Daddy Long legs- old pyjamas and maggie noodles !

I know.. i can hear collective groans .. another review !! I just had to share this !!

Book name: Daddy Long Legs
Author : Jean Webster
Genre : Young Adult Fiction
Publisher : Penguin classics
Price :Rs.199
My rating : 4/5

I finally ended up reading Daddy long legs approximately 16 years after I resolved to read that book.I was in school and there was a mad clamour for Jean Webster’s classic.The queue for borrowing the book was so long that I shelved the book in the recesses of my memory as “To read Someday”.Comfortably forgotten,the book languished in the recesses until oneday,on a whim I decided to pick it up.. and boy,was i in for a treat..

Daddy Long legs is a beautiful story about a delightfully spunky and full-of-life orphan Jerusha.Jerusha or Judy, as she likes to be called is surprised when she gets to know that a mystery benefactor wants to fund her college education.In return, the benefactor’s only request was that Jerusha had to write a letter a month detailing her progress.So ,the entire story is in the form of letters from Judy to the benefactor,who Judy calls "Daddy long Legs"( because he has very long legs and thet is the only information Judy has about him).

Judy romps through college and there is sunshine in every word she writes.She aspires to become a writer and works towards the goal.She meets new people, makes friends, goes on trips and starts liking a man,eventually.Of course,there is a happily-ever-after ending.The book is ideal for light reading,with a few philosophical undertones creeping in occasionally.Mostly, the book is about everyday observations and activities of a highly intelligent and impressionable mind.

Energy and wit bubbles in the writings like some effervescent liquid.The letters are peppered with cute drawings that amuse you to no end.Absolutely lovable stuff !! .. I only wish I had discovered the book way back..A true feel-good young adult fiction.A bit of Trivia about Jean Webster…that was her assumed name and she was related to Jules Verne from her mother’s side.

4 stars from me for this classic!! .. I cant wait to dig into “The enemy”,Jean webster’s other successful novel.

Eureka !!!

A post that is not a book review,for a change ..

I love most words.Period.Long ones.Short ones.Esoteric ones.Difficult ones.Funny ones.Serious ones.The works.But,not all words ellicit the same amount of passion in me. I hate some- but not with enough gusto.I love some -again with not the same amount of passion.

For some insane reason i like the word Cuckoo..i think it's a fun word!!..Some more words i consider fun.. Jamboree ! and Juggernaut..Maybe i have a "J" fixation !!..Also, i love words that invoke a sense of "sound".. like "Thud" and "Bang" and "Lub-dub" and "Rumble" and "Tumble" and "Splash".. Ok,Lub-dub might technically not be called a word.. I love foreign sounding words .. Like "Rendezvous" and "Razzmatazz"..They conjure up images of strange lands and people.

I discovered today that i don't like the word "licorice"..The hatred isn't too strong or anything..Just a mild hatred.No offense to the word,though.I also have a mild hatred towards the word "Avuncular"..don't know why !! ..There are some words that are so uninspiring.. Maybe more than the word "uninspiring"..Like "Baking" and "word" and "Best" and "Good".I think "Bravo" is a more inspiring word than "Good".

I read somewhere that "MOIST" is one of the most hated words..There is even a FB group proclaiming this.. Well,Moist doesn't evoke hatred in me.. it just evokes an uncomfortable feeling .. Like,the way you feel,when on a routine visit to your dentist,you realize that your wisdom tooth has to be pulled out !!.. Uncomfortable,but not fearful.."Screech" grates on my nerves like a chalk piece/fingetnails dragged against a blackboard..

So,i am reading JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and i bump into this word .. JITTERBUG.. and for some reason ,my tongue insists on rolling this word around and around and i catch myself grinning.I felt like a kid in a toystore or chocolate shop..Whatever works for the kid !...Jitterbugging,i learnt later is a dance form that was popular in 1940's.A dance form that involved lot of action and moving around..the kind of word i would like,anyways..

What's your favourite word? Do you feel strongly about any words? or is it just me???

On a differnt note,Hope Salinger and Erich Segal's souls rest in peace.2 great authors.My only qualm,why didnt Salinger publish more ??.. more about that in my next post !

Liz rocks,and how !

Book name : Eat, Pray Love- One woman's Search for everything across Italy,India & Indonesia.
Author : Elizabeth Gilbert
Genre : Spiritual memoirs
Publisher:Bloomsbury
Price:Rs.350
My rating : 4/5

The book is sensual,spiritual,funny and serious all at the same time.This is probably the first spiritual memoirs i have read and i am not disappointed.Eat Pray Love chronicles Liz's journey to sanity after a very traumatic divorce.Liz takes a year off her "life" and decides to EAT,PRAY and LOVE. the book is divided into 109 chapters ,symbolically representing the Japa mala which has 108 beads.The 109th bead is for thanking the teachers.These 109 chapters are further divided into 36 chapters each devoted to the pursuit of Eating,praying and Loving.

Liz gallivants across Italy with the sole purpose of eating beautiful food.This part of the memoirs is very light and Liz's wit sparkles in the pages..Liz describes beautiful food and her hunger for gelatos.Funnily,the book reminded of the book Conversations with God.But,this part of Eat Pray Love is definitely more engaging and almost chick-lit-ish!.

The second part of the book was a little dense.The part in India,where she goes to pray.The humour that sparkled in the first half almost dries up,replaced by a serious narrative that describes Liz's struggles with taming her mind.She stays in an Ashram (edit: in the outskirts of ) Mumbai,scrubs floors,meditates,battles fears and demons and emerges cleansed.This is a boon for people like me who have 10 books about alternative religions with them,yet don't have the urge to read any of them as they are dense and tiring.Liz does compare notes about various religious ideologies.She seems so learned and spiritual at this point.

The final 36 chapters of the book deal with Liz's journey to Indonesia to find a balance between her spiritual-seeking and pleasure seeking nature.Yeah,that's where she meets the love of her life after almost one and a half years of celibacy.This part again is fun and full of interesting tit-bits on Bali's Socio-cultural aspects. Very engaging read.

All in all,a beautiful book.Hugely popular.Some critics have panned it saying that it has a very Chick-lit-ish approach to spiritualism.My take is that this is what makes the book what it is.. Funny ,poignant and yet serious.You can't help but like Liz and her motley group of friends at the end of the book.Wonderful book that lets us have a peak inside a troubled mind going to divorce.At the end of the designated year of eating,praying and Loving,Liz is rid of her negative thoughts and feelings about divorce. She doesn't however say that these will be kept at bay for ever as spiritual good health is something that has to be constantly strived for.If not given timely overhauls,the weeds will grow right back and draw you back to the negative circle.

I loved it.A book i would want to gift my best girlfriends(in the words of Julia Roberts!!).. A higly recommended read.

Rankin all the way !

A few days back,i somehow found myself in Landmark on a special mission.More on the mission later.. and ended up attending a book launch...Now,i have attended a few book launches in the past and have found that a lot of authors who are brilliant when it comes to the written word, turn wallflowers and subdued at launches. Nervous laughter and comments follow. Well,this one was so different.So super confident and articulate that Ian Rankin came across that i found myself warming up to the prospect of buying his books :-O!

A little bit about Rankin.. Ian Rankin is touted at one of the top crime fiction writers in the UK.His inspector Remus series is hugely popular and accounts for almost 10% crime novels sold in the UK.His novels are based in Edinburgh and graphically describe the criminal underbelly of the city.With more than 20 novels to his credit,Rankin was in the city for the launch of this new book,The complaints.I read his interview in the Hindu (open ed page)this morning and realized what a huge phenomenon he is !!.

I have never seen a better-handled question and answer session before.. Rankin was brimming with wit and his every answer had a clarity and earnestness that endeared him to the audiences.He also shared snippets about his life,work,opinion on crime,writing and sundry..His anecdotes were funny and there were several i liked a lot..

Rankin was talking about how his first 7 novels were huge failures and he needed a bestseller to just survive.He decided to write under a pseudonym and took the name -Jack Harvey.Rankin elaborated on why he chose this name.Apparently in the UK,books are arranged in such a way that the authors with an "A" surname found themselves on top of the shelf and the ones with a "z" surname at the bottom.Now,our smart author picks a surname that is not only partially the name of his son(first and middle name),but also ensured that he got his books placed at eye level,making sure that people picked his books up,leastwise to browse them!...Rankin also spoke about how there is a certain amount of intellectual snobbism critics and readers in general indulged in.Crime fiction is never perceived as Literature and is always considered populist. I think what he said makes a lot of sense .. I have often caught myself practicing this snobbery when i read chicklits/light reads.Put in his words.. There should be only 2 classes of books - Good ones and bad ones!.

I ended up giggling like a teenager at the end of the launch and bought one of his book(Black and Blue) just to get an autograph from him!.My first author-autographed book!.yay!!.Black and Blue apparently was the book that changed Rankin's fate and made him a bestselling author .The author himself mentioned during the launch that it was his favorite work till date,so i promptly bought it as i was intrigued about his writing. I am all set to discover another author..

I have to tell you about this mission which the hubby and I have set for ourselves.. A library with 1000 books in the next 1 year..We have just around 200 books now.So a long way to go !!.When i was younger,i was fortunate to discover many authors like PG Wodehouse & RK Narayan thanks to the books my father had collected.We'll hopefully be able to introduce our kids to such great authors someday!.

Review of BPO Sutra by Sudhindra Mokhasi

A compendium of real life BPO stories compiled and edited by Sudhindra Mokhasi. 150 accounts that gives us insights into lives of people working in the industry touted as one of the Sunrise industries in India.Sudhindra himself has worked in various BPOs for almost a decade and some of the stories are drawn from his own experiences.

The stories are mostly one-two pagers and make for a light time pass read.No deep insights or wit here.The stories mostly revolve around abusive clients,dumb clients,the shady happenings in a call center,the affairs and sexual harassment cases,insensitive bosses and the works.Nothing jumps out at you out of the pages and sustains your attention for more than 20 minutes. To be very fair, i did like a few stories in there..There was story where a supervisor goes out of the way to help out an old lady who is unable to use her credit card.The old lady asks for the Supervisor's address,to which the supervisor just gives here name of company and says that it was in India.A week later the supervisor is surprised to see a package for her in the mail.She opens the package to find a box of chocolates and a cute letter from the old lady.The old lady had taken the pains to figure out where the supervisor worked and had sent her the chocolates !.. sweet woman,no??

Several stories revolved around BPO drivers and adventures of Agents while onsite.There are lots of sleazy stories as well.For someone who isn't accustomed to such stories,this book might have seemed new and different.I didn't find anything new as the Hubby regales me with such tales almost everyday.Yeah,he works for a BPO.No,he doesnt take calls ;-)!.

BPO sutra also happens to be an online portal(Bposutra.com).There are forums for people in the industry to interact with each other.There are also mentorship programs,job postings and gyan articles about how to get it on in the industry. The second volume is in the pipeline and the author is looking for more stories.Do check the site for details.

Overall,a lacklustre book.Good for reading in short bursts.Ideal for local travel!.

My rating : 2.5/5
Publisher: RUPA
Price: Rs. 95

The name is Rajinikanth -Shoddy job!

Let me start this review with a disclaimer: I am not a huge fan of Rajinkanth.Have never been.However, i can't not acknowledge this Man's success.Affectionately called the superstar,Rajini has 69,000 fan clubs dedicated to him.Despite his average looks & acting abilities, Rajini has almost a "GOD" status in Tamil Nadu. I was curious about his life and picked up the book to get to know the "star" more!.

The book has been written by Gayathri Shreekanth, who prefers to be referred to as an ophthalmologist turned Writer. I can't fathom how the lady has the guts to call herself a writer.My hand itched ,wanting to correct the gazillion typo errors, misspellings,gross grammatical errors and horrendous formatting that the book is littered with..Throughout the book i wondered why the editor didn't try to make any corrections to the glaring mistakes.Either the writing was so bad to begin with that the editor gave up trying to make it better or that the editor was so bad that he/she didn't find anything amiss.

However,the writing style ,i must confess is racy,almost like a Rajinikanth movie.The book has more dialogues than what you would normally associate with a biography.The book's appeal is the extraordinary Rags to riches story of Rajinikanth,a story that has never failed to evoke sympathy and awe since time immemorial.After a few pages of nit-picking,I decided to forget about the almost-offensive grammar and concentrate of the tidbits and anecdotes shared in the book. That's when i found that the book was charming and that it was literally growing on me..Wasn't that how most Rajinikanth movies were?..Entertainment above anything else!.

Gayathri describes Rajini's childhood and his struggle to become an actor very well. Another aspect i liked about the book was that it was not an excuse to extoll the virtues of Rajini,but also tackled various negative aspects about him. I didn't know that Rajini took to drinking when he was very young(around 12years).His infamous nervous breakdown is also covered in great detail in the book.

I read somewhere that the book was written without Gayathri ever making a single visit to see Rajinikant.That does make me wonder whether the material in the book is mostly hearsay/googled!. However,several other co-stars like Siva Kumar,Sri Priya ,Kushboo and many directors have shared their candid opinions about him in the book.Though,the friendship between Kamal and Rajini has been dealt very briefly,more inputs from Kamal is ostensibly missing.

Little Shivaji's (Rajini's real name) naughty antics leave you grinning ear to ear and Gayathri has done justice to capture this part of the Superstar's life very well.It's when the story moves to his adulthood that things start getting muddled as the narrative bounces between time periods and gets as choppy as it possibly can.One startling aspect that jumps at you is Rajini's closeness with his friends.At every juncture,he has had friends who have supported and egged him on to success.How else can you explain someone with mediocre looks and talent become such a sensation?.It is also a well known fact that director KB(K.Balachander)'s magical wand was instrumental in sculpting Rajini's career and this aspect has also been covered in the book.KB has not only been a mentor but has also helped Rajini on personal issues (like the time Rajini wanted to give up acting,get a divorce and embrace sainthood).Rajinikanth's brush with spirituality is also broached upon in great detail.I expected more trivia about his working life ,but was not too dissapointed with the fare Gayathri had to offer.

The almost fairytale like story of Rajinikanth's marriage to his wife Latha also makes one wonder about various facets to Rajini. One one hand he is this rough,unpolished actor brimming with vices and on the other hand, he vows to unconditionally love and marry a college girl he barely knows.I was also surprised to know that at one point in time Rajini was considered highly arrogant and irresponsible in the industry.And,look how he has metomorphised into the most loved actor in Tamilnadu !.

Rajini's political ambitions or the lack thereof have also been elaborated in the book. I was amused at the power-play incidents between Dr.Ramadoss of PMK and Rajini outlined in the book.Several ego-centric incidents involving Jayalalitha and Rajini are also mentioned in the book.The most amusing one is when Rajini gets miffed when he is made to wait for almost half hour as the then-CM,Jayalalitha was traveling through that route. Traffic was piling up and people were made to wait incessantly. Rajini gets out of the car and stands in the middle of the road making people run frantically towards him to get his autograph.The traffic police go bonkers and don't know how to control the situation.Finally they hold Jayalalitha's vehicle and let Rajinikanth's car leave.

This book is definitely for hard-core Rajinikanth's fans-For people whom content would matter moreover form.As i finished reading the book i couldn't stop wondering how luck and risk-taking behavior has catapulted a boy who started his career lifting heavy gunny bags and sacks to a supernova beyond description.

A true phenomenon,who decidedly deserves a better written book!.

2/5 for the writing style
3/5 for the wealth of information it shares about the star.

Ok read. If you are a purist who insists on good grammar, please stay away from this book.If you like a rollicking,fun read with bad grammar,please go pick it up !;-)

Cocktails for three- Where's the high?

It's no secret that i love Sophie Kinsella's writing.As a corollary, i assumed that i would like Madeleine Wickham's writing as well.After all,it was by the same author. I wouldn't say i was entirely right. The writing styles are as different as morning and night. Whereas,Kinsella enthralls you with her witty writing, Madeline's writing is more restrained and mature.I haven't read any other Madeleine novel and might run the risk of over-generalizing.

Cocktails for three is about the lives of 3 young with-it women who work for a magazine in London and are best of friends.
Roxanne is a confident and gutsy young lady who has a secret lover whose identity nobody knows.Not even the other 2 girls.

Maggie is the capable editor of the magazine who finds it difficult to grapple with the issues of motherhood

Candice is the quintessential trusting,generous blonde with a troubled past.

The trio meet regularly at a local bar to gossip and catch up with their lives.Their lives change when, unexpectedly Candice's schoolmate turns up as a waitress at their favorite bar.The story is not exactly path breaking and is predictably tame.
Each woman has a different ghost to conquer and as usual the story is about how the women get their act together at the end of it all..Can chick-lits have an ending other than a "happily ever after"?.

I was a little dissapointed with the typecasting related to names.Do all Roxanne's have to be gutsy and spunky ?.Similarly, do all Candice's have to be blonde,unsuspecting innocent girls?.The book didn't make me gasp out of surprise at any point in the narrative.

That is where i realized that the Kinsella name hung about this novel's neck like a dead albatross. This book was not meant to have crazy twists.It was meant to chronicle the journeys of 3 young women who were battling 3 different situations. When i started seeing the book in this light,i felt that the book was not that disappointing.It was a standard Danielle Steele-type fare(sans the melodrama and copious amounts of tearing!).Despite the book being devoted to 3 heroines,all 3 characters are etched out well.

The emotions that the 3 central characters go through are also captured very well.However,some emotions like the insecure feeling that Maggie has when her mother in law tries to help her out or the one where Candice feels guilty about the families that her father ruined is a little grating on the nerves after a point as it gets too excessive.

Overall,its a decent read. Not as light-hearted or funny as i would have wanted it to be.If i didn't know that this was written by the same lady who wrote Confessions of a shopaholic, i would probably not judge it this way!.Definitely not my style of writing,but i have promised myself to read a few more Madeleine books to understand her style better.I would stick to Cecilia Ahern or Danielle Steele if i needed a non-humorous chick-lit fix !

Rating : 2 out of 5.

Ok,i have signed up for the Booker challenge and have decided to start of with Winner's circle where 6 booker winners need to be read in the next one year.. doable i guess..I have read only 2 books ,that too a long time ago.. needs a revisit!! List of winners..

2009 - Wolf Hall (Mantel)
2008 - The White Tiger (Adiga)
2007 - The Gathering (Enright)
2006 - The Inheritance of Loss (Desai)
2005 - The Sea (Banville)
2004 - The Line of Beauty (Hollinghurst)
2003 - Vernon God Little (Pierre)
2002 - Life of Pi (Martel)
2001 - True History of the Kelly Gang (Carey)
2000 - The Blind Assassin (Atwood)
1999 - Disgrace (Coetzee)
1998 - Amsterdam: A Novel (McEwan)
1997 - The God of Small Things (Roy)
1996 - Last Orders (Swift)
1995 - The Ghost Road (Barker)
1994 - How Late It Was, How Late (Kelman)
1993 - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Doyle)
1992 - The English Patient (Ondaatje)
1992 - Sacred Hunger (Unsworth)
1991 - The Famished Road (Okri)
1990 - Possession: A Romance (Byatt)
1989 - The Remains of the Day (Ishiguro)
1988 - Oscar and Lucinda (Carey)
1987 - Moon Tiger (Lively)
1986 - The Old Devils (Amis)
1985 - The Bone People (Hulme)
1984 - Hotel Du Lac (Brookner)
1983 - Life & Times of Michael K (Coetzee)
1982 - Schindler's Ark (Keneally)
1981 - Midnight's Children (Rushdie)
1980 - Rites of Passage (Golding)
1979 - Offshore (Fitzgerald)
1978 - The Sea, the Sea (Murdoch)
1977 - Staying on (Scott)
1976 - Saville (Storey)
1975 - Heat and Dust (Jhabvala)
1974 - The Conservationist (Gordimer)
1974 - Holiday (Middleton)
1973 - The Siege of Krishnapur (Farrell)
1972 - G. (Berger)
1971 - In a Free State (Naipaul)
1970 - The Elected Member (Rubens)
1969 - Something to Answer For

NEXT is what ??

Un-putdownable!!Yeah, i am talking about Micheal Chrichton's NEXT. I have always been a huge fan of Chichton's writing. I inadvertently purchased Congo 2 decades back (yeah,i am ancient!!) and discovered a superb author. Jurassic parks of the world have catapulted him into almost a Cult-author.Crichton passed away in 2008 and two more books have been published posthumously.We have indeed lost a wonderful author..

Ok,back to business... NEXT doesn't read like a normal novel. It felt more like reading about a bunch of startling issues and events related to genetics..Talking chimps,Transgenic apes, Bio-advertising, Gene re-engineering.. the list is endless..After a point,the narrative gets so absorbing that one finds it difficult to draw a line between fact and fiction.

Reviewing the plot wouldn't make sense as the narrative is interspersed with news clippings and research studies.I am amazed at how Crichton has broken down complicated aspects of laws pertaining to Gene patenting and woven it with a racy narrative. There is an elaborate author's note at the end of the book detailing his views on what is wrong with several things concerning genetics...mentioning just 2 of them which i thought were freaky!!

1.Gene Patenting: Currently, i believe the US laws allow patents on chunks of genes.These patents are predominantly owned by universities and corporates.Chrichton says that patents on more than half the genome and most diseases are owned by corporations.How can any company own a disease??.And because these corporations own patent on genes,it makes it very expensive for other researchers to work on these diseases and hence push up the cost of treating the disease.Corporotisation of researchers is a scary trend!.

2. Use of Human tissues- Chrichton cites several cases where blood samples given to universities for testing & research purposes have been misused and genes derived from the blood have been used to develop cell lines. These cell lines are sold to pharma companies for billions of dollars.Later,these corporation turn on their heels and insist that they own the cell line and hence own the cells of the donor. In effect,this means that a man does not have right over his own body ,but a corporation does because it has a patent on the cells derived from the body.

Several other startling incidents like the emergence of a new breed of artists who work with bodily materials for creating art has been broached by the author.For example,Berlusconi's fat (Italian PM ) which was liposuctioned at a clinic was made into a soap and auctioned for 18,000$ and was considered a work of art. yes this is real !!.. you can google it !.Since,gene recombinant kits are available online for several hundred dollars,almost anyone has been able to create transgenic species.. This is a scary thought !.As much as scientific progress is necessary,the sanctity of life is necessary lest we end up with rabbits with spikes and elephants with an exoskeletons!.

Do read the book for more.. !! Highly recommended!!

2 nd shot ! .. 100 shots challenge

Pimienta Pancakes by O Henry

I am of the opinion that O Henry never fails to deliver.Every story written by him has a different appeal . Piementa Pancakes is no exception .I am sure it will make people chuckle. It’s a funny story of the reason for a guy’s aversion towards Pancakes..If I say anything more about this story,it would be akin to letting out the spoilers ..Highly recommended read !

Catch this story at- Pimienta Pancakes


Useless beauty by Guy Maupassant

Another author I have read only as a part of school curriculum.I don’t remember being very taken in with his writing, but one cant expect much out of a 13 year old,can they?. This story by Maupassant is a slightly longish one and several times during the narrative,I felt myself slipping away and wondering whether this should qualify as a short fiction at all in the first place. Maybe,the meandering narrative was needed to make the plot more effective. It’s a story about how a Count loses sleep over speculation about a statement made by his lady.Several discourses on beauty and nature of human beings thrown in liberally.. I didn’t like it too much, but am sure this is not going to be my last Maupassant story for sure.

Catch this story at - Useless Beauty

Uncle Richard’s New year's Dinner by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I selected this story because I had never read this author and I remembered seeing a review of another story in one of the blogs.Montgomery didn’t disappoint me!. I belong to a school of thought that believes that short stories need to have a twist to be effective or entertaining and hence have not been able to enjoy many gems that don’t have a twist. Uncle New year's Dinner is a simple story that does not have any twists,but still manages to warm the heart and entertain.Another lovely Christmastime story.Do read this story !.

Catch this story at - Uncle Richard's New year's Dinner

Oh,the picture in this post is of one of my favorite authors !! any guesses??? ;-)

New year and yayyyy!!!

Wishing everyone an awesome year ahead.. may all your dreams come true and you & your loved ones be happy and safe ...I have no resolutions for this year.. no expectations or plans..just willing to embrace whatever Life chooses to throw my way...

100 shots of Short Challenge ..

I got to know about the 100 shots of shot challenge from Priya's blog and have decided to take it up.I am a huge fan of short stories,but haven't been able to read many these days as novels take up too much of my reading bandwidth.

The Challenge is a simple one – no time limit, no specific titles, just the goal of reading 100 self-picked short stories as and when possible.

I kicked off the challenge with 3 distinctly different short stories..

SHOT 1: The Gift of Maggi by O henry

I was introduced to this lovely story and author by my english teacher in my 8th standard..I have read this story several times in the past and each time the story warms my heart. It's a beautiful Christmas time story about gifting..Beautiful story,told in O Henry's inimitable style.Do read it !!

Catch this story at - The gift of Magi

SHOT 2: A telephone call by Dorothy Parker

I had never read anything by Dorothy Parker and was curious about the story after i read the review on Priya's blog.I wouldn't exactly call it a story ,but a short piece on the emotions a young lady goes through waiting for a phone call.I thought the story was very average and that the wafer thin plot was stretched beyond it's permissible elasticity.However,certain parts of the "story" were relatable!.

Catch this story at- The telephone call

SHOT 3 : How the camel got his hump by Rudyard Kipling

I have never actually read anything by Kipling on my own.I have read a few stories when i was much younger(part of school curriculum) and havent been really hooked on his writing..I really wonder how i missed out on lovely stories this author has to offer.As is evident from the title,this is a story about how the camel got it's hump.. It is soo adorable that you cant stop saying "Soo Cute !!".The story ends with a wacky poem.I am sure to read more of Kipling in the coming days .. !!

Catch this story at - How the Camel got his hump

Next update in couple of days !!! .. Happy reading!!

The cutest cupcakes ever!!

Seriously,the cutest stuff i have seen in a while!. What an ingenious idea!! Except for the snow globe,everything is edible..i can hear the "aww schoo cute !!". Merry christmas to everyone !!..

Image courtesy Bakerella..

Din chuck Din chuck ..

sunshine!!!!! ..yaaayyyy!!! my hindi playlist for today !!

Dreaming of..

A Cup of hot chocolate spiced with Cinnamon,a blueberry muffin and some of my favorite "December songs " are what i need on such a gloomy day !!!.. Actually not all songs have references to December/Christmas,i just associate these songs with December,for reasons unknown to me !

2 states .. the story of my disgust !!

To be very honest and fair,i think i don't know what to think of Chetan Bhagat's latest offering 2 states,the story of my marriage.I tried to read the book with an objective mind ,but somehow ended up getting pissed off at regular intervals.
I have never been a Chetan fan and the only reason i bought this book was becos of the price-95 bucks !!!

The plot is very relatable and racy and is all about how 2 people from very different backgrounds (and states) fall in love and strive to get married.So,why didnt it work for me? Let me first tell you what i liked about the book.. The book starts with Krish (the protagonist, a Punjabi) meeting and falling in love with Ananya,a south Indian in the campus of IIM(A).Chetan,an IIM(A) alumnus himself has captured this phase of the story very well.. The 10 pm cheap calls home,crappy hostel food,cooking maggi at night in the hostel,the palpable tension during day 0 of placements.. all these took me on a nostalgic trail.. but there were too many other things that just irritated me to the core!!.There is a heavy tamil-bashing undercurrent..actually,its not an undercurrent.. It's just all over the book.One starts to wonder whether all this is said in jest or whether our author has real deep rooted prejudices,especially since the book has supposedly autobiographical nuances.. After a point,it just gets excessive!!.

Now, i do realise that the success of a book like this would depend on the extreme characterizations of the parents and the 2 sides. Still,several parts of the book leave you with a bad taste in the mouth..Sample some of the statements the protagonist and his parents make ..

" These south Indians dont know how to control their daughters.From Hema Malini to Sri Devi,all of them trying to catch punjabi men" says Krish's mother.

" The tamil sense of humour ,if there is any is really an acquired taste."says Krish. Dude,i know more tamilians with a robust sense of humour than you have hair on your head!!

"The house had an eerie silence.A punjabi house is never this silent even when people sleep in the night".says Krish referring to Ananya's tamil household. Again,in bad taste.

"They sounded like long wails,as if someone was slowly strangled". says krish referring to MS Subbulakshmi's song. Now,dude you could get stoned in Chennai for a statement like that.

"We sat on the floor for dinner and ate on a banana leaf". They have gunpowder with sambhar our author describes as " sawdust mixed with chillies"(what Crap!!)!!-Like ,the plate is yet to be discovered in Chennai.A little hard to believe when the family is broad minded enough to send the daughter to IIM(A) and the said daughter has Pink floyd cassette at home. Just grates on your nerves!!.

" The spiral shaped brown coloured snacks resembled fossiled snakes".I am guessing he refers to the murukku. He also calls it bland.I really had half a mind to get myself on a flight and throw the book on the author's face.

"Tamilians love to irritate other non tamils by speaking in tamil in front of them. This is the only silent rebellion in their otherwise repressed docile personality". Says Krish. I am guessing the only repressed personality here is you,Mr.Chetan Bhagat.

The story is actually ok. Just that Chetan got carried away painting a horrible picture of tamilians and chennai.And sorry,i didnt do justice to this review !!
Our man goes on to bitch about relatives saying " These stupid biases and discrimination are the reason our country is so screwed up." despite spouting insults at tamilians throughout the book.

There are mentions of "horrible sambhar smells" &"chennai trainees avoiding eye contact ,especially when it comes to authority" and several other irritating things.. Like there is an instance where Ananya takes him dancing in the afternoon and the disco plays Rajini songs.. how conceited can someone get !!! An auto driver enroute to his place stops in front of a Rajini cut-out to pray.. Now,dude .. this is the max i can take !!!

I could just go on and on about this tasteless book..If this is what "best selling " authors in India can churn out, i am better off reading books by obscure people!!.Every word reeks of commercialism and looks like it's been written to get scripted into a hindi movie.. I will be surprised if the Yash raj stable doesn't grab the rights for this book !!! despicable!! Oh,did i mention that there are digs at Citibank thrown liberally..

Because this is more of a rant than a review, i am not filling you on the story. 3 out of 4 people i know wanted to bash chetan's brain out after reading this book.To think that there are more humorous way of tackling a subject like this makes me wonder about Chetan Bhagat's writing prowess.

I read it till the end to figure out how much Chetan could grate on my nerves and must say that he doesn't miss a beat. I am still seething !!.

PS: Pls read this book and let me know what you think !!!..






"

Yep Paaa..

This post is an ode to TR..Love u,TR!!!.. What is entertainment without you????.. ..what fun!!!

Image courtesy Nautankey..

The black Tuesday..

I am addicted ...and big time!! First it was the mafia wars ..I would be seen in the wee hours of the morning fighting fellow dons (along with sleep!!).. Things got so extreme that the hubby started calling me Don BB.. Then,as abruptly as it started,the desire to run away to Cuba to start new fights abated...The aftermath of Mafia wars is that i have a new found respect for gangster movies.. So much of thought and intelligence(!!) goes into a hit !!!

Despite status messages that warn people from sending me other game requests on FB(i threatened to go into Don BB mode in real life),i started getting requests for Farmland,fishville,yoville and several other Villes and Lands ... There is a nation of jobless people craving mind numbing entertainment..One fine day, when my rotis were refusing to puff up and there was no relative of methanol to drown out my sorrow at being a domestic-fledgling, i took to farming ( farmville,for the uninitiated).

Initially, i repeatedly made it a point to insult people who farmed online calling them sissy.. little did i know that the horses,pigs ,turkeys and sugarcane crops would be closing their claws on me..Now,hubby greets me with Howdy farmer when he comes home from work..The saddest part of all this is that couple of my friends who *obviously* don't have a life(like me) ask me pointers on how to get to the next level quicker(just like cheat sheets of the era of computer games ).. I am a pretty accomplished farmer with an amazing farm to boot..Every morning,even before i move on to other "essential" actions,i have to check out my farm and farm a bit.. The mind numbing clicks (aka plowing,planting and harvesting)are strangely soothing on the nerves..

So,when a few days back(BLACK TUESDAY!!!!) ,the Farmville application shut down for 24 hours,i almost had a nervous breakdown .. 24 hours without my beloved animals and plants.. what kind of a nature loving person lived like that ..Despite a few deadlines to close out that day, i managed to log into FB atleast 25 times to check if my beloved farm was up and running .. It was pure,unadulterated torture.. i snapped at people and ignored phone calls that did not revolve around farmville.. and was almost on the brink of becoming a loony bin..

After many hours of pacing and prancing and cribbing,a disaster was averted..
12.42 AM Still unable to sleep,i get an SMS from a fellow-farmer that the farm was up .. YAYYYY!!! .. Farmville ended up saving me from a visit to the shrink!..

Some fellow addicts bonded and the chennai Chapter of Farmville Anonymous was started..The FA does not aim to wean us from our farms(we love to commune with nature!),it's a non profit organization founded to give moral support to members when the application goes bonkers and decides to shut down(how dare the darn,dumb programme do that??).. oh,before you ask,the admission to FA is by invitation only. A panel of 3 experts (yours truly included) will review the farm and evaluate the farm on 5 parameters-

1.Animal satisfaction measure
2. Plant satisfaction measure
3. Decorations to plant ratio
4. Layout and Vasthu of the farm
5. Yield and other statistics

Ok,did i tell you that a goodluck plant i have at home is struggling to stay alive .. apparently, i don't water it everyday!!!who has the time,anyways !! ;-)

Bringing up Vasu - Bringing down the house !!!

I had blog-hopped and Landed into Parul Sharma's blog a few weeks back . Some of her posts were very articulate and funny.. I had to buy her book - Bringing up Vasu,that first year !!! Buy, I did.. but, I wasn’t very sure whether I would relate to it.. Stuff about bringing up a child- something I know nothing about.. The book opens with the protagonist (Mira) delivering a baby in a hospital.. The first few pages are slight dampeners, in the sense that they are in no way indicative of the roller coaster ride that follows..A spunky protagonist,mis-matched set of friends,hen-pecked but sweet husband and a weird mother ensure that there is enough drama to be milked ..

Mira gets into motherhood to realize that having a baby is no joke.. The endless poos the baby subjects them to,cleaning up after the storm,feeding every few hours ,lack of sleep & energy… and more . She also gets fired from her job as her maternity leave status makes her a sitting duck when her company gets taken over. To make matters worse, her mom has to leave town to take care of her ailing aunt and the nanny decides to desert her to get married. Grappling with the prospect of “no nanny”,”no career” and 80 kilos, Mira struggles through the demands of motherhood.. There are many weird characters & situations that are thrown in to add to the spice …A lot of issues Mira faces are very relevant to even women without children. Like the way she reels with jealousy when her nit-wit friend gets promoted and becomes the AVP,Mira says that she doesn’t care about the job,it’s the perks that her friend will enjoy that really rile her !..

More than anything, the book is a coming of age story of Mira, who battles against all odds to become “Supermom”.The book offers a sneak peak into the life of a young mom who is faced with myriad of emotions .A snazzy chick-lit that entertains and is full paisa vasool.. I am thinking people who love Sophie kinsella’s self deprecating humour, would totally love this book to bits !.. Go buy the book,I say!! ..At 250 bucks,it‘s a decent read !!

The Edge..

I am not a poetry person and cant appreciate deep poetry(make that most poetry)..Also, i am never very comfortable or at ease while writing a poem.. Recently someone was reviewing the stuff i had written and told me that irrespective of whether the piece was prose or poetry,there was a common theme.. and that was hope. I was shocked as i had never thought about it. I always had thought of myself as a pretty versatile writer. When i went back to some of the pieces, i did realize that what she said made perfect sense..I realized what it meant to have a myopic vision when it comes to things we create!! ..

So,here is an attempt to sound different from my normal self.. it's a poem and i hope that "hope" is not the underlying theme..I am trying to get better at writing poems,so do let me know if you know any sites/aids that can help me..

I will smile
Till the shadows of sorrow shroud me
Like an ominous cloak.

I will dance
Till my shoes can take no more
And their tatters litter the floor.

I will sing
Till the nightingale hushes up
And silence echoes in the valleys.

I will paint
Till the colours fall off my palette
Like dried leaves on an autumn day.

I will run
Till my knees buckle
From old age and rheumatism.

I will write
Till the words clot
And refuse to flow.

I will struggle
Till I learn to love and give
Without a blemish in my heart.

I will live
Till the soul bleeds dry
And the life‘s breath ebbs out of me.

Travails of a Freelance writer

This was written roughly a year back when online freelance writing was what i thought was ,my destiny..People who know me would also know that my destiny keeps changing every few months.. A year later, with "0" articles published online, i think i am fairly qualified to say that sending snail mails to magazines elicit more response than wanting to get published online ..this article was published 6-months back in the only magazine that accepts my junk every month ,Eve's touch..My life's ambition still remains writing a book.. a funny book.. it must be a lot of work ;-).. someday,guys!! now, read on..

“Writing jobs” : 10,600,000 pages on Google
“Free lance+ jobs” – 1,670,000 pages on Google
“Free lance +writing jobs”: 4, 37,000 pages on Google

Surprising, huh? That’s how big the free-lance writing market really is. Supposedly.
I am always a tad suspicious of the net, what with the anonymity and accounts of weirdos on the prowl, but that didn’t deter me from donning my googling- hat and exploring the vast tracts of writing related money-making ventures on the net. What follows are my (mis)adventures in the land of milk and honey(it’s the Internet, of course).

Day 1 : A very Excited me. After all, I came across thousands of testimonials of people making money, writing on the net. I ended up registering myself on at least half a dozen sites, which offered to pay me based on number of hits on pages..After several hours on the net, I had successfully created profiles on most sites. I was feeling a little tired, but was confident that the time spent would be totally worth it as I was soon going to become a famous-freelance writer. That night I dreamed that I had become a huge writing-sensation, free lance online writing sensation, of course…

Day 2 : No hits on any site I had registered for . No mails. Nothing. Just a mail reminding me to fill in my PayPal details..For all the money that I would be getting once I started getting assignments. Gosh, how had I forgotten that?. So, I got myself a free-paypal account.

Day 3 : Nothing .” Be Patient” I told myself. All geniuses take time to get discovered. I was still getting the same “writing sensation dream”..
Day 11 to 9 pass in a haze. Haze of many permutations and combinations of the “writing sensation dream”.

Day 10 : One comment on my article. My heart skipped a beat. Was it somebody commissioning me to write something after reading my thought-proving article ? Alas, It just happened to be my friend leaving me a message to keep writing … That night ,my “writing sensation dream” was slightly off-colour.

Day 11: I decided maybe the sites took time and started looking for writing jobs incraiglists. I patiently responded to 50 posts with the same copy –paste template of my profile and checked my mail at least a dozen times that day hoping for responses ( It’s Day 40 and I still haven’t heard from any of those advertisers).

Day 12 through 20 : More googling, more registrations.First signs of helplessness started creeping in.

Registered for mailing lists ,hoping to get to know the latest news in the world of online Free-lance writing. These mailing lists have faithfully been spewing out information that I find utterly useless, not taking me even a step closer to my goal.

Day 21 : Frustration. Despair. Just when I thought I would give up, someone suggested I check Orkut for Postings. That’s where I stumbled upon Dheeraj Makhijha’s (name changed, of course) Post. He was looking for free lance writers.I promptly mailed him on what I could bring to the table. Surprise.. Within a minute of mailing, I get a message asking me to add him on Gtalk ..

“Yipeee!!” Maybe I was going to be a free-lance writer, after all. So I added him. And waited…Everyday Dheeraj would get online and I would wait for him to talk about the assignments he had , but he just never responded to my messages.

Day 25: Just when I had given up on Dheeraj , a message popped on my gtalk .

Gtalk transcripts interspersed with my thought bubbles…

Dheeraj Makhijha Says : Hi

My thought bubbles: Wow!! Perseverance pays ..

Dheeraj refused to reveal any information about himself, but wanted my name, location and all my details. I told myself employers were like that, even in the virtual world. He didn’t ask me anything about my writing experience and only wanted to know whether I could write 5 articles everyday…

My thought bubbles: 5 articles? Whoopee.. Maybe, I could try…
Dheeraj Makhijha says: So, do you know about Copyscape and other rules of online free-lancing?
My thought bubbles: I froze. I had no clue what Copyscape was and I was in the middle of an interview. Thankfully , there was google. So I logged out of gtalk and frantically googled Copyscape and logged back in after I had enough dope on it.Atleast, enough not to sound like a first-timer.

Me : Sorry I got cut off. Yeah I know about Copyscape.

Dheeraj Makhijha says : Then you must also know that like most other companies , if copyscape catches more than 3 consecutive words on any other pages, your article will not be accepted by me .
My thought bubbles: What if I had to say “ Go to Hell”. That should definitely get caught on Copyscape. Am sure a million people say “Go to hell “on their web pages .Does that mean their articles weren’t original? It Made me speculate on whether Shakespeare would have cleared our Man’s stringent “ 3 consecutive word rule”.

Me : Yeah no problem (Faking it like a true professional . As If I knew the industry inside out). So what do I have to write about ?

Dheeraj Makhijha says : Anything under the sun. No Adult and explicit stuff,of course.
Me : So what is the target audience we are looking at ?
There was no reply for almost 10 minutes and then ..
Dheeraj Makhijha Says : Don’t think so much. Write what you want.
My thought bubbles: Maybe I could do that. Not think too much and just write about anything. Nice, flexible boss.

And then, hesitatingly..
Me : So how much do you pay for an article?

My Thought bubbles : I had to be careful. Talking about money too soon could put off employers. I am in this for the love of writing and not for money, I told myself.
Dheeraj Makhijha Says : $ 2 per 500 words, if found satisfactory and if it clears Copyscape.
My thought bubbles: $ 2!! No way!! Even if I did end up writing 500 words, the possibility of it being seen as an original seemed very remote..Maybe I could bargain.
Me : Isn’t that too less?.( Trying to sound experienced). I know many sites that pay $ 10.
Dheeraj Makijha Says : Well , that’s what I pay and a lot of people work with me for that rate . It’s your call.

And he logged off. Just like that. Abruptly.

What does one do with $2? Did Dheeraj realize that the chat with him alone cost me $2? Heights of cheap off-shoring..

I still don’t know what to make of the countless testimonials on the net, scheming to lure unsuspecting people into getting “Online-writing sensation” dreams. Someday, if I do become an online-writing sensation, I’ll surely write another article chronicling my journey, for sure.

Yeah,husbands are like that !!

When it rains,it pours..i was just referring to my verbal diarrhea these days.I realized a few days back that its been a while since i had a decent dig at the Hubby on the blog and promptly decided to remedy the situation..Hence this post.. what purpose do husbands serve, if they are not made fun of in their Wife's blogs??..

Our man, now ,is a great shopper. He has a great Shopper's acumen and knows exactly what the wife wants for birthdays,anniversarys and assorted other "wannabe" occasions like Valentines day,Wife's day,Children's day (!!)and so forth ..Now, what more can a woman want??..except that she would have preferred a perfume instead of a copy of "Terrorism in Srilanka and it's sociological implications"!. Sociological implications -my left foot !!. How is that even remotely related to my birthday??.
Reminds me of times when i have recycled gifts (totally inappropriate ones like -wall clock for a 14 year old and jewel box to a guy !!) to unsuspecting souls just because someone else recycled it and dumped it on me .. Think of the life cycle of such recycled gifts .. fascinating ,i say !!. and yeah, i know what you are thinking .. i am shameless !!..I know a lot of you reading this post are shameless as well !!!own up,people!

Hubby is a sharp fellow otherwise.. He has some fancy degrees and all. He even claims to have a decent IQ(not that i verified it before deciding to tie the knot!) .. but when it comes to the gifting department he is like a toddler with a teething trouble .. umm,so the terrorism debacle was a few years back..Last year,he gets smart and buys me collected works of Roald Dahl ..I was impressed .. Now, i wouldn't say that i am too much into the Roald Dahl genere of writing .. but, i was flattered that he bought me something which i would someday consider reading and the only purpose of that book would not be furthering hubby's library collection.. So i sweetly tell him thanx and all .. and he tells me " yeah,that's ok.. i just wanted to buy that book for myself ,you see. One stone,2 birds". Gosh, this man is unstoppable !!!

So, every time some occasion looms in the horizon, i tell him beforehand what i want , lest i end up with books on apartheid,sociological implications of organic farming and other "really important issues" that plague the world ,as he puts it. I am content reading about Becky's adventures (should i say misadventures??)in Shopping and other mind numbing literature..In fact,we have agreed on separate libraries when we move into our house next year.. Can't imagine what my copy of pride and predujice would feel sitting next to " Banker to the poor" and books like that..What a sham(e)!!

Whenever hubby travels, he is often bombarded with requests for liquor from shameless people. Our home,on weekends is a glorified TASMAC for some really sad( read shameless) souls who think that it's cool to discuss materialism & jaded lives with a glass of bootlegged liquor or sometimes, local toddy.We lead such sad lives !!!. yeah,judge us !.. So this time, i preempted all the other drunkards and told hubby to get us an Absolut and "something else that's not a tequila"..Little did i realize that i had made the biggest mistake in my drinking history..So, I am all excited when he comes into town expecting some exotic drink which i haven't tried before and he proudly tells me " I bought that absolut you asked for and guess what else.. a bottle of tequila !!! .. Arent you proud of me ?? ". Oh, yeah, i am !!. You are priceless. We just happen to have 2 unfinished bottles of tequila which nobody even wants to touch... I am soo glad that this 3rd bottle of tequila is going to join those 2 other poor basta*$ and age away to glory.. We will probably have it for our 50th anniversary.. Then, he wouldn't have to look for a book & can gift me this famed bottle of tequila !! smarrt booy!!! i knew i married right !!.. 2 birds,one stone, again !

Moral of the story- Never let the hubbies take any decision... they r not built to handle all that jazz!!..Thrust your decision on the man and don't take no for an answer. Sulk and pout ,if you have to.. whatever works for you ,gurls!!.. and secondly, I have realized that fact that the attention span of a male(especially the married variety) is 2 seconds.. cram in all the information in those 2 seconds..It doesn't really help if Katrina kaif is sashaying in the background,though!! .. Husbands,i say !!

Sunshine's out,yeah,yeah !!

oh yeah .. am back.. contemplation is for losers..why bother?? ..anyways, i have this habit of spinning/imagining exotic stories about people i don't know too well ..Not that i don't enjoy spinning stories about myself.. i do that too .. a lot !!.. when i was in school i vaguely remember telling kids every year that my dad was getting transferred to some foreign country.. Ok,every year it was a different place.. Canary Island(i have no clue how i knew about this place when i was 10,but i did!),New zealand,Australia .. the list was just so long .. Whenever i changed schools, which was quite often,it was time for the yarn to be out .. and i would spin stories to that could put weavers to shame .. i am amazed how some of those girls i spun such stories to, are decent friends today.. they must have thought that i was a certified weirdo ..

I am fairly ashamed(!!)of myself of being a borderline Voyeur.. ok ,in a way i was .. which sane person imagines weird stories about people they barely knew?...i would wonder about their lives ,relationships,what they wore at home,what shows they watched and weird stuff like that .. when i was a kid the stories obviously were a lot more colorful..now they r slightly boring and staid..limited by an adult imagination..

Once, a cousin and I called ourselves investigators(we had business cards and the works !!)and went around the neighborhood trying to trace a local cleaner who stopped coming to our house to take out the garbage,one fine day.We named her Neelu posi which means water is flowing(i think!) in Telugu..we named her that cos her standard opening line to everyone was .. you guessed it .. Neelu posi !. .. We thought that someone had murdered her... There were so many wild theories we had for her disappearance.. We somehow forgot to think of the fact that the lady was well over 70 and her disappearance could simply have been a case of relocation to another part of town or simply death due to old age... We never found what happened to Neelu posi(We were such sad investigators!!) and the case is still open .. anyone who is interested in investigating her disappearance, let me know, will give u the case notes..So what if they are at least 20 years old !!

Just remember .. The truth is out there !! :-)

ummm..eh?

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home...

Sometimes,i wish i weren't so complex...why couldn't i just ..
goto work.crib about no time.cook inedible dinner.crib some more about work.sleep.go back to work..

Options and decisions.. goals and dreams... happiness and contentment..So,whats the point?..of everything ?

can't ever keep from falling apart
At the seams
We'll try to stay blind
To the hope and fear outside
Hey child, stay wilder than the wind
And blow me in to cry
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone

Who am i? really ?what do i believe in ??Am i who i think i am ? .. Whats the whole point,again ?

I'm torn
I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel
I'm cold and I am shamed
lying naked on the floor
illusion never changed
into something real
I'm wide awake and I can see the perfect sky is torn
you're a little late
I'm already torn

So much for WTF post for the week.. make that the year !.. Gosh,this is a weird frame of mind to be in ..

I wonder how
I wonder why
Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky
And all that I can see is just a yellow lemon-tree
I'm turning my head up and down
I'm turning turning turning turning turning around
And all that I can see is just another lemon-tree

I'm sitting here
I miss the power
I'd like to go out taking a shower
But there's a heavy cloud inside my head
I feel so tired
Put myself into bed
Well, nothing ever happens and I wonder

I must tell my brain to shut down for maintenance..For it's own good ;-). Ok,i dunno why that smiley got in there.. this is supposed to be a serious post!!..I dont blame you if you don't understand anything..I don't get a lot of things myself..

Note(s) to self: I mustn't read pseudo-intellectual stuff..unless i am able to assimilate it and/or ignore it as a pile of Crowshit and move on to making inane conversation about finalists of So,you think you can dance or the plot of Blue or the soaring prices of vegetables these days ..I must'nt wonder about people or try to decipher why they do what they do.. I mustn't try to decipher why i do the things i do ...I must'nt think about what people who dont matter to me think about me.. Neither should i kid myself by thinking that what they say wouldnt hurt..Oh yeah,it hurts..I shouldn't dream about what it would feel to be non-dysfunctional.. I should say Fu*k off when i feel like saying it.. even if they are to be directed at someone elderly and especially so when they don't give a fiddlers fa*t about what i feel ..Why did God have to create relatives???..Just to be a pain in the wrong area and most importantly to keep judging you .I must learn to ignore what they say,anyway !

I do realize that its one of "those" days !

NUMB.KAPUT.I MUST SHUT UP NOW.VOKAY,OVER AND OUT!! DUH!

Clutter -De Management !

Does anyone remember this show called crystal maze?? well,my house is exactly like a set of crystal maze.. To navigate the guest bedroom one has to jump over bags of bric brac, chocolate supplies, bags of clothes in various states of unuse( yeah,some salwars don't have naada , some have a tear,some have been abandoned for reasons not known to mankind.. I have around 50 different taxonomical classifications,you see), dabbas with God knows what,cassettes,cds,books,bags, boxes filled to the brim with papers and bottles and of course the usual suspects.. a couch,a computer table,newpaper stand.. Now,sometimes it does cross my mind that i am abusing a poor lil 70 sq ft space..How can someone cram so much stuff into one lil patch? well,ergonomically it can be done.. and i have a master belt in that !!

For the curious minded,The Guest bedroom is called that cos Hubby and i delude ourselves into thinking that someday human beings might actually want to inhabit that space.. As far as any guest accommodation goes,the couch on the living room is the most hospitable space at home..more hospitable than even the bedroom!..That's not a random observation.. something someone actually told us !! .The poor lil bedroom is crammed with more stuff,of course!! ..there are bars of chocolates,papers,papers ,more papers (god knows where they come from !!!) and all kinds of junk.. My maid finds it an ordeal to jump over these packets of Happiness & materialism and tells me everyday that i should be moving out and looking for a new house ..!! huh !!!

So,thats what we are gonna do..We have a lot of memories(good and bad) in this house.. and though it might not be a palace,its a place where a lot of changes happened in our life.. Maybe,that's why we need to find another place..I would have to start with de-cluttering as much as possible.. Now,thats going to be an ordeal .. How does one throw out the empty bottles of Johnny walkers and study materials on Credit crunch,which are no longer useful to me ? ..sigh!!!...tough times ahead !

The bookworm returns..

This post was supposed to be continuation of part one of up goes the finger ..but decided to save myself from all the expletives and decided to write about something that i have been doing a lot lately.. Reading books..Voluntarily took a week off from work and have been indulging in books.. Nothing serious.. all candy floss and fiction mostly.. I did want to tell you people about this amazing author i came across - Jonnathan Kellerman.He is a clinical psychologist turned best-selling author.I had picked up a book( Called The conspiracy club) at a sale and really didn't know what to expect.. The book turned to be a page turner and i ended up borrowing another book by him. Lots of insights into the human psyche and the disturbed mind.

The second book that i read(Obsession) was even more interesting as it was a reverse-Who-dun-it,if there is a word like that. Basically,right from the beginning ,we know that someone's done the murder,but we don't know the victim.I thought that was an innovative format. I used to be a huge fan of Irwing Wallace(i might still be, the only reason i say was is because i don't remember the plots of any of the books i read..This was at least 10-11 years ago!).

People have told me that he does indulge a lot in trashy,titillating writing , but somehow i managed to cut across all that and like his stuff.. Seven minutes was a book i really enjoyed. If you ask me the plot,i might not remember.Some books stick to your brain that way. Same way i don't remember much about Roark ,but till date i think Fountainhead is on the top of my favorites. Needless to say, i don't entirely agree with Ayn Rand's philosophies, but that book stays on my top favorites (even though i don't remember the details of the plot!)

Enough rambling for today!!. Hope atleast next week i get some work done !!

Up goes the finger.. in the tune of "pop goes the weasel"

Nothing for 2 months and then 2 posts in a week .. i surprise myself at times..i have wanted to count the number of times i felt like showing the middle finger at a unnecessarily honking vehicle and i did it yesterday !! ..I actually showed the "famed finger " at a few guys and got mobbed... read on ,if you want to know about my life threatening escape !!.. there's a lot of analysis and pseudo-intellectual stuff(not to mention a few sad attempts to sound funny ) .. read at your own risk !

Agenda: Count the number of times Self felt like showing the Middle finger at really irritating motorists

Anti-social behavior pointers and analysis"

1. "I have a million deals to sign in the next one second guys"- Honking commences right the same second the signal turns green.. Losers!!!.. Million deals, my foot ! All they want to actually do is to go home and watch "kyun ki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi".

2. "You Cant overtake me - I have more wheels!"- These guys (typically tourist vehicle drivers) cant stand a two-wheeler that overtakes them .. they have to create a cacophony that will leave you deaf..

3." I got the flags - Gimme way " - Another irritating ilk. These jokers think just because they have a flag that has slight political overtones fluttering on their cars , people have to give way.. Guess what losers?? .. i don't care 2 hoots about your stupid party that has just 2 members and a pink flag to boot.. Try honking at the Lok sabha and they'll throw u out !.. or maybe they wont...Sad state of the country !

4. " Zip,zap,zoom.. machaan ,that babe looked at me!"- stop zipping in and out of the roads trying to impress women on bustands , buses and assorted places where coy women can be seen giggling with their girl cronies ...Losers !!! get a life.. better still, a date !

The Count begins ..

The route : Distance of 8 kilometer on relatively crowded main roads.

The Machine: A poor, worn out Dio , that is waiting to be euthanized.

The Observer: Me

The journey : The observer had just pulled out of her garage when a speeding bike cut her off forcing her to almost ram into an old couple .. She got cussed at and promptly uttered the first set of expletives...along with a show of the famed middle finger .. Count 1

The next 2 minutes were uneventful as she was caught in bumper to bumper traffic leading to a main arterial road. She was starting to wonder how civilized her city had become.. Lo !!! the jeep behind her started honking.. The signal was red and she was reminded of the cornetto ad that was aired not-so long ago where a car keeps honking at a red signal and people around imitate the motion of a bird .. She however ,showed her middle finger and used tamil cuss words. The driver almost got out to bash her up. Thankfully the signal turned green and she fled for her life !! - count 2

She had to take short cuts to avoid running into the jeep guy.5 more minutes passed in blissful panic and she realised that she was being followed ..

.. To be continued.. hee hee ;-) ..

on a slightly different note, i discovered quite accidentally that someone who used to work in my team has actually starred in a movie...and is regularly appearing on film shows giving rehearsed speeches on how he got into the industry and spouting trivia like favorite food, hangout,what colour he liked and stuff like that .. thinking about the times i have hollered at him for not doing his numbers/ not wearing a tie, i can feel the unpredictability of life .. so surreal !!! This guy is a local celebrity now ..(ok i exaggerated ,a little.. he was the hero's friend in the movie.. but still , the movies!!!).. I should ask him for an autograph right away !!!;-)

sniffle.. achhooo!!!

what do u call a common cold of right hemisphere of the brain ??? well , i have had this ailment for a while and i am praying that it doesn't end up becoming a full blown infection thingie..i haven't written anything new in the last few months.. and am beginning to wonder whether i remember how to write at all !! words r clotting and refusing to flow out onto the screen ..but life's been really good .. interesting times , must say !!! hee hee .. am i grinning ear to ear?? .. now, why would i want to do that without any reason .. ??try getting wet in a refreshing spay of rain and u'll agree with me .. achooo!!!.. lemme get back to my inhaler now !!!

Mini-Pattabi rocks !!

This is the story of a tamil family and the glory that their son bought to the tamil community ... Husband, Pattabi was working for an IT company as programmer and wife,ambujam was the admin incharge at an MNC. After 7-8 years of hard work, Pattabi got promoted and was transferred to the US( bay area ,of course). After several years of wedlock Mini Pattabi was born.

Mini Pattabi grew fast and was exceptionally intelligent for a kid his age. On his first day in grade four ..

Mini pattabi's teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history:--Who said 'Give me Liberty, or giveme Death?'"

She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Mini-pattabi, who had his hand up. "Patrick Henry, 1775."

She said.” Very good! Who said 'Government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the Earth'"?

-Again, no response except from Mini Pattabi. "Abraham Lincoln, 1863.", said Mini Pattabi.

The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed. Mini Pattabi, who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do.

This riled the class a bit.

At that point, a student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke".

The teacher glares and asks "All right! Now, who said that?"

Again,Mini Pattabi says, "George Bush [Sr.] to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991."

Now furious, another student yells, "Oh yeah? S**k this!"

Mini Pattabi jumps out of his chair, excitedly waving his hand and shouts to the teacher, "Bill Clinton, to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!"

Now with almost a mob hysteria someone said, "You little s**t. If you say anything else, I'll kill you."

---Mini Pattabi frantically yells at the top of his voice,"[California Congressman] Gary Condit to intern Chandra Levy 2001."(The teacher fainted.)

And as the class gathered around the teacher on the floor, someone said, "Oh shit, we're f**ked!" ---and Mini Pattabi said, "Americans,... in Iraq,2004!"

PS :This is obviously a very popular joke and several versions can be found on the net. No offense to Mini pattabi and family.. Am sure they are a hardworking family and wont mind me trumpeting their son's exploits..I hope the joke was half as funny as i thought it to be ;-)

Freeassociating ..

Being the typical gemini that i am , i tend to think a million thoughts at the same time.. my mom tells me that my mind is like a monkey .. jumping from a branch to another .. i like to think of my mind as a butterfly.. flitting from a flower to another..my butterfly searches for happiness and purpose of its own existence..When my mind works like this monkey/butterfly thing , why should my blog posts be sane .. this post is going to mimic what goes in my brain in 10 seconds ..
A joke that i read sometime back ..

Hubby - You always carry my photo in your handbag to the office. Why?

Wife - When there is a problem, no matter how impossible, I look at your picture and the problem disappears.

Hubby - You see, how miraculous and powerful I am for you?

Wife - Yes, I see your picture and say to myself, "What other problem can there be greater than this one?

hee hee !! now since ,everything happens visually , this joke gets over in a few seconds in my Brain-dvd. No wonder they say that a picture equals a million words ..

why should people spew anger,negativity and bad vibes at others ? .. life is short, shudnt we be having fun, laughing and cracking bad jokes to torture others ..Actually,i was fairly confused about some issues.. but suddenly the fog lifts and now, i am really wondering why i was confused in the first place !!Its funny how priorities suddenly fall in place ,when you least expect them to .. Happiness is the only priority ! anybody/anything that belittles you or others /makes you cringe and twist in your tracks needs to go out of the window...

I haven't written something half decent in a long,long time.. the rust is literally falling off the keyboard..

Just 10 seconds up.. If 10 seconds can hold so many thoughts,its not very surprising that i am so confused in life.. for that matter,i am sure most people have around a million thoughts running in their head ..

i am in awe with the creator .. how did he stumble on the idea of creating human beings ?

whats keeping me away from the blogs..

A new love's ensnared me ..
Sorry, i have been missing out on reading all your blogs
Last few weeks have been hectic
a fun trip to Mumbai for a workshop
Loads and loads of chocolate-related shopping..
A train journey after a long long time
New friends and renewed belief in goodness in human beings
Discovery about self- that i cant keep myself entertained always.
A promise to visit all your spaces soon ;-)

OOOOO.. the culprit !

Ended up FINALLYYY watching usual suspects last evening .. i know ,for a movie freak like me , its strange how i havent seen some really critically acclaimed movies..this post isnt a movie review..sometime back a cousin of mine (who has this habit of telling unsuspecting people endings of movies let me and several others in on the "twist in the tale" .. We tried to block out what he was saying by stuffing our ears with our fingers and making guttural,nasal noises to drown out his monologue..The clever bugger suddenly stopped talking , so we assumed that he was done with his atyachaar..how naive we were !!! .. we stopped droning.. all of us pull out our fingers as well and .. voila! the bugger tells us "who actually dun it" .. The point of me telling you all this is that .. its really weird seeing a movie when the spoilers have already been floated around.. You start giving special meaning to every dialogue and glance that the " culprit" sends your way .. and with this movie , it was even more confusing cos it zips in and out between the past and present ..so finally after 1 1/2 hours, i decided that there was no fun in watching it cos i already knew what was gonna happen.. Its like reading the last page of a novel and trying to work backwards .. i must try that sometime ..

Wurst ad in recent times ..

Officially my 50th post .. god only knows why it's taken me soo long for this half century !! .. The other day i was watching some program and a flurry of crappy ads were unleashed on me .. and surprisingly,all of them were HLL (oops Unilever India) ads..the most notable(notorious!) among them was the one for Hammam .. don't know if its the same ad that gets beamed across India .. but this ad had a mother ( a severely irritating one at that)getting agitated and imagining things ( like her daughter losing confidence , developing rashes just because she forgets to tell her to buy hammam..).. she runs out of the house to stop her child .. one would think that there was some emergency looking at the concern on the mothers face .. the ad ends predictably with the child bringing her "favorite"bar of hammam .. The mother thanks her stars that a disaster has been averted ! .. Cheesy as hell !!

We were taught never to underestimate the intelligence of the customer at b-school .. but HLL ads consistently dumbs down it's customers.. One of our visiting profs , who was also involved with the HLL accounts long time back (i think O & M was servicing them then.) told us that HLL did that because they didn't want the ads to be bigger than their products..well, then why advertise at all..they might be able to cut down on media planning costs by just displaying ticker messages during programmers ..what happened to "Lyrils" of the world..As much as i hate admitting it , Lalitha Ji ,is an icon .. and collective psyche of Indian middle class still remember Lalitha ji, despite her grating on nerves..

One of my favourite ads in recent times is that of coca Cola .. the one where 2 teens sit in a library and the coke flows from the bottle to a glass drawn on the girl's hand .. incredibly ingenious ! .. i am not a coke fan ,and might never ditch Pepsi after seeing this ad .. but i liked it and it made say "wow" and isn't marketing about "wowing " people ? ..I don't consider myself a purist .. but ,if ads have to exist , they might as well be creative and fun !

I wish people making ads, wouldn't dumb us down ..i might not want to buy your product because of your ad.. At least, i wont crib about it on my blog ! .. what say ,guys .. whats your least favorite ad ?

Cant get this out of my mind!!

Love this song .. been humming this for almost 2 days straight and cant seem to get it out of my mind !! .. *bows to gulzar*.. actually love this movie too ..

tujhase naaraaz nahii.n zindagii, hairaan huu.N mai.n
o hairaan huu.N mai.n
tere maasuum savaalo.n se pareshaan huu.N mai.n
o pareshaan huu.N mai.n

jiine ke liye sochaa hii na thaa, dard sambhaalane ho.nge
muskuraauu.N to, muskuraane ke karz uThaane ho.nge
muskuraauu.N kabhii to lagataa hai
jaise ho.nTho.n pe karz rakhaa hai
tujhase ...

aaj agar bhar aaii hai.n, buu.Nde.n baras jaaye.ngii
kal kyaa pataa inake liye aa.Nkhe.n taras jaaye.ngii
jaane kahaa.N gum kahaa.N khoyaa
ek aa.Nsuu chhupaake rakhaa thaa
tujhase ...

zindagii tere Gam ne hame.n rishte naye samajhaaye
mile jo hame.n dhuup me.n mile chhaa.Nv ke Tha.nDe saaye
o tujhase ...

Rain God.. Please visit us !

Everywhere , people are writing about rains.. Wish we had some rains too ...My ode to the rain gods ..

Delicious smell of the wet earth
Tiny rivulets of water flowing around the ankles
Making paper boats and floating them across in the muddy waters
Splashing water on unsuspecting souls
Getting drenched in the rains
Riding a bike with the wind swooshing and rain pelting down the back
Pitter patter sounds of rainfall
Colourful rainbows playing hide and seek
Jet black umbrellas bobbing on streets
Schools,colleges and offices closed !
Reading a book with hot chocolate
Snuggling under covers and sleeping all day


Ok, i was obviously abstaining from mentioning wet soggy clothes, weird damp smell on clothes and everything ,leaky ceilings ,a zillion creepy crawlies making your house their abode, my favourite white kurtas getting splashed and stained with mud,clothes refusing to dry, craving for the sun ater incessant rains, not able to go out cos of water..

Still,gimme Rains anyday .. !!!

One of those days !

Sometimes u just wake up on the wrong side of the bed.. and everything irks you .. the watchman ringing bell at 5:30 to take the car out or the fact that your maid hasnt turned up despite repeatedly telling her to come on time..sometimes, You arent even sure what irks you .. there is just an unpleasant , morose feeling hanging in the air .. at those times even your favorite chick lit or food or movie doesn't cheer you up..Nothing does ! .. You end up lashing out at people whom you love ..and sometimes, there is this pointlessness shrouding your every action.. You wish you wouldn't feel that way.. You try to shake it off by trying to bury yourself in chores .. but that feeling doesn't go away.. Sometimes,you are so blue that you dont feel like picking up that call from your closest friends mainly becos its too much of an effort to talk ..Sometimes, there is a huge wave of panic and irritation welling upinside you , that you are scared that it would devour you and make you even more miserable ..Sometimes the most innocent remarks grates on your nerves..and you wish people wouldnt keep reminding you of your age ,job that you quit, biological clock and stuff like that.. and at those times you feel like telling them that its your life and you will darn well live the way you want to .. And sometimes , you wish you were 16 and footloose..I am footloose , but its not like when i was 16 !!

I think its one of those days :-(..

Inputs, brickbats,ideas pullleess..

A few posts back i was talking about starting something on my own ..i need inputs and suggestions from you'all cos we are running out of ideas :-(.. Pullllesss !

Ok, initially we wanted to start a handcrafted chocolate parlour.. but looks like Vitamin M aint cooperating .. so tis has to be without a brick and mortar entity.. Product range would involve liquer chocolates,nut chocolates, pralines, ganaches and flavoured chocolates.. mostly molded ...Looking at gifting and personal consumption markets..

The biggest hurdle for us is finding a distribution mechanism cos we wont have an outlet .. any ideas??. This problem is compounded by the perishability factor .. esp for the liqueur chocolates.I am also looking for a graphic designer for designing logo et all (again becos of scarcity of vitamin M ,he/she has to be reasonable ! :-()

Any pointers,help,contacts are appreciated! ..

The yoyo ;What goes out comes back in ..

Ah, well.. words are refusing to flow ..still too lazy to comment on blogs.. Lazzeeee !!! .. Gosh , Chennai is hot ! .. Kulir 100 Degrees is horrible. Dont watch it !.vacation was Sooper. Package tours suck.Realised that i am more of a culure-heritage junkie than a beach bum... have always wanted pink-reddish tanned skin ..Tanned beyond recognition.. Correction .. Charred and blackened beyond recognition..I love the Brit accent !..This post is getting disjointed beyond belief .. I must stop !... Good to be back ! :-)

Being your own boss .. Part II

Sorry folks, i haven't been replying to your comments ot visiting your blogs .. just that i was in the middle of quite a few things .. still cramming for the exams ...and preliminarily started chalking out some plans for a business i am planning to start ..sometimes they say , you feelgood about something in your bones .. i think i finally have that feeling.. no amount of balance sheet preening, presentations and client visits have given me this sense of purposefulness..

i don't know whether it will work.. I dont know whether i have the guts to stomach the risks involved .. i don't know whether i have the skill sets required to run the show ..i do know that i have to try ..Too early to let the cat out of the bag ..idea is still at drawing board stage.. will unveil more details in couple of months .. cos next one month i am going to be really tied up ..Till then have fun,be safe and stay beautiful !

Being your own boss !

Several times in the past i have had the entrepreneurial itch..and every time, i chicken out and shelve the urge..mainly cos it scares the living daylights out of me. Being your own boss definitely is exciting , but is also a lot of responsibility.You can choose to slack off for a bit periodically if you are working for someone else.You can bitch about your boss if you are working on Sundays and finally get the work done.. You obviously cant do all that if you start something on your own .. it's your baby 24*7 and you are your own boss! .. and that's a scary thought ..There is also a risk factor associated with it, especially if you are investing most of your savings in it ..

A while ago, i was doing some research and came across a good site for people who are interested in becoming franchisees for good brands ..The site lists out opportunities to become franchisees for companies like Coffee day,Fitness one , Baskin & Robbins,Dollar store and many many more..

What's more..the site also sends a feedback to the principal company if you need more info and the companies directly get back to you in 1-2 days with their service propositions, cash flow break ups and all that jazz.. Opportunities range from a investment as low as 2 lakhs !!.. interesting ,huh ?..the site also gives dope on franchising industry and pointers for successfully running businesses..

Do check the site out ..

http://www.franchisebusiness.in/

North East West South

You wont believe it ... There are 22 news based channels that Tata sky offers as a part of their basic package .. I wouldn't want my affairs getting too current !.. Incidentally, all i get to watch when i go home is News..Dad ends up seeing the same news item at least 5-6 times a day .. and i keep wondering ..why is it that i don't feel that itch to stay informed !! What's with men and news?

On and on i ramble !

A lot of times people tend to assume that since i worked at a bank i must naturally know everything there is to know about banking..like features of 0 balance account for NRI to current deposit rates..during those times .. i feel a little helpless and a tad ashamed that i am not being of any help to these folk who think i would be of help/provide info.. The only times i have been to my own bank (branch)in the 4 odd years is only when i have had to take care of my own personal transactions,which haven't been much..

I probably belong to the first generation in my family to prefer not wanting to go to a branch to get my work done.. My parents still go through the rigmarole of waiting in queues to withdraw money and getting their passbooks updated meticulously every week.Not surprisingly, they know more about deposit rates than i do !.. I know this doesn't sound very flattering , but in my defense i simply never got the time to walk into the branch to learn general banking operations !!

I have been taking some time out to close the gazillion inactive SB accounts that dot various banks in the city.. remnants of salary accounts of my working life..Visit to one particular bank got me thinking ..Well dressed associates lounging in branch , chatting and joking with each other.. I suddenly missed being employed.Especially missed my old job ..Our team used to hang out quite a bit even socially.Crib about bosses and talk shop a lot .. it was fun..Most of us have moved on to fresh pastures or quit .. but i feel the camaraderie even now .. What fun times !! .. coming back to the associates..they almost seemed like clones to me .. similar clothes,impeccable grooming,measured mannerisms and speech.. kids these days,i say !!..

India Inc sure is kicking and kicking back hard at that .. That brings us to bottom line .. i ramble quite a bit,eh ?

What's in a name ?

some people just insist on making your life so much fun by just randomly existing.. A friend recently was sharing the quirks of working in the IT industry and what he shared was supremely funny .. here's what happened..

Apparently,my friend(lets call him S) was put on a project in which he was having to interact with someone onsite (US, i think) ..Our man, S brushes up on his accent and desperately tries to acquire one thinking that he had to somehow impress this guy with a heavy accent ,who called himself Sammy. They interact on a daily basis and one day S really wants to know who Sammy is .. He checks in outlook ,but doesnt find anyone with that name.. finally,he asks another collegue based onsite and gets to know that our Sammy is none other than .. Mr. Maadasaamy from Luz corner !!! ..

I couldnt stop laughing when i heard this .. Someone else also told me that a collegue of his named Jagan Diwakar preferred to be called James D'walker .. how ingenius and fake !! ..ok one more .. Krishnamachari Varada into Kris Var !! haa haa ..Folks, i am sure each one knows atleast another such item .. plss share !!!

And one another thing .. doesnt maadasaamy sound like a milkman's name ??

Shake,shake,shake it !

You have to check this out.. This dude infuses vodka with skittles (i think marblez is the indian version).. and apparently this drink is a rage..i don't quite fancy overly sweet drinks or cocktails .. but then each to his own ! .. read more on it on ..

http://mixthatdrink.com/skittles-vodka-tutorial/

The site also has good dope for budding bartenders and cocktail enthusiasts...

Oh,yeah .. i baked my first cake yesterday and am mighty thrilled !! .. it wasn't much of a looker ..u gotta start somewhere !!..

Now,this is funny!

A cute forward that left me in splits ..

A Woman Parked Her Brand-New Car In Front Of Her Office Ready To Show It Off To Her Colleagues. As She Got Out, A Truck Passed Too Close And Completely Tore Off The Door On The Driver's Side.

The Woman Immediately Grabbed Her Cell Phone, Dialed To Police Station, And Within Minutes A Policeman Pulled Up. Before The Officer Had A Chance To Ask Any Questions, The Woman Started Screaming Hysterically. Her Car, Which She Had Just Picked Up The Day Before, Was Now Completely Ruined And Would Never Be The Same, No Matter What The Body Shop Did To It.

When The Woman Finally Wound Down From Her Ranting And Raving, The Officer Shook His Head In Disgust And Disbelief.

"I Can't Believe How Materialistic You Women Are," He Said. "You Are So Focused On Your Possessions That You Don't Notice Anything Else."

"How Can You Say Such A Thing?" The Woman Asked.

The Policeman Replied, "Don't You Know That Your Left Arm Is Missing From The Elbow Down? It Must Have Been Torn Off When The Truck Hit You."

"OH MY GOD!" Screamed The Woman. "Where's My New Bracelet?????????"

Confessions of a binge-eating shopaholic

Old post again..just no motivation to write these days with all the cranium shattering number crunching that's "supposedly " happening in my life .. Writing my exams in KL finally decided on vacationing in KL and Langkawi ..looking forward to the travel more than my exams actually..;-).. 60 days to go !! There were other places we wanted to check out in Malaysia , but we didn't want too much travel in 1 week and are sticking to the obvious choices.. If anyone has any inputs on places to see in Malaysia , pls do drop me a line ..


Statutory Warning : old post !

All my credit cards are confiscated and I am grounded.. whine !!!!!

No clothes for another quarter !!… Well , things we women have to put up with …

So … I somehow got myself to do some serious heavy duty cleaning(whine, whine.. i hate cleaning ) ... Not the dusting, wiping, polishing kinds. My mission was to discover clothes that I knew I had , but somehow they had mysteriously disappeared from my life. I have always been a hoarder. I hoard all kinds of things.. Chocolate wrapper, sea,shells, books, bags, accessories, anything actually … but mostly
clothes.

And this is what I discovered after raiding 4cupboards, 3 lofts and 9
cockroach sightings later…


I have 32 pieces of clothing that are 3 sizes too small for me currently , 25 pieces that are 2 sizes small , 21 that are one size small and another 17 that are too skimpy for my taste, which i'll never wear . These represent the obsessive compulsive shopping disorder that's taken over me in the last 7 years. If you ask me, honestly ,the trend is great… I have actually reduced my consumption over the span of 3 sizes. …but , the bottom line is pretty straightforward …firstly, these clothes are totally useless currently to me and secondly take up so much space that I might have to move out of my own house to accommodate the next pair of useless t-shirts.


So, I came up with my million dollar idea.. I joined a gym to take of those extra inches. I decided to do this the "corporate" way .. and got myself a new vision and mission statement , which will put even the Ambanis to shame ;-) ..



Vision statement: " To rediscover the new slimmer and make male heads
turn"

Mission statement: " To Reduce 3 inches(minimum) of my waist and if possible revive all those shelved clothes".

I know a mission statement can't this ambiguous. But what the heck !! it's my mission statement..I can write in un-English for all I care.


After hundreds of kilometers on the treadmill , tons of weight lifting(actually I've been slacking off on the weights.. what girl wants manly biceps and cuts??) , liters of sweat, prying eyes of women slyly checking out my treadmill speeds and comparing it to theirs ,sweaty and stinky hand rests and 60 hours of pure agony … I have actually , horrendously put on a kilo and half .


Everybody's conspiring against me - the universe, my gym machines,and my traitor body... Phew..Now, my instructors tell me that I should actually start giving tips to people who want to put on weight. Apparently, in the history of the gym I go to , nobody's gained so much weight in a span of 1 month.. that too , after working
out so much .

Now , I am a shy and withdrawn and stare blankly at damp ceilings. All because I was denied a basic need. How is a woman supposed to survive without new clothes every month and credit card?. I am not too worried though…

On the working out front, they say there is a thin person beneath all that flubber. Maybe someday I'll just melt 3 inches and metamorphose into a "slim me "and then I can wear all those hoarded clothes.. Till then all I have is …HOPE
...

This post was written almost 6-7 months back.. I stopped going to the gym cos i find them really boring and monotonous ..my weight-woes haven't left me yet ..but things r looking up!!

The Game of Life ..

If you thought this was going to be a serious post cos of the title ..think again .. No way !!! I am battling this horrendous writer's block , so It's old post time !!...

This is the tale of my illustrious real estate career and assorted other interests.. In my humble opinion, I've built them all …libraries, workshops, ramblers (have to look up that word in the dictionary), colonial homes, estates, coffee shops and parks. After a lot of hard work, I've raked in a colossal $ 10,201,400.
Do I smell something burning??

Now, that's easily my career best. Well, I've been practicing becoming a real estate tycoon by playing "Build a Lot" lately. And it's taken me almost a week to perfect the game with the kinds of odds against me.. For starters, I can get only one hour free trial download from each gaming site.

Then there is a problem of finding enough sites that have thisgame. I've reached a point where I have downloaded every free trial available on the internet for this game. I've also used 4 other email addresses and 2 other computers… and now I don't have any other option, but to buy this game.. Now, that's bit of a problem,cos my
credit and debit cards are all gone , thanx to my shopoholic nature ..

Similarly I've scrounged the net for several other no-brainer games..What I am about to share with you are rare gems of wisdom, which ideally would have been handed down to my daughters , their daughters, their sons and so forth …But since I happen to be this really generous and nice person, I have decided to share my secret de-stressing
no-brainer free games on the net. Nothing is more enriching (?) and rewarding (?) than these games at the end of a stressful dog-eat-dog day in the merciless corporate world.

Read on.. You can thank me later…

My top-5 no-brainer type Net games..

No 5. Hidden objects mysteries games where amongst an assortment of junk, we need to find an apple or a knife or something hideous like a missing tooth. I've never actually solved any mystery completely though ,cos i guess the gaming companies would go out of business if they let me do the entire investigation(read as find all then arcane,mundane,stupidly concealed objects) in one hours time.

No 4. Noah's ark type stuff.. Actually I don't remember the name of the game, as I had started my gaming career with this amateurish game where similar looking animals have to be linked up by creepers before the water fills up the ark …Don't miss this game cos it has the most adorable pigs and hippos in town..;-)

No 3. Bejeweled type games.. Where you have nice, popping, colorful gems that go "clink,clink ,clink" when you make clusters out of them... This game is as arbitrary and random as games can get. It does also give you a sense of achievement of deftly letting the gems go "clink ,clink, clink". In reality, most of the "clink, clink, clink" is not in your control- It happens quite randomly...Nice music though,
especially the "clink, clink, clink" sound.

No 2. Monopoly type games.. Nothing like plain vintage monopoly for expensive time pass like buying up Newyork city or building 3 houses on California ...

And No 1 , as you would have guessed already would definitely go to Build a Lot type games where unlike in real life I am actually a multi-millionaire.

Through these games you can also get to do a lot of things you can't be in real life. I've been a Wedding planner, Cook, investigator, ancient traveler in second century BC, rich tycoon at the roulette table or a Restaurateur.. Just name it and I've done that. Plus If I have a not-so great gaming session, I can always get back the next day and do the same level again. Just save the game and get back when
things are a lot better… That's my take away from all the mindless gaming I've been indulging in… If today's not your day, come back tomorrow and take on life from where you left it…

"Alt F –S" and "Alt F- X" today, if you are down
Double click game of life tomorrow at dawn
And live happily ever after…


Ps: Since i am bankrupt(also read jobless), please donate money to help me buy
build-a-lot on the internet.$ 6.99 only and you can bring back happiness into my life ..You can transfer the money to ABN Amro A/c ***********1908 .. Thanks in
anticipation ;-)

Das Ka So!

I think this is the shortest title ever in the history of this blog ..
The other day we were really bugged sitting at home and wanted to catch a movie badly. As usual , we always feel this way at the eleventh hour and being a Saturday , we had no illusions of getting a ticket. So, we saunter into Inox , find the booking counter omniously crowded and almost give up on getting a ticket , when this decent looking gentleman(we’ll call him Ramu) comes up to us strikes up a conversation with hubby .

Ramu: Saar, you want tickets ?
Saar: Yeah !!!! .. Do you have tickets ?
Ramu: Yes Saar. 100 rupees per ticket
Saar: Isn’t the ticket 120 bucks? How come you are selling for 100 bucks ?
Ramu: Illa Saar(No, Sir), 10 rupee ticket for 100
Saar:Too much. I am going to be sitting in the 2nd row and paying 100 bucks .. 80 bucks ok ?
Ramu : No saar, I have other customers. 90 bucks. Final.
Saar: Ok , Fine . I’ll Take it . But, won’t the seats be too uncomfortable?
Ramu: No Saar. The seats are similar to 120 bucks seat. 1st 2 rows have to be sold at 10 rs as per government regulations.
Saar: Oh, ok! Tell me something,how did you get 10 rupee tickets?
Ramu: I come here at 5 in the morning to buy all the tickets for the day.
Saar: Oh ok .. Happy selling.

Later when we discussed about Ramu’s business model,what we stumbled upon had us gasping for air. Let me elaborate..

First a few assumptions(which might be true also .. but our calculations are approximate!)

- Assume that there are 2 rows of 10 seats each in a theatre. That gives us 20 seats
- Assume that there are 5 screens
- Assume that there are 4 shows for each screen

That gives us a total of 20*20(400) tickets to be sold in a day.
Now each ticket costs 10 bucks .

Outflow for Ramu (if he buys all tickets) : Rs. 4000

If Ramu sells a ticket for 80 bucks(avg out ) , his inflow will be 80*400 = 32000 bucks

Assuming that Ramu operates on 60% capacity, he will manage to get 0.60*32000 = 19,200 bucks. Ramu probably has to pay of people and lets assume that 30% of daily earnings is paid off as bribes .That leaves Ramu with 13,440 bucks .
Even if Ramu works for 3 days (Fri-sat –Sunday), his earnings for the week would be 40,320 bucks. That’s 1,61,280 bucks per month . Tax Free dough!

Even if Ramu does get hauled by the police for selling black tickets, he would have to pay 25-30k for bail and will still clear over a lakh a month !.

How do u like Ramu’s business model ? I heard he is selling rights for the Wednesday and Thursday slots .. any takers?

Idea Copyrights owned by Bedazzled and HooHaaHaa.Royalty(10% of net earnings) to be paid to copyright owners if anyone becomes Ramu's associates. ;-)

Dude,where is u r underwear ?

I dont understand most Art. The other day a friend was
trying to explain Importance of cubism in the History of Art and its
ramifications on Indian Culture..The only word i understood was Picasso.. I am so Culture-challenged!!.

The closest i have come to appreciating and reproducing art was when i traced out a picture(using butter paper!!) for my school magazine. And they didnt even publish that !! ..That's how bad i was at art !! It's a different issue that a cousin who used my idea and butter paper to trace out another design got his published
... Life is so unfair!!

Ok, now back to what this post is actually about..When i was in school Dad got me this T-shirt from Rome- The land of liberated people.. I am all for sporting Phoren T-shirts.. What better way to show off to friends that your dad was a globe trotter and that you belonged to the elite crowd that wore only phoren tshirts ...

Alas, fate had different plans for me .. The t-shirt had this dude who was, ahem .. not fully clothed. I mean he was baring it all. This dude obviously (in a state of trance ) was trying to reach out to another clothed-old dude and somehow forgotten
to slip on his underwear and pjs before the meeting..This t-shirt arrived in my life at a very impressionable age when the mind is filled with a lot of why's, how's and what's. I could have chosen to shrug of my embarassment , but somehow chose to blush when i showed off my phoren goods to friends who came over home.

This t-shirt gestated in my wadrobe for almost 2 years , when mom threatened one day that if i didnt wear it , she would use it for wiping the kitchen slab.. so, we convened a meeting to discuss to implications of giving up my nude-dude t-shirt.The convention went on and on for hours with us debating the pros and cons of commiting such a horrendous act.

" How can you treat art as rag cloth?" Asked a friend.

" Michelangelo would turn in his grave" Emphatised another. That's when i got to know that the painting was by Michelangelo.

Finally a Kind soul suggested that we paint an underwear on the nude dude. Till date , i think this girl has the aatma of Michelangelo. Its a different issue that she sold out to commercialism and designs shrink wraps for a living !! So, our friend paints a white contraption on the nude-dude.

Another Kind soul suggested that the Contraption looked like a "langot"(loin cloth)
and that we should be more creative. The least we could do to a masterpiece , she said. So, another sweet soul painted pink polka dots on the Said-Langot making the former nude-dude look like a gay dude.. (oh , yeah we knew what gay meant those days!!)..

Finally satisfied with the handiwork, it was decided that i wear it to an outing the following week...Wear i did, feeling really nervous and sceptical.

" Dont worry , di.. nobody knows art. None will know abt the nude-dude."quipped sweet michelangelo's soul , trying to reassure me.

We walk into the movie theatre and this guy (must have been in his late 20's) looks at me

" Nice T-shirt. Isnt it supposed to have that guy in the nude?" He said Grinning ear to ear.

People told me later that i blushed the colour of Tomato.Though, i think its difficult for someone of my colouring to blush a tomato red !.

Ah, well.How was i supposed to know that the nude-dude painting was that famous..!!That was the last time the nude-dude t-shirt was sighted...

The things that we do in the heat of our youth ;-)

How Random Do u want me to get ?

Yipee .. i got a new blog template... black and white, incidentally happen to be my fav colours !! The darn thing didn't support all my old widgets and hence lost my jukebox. Also had to painstakingly construct my blog roll ..
Shayari tagged me a while back on 25 random things about me..Copy paste effort from FB..Here goes...


1. I hate creepy crawlies of any proportion and refuse to coexist with them.
2. I have started to enjoy cooking lately , thanx to Mallika badrinath.
3. I am idealistic beyond belief and think i take myself too seriously at times.
4. I dig humour in any form - on legs,in books .. everywhere..
5. I wish i had money to buy all the books in the world.As a corollary dream too much..
6. Insincerity and disrespect for other's time puts me off
7. I love the smell of wet earth after a summery shower.
8. As much as i love sunny days, i love to read a book with a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day..
9. I am lazy and a routine-postponer
10 I love children and want to start a creche someday.
11.I love cinnamon in anything edible.
12.I think illayaraja is GOD and the only GOD there is
13.I get unconfortable talking about myself and prefer listening to people talk.
14.I love pretty things , blue things and pretty blue things like blue china, blue skies ..
15.I can spend hours looking at the waves splashing against the shore.
16.I love mom's cooking and think she is the best cook, ever !!
17. I am very protective about people i love and will go to any lengths to see them happy.
18.I dont forgive or forget easily. I wish i could.
19.I love dancing and tend to forget everything else when i am dancing.
20.I love playing 1 hour trial arcade and marble popping games on the net.
21.I hate driving and get tempted to use unparlimentary language when people honk unnecessarily.I often give into temptation.
22.I am impulsive and always pick up chocolates and knick knacks at super market counter even if i dont need them..
23.I cry when i hear a sappy story. Time after time.
24. I am addicted to shopping.
25.Sometimes,i think i am still a 5 year old deep inside . And i mean that in a good way

5 Top ways to torture people who tag u in photos in FB

.. And especially tag you for the wrong reasons.. Vinod, u mite wonder who i am referring to ..well, keep thinking.

1. Make them a Himesh Reshamiah tape with his top 10 songs and play it to them in a loop continuously for entire day , so that even Britney spears will sound like Nirvana.Even Music on the lifts will be Himmesh's hits.

2. Stuff their pockets with karuvaadu(dried Fish) and let them wear the same shirt continuosly for 3 working days. All the next-cubicle-greeneyeed-Hotties will pay them to take a bath and .. no more dates with hot women!Period.

3.Hand them over to goons who will take them to Kasimedu, set them in wet cement and threaten to drop them in Mariana Trench.Alternatively subject them to 20 hours of Saas -bahu serials on sun TV and be asked to compare the protagonist of top 5 shows. Brownie point if a SWAT analysis is done.

4.Get grounded for the next 4 weeks with a TQM text. Cookies and a glass of milk will be served before dinner instead of popcorn and beer.No socialising. No parties.No chatting. No tagging people on FB , mainly.

5. Post embarassing pictures of the tagger and tag him in FB, orkut, Linked in, Tagged,ryze and every conceivable social networking site. Brownie points if the pic has the said person picking his nose or oggling at women/men or picking out lice from their head.

Some people(ok 1 person) has enthusiastically expressed his desire to do this tag.. So i am tagging Prads to do this tag.. Prads .. Revenge time ..Revenge does taste sweet !!.. Would u like to do the tag , vinod ? ;-)

Zen and the art of Snore combat

Ok my last 2 posts (including the one that disappeared) were, to be honest not like me .. So here goes an old one that's not as intense or introspective ..when i started a blog i told myself it would never post weepy or intense or cribby stuff ..Guess i have deviated from the mission statement for my blog and
realise that the last few posts have been boring and cribby (it was boring to me when i read it again!!!) .. Darn it !!! Zulu's back and she's gonna be around for a while !!.. oh and another unrelated thing .. i totallly adore the brit accent .. esp kids with brit accents !! What, eh ?


Statutory warning : Old Post. Vimmuuu..See , it's back !!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzz....
Zrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…….

ZZZZZZrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….

I wake up with a start and groggily reach for my mobile to check the
time - 2.23AM..
And then , bigger one … ZZZZZZrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…

It sounded like somebody had dropped a missile on my terrace… Well
Almost … except that it happened to be my husband snoring ….

I am still feeling fuzzy and struggling to remember the dream that had
been interrupted .. Something to do with robbers stealing shredded
cabbage from my house... The robbers in my dream had to be the worst
of their kind.. Nobody steals cabbage – What losers!!

I have perfected a few fool -proof strategies to deal with "snoring
husbands" over the last 2 years. These techniques have been
scientifically tested in my laboratory and have minimal side effects.
What's more.. these strategies work even with snoring-grand moms ,
grand pas and even pets..(I've heard that some breeds of dogs snore,
though I can't name the source now..)

Strategy no1 : "The Lion's Den Manoeuvre"

How it is done : Open the mouth of the source of your disturbance.
Open it in such a way that the mouth forms a O shape . If you open it
too small , then the source will start making yelping sounds, similar
to a whimpering Pomeranian. Now, that is something we really don't
want.
Expected results: You can safely sleep uninterrupted for 10 minutes,
after which the maneuver has to be repeated.

Warning : Don't attempt this if there are too many mosquitoes in your room..

Strategy No 2 : " Flip and rib Manoeuvre"

How it is done : Flip the source of noise in such a way that the
source has its back to you and is turned away from you. Results can be
further enhanced by a poke to the source in its rib.. Voila .. the
source will clam shut. Scientifically, this can be explained by the
fact that the source gets distracted with the physical activity
experienced by it suddenly and will assume a state of equilibrium.
This equilibrium will remain till the source gets distracted by the
state of inactivity and opens up again.

Expected results: Results vary from 10-15 minutes depending on the
nature of source.

Warning : Extra caution has to be applied while using the "Rib" part
of the manoeuvre as the source might wake up if the poke is perceived
as a tickle.

Strategy 3 : " Coordinates swapping and light kung-fu kick manoeuvre "

How It is done: Allign your coordinates in such a way that your leg
faces the sources nose. Since you are far removed from the source's
source of noise, you can sleep for longer periods of time. If your
source still is distinctly loud , you can always kick the source.

Expected results: 30-45 Minutes depending on intensity of source.

Warning : Control the intensity of kicks. Higher intensity kicks might
result in the source reciprocating the manoeuvre and will definately
backfire on the user.

All these strategies can be accompanied with an accessory " Block-out
boulders" ( common name : ear plugs ) to increase effect of strategies
discussed above . These are very effective in cutting out noise and
are made of special spongy material.


Method of use: Plug the contraption in both your ears . These can be worn
upto 10-11 hours continuously.

Warning: The device might pop out if too much of pressure is applied
on it while plugging it in. If the device is too small it might get
into the user's ear canal blocking out noise from all other sources,
forever.

So now that you know the secrets of Snore-combat, Go sleep… ZZZZ

Pot Pourri..

I have never been a jam person .. but i recently discovered squeezee and i boy am i hooked .. breakfast,lunch and dinner -Jam Jam Jammy !!;-)..It's so much fun drawing out shapes with the squeezee.. Whoopie .. i am going to draw a house for breakfast tommorrow !!!

I saw this movie called "The house next door" . It's about an evil house where people living there suddenly start to hate what they love the most .. they get killed, kill,have affairs and stuff like that.. I dont normally see spooky movies alone , but managed to c this one without supervision.. and i am proud of meself
;-)..
The house that we used to live in before was kinda jinxed that way .. it was beautiful.. but weirdly the one odd year we stayed there i was continuously falling sick..I have felt uncomfortable without any explanation in some houses..I also get freaked out if i hear of spooky stories about houses .. there is this house near my parents house where apparently a few people commited suicide .. everytime i pass through this house ,i get goosebumps..

On a different note ..i had visited a tradefair a few weeks back. I love trade fairs .. reminds me of childhood days when the whole family(cousins, cousin of cousins, their cousins and generally the whole jing bang) used to go to and have tons of fun.. Huge appalams, Pink cotton candy, lotsa cheap shopping and generally fun times. I hate roller coasters, so i normally get appointed the official bag keeper when everyone else hops on to the coaster.. I get jittery everytime someone i know climbs into a roller coaster or any such rides...Ok back to story.. so when hubby went on a shabby looking ride , i totally hyperventillated and started praying.. i was later was made fun of for exhibiting such sissy behaviour..I saw guys welding parts of operating rides and knew hearts of hearts that this was going to be the ticket to a disaster..

A few days back , there was a news article about 5 people who were injured badly when they got thrown off a roler coaster becaues of a loose bolt ..Sadly the state of affairs at trade fairs is horrendous and safety measures grossly ignored. Infact ,a similar freak accident happened sometime back and a committee was appointed to review the safety norms of trade fairs.. they came up with the conclusion that the rides didnt need more saftey precautions.. Who are they kidding !!! .. it's just so obvious that the rides are in a state of disrepair..

I hope the state government doesn't see trade fairs only as a way to plaster pictures of the CM and does something about safety..I am not religious or superstitious but after my cousin's accident and similar freak mishaps ,i have started carrying a copy of bhagavad Gita wherever i go .. a friend keeps telling me .. The Sword of Damocles hangs suspended ,perpetually..I childishly believe that the sword wont touch my loved ones if i carry the book..I am weird , i know !! . Spookily, roller coasters also remind me of "final Destination" movie..

I dont normally watch any program regularly on tv .. but never miss " So u think u can dance".. I hope Sabra or Danny wins ..Anyone wants to have a bet on who the winner would be ?.. Gosh , i am a born gambler!! . The quality of this show is lightyears ahead of our desi clones like Jodi no1.. "So u think u can dance" showcases brilliant dancers and dance forms.What shows like Jodi no 1 showcase is just tamashaa..

This sure was a long post .. dankes for reading :-)

The post where i use a bad word ..hmphhh..

Statutory Warning : Long post

Hope everyone had a sooper valentine’s day showering love on spouses, boyfriends, friends,family and themselves .. as for me and hubby .. this is the taleof our (mis)adventures .. ok it was’nt that bad!!

It all started a few days back when I saw this ad in the papers that there was going to be a couple competition in one of the new malls in the city.. My sane Alter ego , ziggie told me to stay away from this becos of 2 reasons

a) Hubby and I are generally not the openly expressing love kinds. We are a lil bit restrained (atleast I am!!) in public and a competition like this might warrant you to make an utter fool of yourself by making public a lot that mush that ideally shoule be shared in private (again, thats the way I am)

b) People who know me well would also know that I am very competitive and don’t like losing, not even in a silly competition like this . Ziggie warned me that I would spoil the ocassion for not just me but hubby as well !!

But then Zulu , my insane Alter ego(I have a split personality) gave into temptation ( the ad mentioned free gifts !!) and decided to register… Now that the background is set and the audiences primed, let me move on to the actual flashback..

Oinnnnnn… Mosquito coils ….

We were asked to report at indie mall at 4:00 and got delayed by couple of minutes. Since I have this weird habit that I have to be exactly one minute before the expected time, hubby got an earful on his time management abilities. .. When we got to the mall , we realised to our utter dismay that there were 5 odd shoppers and 50 people to attend to them .. the 5 included us also us. I felt a little thrilled at the fact that I was now going to become an important statistic to the mall … A footfall is what they wanted , a footfall they would get !! ..now the good part .. having gotten used to a crowded malls filled with Yuppie-wannabe crowd , Indie made me feel like a wild stallion gallopping in green meadows..

The event started at 5:30 types.I was a little psyched with the kind of crowd that had come (I can be a snob sometimes!!) and there were several times when I wanted to bail out.. but then Zulu persevered and I must say she is the dominant personality in me.. The MC being a throrough MCP asked women to propose to their partners.. and what followed was a verbal diahorrea of uttely Cheesy dialogues like “ You are someone to the world , but you mean the world to me !!!” Gosh , what was Zulu thinking !!. Incidentally , this dialogue won a chocolate for the best valentine day saying .. Some men and women made a fools of themselves by sharing embarassing stories about how they met and some crooned mushy songs (like tujhe dekha to ye jaana sanam ) in nasal voices. I freaked at the possibility of having to exhibit such Non- Ziggie behaviour and prayed that I didn’t get picked. Thankfully God was a little free yesterday and decided to listen to me ..What a relief!!

We had several rounds to compete(!!) in. In one round the guys picked up saris and the women were asked to figure out the saris picked by their hubbies. Hubby and I had already agreed on picking Blue beforehand. I promptly (and incidentally beaming with pride) picked up a sari that looked bluish-greenish, while mentally cursing myself for not showing hubby what blue actually meant.. I knew I had cracked this round as there wasn’t any other vaguely blue sari around. Alas! When I come out Hubby tells me apoogetically that he forgot the “blue rule” and picked up something orange!!! .. Another round had us go on a treasure hunt for groceries (why would anyone spend time discovering groceries!!.. duh!!) with the shop attendents guiding people on where to find stuff ,though they were not supposed to .. We did end up getting all the items on the list.

Yet another round had us fill in answers to questions like favourite channel . We had reherersed answers to potential questions before but then after the blue-rule goof up I didn’t expect too much.. Later, when I asked hubby his questions we found that our questions were different. It was nothing more than a info gathering tool for the organisers .. the Bas*****.. And we thought our compatibility was being tested !! .. I wish I had bluffed in the questionnaire!!

The best round of all was where the men had to tie saris to a mannequin with wifeys guiding them. The paper had already warned us this round would be there but since I didn’t have a sari at home , I had to make do with a bedsheet and anyone who has worn a sari would know that it just isnt the same. So when my ill prepared husband had to compete with stalwarts (some men draped the sari better than I could ever manage!!), his mannequin looked like a bedowin belle from Sudan .. However, we did have a good time laughing at our new method of draping a sari .. There were some couples who had gone on panic mode with the wife egging the husband to finish on time .. We had stopped caring after the first few rounds and decided to have a good time instead .. too bad we didn’t win for our bedowin costume .. I thought it was cute !!
The whole debacle finished with a fashion show .. (arggh!!) where we were asked to ape some steps the MCP (ok , the MC) showed us. And then when they read out the names of top 10 couples .. we , obviously were not on the 10 ten.. Philosophically we did ask ourselves whether we were a bad couple ..

Takeways.. 2 free pop corns , 2 free mirandas , 1 free sprite (I forgot to pick it up,hubby didnt !! ), 100 rupee voucher to shop in indie , miscellaneous vouchers that I would never use and an acute awareness that I had wasted 3 hours of our time . I should never listen to Zulu ever again.. We did have a snobby time making fun of other participants and the organisers (I know I am mean !!). I also got to know a lot of things about hubby (thanx to the rehersals the previous day. I didnt think i had anything more to know abt him , having known him for around 15 years now ) ..

However Sour green grapish this may sound -winning is not important, having fun definitely is! :0..

These r some of my favourite things ..

Heyya people.. Me's kinda back after the short hibernative stint.. actly dont think i am back in my "blog-about-it" mood , but i guess its a matter of time .. and the things i went looking for ... most of them remain unfound and un-figured out... maybe there r no answers to a lot of questions !!..Lots of action for me in the 15 odd days of my disappearnce .. saw tons of movies ..i definately have to write abt Slumdog and Naan kadavul .. all that probably in the next post .. went on a beach clean up activity and generally have been catching up with a lot of studying.. Sorry havent been reading u r posts regularly or commenting on u r blogs .. now i have tons of catching up to do .. i promise to visit all u r blogs ..

Ok an old post again ..

So many sights, smells and noises assault our senses every day.... And
in a way I am a prisoner of my senses
Some of my all time favorite memories of smells, sounds and
sights..Inspiration of course from "Raindrops and Roses- OST of Sound
of music"


The smell of wet earth after a summer shower
Lazing around with a novel on a rainy afternoon with a cup of hot soup
Pretty pink and blue things like laces, satin
Blue and white china
Fresh Smell of cake baking
That first bite into a chocolaty donut
Light headed high after a few sips of alcohol
Bitter sweet tugs at the heartstrings when I leave home everytime ,
eventhough I know I will be back soon.
New born babies with curled up fists, sweet smell of Johnson and
Johnson combined with baby innocence
Heady smell of roasting spices
Intoxicating smell of melting butter
Vast Green open spaces
Long walks on the beach barefooted
Tall white wedding cakes
Pristine, flowing white wedding gowns
Sound of nothing, feeling nothing
Waking up after a cat-nap trying to recollect the latest dream
Musty smell of a book not used for a long time
Reading old slam books, old letters other silly correspondences
Satisfaction on deleting irritating junk mails and spam and seeing a
clean mailbox
Crunchy Unripe green apples
Sweaky clean hair after a hairwash ..
Smell of vanilla essence, vanilla notes in perfume..
Butterflies in the stomach before a presentation
Stolen furitive glances at the latest crush and stomach doing a
flip-flop every time you bump into that special someone.
Chocolates –with nougat, with nuts.. esp 5 star and after mint
Adrenaline rush when climbing up a hill, running
Verbose Indian fiction
Maggie and cheese at Kamath circle, Cheese Omlette at MIT canteen –
somehow both are entwined in my memory and can't seem to separate one
stimuli from another.
Reading Mallory towers when supposed to be doing school homework
Sleeping in class whilst pretending to be listening to lectures
Listening to Ilayaraja songs
Smell of freshly laundered clothes
Crisp white shirts
Hot liquid cascading down a sore-throat
Cold showers on a hot, sweaty day
Beautiful glossy photographs
Kids playing hopscotch on a summery afternoon
Butterflies with colorful wings
Tickling of taste buds after the second pani -puri
Cheesy sizzlers of Tangerine
Babies gurgling
Rainbows
chucking laundry and watching a rerun of friends .. for the 30th time
Satisfaction of seeing a fullstop at the end of last line in a book.

I am sure I am not able to recollect a lot of sights, smells and
sounds which have been stored away for posterity. ..Some will come
back to me if I think harder.. But most probably won't, despite the
magnificent contraption that our brain is. Thats why maybe i have a
life to manufacture more favourites which will be forgotten in another
5 years time..

weird.. how everything is in a state of constant flux.Feelings,
memories , affections.. everything !

Half time, now ..

Been in weird doldrums for a while
Dont really know why
Going to be off for a bit - someplace far far away
In no-man's land
Just my feelings and me
Know not what i am gonna do
Maybe contemplate, maybe galavant around
Need to figure out some stuff
Strange happenings, alien feelings and negative vibes

Living a half life, smiling half a smile
life sure is stranger than fiction
Different shades of people and human emotions
The river is shallow and navigatable but the ocean is deep and dark
Dont know which is more dangerous
Do i plunge into the darkness or stay safe at the river ?

Bedazzle needs to get back her spunk and life
She will return when she has answers to questions
At the other end of the tunnel when she has found what she wants to find
Its half time now
She is back in hibernation ..
and Time out for now

Alvida ..Stay safe and beautiful

Tis raining Frauds ..

Most of yesterday was spent trying to reach the marketing office of a fairly "reputed" builder with who we had booked a flat almost a year back .. till date the only sign of progress in the project is that they have heaped up bricks near the site .. So we decided to pull out a month back and have been trying to get in touch with the booking office, but in vain .. the lady who sold us the apartment plays stupid tricks like not picking calls when we call from our mobiles, but miraculously picks up when hubby called from landline ..Gosh , what frauds!!..
nyways, since we have the necessary papers in place , taking them to task should not be difficult ..

I was reminded of a fraud i narrowly missed getting associated with in my professional life .."The case of Idea Group" ..I was in abu Dhabi working with a consumer durables company and was in their corporate sales division selling office equipment. This was my first job and i had no experience in dealing with frauds !! The said "idea group"(on hindsight .. the name is so ironic !! sadistic humour of the fraudsters, i say !!)neatly conned a lot of people into a lot of money.. One fine day , on my regular cold calling beat , i discovered this new office.. surprisngly , the receptionist let me also see the procurement manager, a lebanese, in my first call .. i was elated and zapped .. In my 4 month experience in the industry , nobody had let me see the procurement mgr in the first call .. but then in my elation, i didnt give too much importance to the weirdness of the situation..

To my huge surprise , the company was supposedly opening a retail outleat and they wanted quotes from me for several machines..and if it did come thru , it would have been the biggest ever deal for not only me , but my entire division.. i was thrilled beyond belief ..I followed this up by bringing my boss , his boss and several other bosses , just to make sure that the commercial terms were appropriate.. none of them actually found any problem with the company .. the only hitch was that they needed credit and we didnt give credit to companies without a credit record.. but it was a routine issue which could be circumvented with necessary approvals.. the company i worked for wasnt very professional ... they were more concerned abt competition bagging the project rather than making safe decisions..

My location head decided to go ahead with 20% advance and rest after 30 days and i went up to give the revised quote ..the procurement mgr seemed a lil flustered and she almost shooed me out .. there also seemed to be unusually high activity that day .. while i was stepping out , an indian who worked at an office bang opposite to Idea group called me aside. This was the first time i had ever seen him.. He told me that he had seen me come here couple of times and asked me to go easy on the company as there were many suspicious things happening on the premises . He also told me that many russian and lebanese women kept visiting the place at weird hours..And he told me all this because he didnt want a fellow indian to get into their web !!.. that's what he told me ..;-)

I promptly reported back to my bosses on what the guy told me.. strangely it felt like an oracle !! . my boss was a little vehement about not going slow , but then said ok when the big bosses veteoed their disapproval ..the procurement lady kept calling me and i kept dilly dallying abt availability of machines and similar stupid reasons .. ..An invitation for opening of the showroom appreared a week later and we were a lil dejected thar we weren't going to be part of the success of "idea group"..after a while the calls stopped and all of us got on with out lives

.. until one day.. when i got to office .. everyone is talking about "the idea group" and how they ran away with machines worth millions of dirhams ...the showroom had never opened ... i thanked my oracle - that indian guy for saving me from the clutches of "idea group" .. WOW!! narrow escape .. later my boss went on a self congragulatory mode saying that he knew there was something wrong with that company and thats why he didnt go ahead.. the jerk !!!..

nyways ..later i did get to know that this company had defrauded several times in the past and eventually the machines ended up in places like Sudan where people didnt give a fiddlers beep whether the machines were stolen..The emirates is a very dicey place, i learned.. huge scamsters prowled the markets trying to bait unsuspecting trainees like me..later when i got into banking , i realised everywhere its the same story .. makes me wonder abt the very nature of human beings and gets me a little disillusioned... dishonesty and one-upping behaviour rules the roost.. lives have become so complicated, greed rules the roost and simple things in life dont matter much to us..Things that people do in the name of money(and power!!).. all this shakes my idealism a little bit ..but deep down i feel that everything will get better soon ..Human beings will redeem themselves someway ..

Return of the old post- Part III - Lil Johnnie

I dont know what i am doing posting .. when i should be cramming derivative formulas for my exam.. awww... God please send me an elf to take my exam for me .. please !!

As usual .. statutory warning .. OLD POST !!.. this post was oblieterated in the war of angel Vs.The evil hacker that happened in CIRCA 2008.


Little Johnnie is approximately 3 weeks old. Maybe he is older, but
he's been part of our household only for 3 weeks and he really doesn't
talk to me much. So I really can't say where he was before he started
living with us. I choose to think of Aug 1 as his birthday, as i met
him on that day. He is constantly bothering me with his antics. They
say that the character of a baby and what it will grow up to be as
adult is known even when it is a day old.

Goofy babies end up as goofy adults.
Grouchy babies end up as grouchy adults.
Smiling babies…. I think you got the picture…

...And Johnnie is inquisitive,stubborn, hyper-active and loves cheap
thrills. Definately difficult to manage..

Our house is kind of small, but sure can accommodate lil Johnnie.
Johnnie does enjoy being home- a lot. He likes to listen to 80's
music, keeps his eyes peeled to the TV when Jodi No1 is playing and
hates Face the nation.
Maybe he doesn't like Sagarika Ghosh.

I have so gotten used to Johhnie, that if he is not around for a day ,
I start to wonder if some crow has taken him away.

Johhnie is the Lizard of the house...

Johnnie's really growing up fast and is quite robust for his age. He
was a puny little infant when he came home couple of weeks back.
Weeping, with lost-puppy eyes... Either his momma kicked him out or he
ran away .I think he just ran away.. He has the spirit of a wild
stallion . Maybe lizards start school early and our Johnnie didn't
want to end up a boring white-collared lizard. I decided to let him
stay and call him Johnnie ( Not Johny or Jhonnee or plain Jhonny for
numerological reasons).

Johnnie is being a mischievous devil these days .I had to lock him out
of the house yesterday cos he was being a really bad boy . Hubby had
left his laptop on the table and Johhnie was busy exploring the mouse
(obviously not the living variety– my house doesn't have space for 4
people). And even when I tried to shoo him away, he refused to budge.
Maybe he likes me and doesn't feel threatened by me. Maybe he thinks I
am his foster-momma. I catch him staring soulfully at me with longing,
shiny eyes and I think maybe he is crying. Maybe lizards cry. Maybe he
is lonely. I shouldn't lock him out too often.But i did and as a punishment for his bad behaviour, I lured Johnnie into the balcony yesterday with a piece of cockroach wing and lockedhim out.Talk of the carrot and stick approach !. And Lo!- He was back
today morning in the living room , leering at me with his beady eyes
saying " Don't you know that I know the way back home!!" .

This leadsme to speculate on whether Johnnie and his kind are territorial. Does
he piss around the house like a lion signifying his territory ?I think
Lizards don't piss , but I do know that they do excrete stuff… I
really also need to check if I am trespassing his territory, cos I
really don't want to be stepping on lizard shit.

Do teenage lizards throw tantrums or leave home to go elsewhere to
study hunting for flies or some other lizard-skill? What does an adult
lizard do that a baby lizard doesn't?. Even google couldn't give me
answers to all these. Will have to ask Johnnie when he chooses to
speak…

I think I should brace myself for the next phase in Johnnie's life.
Maybe he'll start shagging other female lizards, throw wild parties
and probably start drinking. I don't think I have enough flies and
cockroaches at home for a lizard rave party. I keep a close tab on the
level of liquid in the absolut bottle at home and have lately been
noticing drastic decrease in the levels. Maybe it is lil johhnie on
the sly.He is pretty resourceful for someone who is just 2 inches
tall.

Its time I really had a talk with Johnnie and let him know the
responsibilities that come with being sexually active. Do lizards use
contraceptives? Wonder which brand Johnnie will take to ? .After all ,
I don't want my house teeming with other unwed –female lizards and
their babies. It's so much trouble having one active lizard at home,
as it is .What do real –lizard parents aspire their kids to grow up
into? Will have to ask Johhnie's biological mom that, if she does ever
decide to check out on what Johnnie turned out to be and visit him
someday …

I was thinking of asking Johnnie to split the rent with us sometime
back, but now that he is almost family I think I really shouldn't.
What say??

PS : I can't wait for him to grow up and leave home. I keep dreaming
of clean white walls, Lizard- free houses and killing lizards with fly
swatters.Is Johnnie in danger?. Freud alone would know how to
interpret that!!

...........

now back to the present .. there is another clone of johnnie (i named him Jamie) at home, who has been tormenting me for the last 3 days.. i havent seen jamie since morning and hope that i have successfully driven the damn thing away !!! ewwww...Jamie,let me study in peace .. please !!!

The pyramid of differential status

The theory of differetial status
- by Dr. Bedazzled

I had this brilliant insight at 3:00am this morning.. alcohol aided , of course!!.. that the only differentiating parameter among human beings is alcohol!!.. I know its really insigtful so take some time to let it sink in .. so, based on what you drink , you r socially stratified..

So , on top of the pyramid-of-differencial-status are the i-love-wine-with-gouda-cheese people.. Snobs who will look down upon anyone profusing love for vodka or any of the lower-strata intoxicant.. These are the people who will wave lectures on cultures on your face and secretly pick their noses when u r not watching!!so why are they on top of the pyramid, you may ask ? .. well ... you'll have to figure than one out yourself !! hee hee

Next level on the pyramid are the black label and johhy walker swiggers.. Now, this is a really dicey level because you have a variety of people peacefully coexisting with each other.. u have the noveau rich,who flaunt their finely-developed-whiskey-taste along with people who normally belong to a lower rung on the pyramid , but get upgraded during long airline flights, when they gulp down anything that remotely has 1% of alcohol(these are the kinds that will drink methanol in a chemistry lab because of its close association with alcohol . You may also find boys trying desperately to be men and uncles trying desperately to remember their youth in this category..

Moving on.. the next level is the most common and frankly I think I belong in here.. The-vodka gulpers … yay!! We are the most interesting,fun and witty people to be with .. we don’t mind being sissy and have no shame in downing normally-girly drinks like stolchanaiya rasberry flavoured vodka .. we rock !!!!.. There are quite a few men in this category .. a lot of blacklabel and johnny walker dudes are closet vodka gulpers !!!

Ah, the next level.. there are 2 schools of thought on this.. one school says that this category should be mariginally higher than vodka gulpers and another (like me) that thinks that this groupis slightly inferior to the vodka dudes.. this level belongs to the tequila-shot,jelly-shot immediate-gratification fraternity.. and this need for mind numbing asap-pleasue seeking behaviour puts them on the lower level.. these guys are some of the drunkest-lewd-jackass joke cracking folk in history..

At this point I need to clarify that gender biases might peep into your mind while reading this .. but no , my clasification is not gender biased .. a dude/dudette can belong to any level, irrespective of cliches associated with that level ..
Coming down to the next level you have the pink-cocktail-drinking crowd .. I have nothing to say to you people.. you are social pariahs !!..

Omg, I left out the i-love –tasmac-and-kothu-parotta crowd .. do u think they should be on top of our pyramid ?? .. help me perfect my theory .. !!

Now, my theory can also segregate people according to the reaction after 3 pegs of alcohol

The steady -let the earthquake hit , i'll still be here guys.. that unwaveringly gulp down gallons of alcohol without even batting an eyelid ..I know it's taken years of heartbreaks,loser-behaviour to get where you have ..strangely u rock !!

Next come The dancing dudes and divas.. it takes great guts to dance to chumbawamba when your body is conspiring against you to throw up every bit of your morning’s breakfast and nuts you have been injesting with the alcohol!! .. I have great respect for you, guys

Then come The hicuppers and snorers.. the former are definitely better than the latter in my books as hicuppers are awake .. unlike snorers who bailout shameleslly ..

Next come The weird-ranters..you carry too much emotional baggage and lots of sissy-behaviour charecteristics .. shame on you!! You probably do this because nobody will listen to you in a un-inebriated state..

The rock bottom of weasly behaviour belong to The pukers.. all I can tell you people is .. clean your own puke , fellas .. and go easy on the biriyani after getting sloshed..

So where do you fit in my pyramid ???

How much love is ok ???

ok .. this is the first post of this year (Applause !!).. was not in a frame of mind to blog before .. but the weekend has been good and i am more or less back to old self..weird me is backkk !!!

something's been nagging me for quite sometime(more like a decade) and i needed to get an answer ... once and for all !!!

Ah the story goes like this .. there is this guy .. lets call him AK and his lovely sister M.. lets call her MASK( M, sister of AK , of course !!! ) .. now MASK and AK are the picture perfect brother-sister tag team in the entire world .. before AK sneezes , MASK gets out the tissues , vicks dabba and crocin tablets.. similarly before MASK sheds a solitary tear, AK tears up for the sister and flexes his muscles in anticipation of some guy ditching the sister .. since i was a witness to all the drama from very close quarters , i was privy to some facets of AK-MASK relationship , which till date i think is weird .. now u will have to help me decide who is more weird .. AK-MASK tag team or your's truly .. ok, let me get to the point

AK was roughly 19 and MASK was 24-25 give or take 1-2 years ( this was almost a decade ago) .. One day yours truly spied (yes spied!!!) on MASK's email to Ak and AK's reply to the mail..and what i read took my breath away ... hold u r breath,guys .. the 3 words !!! "i love u ".. wow, do 19 year olds say " i love you" to their sisters ?? the mail also rambled and meandered for 2500 words brimming with more mushy and utterly sappy stuff like "you are the best brother anyone could ever have " and stuff in similar vein ...Initially i thought this was a classic-chronic case of incest .. but then some other sources(reliable ones at that ) told me that it that wasn't so .. !!!

Ever since i stumbled on this earth shattering mail , i have put AK-MASK on "weirdo-alert" and run a mile away when i see either of the two(not that i bump into them too often) .. well, the latest on this lovely saga is that AK-MASK still haven't changed ,.. they still leave each other mushy .. i miss u and i wanna hug u badly type messages on public domain (the likes of orkut and FB)

At times i wonder whether it is me who is weird .. whats wrong in a 19 year old guy saying i love you to his sister ? another part of me says that i am right(as usual !!)

guys .. say it's not normal.. please !!!! please !!!!

A year that wazz..

Maybe i should post this tomorrow , but what the heck.. so doing it today itself ;)

2008 has been the quintessential roller coaster year for me .. The year started as lack-lusture as any year could be with such high boredom levels at work ,when i started looking at greener pastures. Dreams were big and ambitions were bigger.. Changed jobs after a 3 1/2 year stint with an organization..post the job shift things went on a downward spiral..screwed up everything in sight after that.. goofed my exams, lost peace of mind and ended up working almost 15 hours a day ( without enjoying a single second of it), became a zombie and started snapping at any living being in sight, disappointed that my life and ambitions were crumbling right in front of my eyes ..
Then abruptly, i gave up everything as i couldn't take it any longer..It has taken me a while to reconcile to the fact that i threw away an incredibly well paying job almost impulsively..but yeah, i paid a price for peace of mind and hope i don't ever regret that..

Surprisingly , things have started looking up for me after i quit ..my life which was on "pause" mode for a long,long time started "playing" again..and this time i am not bothered about making that well-orchestrated mother of job-shifts or anxious about not being able to get into investment banking or bothered about what the future has in store for me.I am happy being bored at times and am delighted at the possibilities ahead of me..books to read,movies to see , stuff to write, places to see,skills to learn (cooking !!) and burnt bridges to repair..

2008 has been a year of revelations to me .. Started a blog just for the heck of it(and let it remain dormant for a long time ),did a bit of travel, started writing for a newspaper,made some lovely friends and got myself a tattoo..

I am incredibly surprised that i am posting something as personal as this in public domain ...2008 must go down in history of my life as the year i opened up to so many strangers and made friends so fast .. i am so glad i discovered blogging..

I don't make resolutions normally , but am doing so for 2009 ..i have a feeling that 2009 is going to be good to me.. oh , well ..big deal if it isn't !!.. I am going to have fun .. period

Thanks to everyone who's made this year memorable for me .. Have a great 2009,all u lovely people..May all your dreams come true..cheers!!

Return of the old post- Part 2

Bride Hunting..

Statutory warning : Old post. Ignore if already read !!


Ever since my cousin (let's call him A) attained “eligible bachelor" status , all conversations at family get-togethers dangerously veer towards what he should look for in his prospective bride. Just about everyone wants to contribute his 2 cents....Now don’t get me wrong. Marriage is definitely a family affair. All I am just objecting to is all and sundry thrusting their views on the poor soul trying to get married.

There is of course, the new pastime that my family members have taken to... logging onto http://www.tamilmatrimony.com/ and dissecting each girl’s profile to pieces.

First profile for the day..
A's mother: "That girl looks too modern, she will not fit into our family”

A : "That’s ok, amma. Girls these days want to look good and there is nothing wrong in that. I like my wife to be well dressed and not have a heart attack when she sees other women in tank tops!!"

Booma aunty : "What a name .. Pinky?..We can’t let you get married to someone whose name is Pinky !!.

A : Whats in a name?.Would you guys have said ok if her name was Abhithakuchalambal?.She looks nice, though. "

Ramu mama : "what hobbies?? philosophy, photography, skate boarding and debating ...girl seems independant. You will be get into trouble.She seems High-maintainence.Let's look at some other profile"

A : "Very interesting.. i think i like her"

Seetha chithi : "What interesting ??. You need a girl who knows how to cook and not how to debate."

A's Father: "Where did we go wrong in bringing you up? Such girls will make you cook and clean after marriage.”

Vinu Chittappa : "Did your chithi know Bertrand Russel when we got married. Aren’t we happy?"

A : "Yeah , but i like my wife to be able to make intelligent conversation.Is there anything wrong with that? I want us to be equal partners in marriage. If i have to cook and clean, i will"

Booma aunty: "How come you have never helped your mother cook in the 27 years of your existence and you now willing to do all that for someone you don’t even know?.”

And so we move on to the next profile..

Ravi periappa : "This girl looks nice. They also belong to Tanjavur.The girl's father is also a general manager in sundaram Motors.

A : " Huh .. She looks like a school teacher. Look at that crooked nose. Plus i am not marrying the Girl's father. It doesn't matter to me if he is a big shot.”

A's father : " Aiyoo... At this rate, i don’t think you will ever get married.. You should learn to compromise and not concentrate on external things like looks. Only character matters, Not looks"

What character does one get to know about from a 30 -word write up that in most probability is fake??

Infact, my profile was on the site a 3-4 years back for a brief period of time. I was that tall,beautiful, fair,god fearing,soft spoken,family girl who likes to cook and sing keerthanas and was willing to let career take a back seat...Wonder what people thought of my character..
Gosh , What was i thinking when I let my parents write up my profile ..

No , this is not the last post of this year ..so will wish u guys in my next post ;-)

Of christmas, gifts,photos and tattoos

First things first .. Merry christmas, happeee hols and season's greetings to all ..I have always loved christmas time.. with shiny stars, twiinkling lights, carols and mainly plum cakes(!!)..When i was in college ,a bunch of us used to go to church to attend the mid night mass.. just for the fun of it and feel the festive spirit..

Hubby and i had this weird conversation abt tattoos today .. i wanted one and he obviously thought that i was mad to get one..

Me(while watching LA Ink on TV) : I am getting myself a tattoo..
G: What ??? *&^*!!
Me: Yup, u heard me right. I am getting a pheonix tattoo..
G : R u out of u r mind??.. You should quit watching Discovery travel and living .. tattoos are for hippies..
Me: whine.. Whine .. please !!
G : Its not safe ..I saw something about metal posioning in the tattoo dye on tv..
Me: More Whine.. Whine.. of course it's safe .. So many people get them done ..
G: It hurts ..It's not like some ink drawing which u can wash off with water if u dont like it the next morning .. the damn thing is permanent !
Me: It's ok .. i dont mind the pain .. and i'll get a small tattoo .. that ways if i dont like it .. it will still be ok !!

Then he read tons of googled material on tattoos .. and obviously he had to check out Irezumi's(the tattoo parlour)website to see if they were an ok place! huh,men !!! Finally of course, he agreed. The clincher being that my sister in law showed us her cute tattoos and did a bit of PR work for me .. I am getting a tattoo ASAP !!! hee hee

I spent an hour or so trying to decide what to buy for 6,3 and 8 year old kids .. The shop assistants give u such innane and stupid suggestions that you feel like shooting u r self (and them also !!) .. The assistant actually recommended a barbie doll for a 8 year old..later i got to know that 8 year olds these days didnt play with dolls .. not barbies !! thank goodness i didn't heed her advice and got a book instead ..That ways it's easier with male kids.. u just cant go wrong with shiny red cars .. come to think of it ..you cant go wrong with that for men of any age..;-)

Inagurated the new camera G Got for me today.. Went to the beach and was snapping away to glory .. there was this bunch of professional photographers who were grinning at me and my poor lil non-SLR camera !! .. All i can say is .. snobs, give way !!!

Gosh !! i am so excited about the tattoo !!

So , how did u guys meet?

Ok folks ,the next few posts are going to be very old posts that got wiped off face of blogosphere when disaster struck bedazzled..me thinks most people wouldn't have read them.. If u have .. pls ignore and adjust.. and no ,i am not being lazy .. i just want my old posts back on my blog !! hee hee ..Here's installment number one ..

"So tell me how did you guys meet…?"

That's a question that I totally, totally love…Time to dip into all
those Mills&Boons I had been devouring up for years..Everyone expects
you to tell them exotic stories of mystery men, sophisticated life ,
not something droll and uninspiring which is most often the case.

These are some homespun tales of romance , which I've been practicing
on poor souls who've bothered to ask me the million dollar question
over the years…

"I picked up my husband at a bar. I am really coherent and interesting
when I am drunk you see". I don't think I can hold more than a peg of
alcohol, let alone have coherent conversation..I don't even think I
can have a coherent conversation when I am not drunk..

"Oh, he beat up all the goondas that were following me and I fell for
his bravery". How filmy ..My husband in reality is more Gandhian than
I would want to imagine.

Sometimes trying to be cool.. " I met him at Goa at a beach party . We
were together for every single party that summer" Excuse me .. Beach
party.. My conscience must be dead.. Dead On Arrival, definitely!!

Sometimes cheesy ..."We sat next to each other at our flight to
Paris.. We ended up together on the Eiffel tower".. Ah, I am never
going to show you my passport.. And you will lap up all the dope on
Paris that I googled;-). God bless, google. What would I do without you??

"His car crashed into my mine and sent me a dozen roses everyday for
the next 1 year ". I don't know how to drive a car, don't have a car
and my husband's given me a sum total of 11 flowers in the last 3
years, most of which was after we got married. No, I wasn't counting..

"So, you want to know how we actually met?"

"I used to have a cat that fell into an open manhole. He rescued the
cat for me. How brave.That's how we met …"

So, you wanted a story … and I gave you one ;-)

How did we actually meet??

well, Let's just say an angel dropped him unexpectedly mid flight and let me keep him.. ;-).. So how did u meet your better-half??

A random Walk down my lane

This post is done without any rhyme or reason ... just felt like posting ..

I discovered last evening ,shockingly, that i have started greying..i suddenly remembered assorted commercials of hair-dyes on tv and shuddered at the unfairness of life .. God, spare me !!!

i know this comment will be jeered on by general junta and many wisecracks will follow..but then a girl has to do what she has to do .. ;-)

i was shocked (ok , a lil !!) when i discovered my 3rd white hair .. i always assumed that white hair would happen to other people, not me and hoped that i belonged to a slightly superior gene pool , that would somehow mutate the grey-hair-inducing gene..well, fact of the matter is that maybe the mutation decided to wait for a few more generations before happening and i am stuck with 3 evil white/grey strands that evily remind me of my age...Ah!! vanity ..

On a totally different note, i sent a very stupid mail to a good friend and only after sending the offensive thing did i realise that it was a tad idiotic to have done it ...sometimes, my own stupidity takes my breath away..wish life had one of those undo buttons..

On a totally different note again(i am tiring u all , aren't i ?) , i discovered that i am the worst dressed person in Chennai ..who goes to the Citi centre in old(almost tattered is more like it) jean,worn out kurta and flip-flops? well i did .. and yeah the award for the worst dressed shopper went to me ..whatever happened to shopping in comfort? .. how do u expect to shop in stilettos and designer jeans,people ?

I am looking forward to next week .. lets see what it has in store .. definitely not more greys, i hope ..

Life is beautiful...

I unexpectedly started watching this cute movie called Ru-ba-ru yesterday and quite liked it.. It's got Randeep Hooda(isn't he hawt !!!)and Sahana Goswami(mmm...what a babe!!) in it.I thought it would one of those saccharine sweet love stories that would make me weep.. weep , i did .. for totally different reasons.. no spoilers here .. it's a lovely movie about how one shud live in "now" and not the future ..How,if you need to say "i love you to someone" you shudnt postpone it.. and Do it now !!!

I thought i shud do Nautankey's tag , while on the subject.. The list is actually amazing.. hat's off to whoever has come up with it ..I don't know whether i am living my life to the fullest now .. all that i know is that i don't want to go way with any regrets...I am not modest and must say that i have had an eventful life..not perfect and filled with a lot of incidents i possibly could'nt share with my grand children .. but, i have no complaints.It's been Fun, till now.. honest!!. Without further ado,let me get on with the tag... the highlighted entries are stuff i have already done/experienced...

01. Bought everyone inthe bar a drink
02. Swam with dolphins- not exactly swim ..jumped with them into the water..
03. Climbed a mountain -A million times..
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula - I'll never do this !!
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree- while climbing .. was quite a tom boy as a kid !
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game- cric matches again !!
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower- Meteors also wash up?
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope-My neighbour used to have a telescope at home and used to let us watch the stars.
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment- happens a lot with me
27. Had a food fight -happens a lot again !!;-)
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster - hate roller coasters!!
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking - Time after time..
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day -Fake american accent with an American friend
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment -Having that feeling now ;-)
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk - Used to be the official puke-mopper at hostel ;-)
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country- a lebanese guy in Dubai on my worst new year's eve ever !!
44. Watched whales- National geographic !!
45. Stolen a sign- not a sign ,but have flicked bookmarks from a store in Chennai , when i was little.
46. Backpacked in Europe- sigh.. someday !!
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing- Last week
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love - was in love for couple of months and carried a flame for almost 2 years ;-)
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them -Many times
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business -Will do , someday !!
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken-
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight- wat's D&D??
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news program as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on Stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten Shark - Baby shark, what they call sura puttu
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over- Do it all the time .. i am a vagabond
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking with the windows open
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol - At Marina beach
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. States
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language - its spooky !!
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you -n school
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair - Red !!
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head - when i was lil !!
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

miles to go before i go ...

I have a new boyfriend !!!!

Ever since Apar introduced me to this guy, i have totally lost my bearings.. we've known each other for less than 24 hours , but he has total control over me..I slept fitfully last night(more like this morning !!) for less than 3 hours to be back with him at 5:00in the morning .. i haven't been able to eat and have been online for almost8 hours at a stretch(which has never happened before) , so that i get to know everything there is to know about him..He drives me crazy ,but do i have a choice ??I am in love !!!...sigh .. another sleepless night.. My heart is leaping and singing a thousand songs right now.. ok, need to get back to him now .... !!! ;-)

I don't normally like sharing my boyfriends with anyone , but this time am making an exception and letting you guys experience what i am experiencing too ... hee hee

http://www.iimi-iris.com/iris-2008/klueless/ - ensoy !!!

Movie-shovie., Quirk-wirks.. Whatever !!

I love movies. Can watch any filth , according to some sources..I think that's true, on an average .. I have watched some of the slowest movies in the history of world cinema ((I am talking about those award-winning movies that take 10 minutes to focuss on a crow on top of a tree )and quite enjoyed it .. Well , almost !!


Vimmuuu tagged me asking me to list out some of my movie-related quirks .. Here i go ..

## I can never get myself to watch a spooky ghost movie alone.I start seeing imaginary creatures and ghosts yanking my hair/ shirt from behind . which technically is not possible as there is a wall behind my couch which could make it difficult for ghosts to stand behind me .. but then it is me !!

## I routinely and compulsorily cry during and after every rom-com i see. I must admit i see quite a lot of them. I wear a scarf so that nobody can actually catch me during the act of sobbing my heart out in the movie theatre..Yeah ,it works !!

## I refuse to sit in corner seats at movie theatres.I always imagine rats and miscellaneous rodents clawing at my feet and other parts of me.

This behaviour can be attributed to 2 horrendous rodents hopping on me on 2 separate occassions. One rodent-hopping incident happened was when i was watching a oscar-type flick in South Indian film chambers theatre which is dingy,dirty and musty.It is the kind of place that provides safe haven for rodent-romeos to have free movie dates with rodent-females .I used to go there as they screen classics and foreign language movies for free.. I would even drink phenyl, if they gave it free.. ;-)

The other rodent spotting was at a theatre called "Grand" , which was anything but grand and used to be the only theatre in the neighbourhood that played engliss movies when i was a kid. This theatre , "apparently"went on to become a porn-lover's-paradise (heresay , folk !) and later got demolished.Let those rodents RIP. Amen!

##I insist on being home every friday at 11:00PM to watch world movies.i think i am going to miss it this week as i am travelling. I should have gotten myself Tata sky plus the minute i saw Aamir and Gul panag in that ad.. Arent they a cute couple ? i mean ad-couple ?

## I love fake dvds.. I abhor plagiarism and think that it's the biggest evil that's gripped our society. I also feel bad for the producers.. but, how else can i afford a dvd that costs Rs.699 only for the legal version.The same God that made me poor told me that it's ok to watch fake dvds to quench my thirst for knowledge..


## If there is a mildly explicit scene (like the one in a tam movie where the hero and heroine kiss behind a flower .. No , they dont show the lip-lock.. just a pink flower swaying) when i am watching a flick with my parents, i always walk out to get a bottle of water or something..I am really bashful about these thing.. I also hate people necking in theatres and have picked up fights with them ..

Actually , you cant call these quirks , can you .. these are normal responses to abnormal incidents in a normal person's life .. what say ?

Danke, peoples..

All you folks who left me nice messages after my last depressing post ..Thanks a ton .. But honestly ,cakes and choclates would have cheered me more...;-.. ok i will stop so mean now..

Ah, a few more danks are in order..

Danks to smitha for the lovely scroll ;-)... u r a sweetheart

Danks to Vimmuuu for the lovely butterfly and the spanking new trophy.. You are also a sweetheart.. btw, am doing both apar and u r tag next cos this is going to be a longish, sappy and senti post..

Danks to Vinod for the lovely butterfuly ..even if it was given to me for the wrong reason.. No, i am not a senior citizen .. but i love the butterfly on my blog.. and yeah, you are also a sweetheart ..

Now that i am done with my oscar bit .. lemme move on and do my bit to society ..

I am passing the lovely "Proximidade" scroll to some equally nice folk ..btw, it's always cool displaying foreign language scrolls on your blog .. makes u seem so hep and cultured;-)

This award is given to a blog that invests and believes in PROXIMITY – nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award

Vinod
Praddy
Apar
Arvind
A
Aaarthi
AparnaG
Avdi

Thank you,everybody..

PS 1: whoever wants to be called a sweetheart , give me an award and i will do the honours in the next post .. hee hee.. just kidding !!

PS 2 : Thanks Apar.. for giving me a quick tutorial of html.. i am so tech-challenged!!

PS 3: Gosh ..So many people have their names starting with A ..Why is Z not so popular ??

So what's plan B?

Sometimes all you can do is keep wondering where life is taking you ..Nothing comes out of despair and panic ..Planning has never worked for me.Neither has worrying about things not happening.

PointA to Point B to Point C .. all looks nice on paper .. but seldom happens in reality. Infact, in my case , it never happens that way. and i have to program myself to like Point A to point Z, neverthless.

Success is such a nebulous term.I still havent figured out the real meaning of this million dollar word.In the last 7 odd years of my life , my career has always taken the front seat. Now, i realise i have lost a lot ,running behind something so elusive , that all i have now is this empty , hollow feeling in my gut. 7 years and what next ?.

I am as clueless as i was when i started this journey.This time around , though i
have started believing in destiny more than ever and not fighting it with every fibre of my being...It's frustrating. It's scary.This passivity is freaking me out.

.. All i can do is go with the flow and hold on to myself.

Life is definately a roller coaster.One minute you are revelling in the dizzying heights life takes you to and the next minute you plummet to the nadirs of darkness with fear gripping every fragment of your soul.I guess, i will have to enjoy the adrenaline rush,now that i can't help feeling the way i am.

and yeah , there is no plan B..

Ramu Kaka

This is a story i wrote a few years back ..unearthed it when i was cleaning my mailbox ..it amazes me how writing styles change over time .. when i read it today , i thought that there was a naiveness about the way the story is constructed .. there is of course a predictable ending .. if i had written the story now, i would have opted for a different ending..nyways, read on ..

.............

Vinod stuffed himself with a sandwich his maid had prepared. He was late for his tuitions, again.

Vinod’s parents were successful advocates and came home late in the night. They normally were tired after a long day‘s work and didn’t have time to spend with him.
Vinod missed them a lot, but had to make do with the weekends they spent with him. His parents made up for their absence by showering him with exorbitant gifts.

“ Didi ,bye. I am going to the tuition”. Waved Vinod ,to the maid .

The bazaar, with its bustling crowd and noisy vendors always fascinated Vinod .At the corner of the bazaar street , he noticed a new chat vendor selling pani puris. Vinod’s mouth watered at the thought of yummy pani puris. He longingly looked at the food cart and hurried on, as he didn’t want to get scolded for coming late for his tuitons,again.

Every day , for almost a fortnight, on his way to his tuitons, Vinod noticed the chat vendor with his pani puris and his mouth automatically watered.One day, on his way to the tuitons ,Vinod thought he heard the someone call out to him .He brushed it off thinking that maybe he was imagining things. People always said that about him. That he was imagining things.

“ Beta, Over here.” It was the Chat vendor, an old man with flowing white beard and a smile on his face.

“ Hello. Did you call me?” Said Vinod.

“Would you like some pani puris. I had a feeling you might like them. I’ve been seeing you for a while now”. Said the Vendor.

“Oh no thanks, kaka. My mother will get mad if she knew I was eating pani puris and I don’t have money.” Mumbled Vinod , excited and disappointed at the same time.

“ Beta, I don’t want money. And couple of puris won’t do you any harm. “Said the vendor.

“ Thanks kaka. I’ll just have a couple of them.So, are you new to this city?. ” enquired Vinod .

“ I am from a village in Bihar. My grandson and I came here as we had lost all our property. I came here hoping to make a living”. Said the vendor, his eyes suddenly clouding.

Vinod felt sad at the plight of the vendor. He promised himself he would get some money from his mother to give it to the vendor.Everyday , Vinod started stopping to talk to the vendor and eat pani puris. He called him kaka.Kaka never asked Vinod for any money and a unique friendship developed between the two. Vinod told Kaka about his school, his parents and how he got lonely as there was nobody to play with him.

Kaka on the other hand, spoke only about his grandson, Munna. Munna this , Munna that. Today Munna did this and so forth. Vinod felt all the more lonely listening to kaka talk about his grandson. He wished that he had a grandfather too.How lucky Munna was , he thought with a pang.

“Don’t feel lonely. Your parents are working so hard for you. Come home sometime and play with my Munna. I just stay down the road. Just ask for Ramu kaka’s house and anybody will show you where I live.” Offered kaka.

This went on for a while and nobody at Vinod’s home knew about his special friendship. Soon , it was summer and vacation time. Normally, Vinod looked forward to spending the vacation with his cousins in Mumbai. This time he was reluctant to leave as he knew he would miss his daily trysts with kaka.

“Kaka, I am going to Mumbai for the holidays. I will be back in a month. Take care and don’t forget me , ok.” Said Vinod feeling miserable.

“ How will I forget you , beta. I made a special pani puri just for you today. Kaka’s special. Take care of yourself and see you soon. “Said kaka.

One month passed in no time and Vinod got back from Mumbai . His aunt had taken him to Chowpati for pani puris but it was nothing compared to Kaka’s pani puris. He was looking forward to meeting kaka and telling him that his pani puris were the best .
The next day on the way to his tuitions, he stopped at the place where Kaka had his stall, but there was no sign of kaka.

“ Where is kaka?. He asked the flower vendor who used to sit next to kaka.

“ Baba, Kaka is not well. He doesn’t come here these days” Said the vendor.

“ Where can I find his house?”asked Vinod, gravely.

“ Go down the road , fifth house painted in pink.” said the vendor.

The fifth house was dilapidated, dirty and crowded.

“ Where can I find the chat vendor ?.” Vinod asked a man.

“ Last room on this row” the man said.

When Vinod opened the door, he saw kaka lying on the bed , looking ashen.

“Kaka, it’s Vinod. How are you ?” Said Vinod.

Kaka couldn’t talk. When he coughed , there was blood. Vinod felt like crying.

“Kaka , why are you alone? Where is munna? Did you see a doctor?” Asked Vinod.

“ Beta. No need for a doctor. I know I am dying. My family died in Bihar in a
riot.I always wanted a grandson. So I made up all the stories about Munna.” Said kaka, gasping for breath.

“ I am getting you a doctor and who said that you don’t have a grandson. I am here .Will you be my grandfather?.said Vinod.

When Kaka opened his mouth, he couldn’t say a word.

“ Then, let’s get you to a doctor fast , dadaji. Has anyone told you that you make the best pani puris in this entire world?.” Said Vinod.

Tears of joy streamed down the vendor’s eyes. My grandson, thought the vendor.


So have your writing styles changed over the years ?

The bookworm's newsletter- Part one

I have been catching up on quite a bit of reading in the last few weeks.. Some unexpectedly enjoyable ones and some that threatened to crack my cranium (and hence promptly abandoned)..

My top 4 for the month ..

No 4: Shopoholic in Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella

I lmmensely liked cofessions of a shopaholic and that’s why decided to read the next one in the series as well. It was a riot … breezy and funny.Just like what a chick-lit should be. This book chronicles the adventures of Becky in the shopper’s paradise of NYC.. How she gets embroiled in more shopping and wreaks havoc on her already skyrocketing debt levels is what the story is mostly about … It’s a totally fun read and I suspect a lot of girls might relate to the stuff.. I did!!

No 3 : The white tiger by Aravind Adiga

Unexpectedly, I didn’t like it too much. A lot has been said and written about the book, but to me honestly, it was a let down. The book is fast , racy and un-putdownable, but somehow , didn’t work for me. Adiga tells the story of a social entrepreuner writing a letter to the Chinese premier about how he climbed out of darkness (poverty)to the world of light. Corrupt landlords and politicians, prostitutes with blonde wigs, Adiga’s take (ok the protagonist!!) all the dirt in India.. You’ll find it all in the book…

No2: Tis’ by Frank Mc Court

This is an adorable sequel(part one is Angela’s Ashes) to the memoir of Frank, an Irish Immigrant who makes America his home. Frank is 19 and lands in America , not knowing what to do with himself. The desire to do well is all he has with him. He takes up odd jobs, serves in the army and finally ends up becoming a teacher after getting a degree. Amazingly witty and totally irreverant style kept me in splits. Frank’s adventures as a teacher with a brogue accent is endearing . Truly enjoyable .

No1 : Angela’s Ashes

My “favouritest” book for the month!!. Angela’s ashes is a coming of age story of Frank, an Irish lad , so poor that he is permanently malnourished.His father drinks away all the money , but promptly keeps furthering his progeny putting the family through assorted misfortunes. What I liked about this book is that Frank has Zilch remorse about being poor. Incredibly witty and funny. Frank has a unique style of writing and doesn’t use quotes for any of the dialogues.Incidentally, the book won Pulitzer Prize in 1997. Fun read.

Now, the unfortunate ones that didn’t make it.. ;-) Actually these got abandoned

The Golden Notebook by Dorris Lessing.
Got abandoned as the book just meandered on and on about socalism and about a writer who had 4 differently coloured books for compartmentalising her life... I found the book incredibly depressing and 100 pages into the book got tired of all the intellectual –socialist-babble .
Now , I know Is that I’ll never be a socialist. Ever.
The author won the Noble prize for Literature in 2007. Maybe, I can’t stand “Intellectual” and “intelligent” books. Honestly, the pace was very slow and hence had to chuck it out ;-).

Istanbul – By some guy whose name I don’t remember.
I picked it up as it had a lot of pictures and had never read a memoir of a city before.I decided to abandon it as it was incredibly boring… The author talks about his family ,their weird mannerisms and Istanbul in general. I really don’t know what the book is actually about, as i never got beyond the 30th page .. If someone does read it , do let me know..

And I have picked up these weird book-worm-habits. I have to update my book shelf on Shelfari the minute I finish reading a book. I have also started reading 2 books at a time. I swap between books , if the going gets boring.. Talk about quirks !!

Next on the agenda are A thousand Splendid suns and Veil of roses. Incidentally, I loved Kite runner( i know i digress quite a bit.My ex-bosses have always told me that.)

Someday, I will own all the books there are in the whole-wide-wurld!!! Silver-fishes, dog-eared pages, musty smell of old books, glossy magazines..Aha !!.. How orgasmic can it get ?;-)

Would love to hear your pick for the month .. do drop in a line.

VIBGYOR.. Just for me

My attempt at poetry after a really long time ...I am not too much of a poetry-person..So adjust pliss ..


My voice is black with despair
Sooty, charcoal black.
The thoughts just won’t stop…
From crawling ventricle to ventricle…
Slow and agonizing as it wreaks more damage
Spare my heart and take my brain instead, I cry.
The blood red tendril of my cry takes his breath away
Away from hope and my arms …

What will you do without me? , he jeers.
A yellowish green jeer, I feel with a pang.
I’ll bang my pots and pans in the kitchen. As usual .I retort
The kitchen that will get along fine without you.
And soon there will be rasgollas ..
Wine in my glass, Cheer in my bosom and spring in my step
So long, my friend, I gasp
He walks away. To her.
And doesn’t turn back
Gone. Lost forever.

My breathing is shallow, an ashen grey
The pain courts my senses, ebbing out of every ganglion.
Sleep takes me on , the foster-mother that I crave for
Waves of exhaustion maroon me on an island
Dreams float like happy, whispy clouds
The morning sun tousles my hair playfully
The bird sings from its caged home
Filling me with strength I never knew I possessed.

Wake up dear, don’t put your life on hold
Time to move on, my lamb , she says
Sunny eggs, apples and a strong brew for my child, she coos.
Everything heals with time
Even broken, bleeding, blue hearts.
As I gobble up the goodies
I tell myself soon there will be rasgollas
In my kitchen. For everyone.

For the phoenix shall rise from its ashes.
My heart croons in all the vibrant colors of VIBGYOR
Thank you, my personal rainbow, I mumble.
Thank you for this life and the box
Of delightful possibilities in front of me.
Then I cry, tasting relief and hope in my tears.

The Devil wears a Nightie

This devil wears no Prada, is at least a ton overweight, swears like a gangster and indulges in cold , freezing stares… this devil is my neighbor – the “lady” who lives above my flat. I met “This Devil” (henceforth referred to as TD) 8 months back when I moved into the new neighborhood.

TD, being the helpful, warm neighbor that she is came down in a nightie(hideous “govinda” yellow color with stripes, flower baskets ,and fluorescent green polka dots) to welcome me . I was floored at the nice thought, until she opened her mouth.
TD : Hi, Are you just moving in ?
Me : Umm , yeah. Where do you stay?
TD : Ignoring my question.. “ I saw the movers guys carry up your dining table. Is it new ?”
Me: Oh no. ..We’ve had it for a year now. Do you stay in the opposite house ?
TD : Ignoring my question again.. “ How much did you pay for the table?”
She seemed like a horse with blinkers..
Me: A tad uncomfortable…” I really don’t remember. As I said it’s almost a year..”
TD: “You don’t remember or don’t want to tell me ?”
Me: “mmm.. huh.”
That’s when I lost it and thought that if I opened my mouth I would end up saying choicest 4 letter words.. like “Gosh”

Just when I thought the hurricane would stop , it swirled more fiercely than ever..

TD: “ I thought I would get a friendly neighbor. Someone I could swap my biriyani recipes with. Now, i don’t think I like you. Bye “
Then she left .. An elephant stomping away in rage ..

The first thought that crossed my mind was ..”Wow, that is one weird lady..”. Who actually stops talking to a neighbor just because she refused to tell her the price of her dining table?.The world might have seen many weirdos in it’s lifetime , but TD must top the list..

What followed this eventful encounter was cold war between the two of us. TD has tried to make my life miserable in every conceivable way since then..

TD’s little devil children knock on my door and run away before I open the door. They do this every Sunday afternoon when I am deep in my slumber. Then, the Devil family does tribal dances around 6 every morning, couple of tons weighing down my fragile ceiling… I expect them to crash into my house someday soon, if they insist on being so diligent about fracturing the poor old building…

TD and I had the mother of all disputes a few months back. Her A/C (A devil, like it’s owner) leaks like a kid’s nose and goes pitter- patter, pitter-patter, pitter- patter on my A/c . Since, I was not on talking terms with TD , I made hubby go up and serve the ultimatum. TD shooed him away like a pigeon and said she would take her own sweet time for fitting a drainage pipe t as it was her A/c. Hubby came back deflated. The incessant pitter-patter went on for almost 2 weeks, when I couldn’t take it any longer,I somehow mustered up the courage to ring TD’s bell. I had rehearsed the speech which I would deliver when I met her for almost 2 days and was looking forward to insulting her . This was the speech I had prepared for the show-down..
“This is a decent neighborhood. We don’t know about you , but we are decent people. You are being a nuisance to everyone… Especially us. We have been tolerating you for this long , but you make it impossible for people to live here. We will have to complain to the landlord about the A/c dripping , the noise at ungodly hours , your kids knocking on our door and running way… We have never seen such uncultured people in our entire life “

...Tring tring (ME ringing TD’s door bell). TD opens the door.Today, she is wearing a loud red colored nightie with ugly pink flowers on them .

TD: “What do you want ?. Are you shameless ? I insulted your husband only 2 weeks back and now you are here.. I will have to complain to the landlord that you are trespassing and ringing the bell without any reason. And no, we will not fix the A/C. Do what you can..”
And she banged the door on me ….

All I whimpered was “ ummm …ouch ….” So much for rehearsed speeches..

Finally, our landlord (same as hers) had to pay for her tube. TD’s A/c doesn’t go pitter-patter these days but she has discovered a new way of torture… dropping her rubbish on my balcony..I am helpless , as I can’t really prove that she is the one that is dropping all those potato scraps , chicken bones and onion peels.
Someday I’ll have my revenge…

The Spy who Tagged me ..

I was a Tag-virgin, figuratively speaking, until I got tagged by Vimal. Must say it’s been great fun..

What do you do when..

---You see a man making a pass (trying to woo / flirt / impress) on a woman you like?

A woman I like …!!!! .. Well, for starters I am not built that way. If it’s a man I like then, I will probably go “the Julia Roberts way” (a la My Best friend’s wedding) .. It’s WAR and may the best scheming lady win…

--Some one you like, is not attracted to you?

No Big deal... There are bigger, colourful, richer, better looking fishes in the ocean once I look out of the well... Definitely not Armageddon for me if the guy i like doesnt like me back ...

--You are attracted to someone, but both of you are in two different cities?

Too practical to pursue long distance relationships...Been there- Done that – It’s not hunky-dory all the time … Only for the brave hearts and I don’t think I am one..

--You are reading a book, and your best friend wants to borrow it and can’t wait for you to finish reading, ‘coz he/she has been looking for it for all their life?

Well my best friend will have to keep looking for the book for another day then..Sky’s not going to collapse on his/her head in a day cos he/she disnt read the book that night.And life’s like that.. You always don’t get what you want ASAP, do you ? Even if you think God's your best friend...

--You help plan his / her career, and then, they go on to achieve it, leaving you behind, alone.

Arghhh… not again.. I’ve been taking some some black magic classes.. Maybe someday it will work..

-– What do you do when you have something to tell but no one around to listen ?

Actually honestly i cant beat Vimal’s answer... Inimitable.. Maybe, write a book, email myself or call 0007-23456789 (That’s number of “Call Me” – 5.99$ per hour for a personal conversation with a personal friend)

My additions …

--What will you do in your last hour on earth after which you are going to get back to planet Zorro (You are a Zorroain on earth collecting specimens of earthlings, of course)

--Who do you want to be like - Calvin, Hobbes, Brad Pitt, Mr Bean, Alice (from Alice in Wonderland), Phoebe Buffet, Salman Rushdie or Chandler? And Why?
And my rules... None.. Anyone who wants to answer these 2 questions are more than welcome to do so..

Since I can’t think of anyone else to Tag as of now and also cos Vimal is desperately trying to find people to tag Aparna.. I am doing the honors..

Aparna, You are the sole Tagee (I hope that word exists).

" The one who created this tag is smart but not as smart as the one who tagged me"

Ode to my Teachers

I saw Mona Lisa Smile a while ago and have been thinking about some teachers I’ve had the fortune of coming across in my own life . I know I am a tad late, as teachers day is gone, but I really think I need to blog about them.. just to relive those wonderful and not so wonderful memories of school and college.
Warning: Fairly longish, sappy post.. Sniff Sniff.. Read only if you are relatively jobless..

Bakshi Mam : I met Bakshi mam when I was just stepping into my tumultous adolescence. My father had taken an assignment in Baroda and we had to shift lock, stock and barrel from Chennai. I had to leave my beloved Chennai, where I had spent most of my childhood till then. Then, there was also the language factor. I could manage broken conversations in hindi , but reproducing Surdas , kabir's dohas and writing 200 words on the Kabuliwalas of the world on my own was something I was not prepared for. Bakshi Mam happened to be my hindi teacher. Third or the fourth day into the academedic year(I was in 9th then) , she realized that I was very diffident about my Hindi and what she did for me that day , will be ever etched on my memory. She made me read out a passage in front of the entire class. When I couldn’t get the pronunciation of “jhopadpatti” right, she made me repeat it 4-5 times till I got it right. Humiliation and shame flooded my senses.I reddened looking at all the jeering faces of my classmates. Later after the class , she called me to the staff room and told me that I was very bright for someone who had never studied hindi as a 2nd language.She started helping me with course work and gradually I started picking up things quite well . I actually scored decently on my boards the next year. Definitely more than what I expected…
My take away: A lot of good comes from experiencing shame and mortification. Like the Phoenix…that rose from it’s own ashes, Bakshi mam made me rise from my own tears and feelings of insecurity.

Vasumati Mam: I was back in Chennai for my 12th again as my dad got transferred again. Vasumati mam taught chemistry. I was not particularly not fond of her as she had weird mannerisms. And Vasumati mam never smiled ..Ever !!. I wasn’t too great in Chemistry either as I had slacked off quite a bit in the 11th. I was totally under prepared when I got back to Chennai, where the kids are so focused about their acads. Everybody wants to get into the IITs here. My first mid terms gave me the shock I was dreading all along .. I had just scraped chemistry scoring 27.5 on 75. Vasumati mam , however , had failed me. I went to her with righteous indignation at being failed even though technically I hadn’t. It was the first time I had failed in any subject .. period.
This is what she told me “ If I pass you now , You’ll take it for granted . If I fail you however, you will always remember this failure. Take it in your stride”. I’ve never failed any exam after that ( We’ll have to ,of course, ignore my CFA level II which I failed a few months back.. But then, I wasn’t prepared and was caught between messy job shifts.. So that doesn’t count ;-))

Vinata Sai Mam: Fast forward College … Vinata mam taught English Literature.She was one heck of a lady. When I started college , I wasn’t too happy. I wasn’t happy about the college, my course offered me little intellectual stimulation and found most of my classmates more content in mugging up things rather than trying to learn anything new. I felt trapped between people I couldn’t relate to. Predominantly, I was bored. I used to do very well in my literature classes. But due to my high boredom and fickleness levels , I started dozing off a lot in class, even if the lectures were interesting. One day Vinata mam showed me an ad of a quiz competition (she was the culturals staff coordinator) which was to take place in another college and asked me if I would be interested. I had never quizzed before and was very skeptical about it. She had also picked up girls from other departments and we assembled one afternoon to get to know each other. We hit it off and started a De-facto Quiz club. And suddenly college was so much fun. I was hardly around in college as I was busy attending more quizzes, actually all kinds of competitions- Dumb charades, Jam, collages, creative writing ...anything actually … And most importantly I met a lot of likeminded people who later became some of my good friends. I met Vinata mam a few years back at annual quiz fest organized by a bookchain in chennai and she was there with another bunch of starry eyed students. I don’t quiz any longer. But I suspect , she is there every year , religiously supporting her team.
Thanks vinata mam.. You made my College bearable ;-)

Kediyoor Sir: Fast forward again to Post graduation. It was the final semester and placements were abysmally bad that year. Kediyoor was our PGP coordinator. I had taken a course on Advertising and the final review exams were about to happen. During one weekend during final review exams, I had some friends over and wasn’t staying in the hostel( Not allowed as per our institute policy.. hope my Dad is not reading this ).

The exam was initially scheduled for Sunday 11:00 and the last class I attended was on Friday. I had informed my roomie and a few college friends that I wouldn’t be in till Sunday evening , but they had no idea where we were staying . Just my luck – the exam got preponed by an hour and I had no clue as I hadn’t bothered to stop by the insti earlier nor had I checked up with my roomie.I didn’t have a cell phone those days. So , an hour into the exam I walked into the exam room to horrendously find people already writing the exam. I freaked out !!. My invigilator took me to Kediyoor. Miraculously, he made me write the exam, even though I was allowed only an hour and half. I was actually surprised that I got a A- later. Kediyoor called me after the exam and asked me what was really bothering me . He apparently assumed that I was in depression as I wasn’t placed yet. He put me on to another lady lecturer who started counseling me every week, treating me like a whacked out psycho .. This ode goes to Kediyoor to have taken so much interest in my future to have allowed me to write the exam and also give me extra 30 minutes to finish my exam If he hadn’t allowed me to write the exam , I would have had to repeat the year due to my carelessness… I shudder to think of the consequences.. .I can never forgive him for putting me on to that counseling lady.. Ugh!!
Also thanx to my roomie , Soda for checking out every hotel in town for me, when someone told her that I hadn’t made it to the insti in time for the exam. What fun times..

Ps : No names have been changed as gratitude doesn't need be camoflagued ;-).

Hell , why ?

Why, Oh why?
What is so appealing to people about sadness? Why do sad movies and books get more awards and are critically acclaimed than happy ones? Isn’t it harder eliciting a smile than drawing out a tear drop? Is a creation that evokes a feeling of loss, melancholy or sadness more precious than something that makes you laugh? How many happy-movies have won the Oscars ? How many happy-books have won the Booker? Why does the typical “multiplex” crowd tend to appreciate parallel cinema a whole lot more than commercial cinema?.Why are people who watch serious english theatre considered intellectual? Why do most blogs on the internet written by women seem very similar? Why does the language, the style and the topics seem the same? why do most rockstars have long hair ,pierced body parts and wear t-shirts with whacky lines? Why are Indian kids these days more proficient in english than their own mother- tongues? Will English end up the single unifying factor of this nation? Why are there so many dance-based shows on tv these days ? Why does every 3rd metro-sexual male I bump into look like a clone of the second guy – perfectly groomed? Why are mothers the way they are? .. selfless and caring. Do selfish daughters morph into selfless angels when they become mothers ?Why do Indian women think that drinking , smoking and having pre-marital sex makes them liberated and get them one step closer to equality of sexes? Does Male-infanticide exist? Do husband-beaters exist ?Do women use pick up lines?Why do women reconcile and let their career take a back seat for the sake of the family?Why are male classical dancers considered effeminate ?why do we flinch when we have to wear an unbranded shoe to our aerobics class? Why does it have to be Adidas or Nike or Reebok? Why is nobody content with a single degree anymore? Why do we want to believe in god so desperately when we know subconsciously that the belief is not going to change anything? Why do they not play english songs on MTV anymore? Why are most beautiful places on earth strife-ridden ? Why do I rarely come across people wearing cuff-links these days? Why do people see “sex in the city” or Saas-bahu serials ?why do I switch on the tv automatically when I come home ?Why do neo-nazis and terrorists think the way they do ?.
.. and Yawn ... why am I up at 3:00 AM blogging ?? Honestly ,wish I had answers..

why do people blog??

Me: I created a blog today!!!!
Alter ego :huh .. so what??.. so do gazillion other people who have been randomly littering the internet with their supposed"witicisms" ..

On and off i have wondered what it would be like to have a blog ... and share random details of one's existence to random public..For a really long time i also thought that i didn't have a point of view on a lot of things going on around me and didnt know what i would blog about even if i did start my own blog.. well thats a frightening thought .. but what the heck i decided to litter the internet further with my random musings ..

that brings me to another existential question(!!) - why do people blog?

Maybe cos ...

**They are bored and honestly dont know what to do with themselves ...
**They think they are witty and just want to show off ...
.**Nobody else would to listen to their existential questions (duh)and their metaphysicals interpretations in their offline avtars ...
*They genuinely want to unleash knowledge hithero not known to mankind..I for one cant think of anything i can contibute which has already not been contributed which can lead mankind to a path of greater glory;-)
**Great way to revive memories and share it with others
**Get a kick out of seeing their written word in a public domain .. I almost said seeing their written word in print .. honestly how many of us even have time to read books .. my only reading happens at office when i am browsing during those oh-so boring days at work.

... and what prompted me to start blogging.. well i accidentally bumped into a 18 year old (who i had seen bumming around as a 10-11 year old) and now that same "kid" has a blog that shares his everday learnings ... and... it sounded like such a sauve and intellectual thing to do ..to have a blog .. So here i come !!Unleasing my verbal -online -diahorrea;-)

Ps : check out this kids blog at alearningaday.blogspot.com. I am sure it will make you feel like a bummer youself .. The only thing i thought of at that age was "what next .. i am so confused!!.... "

yipeee ... i created a blog