The Day Began With So Much!

The day's begun in a rather weird manner. At 7:45 am, just as I was about to leave, Mother noticed the crow has robbed her plant.

"Well Mother you encouraged him." Crows are always male to us. We can never think of a lady crow involved in such a robbery.

"Oh it doesn't matter if he did steal it. I still have a portion of the plant in the kitchen."

Then, at around 9:00 am, the company bus nearly made paste of a two-year old. The bus was running pell mell down a lane that latched itself onto a road to Andheri East. As it ran down this lane, the two-year old appeared from nowhere, the driver realized he had a human life near the bus wheels, and so, we heard a loud bang. The driver had braked just in time.

Of course, that wasn't time enough for the two-year old to realize that its head was still in order. The bus had hit its head and that was all that mattered. And since such hits at that age seem like a national crisis to owners of that age, the two-year old began to wail as if its pacifier had decided to not pacify it at all.

Luckily, the parents were around. And they quite knew that were the bus and the party within to be dragged to the police station, they would be held up in one of India's typical jails for being irresponsible guardians of a crying two-year old. So they did the next best thing: The mother coaxed the two-year old to bury its head into her shoulder and the father waved a hand at us as if to say all's well.

Quite naturally then, the bus driver stopped his sweating and drove on.

Hugh Miss; Hugh Mess

My left palm supported a portion of my chin. But my face would have none of this show of affection. So, I had to fling my palm down to the table and throw my ear on to my forearm.

A full 10 minutes later, after I had memorized every pore that slept next to a hair strand or two on my arm, I realized I needed to do something better than an epidermic observation.

I was at home, and I had promised myself to not touch my office inbox. I also decided to not be of much help in the house either.  Hence, the epidermic observation happened.

But it was time to move on to better things. It was time to surf idly - with no direction whatsoever.
So I began to surf - with no fixed intention to land up with anything at all. I visited Google.com. Then, I switched to its video-search page. And from there, God alone knows how, I landed on YouTube.com.

Well, once there, I think I used Hugh Jackman as my search string. For I remember seeing Wolverine's trailers among the search results.  Anyway I clicked on one of those and promptly landed up on a high-definition version of the trailer.

To its side, left side to be specific, Youtube.com had loaded a number of suggestions. And this was one of them!

I was shocked! Of course, I expected stars to do stupid stuff, but this! This is plain silliness in its ripest form! Hugh Jackman looks like an idiot as he forces himself to smile and coaxes his hips to wiggle just in time to the beat of some fluffy slippery jingle.

Poor fellow, I doubt he had time to polish his steps. They are so terrible, our Abhishek Bacchhan does better in comparison! To make matters even worse, I can't quite understand how the advertisers can expect people to digest the fact that the man who played Wolverine and known to have the most severely serious nature onscreen can dance to such faff!

Anyway, who am I to complain. With a pay cheque of a million dollars or more, I am sure the fellow knows what he is doing. He's a star, he has a PR agency to warn and advise him. So I am quite sure he was awake when he signed the contract.

As for me, I am just amused that he is doing all of that for the sake of some silly stupid iced tea!

About Belafonte and Boredom

You know how it is when you stay at home on one of those days when you have to be at work: You have no agenda, no schedule to adhere to, and you definitely don't have to bother about who's peering into your computer screen.

Even better, you don't even have to take the trouble to make conversation for the heck of it. And you definitely don't have to bother about whether your colleague is talking to you or pretending to do so as she or he makes a detailed map of the Web sites open on your desktop.

Today was one of those days for me. :) Oh but I didn't bunk office! I was down with a cold - the one that attacks me without fail at the beginning of every winter that visits Mumbai. That aside, I had done a lot of 'work' the other day and I thought I needed to treat myself to a day's rest.

So, I sat at home and idled my time. Well, by afternoon, I got fed up of doing that too. It seemed like fun initially - no plan agenda etc etc - but then it settled down into another routine - a routine I follow at home: that of doing nothing.

To break that, I decided to go rummage through YouTube.com.

YoutTube is, as you all know by now, this lovely Web site that everyone wanders to for some stupid reason or the other. It's either a song that drags you there or - most of the time - sheer boredom deposits you on YouTube's homepage.

I admit I was bored. I wasn't interested in reading nor did I want to watch a movie. So, I decided to search completely at random on YouTube.com.

Father was getting ready to go to church at that time. So, quite naturally, I searched for Harry Belafonte's Mama Look a Boo-boo. Harry Belafonte began to sing about how his children don't like him and how they make fun of him. Somewhere between the verses, he also mentioned how his wife tells them to shut up and "go away". Finally, towards the end, poor Mr. Belafonte feels mortified to question the mother. The mother quite coolly says, "The children are playing with you my dear." She also mentions something about them being taught too bloomin' slack, to which he says, "That aint kind of joke to crack." And then the song goes back to the chorus.

It's quite a simple song, actually. It talks about poverty in the Carribean islands perhaps and pokes fun quite shamelessly at the strict disciplinarian of a a father. And somehow it does manage to poke fun at such fathers all around the world.  Father hates the song I think: I have never heard him hum it. Which is why I take every opportunity to hum it for him!:)

Visiting Esther: Part 1 - The Journey

3rd October 2011

After quite a long long while, I can say I did do something worthwhile over the weekend. And all the doing began on Saturday - Saturday morning to be precise.

I had awoken with a headache - the one that insists on being my companion when the weeks are their ends. Usually, I let it hold sway and go back to sleep.

But this morning, I somehow let another plan creep into my head much before the headache walked in. I had decided to visit my aunt who stays in Vasai Road.

"But how will you go?"
"By train."
"By train? But look at the time!" 

It was only 8:30.

"Mother," I said, as I wrung my back from my bed, "I doubt she keeps visiting hours you know."
"Oh but what will you take?"
"Take?"
"Yes, you have to take something along. You just can't go like this."
"Like this? But this is not what I'll be wearing you know. It'll be something more decent than this." 'This', by the way, happened to be my shorts and a vest. 
"I don't mean that! I mean you have to take something along. You cannot just go empty-handed!"
"Oh I'll take your regards, etc etc. And I am sure you can send them again via the phone as well."
"Don't talk rubbish! You have to take something! Listen: I'll be going to the market sometime next week. I'll get some kajukatlis then. So you can go next weekend."
"All right. So then I'll go visit Daloo. "

"Daloo? Why do you want to go visit Daloo?"
"Because Mother," I began while I walked to the basin, "I had decided to go out today. So, I'll go there if I cannot go that side. "

However, by the time I had begun my breakfast, I wanted to re-consider my decision. After all, Saturdays do come once in a week. And much as I love trains, I cannot start to love the effort that I have to put in to travel in them for an hour and a half - especially on a Saturday! Mira Road - the place where my cousin Daloo resides - is about an hour and a half from Sion. Besides that, I wasn't quite sure how far her  place was from Mira Road station either.

I dilly-dallied for a while: I began to watch a movie - Flipped - at around 9:00 while my tea sulked to room temperature. Flipped is a wonderful movie with a very bonhomie feel about it. It's shot in beautiful hues of yellow and sunset orange and has a majestic dash of sepia tint thrown in as well. All this aside, the script is very taut. So though it tells a simple story that has been told a million times before, it did keep me engrossed.

"Look at the time! Look at the time! You'll get late! Tcha! This fellow no? No planning at all! No planning at all!"

It was 9:30.

"But Mother, it's not as if I have told her I'll be coming. I'll just go, say hi hello, and come back."
"And lunch?"
"I'll have it outside."
"What nonsense! If she asks you to stay for lunch, stay."
"But Mother I am not brought up that way."
"And what way exactly were you brought up then?"
"Well, tell me something: What do you say when I tell you to fight back?"
"I don't fight back," Mother said very vehemently, "I am not.. -"
"Yes, exactly what I am saying. "

"Okay okay have it your way. But don't go in the Sun!"

As it turned out, I walked out in the heat of the Sun at 10:30 am. As usual, Pratiksha Nagar, at that point in time, amplified every joule of heat and spread it out over the vicinity the way you spread a liberal pat of butter over a piece of bread. Naturally then, it wasn' quite a cool walk at all. The BEST buses constantly tripped in my way and the taxis and cars decided to do that as well.

In Mumbai, there's not much of a choice when it comes to making your way to a railway station. Either you walk to it and weather all the dirt and rubbish and grime and what not that comes your way. Or, you take a bus or a taxi or an autorickshaw.

Now, the BEST is more of an oven and less of a vehicle and the taxis are not quite sure of being honest with their meters. I anyway hate to hunt for change for the bus ticket. And I cannot quite start to hear the taxidriver's reason to not take you that way because of the traffic jam.

And so, I walked all the way to Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar station.


To be continued...

Sick to work?

Getting back to work after a long long bout of sickness is a headache of the worst kind. As it is, the illness leaves you so sapped of your strength and mental vigour, you just assume you have to retire and head for the hills.

But of course you cannot do that. There are bills to pay, rents to bother about, and you know what else. In my case, the what else was getting away from a house locked into one primary school of thought: that sickness entails every member in the family to lecture the sick man or woman about what to, and what not to, do.

"You had a hair bath that day, so you fell sick."
"You ate chocolate, so you fell sick."
"You did not wear slippers, so you got malaria."
"You hardly wore anything that day. That's why you got typhoid."
"You ate meat on Fridays. That is invitation enough for trouble."
...
...
etc, etc.

Going by this sample of statements - that inevitably find themselves in many such lectures - you would be tempted to believe that if you stayed away from hair baths on certain days, avoided chocolate, wore slippers all the time, covered yourself with a quilt the whole day, and avoided meat on Fridays, you would never have to bother about malaria and typhoid.

Well, if it only were that simple, I will not even have required mediclaim! But no, it's supposed to be this simple for the family. And since, I had enough of that for three whole weeks, I just had to drag myself to office than stay put at home.

Now once you are in office, it's quite awkward to sit and expect people to send work to you. So, I went and asked for it, however difficult I found that to be. Then, once I did get a slice of what the people are involved in, I realized I was better off at home with those tablets and capsules and those lectures as well.

And so, by the middle of the day, in the middle of the entire office, I caught myself trying to finish what I myself had asked for and hoping I'll be able to make it for the 6:30 bus home.

It was sheer luck that day then that I was told that nothing on my plate had to go that very day itself. For had it to, I would most definitely have headed to the hills!

Sick, sicker, but not the sickest of them all

I am writing here after a long long time. I was down with an extravaganza of an illness recently. The doctor diagnosed it as malaria with a borderline case of typhoid. I diagnosed it as a terrible terrible thing to happen to me.

For three weeks, I had nothing but hydrocarbons and synthetic compounds dressed like harmless white and red and brown tablets for company. An assortment of these tablets - up to six or seven in number -  made their way into my stomach and God knows where else every one of those 21 days. I could not complain. I wasn't even in a position to complain. All I could do was sleep, get up, take dosages, sleep, get up, feel depressed, and think I need to re-organize my life. In between all this, I would pray wholeheartedly to the Lord above that He not take me just yet, and then I would hope my prayers are heard!

Well, as luck and my constitution would have it, they were.

By the end of Week 3, I was reduced to half my size - or probably three-fourth of what I was. My trousers - once skin tight - now crumpled into little folds as I wore them. And I could see how vehemently my cheek bones insisted on poking their noses out of my cheeks.

Amidst all those observations, I also observed that I had survived. Which, given the frail self that I am, is no mean an achievement to boast about!

Reflections in a Mirror

Corporate jobs are not my game. Sigh!
Double sigh. Triple that and let's sigh another six times.
Sigh!

A Time for Everything

There always is a time,
Happier than the one you're in-
Simpler-neater too-and with a glass of sweet lime.

You don't have it filed in a folder
Or buried under a boulder.
The Yellow Pages won't list its number
For it chooses to not disturb its slumber

Till a conversation seems complex,
And a sigh becomes a reflex;
Till the light of today,
Seems blacker than yesterday;
And till your steps decide
to leave all aside.

It's then that you remember a chime,
And climb down each second and minute and hour
Exactly to where you left a time:
Happier than the one you're in-pickled  and kept in a jar;
Simpler and neater too-handing you a regret sublime.