The seven year rash

So the hero goes for an onsite in a firangi land. 

On his return, he distributes some loot for assorted family members. 

For me, with a flourish he produces,,

.... five pairs of washing and kitchen gloves. 

"You catch a cold if you wash your hands without these isn't it?"

And as clincher ( of our deep and mutual understanding) he declares " I even got the right size!!" 

I'm almost tempted to marry him again. 

Purani Genes

So, flashback to say 7-8 years ago. 

Cyn and Hero in the process of getting acquainted which involves some amount of smallish talk.

Cyn must have asked an innocuous "How was the day" to be met by a tirade about how that is such a lame question and how he finds females who ask such a question unoriginal and how he has devised a beautiful pithy reply to that viz."TOPS".

Cyn retires, much abashed.

Fast forward to now. 

Hero no 2  has just started nursery school (which happens to be the school which the Hero went to)

Hero (sentimental after looking at the tuck shop and the school diary) rushes home from office to eagerly ask the offspring "So how was school today?"

Hero no 2 laconically drawls  "Awright"

Hero's face? Priceless.

Genetics are very lovely (especially when they come back to the bite the spouse in the a**)

P.S. I am trying to get this up and running again and get into the flow of blogging. IS ANYONE READING DAMN IT?

And we come to marriage year 6

The hero goes for a swim with a newish colleague of his. Comes back all harassed and fraught..

"That dude told me his life story" he tells me, aghast. "And then he started telling me about what all he felt. In gory detail!

"FEELINGS. Jesus" - said with utmost loathing..

( Sidebar - after a few years of cohabitating with a male, have come to the following understanding.

Acceptable feelings - a) i'm FEELING hungry b) I'm FEELING sleepy c) I FEEL like uhmm.. passing various bodily functions which we shant get into in a family site.

Unacceptable feelings?Everything else.)

"Ugh" some dramatic shudders here "If I wanted to sit and listen to garbage about feelings - I might as well have sat at home and listened to yours"

Ah the romance of it kills me sometimes.

The labour of waiting.

Continued from here

So a few months ago, the hero and I went to see the hospital rooms and facilities at the behest (such a nice, euphemistic term for nagging no?) of the mothers.

So we see some of the rooms, not the really scary ones and eventually wind up in the waiting room where a few expectant fathers are lounging around.

The hero, then comes up with the following

"Hey, you know what? I should get one of those air-mattresses C ( his Brother in law ) has for this room. So I can lie down and rest on it while you are in labour. These plastic chairs look most uncomfortable"

Bedtime tales

One of the most unnerving ordeals as a new bride/groom has to be definitely the sleeping quarter allocation when one goes a-visiting with the extended outlaws and the laws.

No, I don’t mean the whole suhaag-raat deal, I am sure that is quite awkward as well – but this is slightly later version, long after the marriage frenzy and confusion, when one in cold-blood is expected to walk into a shared er...conjugal quarters under the watchful eyes of parents and/or other elderly relatives.

It is absolutely and completely disorienting – and certainly more so for the girl, if she has been brought up in the usual Indian family ostrich like style of avoiding anything remotely to do with “THAT" topic.

The first trip to Goa post marriage was therefore quite harrowing.

I went swaggering in to the uncle’s house assuming that everything was going to be like usual, with just an addendum in the form of the spouse. Maybe a little fuss about him, but that would soon fizzle out I thought.

I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

Suddenly I found that by virtue of marriage, my whole standing in the house had shifted from just-another-head that needs to be shoved into whichever room/bed/mattress/floor space is available to the er...consort of the CHIEF GUEST OF HONOUR.

(Just to provide a context, in my growing up years, a full house was 25-30 odd people ( all talking at the same time). Sleeping arrangements meant a long room with four mattresses, and pillows which normally resulted in a free for all to get place or bed sheets. A charmingly democratic resolution to the sleeping problem)

There is apparently a rule book about the proper method to treat this CHIEF GUEST OF HONOUR who must not be offended which I had completely missed (the last female marriage had happened when I was about the two, and I am the eldest of the girls and the first to get hitched.)

This included fulfilling (and anticipating) every culinary wish of his, hovering around him and asking him whether he wanted anything every twenty minutes, scampering like hares to pander to every word which emerged out of his lips. (Bloody annoying it was – gave the hero a vastly exaggerated sense of his own importance. Also this overwhelming, gushing gratitude at having married me, wasn’t particularly good for my ego)

And the worst bit of all, the seventy odd year old uncle and his wife, self evicting themselves from the master bedroom and sleeping on the settee so that the Jamai could repose on the king sized bed.

And it was a awkward-as-hell. It takes cold-blooded nerve to confront a white-haired patriarch with conversations about beds and sleeping arrangements.

To be fair, the hero was more discomfited than flattered, but I had little sympathy for him at that point especially when he would talk about how he has saved me from spinsterhood and other lines in the same vein.

And somehow this whole thing followed us for a year or so, when we went to HIS uncles house. We were allocated his cousins room ( Daughter in laws are a much lower species than the sons in law ). We walk into her bedroom to see a double bed there. Hero, with his usual presence of mind and fetish for feet, asks, “But Maami, have you reorganized your house, weren’t these two single beds on two sides of the room?”. Maami blushes and mutters about kitchen and escapes. While I am left to pick up the pieces of my shattered self long enough to kick the hero really hard (He ALWAYS does that. The kind of sticky morasses which I have been subject to because he has a way of firing of his mouth is too awful to even list down here. )

One of the best anecdotes I had heard about this was that of my friend S’s eldest sister – let’s call her R. (Just as a context, S is the youngest of three sisters). R, and her brand new husband come for the first time to the house where she grew up. Come night time and S’s Ma is getting the guest room ready by putting fresh sheets and linen for the newlyweds.

Her dad traipses in, looks bewildered at aunty and says “Isn’t the J (the groom) going to sleep in the same bedroom alongside me – PUT HIM in there. Why are you putting him here?

I always wonder how poor aunty (the good wife and DIL that she is) explained to her irate spouse that his son-in-law could and should, share sleeping quarters with his now-grown-up daughter.

This post was written quite some time ago, somehow never got around to posting it!

Nothing official about it.

The hero seems to have acquired an office wife whose existence is causing much merriment in my life. AND she seems to keep hero in line without me having to do any work ( an ideal state of things,no?).

She is positively and definitely MUCH more wifely than the I am or am ever likely to be.

She tut tuts when he goes out for a lunch with the team the day after he has been sick (Keep him away from chicken when he feels like it? Very hazardous to health activity, that)

She cuts her hair and seeks his opinion ( I have come to the conclusion that unless I get a Mohawk cut, or get a tonsured head, there is very little actual chance of hero noticing.And if I were to ever ask him questions like "how is my hair looking", chances are that he will give some utterly inappropriate (and devastatingly truthful) response.)

She gets scandalized when he swears and tells him "mat karo" ( The official wife is proud of the fact that she has a better cuss-vocabulary then the hero. She is the co-author of that famous cuss-word dictionary after all).

And she, the unofficial wife calls him "Aeee"* in full marathi ayya-issha style( as oppose to "Abbe").

Poor fellow dreads work tete-a-tetes with her because he thinks she might start nagging about something.

I, of course, am shining in comparison.

So that philosophy that "If you want to look thin, get fat friends" seems to work here as well. If you want to be the cool wife, GET a scary wife.

* Closest hindi equivalent would be "Aeji" I think.

The water carrier

We have got a new water filter installed in the house today.
There is a feature which allows one to fill certain quantities of water which seems to have enthralled the hero,rather.
He therefore, has been bhatkoing around the house cordially urging everyone to guzzle gallons of water so that he can fill them up again.
If I die of overdose of water, wonder whether he can be called Homicidal Hydrator?

P.S. Have been missing in action for a while, things were happening so was/am rather preoccupied. Will get down to replying to the comments soon. For those of you who mailed, and tweeted and instituted inquiries - muchly appreciate the concern and will write back individually soon.

Some Romance Shomance in the Cynic Household.

So the hero had been battling a rather tough week at work, and I, in the spirit of providing some wifely support and encouragement decided to make him an some chicken dish (big fan of chicken he is), as a good prelude to a relaxed weekend.

Now the thermostat on the Cynic Cook-o-meter has only two settings – viz. Explosive (the cook) or Explosive (when the cook is the experimentative mode, and thus, there is high probability of the blender and the vegetables and the environment blowing up). Friday happened to be the former so a new a new dish was destined to be born.

So anyways, cooking happened – I have named it Braised Pepper Chicken* . Miraculously turned out quite interesting and I called up hero to apprise him of the fact. I have standing instructions to tell him important details like this – that ways, he can spend the entire day in pleasurable anticipation.

Hero came back from work, and the first thing he did was demand a sneak preview of the meal.

A little later, and I was sitting on the couch contemplating the meaning of life, when he came and sat next to me. He hmmed and hawed a bit, in preparation to telling me something important. After a while, he turned to be with an absolutely mush-oozing out, Bryonically romantic expression on his face and looked at me soulfully and whispered those magical words...

“I have been waiting all my life....”

I waited expectantly, thinking the way to a man’s heart IS through his stomach after all.

“....for this braised pepper chicken”

I did say, I was not even in the running against chicken didn’t I?

P.S.*I have just learnt the meaning of braised and I want to use it. Ha!

P.P.S. That sounds like a good title for a ballad no?

I have been waiting all my life for a braised pepper chickin',
So brown and crispy, it’s just finger lickin’.
The thought of it, makes my heart keep tickin’
My finger licking, heart tickin’, braised pepper chickin

I SHOULD write lyrics! Maybe I shall compose this, after I am through with Mary had a little lamb...

P.P.P.S Edited to convert chicken to chickin' at the proposal of young million-different-people

Misadventures of the Married Kind- IV: The Domestic God in the Kitchen.

Continued from here

I’m ashamed to admit that before I got married, “Kitchen” and “I” weren’t words that could easily be seen hobnobbing in one sentence. Oh all right, I am not ashamed of it. In fact if there was any way I COULD stay out of the kitchen even now, I would.

And so, knowing my limitations, for the first few weeks after marriage, I was quite circumspect about the cooking projects – and firmly stuck to stuff which couldn’t be messed up – viz. mostly potatoes and other such accommodating vegetables ( When I write that famous treatise of mine – “ Vegetables for Dummies” , I shall have a special acknowledgement page for potatoes I think)

A few weeks of this and the hero started displaying chicken withdrawal symptoms. So I thought it was about time to up the collective gourmand ante and experiment some non-vegetarian dishes.

I had never cooked chicken in my life – all my mother’s attempts to instil some culinary sense in me had been met with firm (and vocal) resistance. The only recipe I knew (discovered by the genius of a school friend) started with the eternal words of “First you catch the chicken and then you behead it...” Experience had taught me that was not necessary – there were nice sealed bags of Real Good chicken easily available in the supermarket aisles.

Hero on the other hand had assured me that he often made chicken in the bachelor heydays. I assumed that was more than probable – people tend to know how to cook the stuff they like(note my extensive potatoes repertoire)

So anyways, I asked him whether he wanted to cook it the first time we got it. He refused on the grounds that I needed to learn (!). Somehow I muddled my way through it (with Ma on the speaker phone) and chicken curry happened.

After a few episodes of “You need to learn” I called his bluff and shoved him into the kitchen.

Hero with appropriately solemn dignity started prepping for the event. The knife tray was laid out. Onions were brought out from the basket; the chopping board was aligned (exactly parallel) to the kitchen platform.

And then the awe-inspiring process of actually cooking the chicken curry began.

First he ceremonially placed half an onion on the chopping board. Then he examined it with a narrow eyed concentration from all sides (picture a pro-billiard player with a cue – the way the eyes move from one side of the table to another. I assume that is the same concentration one would find the heart surgeon).

Then a terse command of “Knife”. He carefully he made the first incision across the heart of the onion. This surgery took approximately fifteen minutes – while I stood and watched with my mouth hanging open.

Then he wanted to sauté the onions – I stepped out of the kitchen and came back to see the milk vessel spluttering with some oil in it (fortunately no onions). When asked what he was doing with oil in THAT utensil, he calmly replied that he was cooking.

(Fortunately I managed to save the milk vessel before he added chicken into it. That also shed light on a few things which had confused me till date: - viz. why he had seemed astounded at my very modest number of kitchen utensils. I found out after inquiries that he had operated with three vessels which served as a multipurpose jack-of-all-trades – one day for milk, another for chicken, the third to cook daal in...).

I handed him a cooker instead. He carefully proceeded to dump ALL the contents in at the same time, added whatever masalas took his fancy, closed the cooker and turned to me and said

“Now we pray”

Hmm. I wonder whether THAT is the reason people say Grace before meals.

P.S. Further investigations also indicated that when he had given all those swashbuckling chicken-cooking assurances, he had actually meant the “Ready-to-eat” meals – the sort one actually dumps into a cooker and prays (that it’s fresh and one doesn’t end up with food poisoning)

Misadventures of the married kind – III: This little DeeGee went to the market....

(Continued from here and here)

Just before we got hitched, and around the time I was getting a massive attack of frozen feet about marriage – the responsibilities, the new people, the new location and even grocery/vegetable shopping, I had this conversation with the very-reassuring-and-considerate fiancé.

"Do not worry" he proclaimed "Main hoon na (actually, the English equivalent – but Main hoon na sounds so much more heroic no). I used to shop for vegetables and groceries all the time when I was in the US."

"Do not waste a moment worrying about it" he empathically added.

Thus, after uttering a brief prayer thanking the powers-that-be, for inadvertently acquiring a Domestic God, I blithely traipsed into the marriage.

Let's forward a bit, to a scene a few days after the ceremony.

A foray into the kitchen stores and refrigerator had elicited nothing but 2 inches of accumulated dust and a sneezing fit.

"Aha - Time to see the master in action" I thought to myself.

The Domestic God (henceforth to be known as DG) rose with alacrity to the occasion and thus we found ourselves browsing the aisles of Tru-Mart for the very first time as a couple-setting-up-a-house.

The dimming of the stars in my eyes started in about twenty minutes. For twenty minutes I saw the DG stand with rapt attention in front of the frozen meats section, intensely debating on the relative merits of Chicken salami versus sausages. (A sidebar here, DG’s genes seem to have revolted against generations of brahmanical abstention. They like their chicken. They like the chicken very much. In fact, I am pretty sure that if there was a race between say, a Biryani versus wife, the wife would be so far behind in the race, that it would have been significantly better for the wife's ego not to have started running in the race at all).

Anyways after gently hinting (remember this is very soon after marriage, where one hadn't yet graduated to shrewishly prodding) for about ten minutes, he moved on. – to the snacks and juices counter and carefully and lovingly selected some more staple-foodstuff– viz. custard powder, salted peanuts, Haldiram's snacks, papads and pickes. Then he led me very confidently to the toiletries and cleaning supplies section where he added some ear buds and dental floss to our shopping cart.

And it so happens that I found myself in the slightly atypical situation of having olive oil and salami in the house, but with no daal or atta.

And this highly individualistic shopping pattern continues till today. On the rare day that S goes grocery shopping – specifically on the days he has a craving for corn and realizes that its available in Big Bazaar AND I manage to catch him in time to shove a grocery list in his hand, he comes back cheerily carrying whatever it is that he finds interesting in the aisles (whether or not it is on the list).

The selection process is all very mysterious. Yesterday for instance, he had chilli-powder and turmeric on the list. He brought the turmeric but very snootily passed over the unfortunate chilli-powder.

And rummaging through the shopping bag is always fraught with interesting possibilities – one never knows WHAT one may find inside. Although, probability is high, that one won't find any Harpic or Lizol.

Ah well. Who needs Harpic and Lizol anyways?

To be continued: The Domestic God in the Kitchen.

Bombay Diaries – 1:Journey

Conversations between the spouses, one in Bombay the other in Pune. Henceforth known as P and B.

Marriage Year 1:

P: “When are you coming home?”

B: “Why?”

P:” I am bored, I don’t have anyone to talk to”

B (suitably touched and all that): “Ah. OK. Soon”

Marriage Year 2:

P: “When are you coming home?”

B: “Why?”

P:” I don’t have any clean clothes and I don’t know how to operate the washing machine”

B patiently explains the functioning of the same

P: (very gleefully) “Okay great I figured it out. You know, you have become completely redundant now that I can do all of this”

QED: The journey from wife to washing machine takes exactly one year.

To be continued: The secret diary of Cynic in Wonderland Aged 13 1/4th

Me, Myself and Money management

I like to tell myself that I am not completely financially challenged like the conventional stereotype of females.

'After all’ I say to myself ‘I got along just fine managing my hard earned apology-for-money for close on four or five years before Mr .Finance Planner entered my life and I didn’t do too badly’.

Like I said, I think so. Mr. FP (in non-financial times known as the spouse) begs to disagree and does so far too vocally if you ask me.

But let’s backtrack a bit and cast an eye on my Money philosophy (well I never knew I had one, was supposed to have one, until I was asked by the self same FP). Money was something one earned. And then a little of it was spent. And some was kept snugly in a place one could keep a close jealous eye on it – viz. in a savings account .if I had my way I would have kept it somewhere even closer – under my pillow perhaps. But as a concession to the fact that we are living in modern, educated times, and banks have assured me that they are safe, I settled on a savings account. I even chose the one with an auto sweep to the fixed deposit, so that I earned some interest on it.

This pattern would more or less continue till the middle of January or the gentle investment-proof-reminder mail from office, whichever was earlier. Then there would be some frantic calls to investment feller to beg him to meet me. And my sad little savings were further depleted and channelled into worthy tax saving bonds and some solid life insurance.

The investment feller would preface the conversation each year with questions on what are my ‘future financial plans’. But as I was wont to tell him, my future vision stopped at about four weeks, sometimes it stopped at four days.So all his grand plans of forty years and retirement were light years away from anykindofvision I had. Heck, even four years lock in periods scared the bejesus out of me.

So he would sigh like a steam engine, pocket my cheques and walk away into the sunset with my commission money (and leave me forlorn and considerably poorer)).

A couple of times he DID bring up the topic of Mutual Funds. I don’t like Mutual Funds I told him. Every time he told me about money doubling in five years I retorted with US64. After a point he gave up trying to convince me. And that was that.

And then Mr. Financial Planner happened.

One day he asked me about my money philosophy. And I chanted the flippant money philosophy I had outlined above. Suddenly, the even tempered, equable man metamorphosed before my eyes into this rather wild eyed evangelist. Fidelity, Franklin, SIP, Growth saver, Blue chip, Mid-cap, NAV– an avalanche of terms swept over me.

How can you not invest he raved . When I bleated about US64 he brushed it away impatiently and told me that I was behaving in a manner completely unworthy of my education and intelligence (!) and if I continued with this fixed deposit rubbish( and this accompanied by a beautiful sneer) I would be sure to die in penury and servitude.

Now that I have pledged to honour and serve this bloke (hahahahha ok, I couldn’t help that), I decided that I WOULD invest in mutual funds – besides if I lost my money, he has pretty much vowed to support the wife of his heart ( hahahahha ok, I couldn’t resist that either) in sickness and health and richness and poverty .

So I have.

Now every time I get a mail saying statement I eagerly open it thinking that my money would have doubled or done something dramatic like that (actually this is an unfortunate optimism I haven’t succeeded in curing myself of. Every salary slip, I open with an heightened anticipation and beating heart thinking that SOMEHOW my salary will have magically increased that month. Every month for the last I-don’t-know-how-many-years-I-have-been-disappointed. Only once the salary slip did show a spike and I was happy for half an hour until I figured out that it was the yearly bonus. Sigh.) .

Nothing has happened. The money is stuck in the same damn place for ages now. And I am beginning to lose my faith.

Mutual Fund Gods, are you listening??

P.S. Okay My January investment post is not linking so I shall recycle it . I should anyways since that is one of my personal favourite posts.

P.P.S. It IS my blog no? I can recycle whatever I want. Bah!

Misadventures of the Married Kind- II: Maika

(Continued from here...)

Hindi movies and soaps are abounding with tales of the coy, shy female going to the ‘maika’ from her ‘sasural’ and how she transforms back into the uninhibited girl that she was before she morphed into the dutiful bahu.

True enough. Most femmes do tend to be a little bit more carefree, a little bit more irresponsible and a lot lazier the minute they go to their old homes.

However, no Hindi programme seems to have depicted what transformation takes place in the jamai-feller the minute he goes to the wife’s house.

I have been closely studying this phenomenon and have observed a number of behavioral transformations which become suddenly visible.

One of the most interesting reactions to the maika is the change in a jamai-feller’s metabolism. A normally active verging on exhaustingly active) person suddenly seems to go into some kind of deep state of suspended animation.

Seemingly the only way to rouse this person from this comatose state is to initiate conversations about food. Suddenly one will witness a rapid increase in heart rate and salivary glands. Vocal chords are also activated – enough to list out the particular delicacies which are craved on that particular day.

A great degree of analysis and thought are involved in deciding the menu for the day. Dish x can be offered only on Fridays (after skipping an evening snack in order to have plenty of space for aforementioned Dish x). That should ideally be accompanied by dessert Y (and only Y – anything heavier than Y shall not be appreciated and anything less than dessert Y will be a waste of an opportunity). There is a great deal of debate and thought before foray on relative merits of Dish X versus other dishes- this analysis can start as much as a week in advance of advent into maika and HAS to be satisfactorily resolved in specimen’s head.

There is also a marked degree of increase in dependency on wife. A normally self sufficient, fully functional human being becomes dependent on wife for almost everything. – The roti (to the sofa where he lies comfortably reposed), kapda (to the bathroom when he wants to shower) and well, not makaan but the makaan ke fittings (‘increase the fan speed’/’close the lights’/’ switch on the hand-shower’)

Also there appears to be a distinct tendency to fall into a very deep, dreamless and long sleep – apparently disassociating his mind from the normal cares of daily routine – which one would expect in the girl going to her erstwhile home but is surprisingly very visible in the fellow also.

Another visible and completely inexplicable observed change is how the Nietzsche-Plato-Saki-Luce reader develops this incomprehensible fascination with Mumbai Mirror. Early mornings one can see him making a beeline for the same, sitting in a corner, beatifically reading about Kangana Ranaut and ‘How-a-squirrel-in-Toronto-steals-a-Mars-bar” and occasionally chortling to himself. This, I should add is a particularly baffling occurrence.

This is an on-going study, so additional findings will be published as and when discovered.


P.S. I have to add a word of gratitude to the jamai-feller here, for allowing me to write stuff like this in the first place.

P.P.S Incidentally, a friend of mine (who knows my er ..Idiosyncrasies) has plans to brainwash the self same jamai feller to start a blog where people (she!) can see his views of marriage and misadventures. Thank God, he hates typing!

Identity crisis

What’s in a name said the old Bard feller. Well, if he had to change names - he might have sung a different tune.

I find myself suffering from writers’ cramp every time I write my name these days. The original name pretty much covered seventy percent of the alphabet – the addition of one more name causes a bit of a glut.

It all started when I got married. I have had the old handle for darn too long to willingly contemplate parting with it (its not even women’s lib or anything militantly feministic – just sheer familiarity.)

However, the materfamilias started their collective guilt-tripping – “HOW can you not take their name? They will get offended/hurt/ostracized!”/ “It will be a problem on your passport you know – your marital status will say married but will not reflect in your name” /”What will you do when you have kids – they will have problems with admissions” and much else in the same vein
(Incidentally the in-laws and outlaws have discreetly forborne to have ANY opinion on this.)

I countered with a - I have worked far too long. I have a reputation (sic!) in the industry – do you expect me to throw all that away and go back to being a fresher? Besides, all my official documents are all on the old name. And I am damned if I can remember one more signature (as it is I barely recall the old one).

So we settled on hyphenation. And therein starts the problem.

No one seems to want to use both the surnames. Most people chose whichever they want to depending on temperament and upbringing.

At work, my boss who is a disgruntled ex-advertising-feller-in-a-strange-alien-workplace (like me) usually uses my first surname. The Human resource female (who seems to have made it her life’s mission to remind me of my marital status – she comes wearing a wig of sindoor and has her wedding snaps as a screen saver) always uses the latter (using a prefix ‘Mrs” in all official communication – which incidentally annoys the shit out of me).The rest use one or the other or both or none (“oi ..you there..c’mere”)

My official email id uses the earlier name. My business cards use both. My appointment letter uses the new one.

In Bombay I use the first name. In Pune (depending on who is within earshot) I use the other.

For the purpose of piety (temples) I use the latter (Actually I use only my first name and someone else adds the suffix) and for the profane (shopping!) I use the former.

This whole double identity thing is beginning to muddle my brains a little. I catch myself wondering what name to use when people ask for it these days - occasionally doing a mental inky-pinky-ponky to chose. I have tried using both – but usually by the time I am half way through the first name people lose interest in what I am saying. The other day I actually forgot both the names and stood there blankly for a few minutes. Then I had the happy thought of offering my christened name and sacrificing both the last names. I have toyed with the idea of converting myself into a south Indian and just using the initials (or better still abandon both the names and use the town)


The other day, after ranting on this for fifteen minutes on this I look expectantly at the hero. He grins at me and asks – “I forgot to ask you – what do you use as your middle name?”

Maybe ill just call myself Oi.