormones are a-ragin’).

He knows that nothing completes a rainy day better than a glass of sweet cutting-chai, strong with the flavours of adrak and elaichi, and he knows that the best accompaniment to this chai is piping hot samosas, smothered in green chutney, served in those faded-green leaf donas.

And now, the government wants to ban them all.

It’s a good thing I went and got married when I did.

With Apologies to Nike

So. In my mother’s endless quest for more grandchildren than she knows what to do with, I have been instructed to buy a panchang. For those of you in the dark (from me, who has had an occasional glimpse of light and winced) a panchang is a Vedic calendar based largely on the phases of the moon with an occasional nod to the sun, the nine* real planets in our solar system and two mythical ones (Yes, we have mythical planets. Don’t you?).

The panchang is pretty much the how-to-live-every-day-of-your-life guide for all good, religious, Hindus (I score exactly zero out of three). It has every single day of (however remote) religious significance marked out on it and if you’re even borderline familiar with Hinduism, that is a LOT of days. There is ekadashi, which happens once every month – I know some people fast on this day, there is amavas, which is essentially a moonless night, so I’m assuming people switch on the street-lights this day, and a whole plethora of other days which I have no clue about. All I know is that some involve fasting, some involve feasting and some involve wearing yellow clothes and feeding cows (unless this one of my mother’s twisted little ways of getting a laugh off her children).

’What does this have to do with my mother’s potential grandchildren?’, you might ask.
‘Apparently, lots’, I will say.

You see, since my mother has realised that mere badgering has done nothing to increase her tribe, she has switched to plan B i.e. tempt your daughter with the promise of “super” offspring. Apparently, doing the deed on days specifically earmarked for er…such activity will ensure that the resultant bundle of joy will be the kind of bundle of joy that is the very epitome of joyousness. As they were wont to say in shady seventies Hindi movies, “Heera hoga, heera!!" (He will be a diamond, a diamond!).

But it’s not as simple as it sounds. You can’t ‘just do it’ (sorry nike) on the days circled in red marker. There is A Process. The two parties involved must first have gone though a period of celibacy (ten days, I think). On the designated day, when the clock strikes the magic hour, both parties must bathe, wear clean clothes and light a diya in front of bhagwaan-jis of their choosing. They must then invoke their individual ancestors, inform them of their intentions to further (deepen?) their gene pools, seek their blessings and then get down and do the dirty.

Because of course, *nothing* gets you in the mood like the mental image of an audience of stern-faced gods and grey-beard ancestors watching you as you get it on.


*or is that eight now?