Since I have been a good girl…

…and not shopped for myself in a very very long time (A pair of shoes bought over the last week does not count, of course, what is one measly pair of shoes), I am doing the second best thing I can and am window shopping. Given the fact that it is pouring cats and dogs and a couple of cows outside, the next best thing I can do is to turn to net-a-porter and sigh. And sigh some more. And click. And fill out a wishlist, which, given the current state of brokedom is destined to remain just that, a wishlist. Then I move on to style.com and sigh some more. The amount of sighing emanating from me makes the spouse cast a curious eye on the computer screen.

Having tucked my salivating tongue inside my mouth, I get back to the dour business of trying to earn a living, seeing as I’m not doing much to earn my keep as a kept woman these days. Which is also probably why the husband is looking suspiciously at the computer everytime I sigh deeply. He will probably never understand the twist in the gut that happens each time I gaze on that salmon Marni pump.

The Five Best Things the Spouse has done for me

This is a tag that comes hot of the post by Dipali on her wonderful SRE, and having had the pleasure of meeting the both of them I can safely say a more darling couple would be hard to come by.

And since by the very nature of the title, this requires said tag to be soppy and barf inducing, I put the barf alert notice right up front so those who want to spare themselves the agony of heaving out the contents of their stomach are free to skip this post. Also, I need to touch the husband for a rather heavy emptying out of his wallet in the coming week, so I am hoping this will sort of smooth the way and force him to live up to the reputation I am broadcasting all over the www.

So without much ado, here are the five nicest things my spouse has done for me. And some more.

1] Come with me for every appointment, every scan, every test during my infertility treatment and my pregnancy. Considering he wasnt keen on having any children and I was the one on hormonal wanting overload, I guess he decided he’d better see me through it or I would implode.

2] Not insisting I cook. But then I guess that is not just his niceness, but also his self preservation instincts.

3] Always being there whenever I’ve been stuck in a situation. Riots, power blackouts, floods, you name it, and I’ve been secure in the knowledge that all I need to do is call him and he will come (rather like some superhero without the costume and the cape) and get me home safe and sound.

4] Pampering me. Even when he could ill afford it. He is a generous husband. The best watches, sunglasses, bags, clothes, perfumes, jewellery, he insists on buying them for me. He is not so generous with himself. He buys stuff for himself rarely, but is very giving with me. Truth be told, he is generous with everyone.

5]Always supported me 100 per cent in whatever I’ve chosen to do, whether chuck up jobs, or start anything new, or decide to be a lotus eater, he never says a word. Or maybe he would rather not say a thing and let me make my own mistakes.

And some more:

1] He never notices when I pile on the kilos. Or if he does, he chooses to keep it zipped until I look like I’m ready to be kicked into a goal.

2] He never ever expresses a strong opinion on what I wear or what I do with my hair. Nor does he encourage me not to wear any particular kind of clothes. Any modesty in my dressing is totally self imposed.

3] When I chickened out of driving after a couple of particularly gruesome crashes, he hired a driver.

4] He has unhesitatingly bashed up eveteasers for me. Without being asked to. Way back in the days when we travelled by bus and train. That makes a girl feel really safe.

5] He accompanies me to every doctor’s appointment and surgery still and does the post surgery care to the best of his ability. Post LASIK, he ensured my drops were put in, the eye patches worn every night and no excess eye strain through sitting at the computer or reading done.

6] If I am ever ill (he knows I really am ill when I tuck myself into bed without washing my face, creaming it, and creaming my hands and feet), he takes over the child completely. Feeding, changing, homework, putting to bed.

7] If he hands me over some cash for spending purposes (I am a kept woman, remember), he will never ask me what I spent it on. Or ask me what I need money for. Or be niggardly about handing over some spare dosh when I run out of the greenbacks. Which is ever too often.

8] And he continues to make me feel like the sexiest woman on earth. Despite the triple layers of cellulite, the extra tyres, stretchmarks, balding head, jiggly belly pouch, pigmentation and morning dog breath.

And I tag

Maggie

Rohini

The Mad Momma

Poppins Mom

Cee Kay

Asaan

Get to it, girls.

The account of the LASIK

On popular demand, here below I put down the true account of my LASIK experience. Its been a couple of weeks since I had my LASIK surgery done, and speaking from mine own true experience, it has been a cake walk. All ye who are seriously contemplating getting it done, my total green signal for it. The only words of wisdom I could spout on this issue is choose your doctor well, opt for a reputed eye surgeon, and dont be tempted to settle for a cheaper option if you’re not sure and convinced about the person who will operate on you.

Here’s what happened.

I was called into the Operation Centre at 8 am. I landed there quivering like a leaf. Or a stray drenched to the bone in the cold rain. The only standing instructions had been to not use eye make up or deodorant and not to use my contact lenses for at least ten days.

The atmosphere was rather like the Earthling aboard the alien spacecraft. I was draped in green hospital gown. Made to wash my face carefully and wipe it. Hands and feet encased in plastic slip on mocassins. Everyone around with head covered and mouth covered. Add to it, my spectacles had been deposited with the spouse it the waiting room so all I could see were formless blobs of folk hovering around. A quick double check of my existing power was done. The surgeons conferred in muted tones. I had, after all, been wearing semi soft contact lenses ever since I was 15. That had caused some amount of corneal flattening. My eye specialist had already discussed that he would be leaving a slight number in my left eye to enable me to manage without needing reading glasses in a couple of years. At forty, they say, age related eye muscular issues do necessitate reading glasses. And I am just a couple of years away from that hallowed mark.

Some drops were put into my eyes. And I was made to lie down on a operatng table thingie with some machine looming over me. This is the point at which I said my last prayers and thought back to my son’s face as he slept in the morning when I sneaked out of the house. I am squeamish. When it comes to the eyes, I am double squeamish. I had been instructed before to stare at the red light and not move the eyeball. A suction ring was put in place to hold my eyelids open and suction applied. Now hold, your stomach, if you are queasy about these things, your vision goes blank at this point. They told me it would go black. But it went kindoff white, so it was good to be prepared. I, was, of course, fully conscious and struggling with my instinctive impulse to yell Stop, I want to go…the only thing that held me back was vanity and the knowledge that I’d gotten pretty bored of putting in them contact lenses and was even down to the lowness of attending wedding receptions and parties in spectacles. This, from a woman who never stepped out of her house to go down to the lobby in them spectacles, was pure blasphemy.

So when it went blank, I told the doc it had and was asked to keep staring at the green light which went to red as I stared. As the laser started its work. Some whirring sounds and some minor sensation of doctors working on the eye, which, I assure you is quite a turn the stomach kind of feeling, since the immediate reflex is to shut the eyelid but the eyelid cannot be shut, it being held open by suction pump and such like. Its taking me longer to type this than it took for both eyes to be done. Both eyes done I was helped up and taken out of the operation theatre, and as I walked out, things around me were perceptibly sharper and clearer. I saw, for the first time, the spouse crystal clear as I stepped out. Without lenses or spectacles. That was a total aww mushy moment, so will not encourage random barfing by detailing it here.

Dark glasses perched on my nose, prescription for a series of drops to be doused into said eyes at prescribed intervals in hand, I was marched off with warnings to not wash my face or head for a week, not to allow any impact to the cornea, to sleep on my back or side, but not the tummy and to visit back in a couple of days for a post-LASIK check up. And yes, no television, computers or reading. It did take me till the end of the second day to start seeing clearer and a week to see perfectly. But now, I’m two weeks down and dont even miss my glasses or lenses. This feels perfectly natural and as it was meant to be. And the pain, you’re asking? None. Absolutely none. Just some irritation and haziness and some amount of headache because of the blurry vision initially. Why on earth did I wait so long to have this done?

This post has been done to kick all those who are on the fence into getting the LASIK done. Spectacles and lenses are such a bondage. Getting up in the morning and being able to see the world crystal clear is such a miracle, I cant thank God enough!

Gay Liberation Day today?

So the Delhi High Court today overturns an archaic law that has led to years of gays being harassed, being made to feel like criminals and being at the mercy of random blackmailers.

This is the first step towards the many gays in India being allowed to lead a life free of fear and ridicule and discrimination. For that I laud it. The hounding of gays was reaching ridiculous proportions. I for one found it terrible that a person could vote but was denied the freedom to practise his sexual orientation freely without fear of being thrown behind bars.

As a legal adult, what you do with another legal consenting adult, male or female, behind the closed doors of your bedroom, without force or injury or involving children is none of my business. Though, I must admit, I cannot understand homosexuality.  I have never felt attracted to a woman. Yet. You never know what life brings. I have worked for many years in the media, where the culture is much more open about homosexuality than it is perhaps, in other professions, and I have known co-workers and colleagues who are gay, some openly, some in denial, some married and using their marriage as a cover up. There are a few secrets in a profession which is pretty incestuous to start with. And while I have never understood the homosexual urge I can understand how terrible it must be to be told that your urges are criminal, when in fact they are something that come from within you and cannot be denied. It is simple, you cannot be told by the state how to conduct your personal life. This is a democracy. For that vision I salute the Delhi High Court.

As for how long it will take before men are not compelled to marry women, or women men,  to provide them the cloak of heterosexuality in order to be accepted wholly by society, I dont know. I dont think that is happening in a hurry across the country. There are still miles to go.  I have known the pain of a friend who was married off to a very eligible man through an arranged marriage who has lived for years in a loveless marriage, because her husband is gay. They even have a child, produced out of a sense of duty, and through IVF. To outward appearances their marriage is perfect, she shops, he works and goes for infinite business trips. “How do you compete with another man,” she’d asked me once. She has casual flings to make up for the lack of sex in her life. She longs for love. Her youth is past her. Their marriage is loveless but has reached a level of comfort today. I do not know whom to empathise with here, my friend who has reached middle age without living a truly married life, or her husband, who is forced to live a life of duplicity to prevent his ultra conservative family from disowning him.

God has put everyone of us on this earth for a purpose, and to find our destiny. And defining what gives us happiness and fulfilment is a goal we have to seek ourselves. With this ruling, I can only hope that more gays have the courage to come out of the closet and not need to get themselves into loveless marriages in order to conform to the heterosexual social norm. I hope no one goes through the kind of a barren life my friend has.

Of low heels, and the high…

And its twice official, wearing heels is definitely good for you.

Yes, the experts on this are now agreeing with what I have been screaming at foghorn volume about all along. Wearing a slight heel to your shoe is actually good for you. Yes, and all them wearing ballet flats and thong slippers and such like are actually just sitting ducks for a lifetime of visits to the podiatrist or orthopedic surgeon or some doctor I forget exactly specializing in what.
In celebration of this piece of news in the newspapers yesterday, I promptly ran out and bought myself a pair of greeny yellow patent leather peep toe wedgeheels. No, contrary to perception that is not puke colour. It is a very smart colour, and there were nice patent red numbers out there too, but I didn’t want Minnie Mouse calling for her shoes. I get real nervous talking to mice. Scampering on top of chairs and shrieking in the midst of conversation does not for a dignified stance make.
Peep toe, patent leather wedgeheeled pumps. Yup that’s a mouthful, I agree. But true shoe aficionados out there will immediately get what I am talking about and give me solid sensible tips about what I can now wear this colour with. Given the state of my wardrobe, browns and blacks are the sole colours populating it at the moment, and sure, they go with anything.
Why are heels good for you? For one they make you look taller. When you are a five foot nothing person like I am, with lots of fat on the carcass that you need to visually distribute through optical illusions, wedgeheels and very high stilettos quickly become your best friend when you realize that men you really, really want to date in a tongue hanging out, panting sort of way, pat you on the head like a pet dog (if men like small fluffy dogs that is) and move on to taller, more statuesque women, who swish kilometers above your head and probably need oxygen masks to breath since their head might be somewhere in the upper layers of the stratosphere. And you are not content to set your sights lower, never mind what they say about short men and Napolean Bonaparte and Charlie Chaplin being fine examples of said maxim.
Secondly, when you walk on heels your posture and gait changes. You swish your butt a little. Unwittingly.You automatically sit straighter walk straighter. And you’re less likely to slouch. I remember the nuns at the convent school I attended constantly haranguing us not to slouch, the most effective remedy for unwarranted slouching in class being five stingers with the ruler on the calves. I now have solid calves and I know just whom to thank for them. And I don’t slouch. Not much at least. Not like the current generation of ballet flat wearers who drape themselves over any piece of available furniture like limp asaparaguses (asparagii?) begging to be mopped up by the cleaning staff.
And considering I would jump into moving into the platform trains at the peak of my youth in four inch heels, jump straighter too. These are Mumbai locals I am talking about. That is no achievement to be laughed off scathingly. That is a feat to be noted down in the diary with solemnity and perused at leisure and marveled at. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to get myself into a stationary local train right now even with hiking boots, and armed bodyguards to frogmarch me into one even if my life depended on it, what can I say. I was younger then and fitter, and didn’t have a child to go home to.
Thirdly, when you wear a pair of well constructed heels, you are a lady. You are no longer a girl. I passed out of the hallowed hallways of girldom over two and some decades ago, and have absolutely no chance of being mistaken as someone who is anywhere near the precints, except perhaps as a matron enforcing light out deadlines. And I don’t intend to shovel myself into matron territory anytime soon. Thinking of it, the only folks who wear flats are the very young and the very old most times. And having said this, I am very clear that all parents who allow their toddlers to mince around in two inch heels need to be sentenced a lifetime of mincing around being permastrapped to fetish heels. Yes, including the male progenitor of said child. No, it definitely does not look cute when a three year old minces around delicately because she cant break out into a full blooded run when she pleases. That saying, about there being a time and place for everything. Well, three and four and five right upto 14 is no time or place for heels of any kind.
Yes, I know the girls are sitting on live wires to wear their first pair of High Heels and sashay off into public. Call me old fashioned if you like, but that brings me to my next blasphemy, beauty contests for children. With little girls being primped and permed and mascaraed and blushed on and taught to smile coquettishly and what not. Makes my stomach turn and empty up its contents onto the nearest available human being. But then I am a grim old lady and don’t see the humour in most things.  My distaste for beauty contests might just be an acute case of sour grapes since no such crowns have ever landed on my head, except perhaps for the occasional dunce cap in Mathematics class. Because of course, I didn’t have the height mandated for such crowns. Which brings me back to my pet peeve, the lack of height. Which brings us back to them heels and the need for.
Seriously though, all my fluffy reasons aside wearing a slight heel everyday is good for you. And wearing way high heels rocks the libido. That I know. And what more excuse would you need. As for backaches and pressure on the knees and such gory, totally unappealing things immediately reminiscent of sweet old ladies with walkers and dentures out in the glass on the dresser, they don’t deserve to be in the same paragraph as libido so am going to ignore them blatantly and deal with them when I come to them. Maybe I’ll just have to get into them sturdy flats once them knees go after all these years of teetering around dangerously in heels more vertiginous than the ones deemed medically appropriate by them podiatrists and orthopedic surgeons and knee doctors and their coven. Perhaps I might just then be compelled to get into flats.
Do those Chinese bone stretching and height increasing thingies work after 38? Am getting rather brave after the LASIK.

Buffet survival tips

I went to a buffet yesterday. For lunch. As any kind reader would know by now, for me, an eat all you can buffet is the red signal to morph into the Empress of Blandings and put the snout to the feeding trough, aka the plate with no demurring in the face of gasps of awe and shock at the amount I pack away with absolutely minimal effort.  Yesterday was lunch at the Aromas of China, a restaurant whose name I take in hushed reverent tones. So vast, so ample and so overwhelming is the spread of its Sunday buffet lunch that two trips to replenish plate at said counter donot suffice. And no, I am not telling you how many trips I took, but suffice to say that had I put the trips back to back, I would have done my cardio workout for a day.

Like any serious buffet eater, I had done my preparations well in advance. I had sharpened my hunger by staying semi starved since the morning. Well two halka phulka idlis and sambar is nothing to a paratha breakfaster like me. I had politely declined all tempting nibbles at the birthday party in attended before carting my carcass off to said buffet. I had worn jeans with a substantial proportion of its weave comprising a mix of denim and lycra and reinforce buttons, not likely to pop off and hit my fellow diners in the eye when I finally rose from the table and stretched langurously. I also wore sturdy comfortable shoes, ideal for walking to and fro between table and buffet counter without need to mince around apologetically and accidentally trip and spill food on premises.

Nonetheless, yesterday was a Sunday. And Sunday brings to the fore Very Aggressive Buffet Eaters. These include soft faced elderly aunties, with talcum powder in the folds of their neck and their faces wreathed over in creases who elbow you out of the line by pretending to “just check” the dishes on offer.  Or the ditherers and datherers who stand gawping at each individual dish for an hour before fishing out their personal weighing scales and calorie charts before deciding exactly how much they gently and reverentially place on their plates. Of course, such folk have no business even being at a buffet and holding up the line for rest of us hard-eating folk.

Here are tips to get through a buffet to your hearts (and stomach’s) content:

Donot even venture near the soup counter. That is trick designed by the restaurant to get your stomach half full and ensure you dont pack away as much as you could in normal circumstances.

Wear clothes that camouflage spills and food droppings so you can eat at ease and not have to worry about bits of food on your lap and gravy stains down your dront.

Develop the art of the accidental elbow nudge and plate prod, to get the slow pokes in front to speed it up. Also develop the hide of a rhino if you are to succeed in this strategy.

Eat sparely for the rest of the day to ensure you can eat your money’s worth and more.

Do be OCD about going in line. I would have grown roots had I done that yesterday. Skip around to unpopulated counters and take whats available. Come back for what you think you missed later.

Always, always keep that little space for dessert or you end up eating a great meal till the point the buttons on your shirt and trousers are popping off and all you can remember of it is that you were too stuffed to have dessert.

If you have small children at the table make them useful by sending them to the buffet to fill your plate with specific items if you’re too embarassed to keep going back for the one hundredth time.

Happy buffet-ing.

Michael Jackson is dead….

…and so is a part of me. How do I even begin to explain the phenomenon that was Michael Jackson to my son? Of course, there are parts of this said phenomenon I would prefer not to have to explain to my son, but since the man is recently dead, I will gloss over them like the elephant in the room, as mentioned by Randy Pausch.

The fact remains that Michael Jackson was the music I grew up to. The Way You Make Me Feel was the official love ballad for my generation, raunchy, aggressive, and full of great dancing and MJ, us with the one shouldered oversized tees, hair scrunched up into untidy messy high on head ponytails, legwarmers (for God alone knows what in the heat of Mumbai and no dance classes), the then to be spouse perfected moonwalking and breakdancing for the express purpose of impressing the squealing girls and did a mean headspin and backflip in his time.

I knew the words backwards to Thriller, Billie Jean, Black & White, I Just Cant Stop Loving You, Man in the Mirror. Dammit I worshipped the man. He was the ultimate in coolth to me. Of course, like the rest of my generation I watched on in shock and disbelief as he changed from a cute black boy to something I still dont know what yet. I watched his courtroom appearances with sunken nose and lipsticked and eyemakeupped eunuch persona and tried to reconcile it with the face of the oh so fabulous dancer who had me sitting on the edge of my seat whenever his songs played on television.

And I would think back to the I Want You Back of the Jackson 5 and wondered what had been so terrible in his childhood lost that he never ever could grow up. I watched the documentaries done on him, recoiled in horror as I heard stories of how he had been slavedriven to perform professionally at the age of five. It was heartbreaking to hear him speak in his whispery fragile voice, and say that opposite the recording studio there was a fairground with a carousel and all he wanted to do was to ride the Ferris Wheel and the Carousel and he wouldnt be allowed to. And he had to practise practise practise. He was a child. Five years old. Thats how old my son is. I watched clips of his Neverland mansion, his taking of the Peter Pan personality he had created for himself to the ultimate extreme. I read the stories of the child abuse, the sleepovers, the manic spending, the bizaree appearances at the trial, and even to an untrained non clinical mind the inferences were obvious, the man was trying desperately to get back his childhood. At times I even felt terrible for him. Haunted, an object of ridicule in his later years, a subject of jokes and wondered about the children he had chosen to have borne for him, and wondered what type of a gilded cage they were growing up in. The fabulous music he made in his hey day was forgotten. Newer singers and musicians came on the scene. But the phenomenon that was MJ could never ever be replicated.

Perhaps it is appropriate I am in black today. Of course, you and I know that I am in black every other day, but today it seems particularly appropriate. A part of my youth has died forever, and I am in mourning. Keep his private life aside. That is none of my business, except as a voyeuristic fan. For the music he gave us, I bow to him on bended knee.

“Why not just tell people I’m an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They’ll believe anything you say, because you’re a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, ‘I’m an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight,’ people would say, ‘Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He’s cracked up. You can’t believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth.’”

—Michael Jackson

The King of Pop is dead. And an era is officially over.

The monsoon is here.

The monsoon to me is somewhat like the bad boy of romance novels. You dread his arrival with all the classic symptoms, palpitations, sweats, churning stomach and even accelerated heartbeat, but once he’s around, you just get swept completely off your feet, and enjoy the ride.

The build up to the monsoon this year was rather non dramatic. After the incredibly cruel summer had roasted us all to a crisp, the last few days saw random indeterminate clouds gathering on the horizon and drizzling a bit occasionally, and I kept fleeing into the rooms and shutting the huge french windows petrified of getting any random drop of water finding its way into my newly Lasiked eyes. Last evening we pulled our cane chiks down from the balconies, shifted the huge comfuy sofas in and moved the balcony furnitue to safer spots, and arranged the plants in the perimeter of said balconies to prevent them from toppling over and falling with the gale force winds that blast through the floors we are at. We dug out our umbrellas and raincoats and windcheaters and kept safety kits in both the cars. We also in our hearts prayed that we wouldnt be stuck in a 26/7 situation ever again. Once is enough for me, thank you very much. This year we are also out of the old residence which inevitably had the walls leaking puddles on our floors, creepy things crawling up our drainpipes and the exiting the ground floor requiring a swim with underwater snorkelling equipment to reach the first floor landing.

Monsoons were always a riot. My lenses perpetually fell off, fogged over or worse, managed to dislodge themselves in heavy showers and travel to distant corners of the eye leaving me hapless and hunting for the nearest open eye doctor who could then coerce the damn thing back to where the Good Lord intended it to be. Yup, it was not always possible to be soigne and such like in the monsoons. Not with rain getting into your ears and such like.

I am currently wearing sunglasses thanks to the surgery. The sunglasses I have been hiding behind are so double wrapped around the eyes that even a mote of dust would be hardpressed to find their way into an opening and land into the eyes. Yes, you guessed right. These are pair of sunglasses bought back in the times when  Iwould rather wear bikers helmets for protection from said dust motes whizzing into them lenses and making me do the wriggle shake blink tear dance and hunt for safe non windy place to remove said lenses, rinse and redeposit in the eye or give up all efforts to be sauve and nonbespectacled and shove on them glasses and be at peace. And of course, the monsoons had another issue. That of contact lenses getting fogged up and blurry. You see, I am from the age of the dinosaurs, and started out wearing semi soft contact lenses and despite the best efforts of doctors and eye stores to convince me to switch to soft lenses, never quite managed to overcome the squeamishness in pit of stomach whenever said lens was to be plucked off the eyeball and sconsequently stuck to the tried and tested semi soft version.

This year, hopefully, life will be good. Hopefully, I will sail through the monsoon without any flood rescue boats being pressed into service. Seriously though, I see the thick black clouds rolling up at top speed over the creek our building looks out on, and then come wham into our balconies, making us feel like we’ve migrated to a hillstation of sorts. The wind howls through little slivers of space between window frame joints, making us leap in fright at sudden unimaginably terrifying sounds like random footsteps coming from the floor above. A bedraggled raven sitting on the balcony in search of temporary shelter from the rain, cawing his lungs out for no other reason but to irritate me, gets swotted away. Chai gets made by the tumbler full, and gulped down with parathas and pakoras and all such things that go straight to the hips and settle comfortably there, nudging and poking existing cellulite and pushing at the skin to make new space. Bhuttas are cooked on open charcoal sigris and smeared with lime, salt and chilli powder and eaten at pavement stops on grey windy days.  Groundnuts are brought home and washed (double washed mind you, to get all the dirt off), boiled with salt and then happily occupy much of a chilly wet evening, when going out is not an option and shelling boiled groundnuts and popping them into your mouth is the next best thing to heaven on earth.

I am also a die hard romantic. Come the rains and I half imagine myself to be sweet sixteen again and need to have a walk under single umbrella with love of my life to relive days of youth gone by. Of course, tis a different situation now with one of those beach umbrellas being required to accommodate both of us without us getting any water on ourselves. And secondly, I have officially forgotten the art of walking down pavements and such like in rainy weather without managing to sprain an ankle or topple over and impact the concrete by causing cracks in the road surface.

I hope to get a few hours of peace, to be able to put on Naina Devi’s thumris, sit in my balcony with a sappy Mills and Boon, gorge on chai pakoras and think back to a time in my life when the monsoon was romantic and fun and full of all the corny cliches that Bollywood is made off, save the dancing around trees in the rain bit. But give me an old log cabin in the mountains and a storm and George Clooney anyday. Sigh. Let me get to that balcony. Tis the best I will get.

Am back…

And seeing the world with renewed eyes. Eyes that arent yet as clear as I would have liked, seeing as I am shaking them up ever so often by sneezing violently, enough to scramble my brains into an omlette. Yes, yes, yes, trust me to have the fantastically bad timing to go into a serious nose blocked, snot producing, hacking cough type, ribcage rattling sneeze-o-fest kind of a cold just when I dont have to shake them eyes too much.

Please forgive me for not replying to all comments right now, I have an hour granted to me to sit at the computer by the stern browed man I married, who is right behind me, clicking my time. And undoubtedly reading over my shoulder.

The eyes are still not used to being open the first thing in the morning and being able to see the world and by reflex action the hand starts patting the sidetable for spectacles, and of course, since am on dark glasses continuous wear these days I have the substitute.

The birthday yesterday was a tame affair. AND NO ONE BOUGHT ME CAKE. *This typed with smirking backward glance at the man who is timing me and definitely reading over my shoulder, and being all stern faced and impassive while doing so.*

I am the officially designated cake buyer in the house, the one whose lot it comes to run out and pick up a cake for who so ever happens to turn a year older,  and I was not considered worthy of a cake to cut on my birthday. Let me sniffle away in a corner. Let me talk in great detail about Dutch truffle and the good things it always does to my libido. And why since no Dutch Truffle was ingested the first day of the current year of my life, there will be no libido for said year.

Guess who is so getting his head bitten off all of today. Never mind that two lovely bags were proferred as peace offerings to the birthday girl on the warpath. You see they were not giftwrapped. More on that later.

Didnt help that I was running a fever so for most part of the day was closeted in the bedroom like Mrs Rochester, with the same wild unwashed hair and the same feral anger towards people who spoke in high voices in the house. 

In the evening, the day was saved by two sweethearts of friends coming over out of the blue bearing gifts… yes, I am shallow like that, I love gifts and the unwrapping of. Whats a girl without her girlfriends I ask you? I go into unseemly rhapsodies over stuff that is giftwrapped. I need giftwrapped stuff. Especially on the birthday. I mean its bad enough that I dont get thrown any parties anymore. And folks forget to buy cake for me, with just one symbolic candle, I’m not greedy, I dont want the entire shebang of 38 candles on the damn surface of the cake resulting in one wax bite overload of melted candle. All I ask is for gifts. Wrapped in multiple layers. Of very Shiny Gift wrapping Papers. To add to the anticipation. You know. Whats a birthday present without the wrapping. 

Oh okay. Its time to grow up I think. Should try. Am almost qualifying for that walking stick now. I think I still want the gifts and the cake and the balloons on my 90th birthday. I might still do the shake. Involuntarily though.

Happy budday to me

And a quick update. The LASIK went smashingly. I can open my eyes and see things in detail not patches of interminate origin, I walked out of the operation theatre and saw my husbands face crystal clear for the first time in my life. Am embarassed to say I did hormonal stuff like cry buckets with the nurses daubing my cheeks with gauze and exhorting me to stop the waterworks. More details on the operation later. For all ye who are squeamish, tis nothing, piece of cake. And if you’ve had a child pulled out of you its phtooey stuff. Get it done now. Signing off before my phone gets confiscated.