Limerick

Dedicated to the gentleman who comes to the gym in RSS-style khakhi shorts.

If you want a body like Zeus's
We do recommend that you use
This thing called deodorant
About which we're militant
Because you don't smell like a rose.

Hell hath no fury…

…like an insomniac awoken.

Dear friends, family and other assorted nincompoops who call me past 10:00 p.m.,

I love you all, dearly, and I would lay down my life for you (not you, assorted nincompoops) in a hot second, but seriously, WTF? Why do all of you persist in calling me only after 10:00 p.m.? Why is the thought of conversing with me appealing only AFTER the clock strikes 10? Do I sound better when I’m groggy with sleep? Does the disorientation in my voice make me more endearing? What is it? WhatwhatWHAT??

I don’t know if you know this about me, but roundabout in 2004, my one-time-good-buddy Morpheus deserted me big time. We were close once, yes, but our 14-hour long trysts are now a thing of the happy somnific past. Dude has walked and left me a raving insomniac. Which means sleep now is something that happens infrequently and with great difficulty.

Where earlier my bedtime was a simple two-step process:
1. Place head on pillow
2. Crash into deep, Kumbhakarna-like slumber from which the devil and his horses cannot rouse me.

Now, it is the following:
1. Place head on pillow
2. Shift pillow around, punch it into shape, shift it around some more
3. Kick off bedclothes, then pull them on, then kick them off again. (repeat one hundred times)
4. Clamber out of bed, adjust fan speed, climb back into bed. Climb out again, adjust fan speed again. (Repeat three times)
5. Toss, turn, toss, turn, toss, turn (repeat till you have pretty much butter-churned yourself into exhaustion and fitful sleep).

And when finally, finally I get to the point where I’m about to drop of the precipice of consciousness and float down on a fluffy cloud of sleep, one of you calls me, the shrill ring cruelly jerking me back to that state where I will have to go through steps 1 to 5 ALL. OVER. AGAIN.

Why folks? What the hell have I ever done to you?

You just called to wish me a happy birthday? Well, that is thoughtful of you, and now I feel like a bitch for telling you this, but this how happy you’ve made me.

CS: Slowly, after many hours of tossing and turning, drifts off to sleep.
Phone: TRRIINNGG!! TRIINNGGGG!! TRIINNNGGG!!!
CS: Shoots out of bed, wild-eyed, crazy haired and disoriented as fuck.
“What the…?! Who the @#$%^&* is calling me at this time of night?! Bloody @@#$%!! Couldn’t it have waited until @#$% morning??“

So yes, happy? I DON’T THINK SO.

See the thing is, I’m not anal about the dates. You can wish me happy a YEAR after the event and I won’t hold it against you. I know remembering dates can be a pain and I forget them myself very frequently (which might explain also why I’m so willing to forgive, but that’s neither here nor there). Birthdays, anniversaries, New Years, Christmas, Diwali, dude, they are all just dates. They do NOT matter. What does matter is being able to have a decent, non-groggy, non-murderous conversation with you under circumstances that we are BOTH comfortable with. Have I ever called you post 10:00 p.m.? Is it ever MY phone calls that rouse you out of bed on sleepy Sundays? No, right? Then why, why this sadistic urge to yank me from my hard-earned sleep and as a consequence, ensure that I spend the next day walking around like bear with a sore head?? WhywhyWHY??

*sobs brokenly*

I understand that some of you live in different time zones which somehow make you forget that your afternoon is my midnight, but it’s not that hard to do, really! So here’s the deal. The next time you’re taken by the urge to hear the melodious sound of my voice, take a moment and think it through. Then stop and think again. Also, for your convenience, I have made out a little checklist of circumstances under which you can and cannot call me after 10:00 p.m.

1. You are dead. Or very close to it. Or someone in our immediate family is in grievous danger. (Yes, call. No, second cousin twice removed does NOT count)
2. There is a terrorist attack in a random part of the world that I have no connection with and more importantly, cannot do anything about. (No. It can jolly well wait till morning)
3. It is my birthday / anniversary / random festival (No. Remember morning? Yeah, WAIT FOR IT).
4. You want to hear the melodious sound of my voice. (No. Call me post 10 and what you get to hear will be nothing even remotely melodious. Trust me on that)
5. There have been blasts close to where I live and you’re worried about me. (No. Unless you hear of blasts specifically inside *my* building. Trust me, I’ll be home safe. If I’m not, I’LL call YOU and tell you so.)

And now that we're clear on that, I would like you to know that if any of you now call me post-10:00 p.m., I am striking you vehemently off my will...vehemently!

With all my love (except to the nincompoops),

CS.

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.

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.

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?

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?

Reeling

I dodge behind a pillar when I see them approach. I wear sunglasses and avoid eye contact with anyone once I step outside the building. I even take the stairs if I see that the lift is already occupied by one whole person.

You never know whom she’s gone and made friends with.

No, I haven’t suddenly decided to enter the gumshoe business, nor am I practicing writing a bad spy novel. What I am doing, is reeling in the aftermath of the four-foot-ten-inch hurricane of friendliness and outgoing that is my mother.

She was here for two days. Two measly days. And in those two days? She went and befriended, advised and made life-long devotees of everybody within a ten-mile radius of my life.

My frequent admonitions through gritted teeth as I tugged on her sari aanchal, were of no avail. No amount of - “Ma! Stop smiling at strangers in the lift!” and “You don’t have to make conversation with the sabziwalla for christ’s sake!” or even “Please ma, let him drive his cab. Do we really need to know which part of UP he’s from?” - helped. And now she’s gone, and left me to fend for myself against this sea of super-friendly strangers.

Somedays I am convinced that I am a victim of a baby-swapping episode.

In the last one-year, all my lift rides had been spent in a peaceful contemplative silence during which the lift-attendant and I conducted in-depth studies of our personal footwear. I wondered whether my shoelaces were tied into perfect bows, how the pink swoosh contrasted nicely against the dark blue background, whether the soles were bouncy enough…you know? Lift thoughts. Now? I am suddenly and without warning being addressed as ‘baby’ ('baby'??) and asked solicitous questions about whether the house-keeping staff turn up on time, whether my bai is doing her work well and that if I ever need anything, I only need to inform security to send ‘Manoj’.

Every gaggle of aunties I meet now, accosts me with friendly cries of “Hello beta! You must tell your mummy that the boy/medicine/yoga exercise she recommended for my young-female-relative/age-related-ailment/random-joint-pain worked wonderfully! She’s getting married! / I’m cured! /Look at me do cartwheels now!” At which I can only smile weakly and reply, “Yes auntie, I definitely will” because I have no idea who these women are.

The sabziwallas now all flash friendly smiles at me, conduct conversations in Bhojpuri, which I don’t understand and offer me vegetables I don’t know how to cook. When I tell them I cannot understand a word they are saying, they laugh and say, “Achcha aap nahin samajhti hain? Koi baat nahin. Apni mataji ko hamari taraf se namaste kah dijiyega.”

The neighbours, whom till today, I only knew as the people who shifted their furniture at odd hours of the night, now stop me and tell me what a nice, friendly, social lady my mother is.

I have to fight the temptation to lean against their shoulders and brokenly sob, “You don’t know the half of it!”

I’m sure my real mother is a quiet, reclusive academic, who lives in a small, secluded cottage in some remote hill station. And then I wonder how she must cope with her unintentionally adopted miniature hurricane.

***

Update on the Baby Front:
The only thing more horrifying than your mother telling you to start making babies, is when she starts telling you how.

Excuse me while I go and pick up my ears. They sort of melted off the sides of my head while she was talking.

The Mommy Returns

Be afraid, be very afraid.

I've been practicing the eye-rolling and the exasperated sighing, only this time, the problem is likely to be slightly bigger than grimy masala bottles or recalcitrant maids.

I am being interrogated as to why, after a whole year of being married, I do not have anything substantial (i.e. a baby. or two, or three) to show for it.

My mother is strangely obsessed with babies. Strangely, I say, because people, she has had *five* of her own. Five. And like that's not enough? She now has four grandchildren. It seems that no matter how many babies there are in her immediate vicinity, there is always room for more*.

And whose job is it to fill up the empty-baby spaces? You guessed it! Yours truly.

Now, Yours Truly is rather partial to the creatures; she loves their little pudgy hands, their toothless grins and their small wiggly-ness, but has seen enough of them to know that babies are just little bundles of TNT, camouflaged in cuteness.

So while she might someday be persuaded to see her present life collapse like a house of cards, (only to be picked up, chewed, and drooled over), today is not that day.

And the next three years don't look like it either.


*You could stick my mother in a room full of babies and over the gurgling and crying and cooing, you would still hear her saying, "Send in the babies! We need more babies!!"

Trial by...

Why do trial rooms have those strange doors? You know, the ones that look like they ran out wood so they just sort of fitted in whatever they had left over and hoped that people wouldn't be that upset about the world being able to see their socks?

Only, there is a much more disturbing aspect to these doors, which I discovered when I went shopping for a pair of jeans* yesterday.

Woman walks into a store. Woman does not like pushy sales people. As if on cue, she is immediately accosted by one.

Stud Boy Sales Guy: Hi ma'am! Can I help you?".
Woman: I'm...ummm...looking for a pair of jeans.
SBSG: Sure ma'am! What waist size?
(at which point SBSG looks at woman's midriff appraisingly and says, "I know size x**!", and saunters off to get it)
Woman: Actually, I want a size x+1, in dark blue...with a regular rise.
(SBSG stops in mid-saunter, turns around horrified)
SBSG: But ma'am, low rise is in right now!
Woman: Regular, please.

SBSG returns with jeans in hand and skepticism on face. Woman steps into the trial room, SBSG stands right outside, and that is when she realises; SBSG is standing right outside said trial room, which means, he is going to know when Woman takes her pants (trousers, if you're thinking Brit) off. Okay, so he can't actually *see* anything apart from sock-clad feet but still...he knows, and that's enough to make Woman want to climb up the walls, Spidey-style and then face whatever trials (pun unintended, but apt) come her way.

Woman, sadly enough, has never been bitten by radioactive spiders, so climbing up the walls is out. Lacking a plan 'B', Woman decides that a little Houdini-style-flexibility is the call of the hour.

Woman tries to squeeze herself out of line of vision (complicated, when you're in a 3x3 room) and try on jeans at the same time (a difficult maneuver, at the best of times). She is mid-wiggle into the jeans when she hears a voice.

SBSG: Ma'am, is it okay? Is it too tight?
(woman freezes, much like bunny trapped in headlights, only imagine bunny in inconvenient state of undress as well. Woman, however, not being bunny, eventually recovers enough to stammer out) Ummm...a little, yes. Can you give me the same style in size x+1?

SBSG passes it over the door.

SBSG: (at eager-beaver-best) Is it okay ma'am? Can I see?
Woman: (What?! No! You can most certainly NOT see, you dolt! What Woman *says* however, is) Uh...No?
SBSG: Is it tight around the hips?
Woman: (with tendrils of smoke beginning to snake their way out of her nostrils) Look, can I come out and have this conversation??
SBSG: (most obligingly) Ya sure!

Woman steps out and hands SBSG the jeans with an icy, "I don't like them, thank you." and a matching frosty look. SBSG, obviously never having understood the language of icy looks, takes proffered denims and further proceeds to dish out advice.

SBSG: See ma'am, the problem is, in proportion to your waist, your hips are too broad.

Woman first blinks in disbelief, then seriously contemplates whacking SBSG over the head with her handbag. Having been brought up to be polite and infuriatingly non-confrontational however, she regretfully discards this line of thought, instead, switching to that last weapon in the arsenal of the wuss, sarcasm.

Woman: (smiling brightly) Really? Thank you so much! I think you're *wonderful* too!
SBSG: (smiling brightly back, absolutely oblivious to the dripping sarcasm) That's okay, no problem!

And that would be the first, of three times in the last week, that random people have said to me, sentences ending with, "your hips are too broad".

Jeans fit weird?
"Your hips are too broad".
Slipped off the raft?
"Your hips are too broad".
Global warming?
"Your hips are too broad".


Is this fair, I ask you. Is it?


*Which, in Chronicus Skepticus' speak, translates into, 'I walked through the fires of hell', because my GOD, there are few activities* I *loathe* more than shopping.

**And just because you're the internet and know pretty much everything *else* that there is to know about me, is not reason enough for me to let you know my waist size as well. Some secrets are *meant* to be taken to graves alright? Let it go now.

Mirror mirror

The expression on my face right now is a mix between the 'sheer-puzzlement-half-smile' and the 'oh-really-left-eyebrow-raise'. Put them together and you get the look that's on my face a WHOLE LOT these days.

What brought about the wild-dance-of-the-facial-muscles today, was a chance encounter. In the ladies' room. The room which has recently been divested of its' full length mirror.

No, the WDoTFM was NOT due to the disappearing mirror, but because I was apparently the reason it went AWOL. Or so I was informed. By psycho-short-haired-girl-in-the-art-department (who will henceforth be referred to as psycho-arty).

Now psycho-arty, has, on many occasions*, witnessed the ongoing battle between The Haircut and I. The Haircut, which insists on adapting an uncanny resemblance to roadkill, and I, who refuse to look like I've been crowned with the remains of a road accident. This battle, it may be noted, takes place ONLY in front of the SMALL mirror in the ladies' room, because that's the only time I see what vile conspiracies The Haircut has been hatching behind my unknowing back (or above my unseeing scalp if you're a stickler for precise phraseology, in which case, boo to you).

Previous ladies' room encounters with psycho-arty have usually been on these lines:
1. Me - Flustered but trying hard to ignore psycho-arty staring at me in the SMALL mirror.
Psycho-arty - mMMmm! EddMiring!! *with smug-I-know-it-all-look*

2. Me - Flustered but trying hard to ignore psycho-arty staring at me in the SMALL mirror.
Psycho-arty - mMMmm! NaarSeesis!!

And then, today:

Me - Flustered but trying hard to ignore psycho-arty staring at me in the SMALL mirror.
Psycho-arty - See? They took out the mirror because of YOU!


So yes, I've got that face on again.


*Yes, the ladies' room is the ONLY place these close-encounters-of-the-psycho-kind take place. I have NEVER, actually seen her around office. Maybe she's not real. Maybe she's like Moaning Myrtle. At least that way it makes some sense.