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?

Honeytrap..

Overheard..

The MIL to Junior ( now eight months), "Come, Lets take you out to the balcony and I'll show you the birds and the bees."

Hmm. I REALLY thought potty training came before sex education.

Gee, Strung!

The location - a hotel lobby somewhere in India
The characters - a Mother in law, Daughter in law

DiL walks into the lobby and suddenly sees her MiL gesticulating urgently at her, indicating that she would like a word in private.
DiL obligingly walks into a poky corner, where the MIL whispers emphatically "ADJUST YOUR G-STRING, it's showing"
DiL, decorously attired in a modest salwar kameez goes "Huh? Whaa?"
MiL,"The g-string, the g-string - you can see it" points to the offending erm..garment

The garment happens to be the end of the salwar string (nada) which can be seen under the edge of the kurta.

Fact, is funnier than fiction.

Cyn-la-carte

What does one do when one has a very painful skin infection (which has resurfaced in a month) and the allopathic remedy for that is a very strong antibiotic?
What does one do if those antibiotics cause severe drowsiness and dizziness?
What does one do if drowsiness and dizziness is NOT a good idea when one is managing a three month old baby and is home alone?

One wades through the Internet and tries all sorts of home remedies.

So far, one has applied the following to one's skin

Potato in their jackets
Crushed Garlic
Cut Onion
Crushed Pepper Corns

Now we just need a dash of mayo and a pinch of salt, and voila Cynic-Potato Salad is ready for consumption

Tomorrows recipe : Cynful Aloo Methi with Jeera

P.S. I wonder whether I should put myself up on bhajifried.

Raising Mama!

The following conversation between the hero and his mother (Fortunately, I was a fly on the wall!).

S has been on a movie spree these days, and he has a penchant for Clint Eastwood/War movies - grim, grit and gore fare.

Yesterday, after seeing yet another of those, his mother exasperatedly turns to him and says

"Can we please try and get some cheerful movies once in a while?

And then the afterthought "Also ones, without any f****** in them"

(Referring, we think, to the colourful language which peppers these movies, rather than the more literal intepretation of the same.)

And then she realized what she had just said...

P.S. I am on severely blogcked right now pliss to excuse. (17 half finished posts I tell you. Hmpf)

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!

The goose and the gander

Let me illustrate by an example. Say a goose and a gander, try on a pair of jeans that don’t fit. This is sequence of events thereafter.

Goose
1. Starts minor hyperventilation
2. Tries to squeeze into jeans by contorting the body into weird shapes and not breathing
3. Examines the jeans to see if they have mysteriously shrunk and heaves a sigh of relief thinking they have indeed shrunk.
4. Tries on another pair of jeans just to prove the hypothesis
5. Finds out that the other jeans are no more accommodating than the first pair (pun unintended)
6. Minor hyperventilation progresses into medium sized hyperventilation
7. Goes through a mental checklist of what has been eaten in the previous two hours, wonders about water retention, salt intake, pms and other cheerful things
8. Tentatively (after wearing the lightest possible clothes in the wardrobe) climbs onto a weighing machine
9. Does an acrobatic back-flip in horror
10.Medium hyperventilation progresses to major hyperventilation
11.Calls best friends (2nos) and tearfully asks whether “Have I been looking fat these days?”
12.Hangs up after not believing them and sits in a corner brooding for the half hour
13.Goes through a check list of all meals and lack of exercise in the last three weeks
14.Curses Diwali, festivals and everything fattening
15.Kicks the offending jeans a couple of times
16.Make plans for drastic starvation and salad diet w/o sugar, oil, salt or anything edible in it
17.Curses genes
18. Make plans for rigorous exercise schedule
19. Make an excel sheet for diet and exercise tracking
20. Wallows in self pity

Gander
1. Waves the offending jeans at whoever is present and blandly and unconcernedly says “I need to get rid of all these jeans that don’t fit, they are cluttering up my cupboard”

Dream Girl Kisi Shayar ki Ghazal (or Oh-hell-cant-I-write-a-random-post-instead-of-working?)

I had a rather vague dream yesterday - about Muslim fundamentalists’ (of all things). I am going in a car with Ma somewhere, and suddenly some very violent, virulent ladies start pelting us with rocks. One of these rocks hit’s Ma’s head, she starts bleeding, and acting very disoriented. So for most of the dream (or what I remember of it), I am trying to lob back some rocks (and doing so quite accurately), worrying about whether Ma has concussion and wondering how to get out of the situation. Somewhere along the lines, it morphs into a train scene then a dhobi seems to feature in it and some cops eating paan. Mind you, all of this happening to the background music of Salaam-e-ishq.

On a scale of weirdness, I would probably have given this 3.5 or so.

Well, I HAVE dreamt of dolphins speaking fluent, mellifluous Bengali after all – that’s a tough act to follow. Something about an office picnic on a beach and dolphin gets washed up ashore, and starts babbling. The admin fellow, in the manner of admin-fellows, tries to locate Bengali colleague to do the needful. This dolphin then proceeds to turn to a VERY ugly man in a wet white-kurta-pyjama.

Then there was the time, I dreamt of Prince William impregnating some chick and ending up in a UK tabloid (Mind you I hadn’t thought of the princes for years. No reason to no?) . For some reason, there is a vociferous discussion about hairstyles happening with William, and this again, has the background score from Neil and Nikki. (A movie which of course I hadn’t watched – I mean Uday Chopra? And had bombed miserably some two or three years before this dream happened).

Frankly, I LOVE my dreams. I have a much more rollicking time in them than I ever have had in real life. And it’s all Technicolor, there is usually background music in it (even if it is etcetera music) and there is normally lot of action and excitement in it.

Whether it is the time a couple of friends and I am smuggling doped-out-bodies ala jaane-bhi-do-yaaro and being chased around town by my friend’s octogenarian family-retainer-named-ajibai. Or watching completely coherent sequels to Fight Club. Or cowering somewhere because of Alien invasions, wearing a silver plated miniaturized chip on our necks for protection. Or running away from two-inch crocodiles (on a leash) that are hell bent on eating my big toe nail. Or watching a vague cousin-in-law turn into a cannibal in freezing Minnesota, who is ... okay, I will spare the details, certainly not suitable for the weak stomached.

Incidentally, I am so BRIGHT in these dreams it’s amazing. I solve complicated quantum physics problems, concoct delectable recipes, read engrossing sequels to books, watch very logical sequels to movies, and am generally so multitalented that I generally give the waking avatar , a massive inferiority complex.

The curious thing is that there is usually no, (or at best) a very tenuous link to what is happening in my life at that moment. I was reading about Wakf yesterday – so might explain the Muslim bit. But seriously, where does the dhobi come into the picture?
Most of the times I am left racking my brains wondering what on earth could have set it off. I wonder what Freud uncle would have made out of these. Hmmm.

P.S. I have forgotten a vast number of them, so the new resolution is to post them for posterity.
P.P.S Also this way I get to shirk working on things which should have been dispatched one hour ago. Sigh

The Bored and the Beautiful

When uninspired, recycle from old blog and pretend it is for a good cause -viz. preservation of valuable literature for posterity. Hell. Its MY blog. I shall call it PRICELESS literature if i want to. Hmpf!(This is from Dec 05).

Do you have what it takes to be rich and famous? Go ahead and take this quiz to judge whether you are a member of the Association de la Loaded

Tick the answer you feel is closest to your heart

1. A long weekend coming up, you…
a. Travel to Turkey with your husband for a romantic weekend getaway
b. You wish you had money to send your husband to Turkey so that he could be out of your hair for the weekend
c. Turkey. Delicious. Definitely better than chicken!


2. You really need to look good for an office party. You take care of your skin by …
a. La Prairie Skin caviar is the only thing you would apply on your skin. But it’s a problem obtaining it locally! There are only five packs sold in the country at any given point of time. Oh, the cost? You don’t really remember, about a lakh, but a complete steal for the price.
b. You had saved for a year and buy a face cream for Rs.25, 000 but not for an office party – what the use, the COO wont be there to see you and anyways much better to just occasionally take it out and look at the pack.
c. How do you take care of your skin? Huh? Wash it what else?


3. You have a meeting at a prospective new clients office. You…
a. Chose the Louis Vuitton bag that matches the mood of the day. You must look upbeat when you meet new clients, so the tan bag you picked up in Paris should be good.
b. You have Hidedesign bags which you thought were quite hep, but had to hide them under the table when you saw A
c. Who the heck is Louis Vuitton? Always thought he was a gay rights activist. Bag? Well, one got wet in the rains and the other got stolen. So you really don’t have a choice do you?

4. Time is of crucial importance and you keep track of it by …
a. Your faithful Rado watch because its scratchproof and quite functional
b. You tell your friends that you were planning to buy Tommy Hillfiger watches but didn’t because he is racist.
c. Rado killed the video star


5. The coming Saturday you plan to go rustic. You….
a. Go that that quaint retro store in Jakarta where you had picked up that completely darling antique Fossil.
b. Lifestyle darling! All those suburbanites shop there nowadays.
c. Linking road zindabad.

Your score.
Mostly (a):
You are right up there in la-di-dah land. You have so much money you don’t know what to do with it. And well, if you are male, will you marry me? Yes, you are quite obnoxious I am sure, but I really, really want to quit working.

Mostly (b):
Well, who knows about the money, but you sure have the pretentiousness all sewed up darlings!

Mostly (c):
Ah…!

Postscript.
(All you uneducated plebeians, a Louis Vuitton basic functional key chain is about eight grand.)

This post was brought on by a surfeit of type (a) and (b) people in life right now. HELP!!!

Dress rehearsal

We were watching TV the other day and caught that super annoying Appy-Grappy Fizz ad. S, after taking another look at them – the four boys, the girls and the bottles, had a minor meltdown about the unfairness of the genders expectations and roles – especially in the teens.

He claimed that the gaggle of giggly girls weren’t expected to do anything, but just sit around and blush and giggle while the boys posed, postured and tried to outdo each other in wit in some weird mating ritual to attract them. (I smell a story here; I should rummage a little bit in that closet!)

True enough I suppose, but I added a caveat. Told him, that this rule of just turning up and giggling was applicable to pretty, feminine girls. The not so pretty ones, the not so slim ones, the not so girly ones, had to resort to wit as well.

And as such conversations will, it degenerated to him turning to ask me “Well, were you pretty or were you funny?” (Sigh)

So I wryly thought back to my teen years – through late school, and early college, and suddenly realized how many people I know from that era were...er funny ( many of them have subsequently acquired prettiness or handsomeness, and forgotten that funniness).

When I looked back of acquaintances from that era, I remember some with good features, other’s with reasonably good figures – but I can’t for the life of me remember anyone who jaw-dropping, traffic stopping hot. That itself is rather intriguing. Yes, one goes through that gauche, gangly, acned teenage phase – but not for a decade. Probabilistically speaking, I ought to have acquired at least one hot acquaintance during that time, no?

And I had an epiphany – the clothes!

I grew up in a generation with fashion dyslexia. That's the kindest way to describe it.

I think back to the school and college years and what stands out is the terrible fashion sense, and well I suffered from it too. When I recall that hideous magenta skirt set, or that crushed crepe thingummy, I want to put my head through a wall (and this is coming from a fashion agnostic)

Many of memories of people are inextricably linked up with what they wore. If someone mentions a Mr. Sharma, to me, the first image that comes to mind is a vermillion shirt with big fat white polka dots. Or the Ms. Singh (who later became an international airline airhostess), is always associated with that bilious green sack-like, sack-material-like dress. Or even the more recent Mr. A with his brick orange shirt, with the er, brick pattern on it. Mr. A, I know for a fact has become quite trendy and has so many young girls buzzing around him, that we are planning to auction him off as a gigolo.

And it wasn’t only the designs – it was the material, the cut, the fitting, everything. I had a salwar suit in various shades of blue (which for some reason I thought was my lucky dress) which could easily have doubled up as a raincoat.

In undergrad, all the girls took to rather voluminous dresses (a couple of sizes too large- usually picked up from Fashion Street). Perhaps this was to cloak burgeoning figures, perhaps this was the modern avatar of half saris – but whatever it was, they looked terrible. I know I had this one white shirt, which reached halfway to my knees and could have easily be worn as a lab-coat. Or that other tee-shirt which was so huge, I could have worn it as a dress (this particular one was subsequently passed it off to my male cousin who is roughly twice my height and girth). Or those oh-so-ghastly checked umbrella cut skirts in towel-like materials which ended as dead-weights after a bout with the mumbai monsoons.

The best that could be said of most people’s fashion sense was that it was consistent. People stuck to their types – my friend S had a wardrobe which consisted exclusively of south cottons in shades of dark green, dark maroon, and dark rust in college. My other friend B had a penchant for knitted tops. Other classmate BP had a couple of these bandhni red shirts which were a particular favourite of his.

It took a few years of working before most of us started dressing up normally and discovering that it is okay to buy clothes from shops rather than from footpath. That clothes need to be approximately the same size as the individual wearing them. That accessories and shoes exist. That brands are brands for a reason.

I look at all the college kids today and am amazed at how well turned out they are – rebonded hair, hip, designer clothes, stunning shoes. I think we all looked so well, raw!

Ah well, the old order giveth way to the new.

Next: Much ado about Mouch ( Ever noticed how ALL boys went through growing moustaches as soon as they could and shaving it off once they hit 25?)

Some potter patter in the monsoons.

So after threatening to do it for two months, I finally went and enrolled myself (and bulldozed the hero) into a four day pottery workshop. And it was frickin’ awesome.

I am on a bit of a lets-gather-new-experiences trip these days – don’t know whether it’s the bucket list phenomena or the fact the weekend routine of movies-malls-eating-out is seriously losing its charm. Also, I might not have quite lost my preteen fascination with clay ( and this was like rediscovering an old flame and finding that the spark still burned)

It was split two days for clay modelling and two days on the wheel. Clay modelling is fun – especially when you have a running commentary in your head (with the stray thought escaping aloud) about the stuff that one and others actually manage to create.

But it’s the wheel that is utterly magical. When you put a lump of grey gooey stuff on a wheel and put your hands to it and suddenly it starts taking shape – whichever way you hold it – you can flare it out, you can thin it down, you can make it spherical, cylindrical, and circular, you can put little swirls on it, you can smoothen it . I cant think of anything which gets formed and destroyed so fast - and you have the power to make something beautiful in a few minutes - a huge rush.

On other side-notes, it’s interesting to see how group dynamics exist even in the smallest of groups – there will be the abrasive, aggressive lady-dog from hell, there will be the overgrown front bencher who goes “miss, miss”, there will be the nice-guy-Santa’s –helper and well, there will be back benchers.

Some snaps by popular demand ( mine. Hmpf) .

Check out the sheeposaurus. The floppy ears could double up as wings.Only the heavy bottomedness will probably keep it grounded firmly on Terra firma (Damn I need to stop thinking of that dratted heavy bottomed skillet). Ever noticed how sheep's always have a goshdarned silly expression on their faces?


This is Cyn Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was actually trying to make a vase, but it ended up as a wine glass.
Ah well.

P.S. All these snaps are before they have been fired through the kiln.

Etude

GGAGCB GGABDC GG (G) ECBA FFECDC

After six months of knuckle breaking classes and exercises which involve contorting my fingers into un-genteel, unladylike claws (for purposes other than cattiness and/or Mumbai local trains that is), I have finally learnt how to play Happy Birthday on my guitar.

Am I rocking or what?

Keep an eye on this space, by December I should have cracked Twinkle Twinkle – and hold your breath, I might even be grooving to Mary had a little lamb.

* Deep bow * (Or should that be curtsy? Hmm.)

P.S. And to think I was taught Happy Birthday on the recorder when I was seven and played it by ear on the synthesizer when I was nine. I used pick up all these songs just by listening to them when I was a kid and play them. Somehow, I seem to have lost the knack. Hero's tone deafness must be catching. (Unfair you say? What is the fun of having a spouse if one cannot blame him for random stuff eh?)

P.P.S I KNEW I should have learnt the piano.Hmpf. After all, better a middling, middle aged Mozart than a swinging, septuagenarian Santana.

P.P.S Sigh.

Doggone it!

Ed Note: Written in May 2007 -In the old house. Ah I miss them!

When I first got married and moved to this flat in Pune, I used to wonder at the completely eclectic group of individuals/families, which reside in this apartment complex. The first floor itself is shared between an orthodox Muslim joint family, an eccentric, sixty odd years old Rajnish Ashram American devotee who lives with his mistress -formerly his maid (As an aside, we always wonder whether the lady of the house has retired or continues to do her earlier job) and a penny-pinching, nosy, ISKON worshipping Sindhi family. (The third floor has a Tamilian priest living next door to a rich bloke’s mistress – how did they GET these combinations will remain a perennial mystery to me).

Anyways, this post is not about the residents in the flats, but the residents outside it. Amongst other things, the Osho gentleman, has decided to adopt three stray dogs – well, not adopt exactly, but he feeds them at night. So the first sight you get of this otherwise nice-enough building is three (one black, one white and one white with cream patches), mangy, slightly scary, flee-bitten, sick looking (and probably ill) strays lying on the passageway to the lift - usually just lying there sleeping most of the day. Rumor has it, that the other residents have tried many a times to rid the building of these dogs or get the chap to take them inside his flat, but have not yet succeeded.

For the first few months, I was a bit wary of them – all the warnings about rabies, strays and injections tend to float in the mind. But after a point I pretty much got used to them, and would pass by without taking a circuitous detour.

Forward to April, S’s sister was getting married, so we had a number of functions at his mother’s house (two buildings away). So typically, in the mornings, S would go on ahead to help with the wedding preparations, and I would follow later after winding down this house, along with my mother who had come down for the ceremonies. One day Ma noticed it. She said, “ Have you seen these dogs? Every time you dress up in a sari those dogs escort you to the other building (MIL’s house) and then go back to your building.”

Turned out that was true- specially the cream patch feller (and usually one of the other two)! When I went from this house to the other, the guard of honour would drop me to the other house and go back. The mother of course, was amused. Claimed they probably thought I looked nice with the sari and the jewellery so they were just making sure I reached in one piece.

Wedding happened, and I went back from saris to the usual jeans but the escort service continues. What amazes me is the fact that I go to the other house for lunch and dinner and they don’t bat an eyelid. But the minute I am going out, that’s a different story. They will (usually) make sure that I am accompanied. Even when S is with me. Even if they are otherwise occupied somewhere down the road. They will drop whatever is it that they are doing, come to the gate of the other house (where S parks his car), wait outside wagging their tails, and as soon as we are out of the building, they turn around and go back to whatever they were doing.

S complains that they don’t seem to give him that kind of attention, and there are many other girls in the building who don’t seem to have merited this either. I don’t understand how I have to be honest. It’s not like I give them food, or pat them or talk to them or anything of the sort.

Today, I realized just HOW much they have decided to adopt me. A friend of mine was staying over, and she was to leave very early in the morning. So we were waiting outside for a while to flag the auto. The black and the cream chaps came, tails wagging nineteen to a dozen, sniffed around us, yawned, stretched but generally sticking close to use throughout. After a while, my friend decided to go to the end of the road for an auto, while I was waiting with her bags. During this time, the cream chap had decided to go and investigate something inside the building. Suddenly, as I was standing, a slightly seedy looking man was walking down the road – before I knew it, both these dogs were standing flanking me from the front and right, hackles raised while this man passed by. They relaxed after he was gone but still stuck fairly close around me. Friend came, friend left, I went back to the lift, (chaperoned of course). Then I peered down from the gallery and I saw that my canine friends had gone back to their well-deserved sleep after performing their self-appointed duty.

Apparently knights come in many guises!

Continued here for those who are interested : Adventures of mutt and moron

Careless Blisters: An ode to high heels or a eulogy to my feet

Time can never mend, the miseries of a shoe fiend
To the heels and behind, tension of all kinds
There’s no comfort in the looks
Pain is that all you’ll find

Should've known better

I feel so unsure
As I take a few steps and totter unsteadily to the floor
As my ankles strive and my insteps cry
Calls to mind, my flattest moccasin
And all my toes heave a sigh

I’m never gonna heel again
Painful feet have gone a keel-ing
Though it’s easy to pretend
That my feet look so cool

Should’ve known better then to mistreat a friend
And suffer the cost is what I’ve been livin’
And im never gonna be able to walk again
My feet all are black and blue

Time can never mend, the miseries of a shoe fiend
To the heels and behind, tension of all kinds
There’s no comfort in the looks
Pain is that all you’ll find

Tonight my calves feel so cowed
I wish that I could be a dowd
Maybe its better this way
I’d feel like a frump if I saw other femmes sashay

We could have been so svelte together
If only you didn’t my feet sever
But now my feet are a-begging me
Please foot spray

I’m never gonna heel again
Painful feet have gone a keel-ing
Though it’s easy to pretend
That my feet look so cool

Should’ve known better then to mistreat a friend
And suffer the cost is what I’ve been livin’
And im never gonna be able to walk again
My feet all are black and blue

P.S. Sung to careless whispers.
P.P.S i HATE that song which is why its so appropriate
P.P.P.S WHO THE F*** invented high heels and WHY?

Confessions of a stationery stealer

Ed Note: The original post on my er..stationary fetish (written in May 06 – rediffblogs). Seemed like a good time to post this since a) just come back from rather hectic trip to Bombay and don’t have any posts b) this is the backdrop to the Embezzlers and c) I had a DREAM that I was pinching some stationary last night. Bah!

I have discovered a dangerous flaw in my character. I am a stationary kleptomaniac. Whenever I see any kind of pens, post-its or papers. I have this overmastering urge to pinch it. Have tried many things, but that itch refuses to go away.

Rumor has it that this unhealthy obsession started when I was about three. My father from one of his trips to Singapore or Sri Lanka I forget where had got this mammoth, mother –of-all-pencils for me (which again, rumor has it, was as tall as me!) – all colorful and fluffy whatnots.

Love happened. And it’s never quite gone away.

Every single day for the next four years when my father left for office I would beseechingly look at him and request a pencil – a BIGGGGGGG pencil from his office.
He did get me some – but having sensibly decided that he couldn’t give me a pencil a day, he would come home at night and present one to me, and take another from the collection while I was asleep to give me the next day.

As I grew older, I began to covet other things. Each birthday party I would go to I would look forward to the return gift and pray it was the fancy letter-pads (I have nearly intact, decorative letter pads which are twenty years old l!) or sketch pens. Birthday requests always included a demand for colored pencils and pen-pencils (the latter for a particular favourite of mine between the ages of 8-13-. Had not yet graduated to exotic pens hence that was the closest substitute)

Then I discovered pens. Calligraphy pens, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, fat pens, thin pens, you name it - I love it.
I am so fiercely possessive about my pens that even if someone borrows an ordinary ballpoint for a meeting, I am restless until the end of the meeting when I can rightfully reclaim it. And if some client decides to retain it, I bear a grudge with him/her (“as the person who pinched my pen”) for the rest of my life

Just before my engagement, Ma tentatively suggested giving one of the PENS I had to S. This wasn’t even an ordinary pen. It was a pen with capital letters – I screamed blue murder and refused to give it to him. So what if he is bridegroom?

So I have this legitimate collection of stationery, which I have accumulated by rightful means over the last many years.

Now to the unlawful.

Somewhere a few years ago I started working. A stationary freaks paradise! I could actually go to administration and get whatever I wanted. Stapler and plastic u clips. Punches and binder clips. Colored pens, highlighter pens, CD pens – CDs!!! Could heaven get any better?

After a few months, cost cutting measures and the concept of requisitions started. A sudden choke on my store of office supplies. Withdrawal symptoms commenced. I HAD to get to my fix of pens and other things.

Thus the disease started. I would hang around till late evening and regularly check the drawers in the hope that the bloke who was in charge had forgotten to lock it.
Occasionally would request the senior admin guy in the evenings that I was in pressing need of a pen and could I get the keys (the peon or whoever having left for the day) – the hypothesis being that the senior admin guy was far to busy to actually unlock the door so would just give me the keys. If that happened – ah bliss.

Every conference and workshop, after the day was over and there was a random collection of half opened colored post its and pencils would be sneaked into my bag – and if anyone happened to catch me, I would say “its such a shame to waste them” or alternatively “ never get the time to actually go to stationary bloke” – mostly I just tried to do it when no one was around.

So anyways, now I have this assortment of dry whitening ink and rusty staplers and pen that don’t write and posts its which are too pretty to use, planners, blank CDs, pencil mugs – all lying at home. And I STILL CRAVE MORE!

I wonder whether I need therapy. Hmmm.

Beauticians are in the eye of the beholder

Ed Note: The first of the beauty rants written in Jul/05 – forerunner to this. Recycling this since I am unwell(shameless sympathy fishing here) and am not supposed to be up and about..

There are three things in the world that I am afraid of - dentists, lizards and superior-young-women-at-beauty-parlours. Today's post is dedicated to the third.

A typical scene from a beauty parlour goes thus

I walk in (usually without an appointment - somehow this thing about taking appointments for parlours has never cut any ice with me - I don’t take appointments for doctors and I’ll be damned if I will take one for a parlour)

Usually two or three extremely superior young women will be standing there looking well, extremely supercilious. The minute I walk in they will turn around and look at me with a slightly contemptuous sneer on their face (I promptly feel that my hair is all wrong or my clothes are inside out or there is a zit on my face or SOMETHING!)

After about three minutes of looking helplessly around one will condescend to come upto me to ask what is it that I want to do. (Usually something very basic - a hair trim perhaps)

She will seat me on the chair (ah, that’s the reason I don’t like beauty parlours’ - the chairs are the same as those they have in a dentists consulting room!).

She stares at my face and asks me "what is your skin care programme"
Me: "Uhm skin care programme?"
!?!?
She: “Yes skin programme - what all do you do to take care of your skin?”
Me: (Half defiantly, half sheepishly) “Nothing much really - just wash it and keep it clean and don’t experiment with my face wash/soap/cream”
She (rolling her eyes heavenward - one can almost hear her begging God to deliver her from these half-baked-skin-programme less-morons). “You should have a skin regimen - you need to take care of your skin - if you don’t you will end up with wrinkles and marks and look something like that” pointing in the general direction of the picture of an 87 year old woman with a pockmarked face.
She continues: “Look at this - you already have a blackhead here if you don’t take care they will go on multiplying”
I much shaken, peer into the mirror and see zilch: “Uhm where?”
She: “There on your nose! Can’t you see it???”
I peer more intently and manage to locate one solitary blackhead.
She: "You need to take care of your skin - you should have a proper facial and get your skin cleansed and toned - should I do it now?"
Me (feebly): “No- not today I am going for a movie in an hour or so - I just need a hair trim right now”
She (sniffing disapprovingly): “Ok. But I suggest you get some scrubs for your face”

(I have but a nebulous idea what a scrub is - I used to always think it is that thingummy one washes ones clothes with which they beat the dirt out- I have recently discovered it’s a walnut based or apricot based paste, which one is to apply. I haven’t seen it yet but I have just heard all these fancy descriptions from my cousins.)

She (looking at my hair from all angles): “Your hair - it’s so DRY”.
Last time I went there they told me my hair was too OILY - you never win do you?
She lifts my hair up and tells her colleagues “Look at her hair it’s so DRY”
I am ready to sink through the floor, for shamelessly walking around the world with DRY hair.
Then she starts to measure and cut and meanwhile continues her rant.
She: “What shampoo do you use?”
Me: “Head and Shoulders or Pantene”
She (aghast): “Those? Those are very strong! They will ruin your hair - it will eventually all fall off”
Me: (Quaking at the thought of my suddenly going bald):"Uh..what about Sunsilk? Which one should I use?”
She: “Tetra hydrox something something" (I don’t get the last part of the name but it sounds like a washing machine)
She continues: "You should colour your hair - that will automatically condition it and stop it from becoming dry"
Me: "Er no I don’t want to colour it - everyone I know who has coloured complains that it ruins the texture of the hair"
She: "Bah! They do lots of research and testing before they out it on hair - of course nothing will happen to your hair"
Turns to her assistant: "Get the catalogue of hair colour"
I flip through the catalogue - somehow my imagination balks at the thought of me as a peroxide blonde.
I tell the lady the same.
She: "Don't get a global hair colour get it highlighted - that will look nice"
Me:"Uhm but the texture - have been told that it completely ruins it"
She: (In an obvious effort to explain things to a cosmetically-challenged half wit ) : "If you are so afraid of it you should go in for the ammonia free hair colour"

Ammonia? They use ammonia to colour hair? ...Eeeks! I thought ammonia was used for disinfectants.

Me: "Er no ..I think Ill pass the hair colour for now- I just need to trim it you know"
She: "At least come for a conditioning treatment"
Me: "What is that?"
She:"You have to come here and we condition your hair"
Me (suspiciously): "How many times?"
She: "At least five times - you'll need to come every 10 days to sit here for sessions of 45 minutes"
Yeah right - here I barely manage to go to the damn place once in 5 months and she expects me to go there 5 times.
Me: "Isn’t there anything I can do at home?"
She (firmly): “Hmm...at home isn’t good enough you will have to come here"
Me (looking at her piteously):"Nothing whatsoever?"
She: “You can try this new L'Oreal shampoo-conditioner"
Me: "Where does one get it?"
She turns to her assistant who promptly gets it and puts it in front of me.
She continues:"You must use it - you really need to take care of your skin and hair you know"
Me: (meekly): “This is good is it?"
She: "Yes not as good as a treatment here but if you insist this is decent"
By this time my spirit is utterly broken.
Me: “Okay I guess I will buy this”

All the while knowing I am being conned - hell I work in advertising I know how to con consumers into buying things they don’t need or want and I still fall for this!

By this time, the haircut is also done and I walk out the reluctant owner of a very expensive shampoo and conditioner

Beauty? Gah!

Notes from the Guitar Class

In my old age, I suddenly decided to go and learn the guitar. Bucket list and all that.

So a few months ago, I toddled off to a class and registered myself. The spouse accompanied me and put on a long-suffering air stating that “Now you can’t say that marriage has stopped you from pursuing your dreams and hobbies”. Full melodrama this – I’m not really the martyr types who will sacrifice her life at the altar of matrimony.

So like I was saying I went and registered in this class in my neighbouring suburb and have been going there twice a week ever since.

This guitar class is a one man show run by an elderly-catholic-gentleman who from what I can gather has been playing the guitar professionally since 1950 or so. Being definitely old school in his approach to life in general and guitar in particular, he believes in all those old maxims of hard-work and practice makes perfect, 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, and no progress without duress ( is that a maxim or did I just make that up?) – Anyways you get the gist.

As an aside and for the record, I would have much rather had a hot, stubbly young rocker-teacher types but I couldn’t because a) I didn’t find anyone of the sort and b) S claims ( quite unjustly) that I need someone who will figuratively cane me into practising – and this gentleman seems to fit the bill.

He, let’s call him Mr. M was quite fascinated by me when I first started attending his class. A female keen to learn the guitar was rare, a person on the wrong side of ..well never mind the numerical age, but the wrong side of the guitar-learning age was rarer (most of his students appear prepubescent to me - smaller than the guitars they play on.) and a person who is married is also quite unusual. So a person who combined all three was an oddity quite deserving of deep suspicion and an unshakable conviction that “She won’t last for more than a couple of weeks” and I think the fact that I do turn up quite regularly, never fails to surprise him.

As I mentioned earlier , he is quite the old style school teacher – balding, be-whiskered, beer-bellied ( ah for the young rocker, sigh) - he regularly scolds and clucks around all the unfortunate students for everything – whether it is not doing homework ( which is practising some 4 hours a day) to smoking ( “Next time you come I will SMELL your mouth and if I think you have smoked you better ‘WATCH IT”) and for not covering notebook ( this last particular one was directed exclusively at me – I kept on forgetting to cover the damn thing ( incidentally the first time he told me to cover my notebook I gaped at him like a half-wit – no one had told me to do that for close on 15 years. I also spent some pleasant time contemplating what stickers I should put on them – the Hello Kitty ones or Snoopy. Ok. I am being nasty).

He is also exceedingly meticulous (although I suspect terribly dated) in his music classes – one is expected to write down the theory (and seriously, all you typer-sharks out there are you able to write extended passages even now? I seem to struggle to write anything more than my signature these days), followed by a long diatribe on lack-of-practise ( he firmly believes that practise is more important than other minor things like earning-one’s livelihood or preparing food) and then some exceedingly excruciating exercises’ for one or the other hand – yes, I am still stuck at those (exclusively-arachnidan named) exercises’ - I have been doing these for months now, and I suspect I will be doing them till the end of time.

Also Mr. M and I seem to have quite differing definitions of what constitutes a relaxed hand. He will contort his hand in a quite impossible angle and make me do that with mine and insist that the hand is not relaxed enough. Well, I agree with that – my claw looks like it’s in the throes of rigor mortis. But I defy anyone to hold the hand in those particular positions and be yogic-ly relaxed at the same time.

And I suspect my fairly flippant attitude to learning is something which he views with deep disapproval. He wants to make a professional guitarist out of me - despite all the odds and despite the unpromising musical raw material. He periodically drops broad hints about how a so-and-so- restaurant is in need of someone who can play and sing and how in a few months I might consider it (It might be worthwhile to broach this proposal in front of my Ma– I am sure her reaction to the news that I am considering singing and playing a guitar professionally ought to be quite interesting. I'm sure band bajega. Quite literally)

So anyways I plug (pluck?) on with the guitar. In a few decades if you see a white haired old lady standing and crooning on some stage with a guitar, stop by to say hallo, it just might be me.

The Beautician Beast

I don’t like going to parlours. Apart from office and dentists I can’t think of any place I like going to less. The thought of strange women with clammy hands pummelling and pulling and doing all other manners of excruciating things on various parts of one’s anatomy is not quite my idea of a fun time. As an aside, I am completely fascinated by the legendary ladies who go to parlours once in two days – they must have a particularly masochistic strain in them.

However, I am reconciled to the fact that since I am female I cannot go around with Chinese whiskers and a French beard. Also, all these conniving, waxed, metrosexual types shame one into the periodic visit. Thus, I go to the salon, once every month/couple-of-months/once-in-three-months/till-people-start-lending-me-burkhas.

So anyways, today was the day ( after procrastinating for a month) that I had decided I would groan and bear it like a (wo)man.

The next task was to identify the salon.

Now salons are like dentists. Once one is stuck with a half decent place, one doesn’t change unless under considerable duress. The salon people, like dentists are also equipped with various instruments of torture – so the old cliché of a known devil, is particularly apposite.

Thus, for the first few months after shifting to Pune, I stubbornly clung to the old salon in Mumbai. A few months of this and I regretfully realized that it was not always possible to manage a parlour visit in my quick trips to the city.

So we come to Pune, and I go to the highly recommended (and consequently exorbitant) famous-brand-salon. Famous-brand-salon is quite infamously mind-numbingly slow - painstaking they would have us believe, but really, excruciatingly slow. Each activity was carefully orchestrated and choreographed for maximum effect – the instruments were laid out, the napkins had to be kept in just that particular angle, the cotton swabs needed to be absolutely round – quite reminiscent or brain surgery rather than a salon treatment. I vastly prefer quick and brutal pain/death than the slow, lingering variety.

So that was the end of that.

Then I found another parlour quite conveniently located in the same building – reasonably, clean, quick and efficient – so that worked for a while. Then after a few months the lease ran out and they had to shift out of the place. I went to the new location for a while, but apparently the owner has not managed to pull in enough of her clients and none of the assistants are willing to go to the new location, so the place has shut down.

So we come to today - I search on the net and find one – suitably close to my house.

Go there; get all the painful stuff done and over with.

Then, as a belated birthday present to self and because I have been suffering from a niggling pain (from a bad catch) in the back which is just not going away, I decide to get a back massage. Something which I have almost never done in the past and after today, am pretty sure I will never do in the future.

So all is going well, there I am, feeling reasonably relaxed, the back pain is better, and am quite somnolent on the trolley.

And then suddenly - I find that the dame who is massaging me, is on the top of the trolley straddling me from both sides.

Promptly all traces of sleep vanish and the relaxed back muscles spring right back into the earlier knotted condition. At one point when she is trying to reach my neck - well, let me put it this way, if a divorce lawyer was to see us then, he would have had no hesitation in labelling it as er..a compromising position.

While this happening, one part of my brain is planning (wildly improbable) escape routes, another part is squeaking vocal but very ineffective protests (and there is not much one can do when imprisoned in that fashion by a muscular lady sitting on one’s back and shoving one’s face on the trolley) and another part of my idiot renegade brain is rolling on the floor chortling at my predicament.

Soon she is doing some form of convoluted dance meets voodoo thing which is completely surreal – which involves waving her hands a couple of centimetres away from the back which besides being definitely ticklish and uncomfortable is also plain damn weird.

Ah well. I live to tell the tale, with my er..honour intact. Back to shopping for another parlour. Sigh.

Que Sari Sari

I have always envied women who can wear saris effortlessly and gracefully. I have never been quite able to crack it. I can wear them. After about seven attempts and 41safety pins (a girl’s best friend), it can even look passably elegant. But if truth be told, I have never quite mastered the art and therefore, can never be one of those marvellous super women-types who just get up in the morning and glide into a sari without any fuss or tears.

My standard operating practise when confronted with a sari-wearing occasion is to

a) Avoid: Duck the occasion altogether (ah, wishful thinking)

b) Substitute: Give feeble excuses and turn up in a Salwar Kameez.

c) Sulk and comply: Throw tantrums, fret, curse, and then finally wear it (with the help of Ma or any handy female) with a martyred air and totter to whichever function. This, after turning most of the room upside down and getting into at least one spat (with the mother, – “WHY the HELL can’t you drape it properly-you have thirty years of practise?”/ “No I will NOT wear those rib-cracking-circulation-stopping blouses. I don’t care if people call it a tee-shirt. At least I don’t get asphyxiated ”/”Stick a pin there, and there and there as well, you missed that spot, OUCH!!!” or with the husband, “ hope in the next janam you are born an Indian woman and have to wear saris everyday” or the more pithy “Eff off”)

d)In a rare burst of enthusiasm, decide to drape it without any help and do so successfully. Only figure out that it has been arrayed in the mirror image of the more conventional left shouldered way after the mother goes into peals of raucous and unseemly laughter.

My first brush with the sari started somewhere in late school. Till then, I had quite successfully managed to avoid coming within lassoing distance of them despite the occasional traditional /teacher’s day scare.

Let’s forward to Class 9, Hyderabad.

Our much esteemed (!) and very I-know-which-side-my-bread-is-buttered-and-will-do-sell-my-grandmother-let-alone-these-useless-students-for-money Owner/Principal manages to get the school invited for some inter-state- competition. As a gesture of goodwill (to the rich dignitaries) and revenge (on the hapless female students), she mandates that we don costumes of the participating states and sashay down the grounds.

Some evil star prompts the organizer to allocate a Bengali sari to me. The Bengali traditional sari – the one which is the lovely red and white (Think Parineeta) which is distinguished by the fact that it has ABSOLUTELY no pleats in front. The same all-important-pleats which allow the wearer some moving and breathing space. This one is to be worn more like a crepe bandage- viz. just rolled around the wearer. Also as with the crepe, the key focus seems to be to restrict and impede any free movement (the dainty, femininity thing l I assume).

Definitely not the ideal way to initiate a semi-tomboy into the intricacies of the garment.

Somehow I manage to shuffle, waddle, and roll myself to the parade grounds with other similarly suffering schoolmates - accompanied by distressingly forthright commentary from the boys. Once there, we are told, that we need to perambulate the ground (which incidentally are flanked by er..nubile young jawaans).

So we all waddle, shuffle and roll some more, collectively stomping over and crushing yards and yards of silk and satin. During the course of this walk, my sari which seems to have a distinct mind of its own (quite typical of Bengalis?), decides that it has enough of me and valiantly tries to part ways. Fortunately, it meets with only partial success.

The Gujurati sari next to mine, decides to emulate the attempt and is much more successful (again, quite typical of the state? Hmmmm!). About seventy percent manages to sneak away before the wearer realizes that.

I did mention that we were flanked by nubile (?) young jawans didn’t I?

Let us discreetly draw a curtain over the rest of the proceedings.

Incidentally there is still a photograph of me in that damn thing floating around in cyberspace in-spite of all my attempts to destroy it. One of my moronic friends has become the self appointed guardian of my ‘street-urchin’ (as he calls it) look for eternity. Every few years he digs the photo out, sends me a sadistic mail with the photo as an attachment. Hmm, I really need to get new friends.

After this, I firmly stayed away from saris for the next three years until the twelfth standard farewell party. This was quite uneventful, except for the fashion atrocity of wearing puffed LONG sleeved blouse (the ‘in’ (sic) style) with a Guajarati pallu.

Undergrad was relatively simple. Traditional and sari days could just be avoided – as were rose days and friendship days (do they still have them I wonder, the friendship days were particularly nauseating as I recall).

Then we come to B-school. College brochures, presentations, inter-collegiate functions, mug-shots – all in saris, all fraught with much tension. The halcyon sans-sari days seemed definitely over. But on the plus side, I meet like-minded, sari-challenged friends. (Once, after a few nights-out-battling-insane-deadline-for-an-intercollegiate-competitions, we (four females) accompanied the sari-clad-presenter without realizing that it was draped on the wrong shoulder. Fortunately a friend (male!) pointed it out before she went up onto the dais).

After that it’s been a series of saris – cousins’ weddings, engagement, marriage, pujas so on and so forth. I suppose I am better than I was, but I prefer it infinitely more, when it is worn by other people.

This sari post will not be complete, if I don’t end this with an incident with a friend.

Just after she got married, she had to go to the in-laws for the first time as a bride, for a Satyanarayan puja.There she was expected to change into an appropriate sari for the function which she did and since she didn’t have the help of any friendly, known females. She asked her husband to help her pin the sari pallu together – which he did. Only being a male, he wasn’t aware that the pallu is normally ALSO pinned to the blouse – to keep it in place. Then friend goes to the pandal and does the sashtang pranam (prostration before the idol). Gravity of course, played out its part on the thick Kancheepuram pallu.

Apparently a lot of the younger folks of her husband’s family fondly recall her as the bride whose pallu fell down.

Ah well.

Twinkle toes.

Every time I come to work, I pass this advertisement for a “Dance Studio” which I am seriously contemplating joining.

People who know me in offline life and are reading this, will probably be falling off chairs and breaking bones after reading this earth shattering revelation (serves you right, you scoffers) or maybe calling each other up to discuss what has brought about this metamorphosis in me (Hmm. Probably not) .

Well, maybe they have a point. For a greater part of my young adult life (say between the age of 18-23, (round about the time I accumulated these scoffers), I excelled so much in wall flowering that I almost made it an art form. I had a problem for every solution they offered on dancing (I can feel my spinal disc slipping, angan tedha hai, I don’t dance to Hindi flllum music, my shoes- they, bite like the serpent and sting like the adder)

The reality was that all these people I used to fraternize with seemed to be the direct descendents of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Or Hrithik and Madhuri) – all sinuous moves and grace and light toes. I on the other hand, well, let’s say if you wanted to be kind, you could have compared me to a left-footed, coordination-challenged china-shop-Bull, high on fevicol, let loose amongst these graceful gazelles and dewy-eyed-does.

At 22-23, round about the time I started working, I improved slightly. It could be attributed to the fact that my then-super boss threatened to sack me if I didn’t get myself on to the dance floor. They told me I wasn’t half bad. It was probably all those nerves twitching at the prospect of no money, which they mistook for jazzy dance moves.

Fortunately I quit and ended up at a places where the bosses were male and more interested in making us dance through hoops IN the office (Boss No.2) or in the mythology of dance ( hyuk, hyuk, this last one is such a GOOD pot-shot at my erstwhile (unloved and unlovable) Boss No. 3. Such a pity no one will see it)

Then I got married. Husband dearest has a well, rhythm-sense, which seems to be operating on a frequency known only to him. So while he DOES dance well enough, he dances to a beat is in his brain, which is usually not even remotely in sync with the tone actually playing outside it.

So one COULD be forgiven for thinking one was watching a drunken rout of some sailors on an unsteady ship in a storm, if they happened to see us boogieing together.

So anyways, coming back to what I was saying. What has brought about this metamorphosis? This complete volte-face? This turnaround in principles dearly adhered to, most of my life?

Trigger number 1 – at the sister in law’s wedding party – there was this razzmatazz-type-thingummy where the dratted video camera has caught enough footage to make an Ashutosh Gowariker length movie of S trying to get me on the dance floor and me sneaking away from it. All it needs are some background tracks from Aaja Nachle and me yodelling ‘na, na, na, na, na, na. Dancing like a drunken sailor with friends is one thing, but to do it with a posse of in laws, not to mention a video camera, is something which I would gladly pass.

Trigger number 2- We were dragged kicking and screaming to some party where even the doddering centurions were waving their walking sticks in accompaniment to the beats while I was quietly (and unsuccessfully) trying to merge with the woodwork.

This stain on the reputation of the valiant descendents of la Cynique de Wonderlande cannot continue I have decided. So I shall either conquer dance, or dance shall conquer me.

(If I don’t come back with another post, chances are dance MIGHT have conquered me)