Happy Voting to You!

Nope, I havent voted. And this is the first time since I have turned legally an adult and therefore fully responsible for my own goof ups that I havent.

Now here come the excuses.

For one we’ve shifted suburbs. And our ration cards are made out to the new address, while our voters id cards, the old ones are still at the old one.

Yup. We havent made our new voter id cards. How shameful can we be! Procrastination, they say, should be my middle name and sloth, the spouse’s. The sole attempt I made to get our names on the damn list had me standing and stewing in the line for an hour after which I was asked to come back the next day with some xeroxes and of course, I never went back.

The main reason of course, is the candidates. They are both people I dont think I want to vote for. One candidate is a hardworking soul but with a party I dont support for its Hindutva ideology for obvious reasons. The other is a Bigg Boss escapee who leaves me totally cold when it comes to his actual real time efforts in politics.

And I had no clue where I was supposed to go this morning. Old place or new place. Hadnt received any slips notifying me too of my need to go and vote, and considering that the old residence is now a hole in the ground all in the good cause of redevelopment, I dont think I was getting any slips from there.

Okay. Enough excuses. I’m cringeing with shame now. I might just take a turn and check out the polling booth on my way back home.

But I hope you voted like the good citizen I hope you are.

I have finally…

Tried to reply to every comment I got over the past month or so. Please forgive me if I dont reply, am normally rushed for time, but I do love receiving comments, and am delighted when folks take time out to write in. Comments make me feel that people are reading the blog, and therefore it might not be a good idea to draw the curtains on the blog.

Phew.

I must do this everyday. Backlog does get exhausting.

Keep commenting.

Random stuff…

I seriously, very seriously, was thinking about quitting blogging a couple of days ago. I had composed out my farewell post, and wrung out enough lachrymal secretions to have done Bollywood proud, and sat at the computer much in the manner of that blonde headed chappie who went “Tis a far better thing I’m doing than I have ever done,” or words to that effect penned by the Dickens chappie. I’m not a woman for detail.

Therefore, why am I inflicting myself on you, dear unsuspecting reader, all over again? Simple. I need to blog. Nowhere else do I get to write random stuff and not get handed in my papers. Well, technically, since I am jobless, this is purely theoretical. 

Like any good performer, I’ve been recycling my material too often for my own comfort. I mean, how long can you go on reading about my weight related angst, my shopping sprees, my food fetishes, etc, etc. Right. Its a wonder I havent had virtual shoes chucked at my head, knocking me virtually senseless. Well, if anyone does decide to do any shoe chucking, make them size six and chocolate brown satin pumps. Saw them yesterday at a sale, and positively melted into an unseemly puddle of wanting and needing, not rivalled by the unseemly puddle of wanting and needing, brought on by Brad Pitt in some movie where he has insanely long hair and goes butt naked.  Therefore, shoe chucking should kindly be reserved for those with size six feet and good taste in shoes.

The tragedy is that there is a lot happening in life, which is completely off blog limits. As you all might know and realise, I keep a vanilla clean blog. Therefore, there’s volcanoes erupting all around me, and all I do is come out here and write about rolling elysian fields and such like.

Heartbreaking, isnt it? But I’m a woman of resolve as firm as newly set jelly, therefore I will stick to the rules I set for myself when I started blogging. Aka, no bitching. I’ll do all my bitching in person, thank you very much.

Went for a wedding this Saturday with the mater. Actually, as the mater’s escort service, given that this was her best friend in the whole wide world’s son’s  wedding and there was no chance of her making it on her own through Saturday night traffic and emerging unshaken and unstirred.  I got appropriately togged out. Read, I wore shiny shoes, applied some eyeshadow and blush on that promptly dissolved in the flood of oil that keeps emanating from geyser like pores, needing me to keep slapping on more, which finally ended at a point where I could have walked down the Mardi Gras parade and have folks compliment me for my authentic clown mask make up.

The mother was in a simple silk sari, face powdered with talcum powder and hair in a bun looking effortlessly graceful like only mothers can look.

We reached the venue, which was the banqueting hall of a five star hotel. Now this was a Catholic wedding. Therefore, like all good Catholic weddings, we opened the imposing doors of the banqueting hall to confront rows and rows and tables of imposing emptiness. I did a double check and peered with squinty eyes at the watch. 8.15pm. The invite stated, clearly, in cursive font printed on gold, with totally unnecessary flourishes, 7.30 pm, did it not, I questioned the mother in tones that the inquisitors might have used on their hapless captors. I hate being late. To start with. And then to reach late and realise that you are actually early is a double whammy I couldnt stomach. So we sat and waited and waited. And I touched up my face yet again, until my powder compact threatened to hand in its resignation. And the first guests drifted in, and the hosts drifted in. Much cheek kissing happened. The bridal couple drifted in. My mother gasped loudly and audibly. The bride was wearing a strapless contraption she was pulling up every couple of seconds to spare us a wardrobe malfunction situation. And this strapless contraption, was, blasphemy, in black. I sprinkled some water on the mater. She sputtered back to consciousness and gasped out, “The bride is wearing black!!!! How could she?” I begged her to hold her peace, since the man in question for whom the black deemed inauspiciousness seemed to be in no such sputtering anger mode and was going around pretty chuffed with himself pumping innumerable hands and pocketing envelopes of cash.

And then came the interminable wait through toasts and wedding march and such like for something edible to be served. And when it did come it was all cooked animal pieces on little toothpicks. Aaarghhhh…and the containers which would contain the dinner promised for braving the traffic were showing no signs of being filled with anything edible. 10.30 pm. I dragged the reluctant mater out, braved Saturday night traffic, reached home and foraged in the refrigerator for leftovers.

I’m still regretting the cash I placed in said envelope.

The Number Game

I got this lovely tag from Itchy, and since this is one of those usual days when I have nothing buzzing in my cranium that demands to be put down on the blog of urgent imperativeness, apart from the fact that I have been a glutton of the highest order this past week, and wont even be able to find a rope strong enough should I want to hang myself in shame, I decided to take it up pronto.

One: My child. My beautiful, happy, laughing, mischievious, scrawny, persistent, determined child.

Two:  Me and my husband. Yin and Yang. Opposites. Night and day.

Three: My family. The three of us. God keep us safe.

Four: My birth number. 22nd June, in case anyone feels like sending across some good wishes. Also my marriage anniversary. 4th of Jan, in case anyone out there is diligently taking down notes.

Five:  The number of years my husband and I dated before we got hitched to each other. Well, the Good Lord did give us ample time to change our minds.

Six: How old my son will be in a few months, come October. How did this zygote suddenly fast forward himself to first grade I will never know.

Seven: The seven deadly sins. Of which I confess to being guilty of all. Lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, envy, pride and when denied of food, or sleep, wrath as well. Lord save my immortal soul. I will be doomed to a hell of no malls, no mirrors and no make up.

Eight:  The size I wish I could be. There’s no cap on wishful thinking, is there?

Nine: How old I was when my father passed away and we were out on our own. Life moves on. One survives. One grows up.

Ten: Ten years since I chose a very different path of life from the one I thought I’d take. Ten years since I quit full time journalism, and my safe, secure job at The Times of India, to embark on a see saw of freelance journalism, advertising, and much later, motherhood, which of course, is the most rewarding slave labour type job I’d recommend to anyone interested, with to die for perks like stretch marked jelly belly, raccoon eyes caused by sleepless nights and days, and senses that once couldnt rouse one from sleep even if the home was bombed, suddenly on super duper triple hyper alert to pick even the minutest squawk from parcel of flesh in the cradle. Any regrets, plenty. Re the career. None re motherhood.

I tag:

Rohini

Sue

Aneela

Tara

Gauri

Dipali

MayG

Abha

Suki

Priyanka

Dog tales

A resident in the building complex we live in has a dog. Make that has one of those dogs which cant make up its mind whether it is a dog or an overgrown rodent. And is black in colour too. The primary pastime of this resident is to send this overgrown rodent down with his Man Friday to the garden and let it loose amongst the yelping children, and stand up in his balcony to watch the fun.

Chihuahua. I think. Is the name for the kind of doggie breed this particular type belongs to. After much agile leaping around in the course of my evening walk to avoid the dratted dog racing around the jogging track and grass like a rodent on steroids, being chased by a Star Wars army of clones kind of army of robotic cats, I finally lost the little patience I seem to possess these days. ”Keep the dog on a leash,” I yelled at Man Friday, who was gossiping long and lovingly into his phone, which if he had shoved any closer to his ear, would have needed a surgeon and an operating table for extrication.

Of course, he didnt hear me yelling. I wished I could have uprooted a small tree to chase said dog off the jogging track, (all ye dog lovers, dont send in hate mail now, I lived with a dog in the house for close on 13 years, and cremated him myself), or risk it being stepped and trampled on by army of evening walkers and ipod earplugged joggers, and manic kids.

Finally, my waving and gesticulations came to his attention. Albeit slowly. He gave me the “Hey, you talkin to me,” kinda one eyebrow raised look. It also helped that all 60 plus kilos of me were parked plop in front of him and I was one second away from extricating his mobile device on prepaid talktime from his ear and depositing it in the undergrowth.

“Kutte ko pakadke rakho,” I said in the kind of slow tone one uses when one is not sure one is talking to a person who is assimilating what one is saying. “Kyon?” asked Man Friday back, in what I thought was A Very Rude Tone.

I explained to him that the dog might get injured since people were walking around and the children were running across. He looked at me and smiled. A Very Nasty Smile that immediately qualified him for incarceration at any facility worth its tranquilisers. “Aap dariye mat. Yeh kaatega nahin.”

Why food is always on my mind….

Once upon a time, in a life long past, I’m pretty sure I starved to death. You know, in a famine or a dungeon cell, or more likely from sucking in my paunch to have my mammy whittle it down to a sixteen inch one, holding onto them bedposts. Pretty much explains the relationship I have with food in this life. Yup. Them live to eat types? Them ones standing with plate in hand at buffets, before the waiters even load the containers with food, or light the fire below each individual serving dish? I am a card carrying member of that clan. I have been known to go upto hosts at wedding buffets to ask how long they plan to be rude and inhospitable and keep their starving guests from being fed and sated, and hope they had the riot police on full alert when the guests went on a rampage and began sticking carrot sticks into each other’s throats. Anyway. The truth is that I have been known to have buffet fires lit, and food hastily dragged from restaurant kitchens in semi cooked stage by the simple expedient of threatening to sing. Mournful love ballads. Out loud.

I have been known to fast for absolutely non religious reasons such as liking the sabudana khichdi that is mandatory ingestion during fast times, and therefore starving self of all other items of food to overdose on said khichdi and emerging even more stuffed than on regular days.

I have a simple funda. I need food at regular intervals. And not the kind of food which is plated, and sauced and topped with artistically placed sprig of some green thingie which means absolutely nothing and needs me to empty out my pockets and count out my small change, plus carry along a gun to the restaurant to rob the other diners in order to pay for the check for the plated stuff which probably leaves me feeling unfulfilled and needing a grab at the nearest McDonalds or greasy spoon joint.

I have a stomach that is impervious to bacteria and other nasties the size of bullfight entrants that populate offerings from street stalls, they probably get swatted silly when they enter my gastro intestinal region and get a stern talking to on how to behave in the presence of a seasoned gut. Where they immediately calm down and put their guns back into the holsters and mope around till they are expelled. This comes from years of living off street food, and developing an iron clad gut that can take anything that gets into it, excluding glass pieces and such like that some creatures insist on chewing on to get into world record books. Though I suspect if deprived of edible stuff for long enough, I might even be tempted to take a bite off the nearest lightbulb. Wonder what it would taste like?

I need stuff that is carbohydrate rich. With some animal protein in earlier days. And filling. And the kind that a woman can eat, and lick her fingers and lie down feeling happy and content about. With a gentle burp or two. If said stuff is fried or drowned in butter or assorted fats, the better. Now that I have decided that I could live in purgatory all my life and gone vegetarian, its becoming increasingly difficult for me to emerge from a meal with my stomach stuffed right upto the thorax and the diaphragm rebelling with obnoxious emissions which need acidity lozenges to keep in check.

Now that there is no animal in my diet, I have to look for animal substitutes. Soya and paneer. My latest favourite joint is Bikajis, where I get a good filling North Indian thali for Rs 120 and can be guaranteed on to need help to get back to my feet after a meal. I fantasize about butter paneer and butter naan with a ferocity that wasnt reserved for Richard Gere in his hey day. Not for me the insipid vagaries of corn and sprout salad, which will no doubt whittle the waistline to nothingness and clobber them cellulite deposits into breaking down and melting into puddles of pure fat. Though the current Mumbai heat might do a good job of that unaided.

True to type, I have my comfort foods. My morning must start with a saada paratha dipped in tea. In hick villager style. Yup, thats not helping the waistline cause by a long shot. Lunch must be rice. With a gravy. And a veggie on the side. Dinner, if I do have any, will also be rice. With a curry or a daal. And a vegetable on the side. If there is any sweet item in the house, I can be counted on to ensure it disappears from sight within the day. Any other fattening items You notice, I am sure, the absence of healthy stuff like salads, fruits and such like in this dietary plan. Or even milk. Yes, I am so going to keel over and die one fine day, and have the bacteria doing whooping wardances over my grave. And the rodents I deprived of leftovers at buffets will play hosts at the do.

Yup, I hope they have a wake for me. And serve some nice food while they’re at it though. And lotsa fried stuff.

I call them character lines…

Crueller people call them crow’s feet.

The child calls them a fan. As in, Mamma, you have fans under your eyes. Such vivid imagination. His mother’s son, after all.

Get out of my way unless you want to be trampled down by wild aged woman running helter skelter to nearest cosmetic counters for them undereye creams, which she is to use her third finger to pat on gently under said eyes every night. And contemplate, seriously contemplate injecting paralytic substances through fierce looking needles under her skin to freeze her face into a grotesque mask of expressionlessness and therefore no further line forming. Before giving up all pretence of being brave enough to bear long needles, and deciding that she will age disgracefully.

Any magic lotions and potions and home remedies will be welcome. Would be nice not to have crepe paper where my eyelids and under eye area used to be.

Bags with scarves..

As complete, total and irrefutable proof of my slow slide into ancient relative territory, recent trends in fashion flummox me completely. It started around the time boys went around wearing pants that were so loose at the waist, the belt and waistband was somewhere around their knees, and their ratty fake CK briefs were in full unwashed display along with back hair and butt crack. Which is not a pleasant sight. Whatever ever happened to pants at the waist or the hipline, held up with belts. Thankfully, with all the tripping around that happened thanks to the practical difficulties of trying to swagger when your pants are threatening to fall right to your ankles, and the fatalities that inevitably occured with pants worn low slung and potholed roads, this fashion trend was short lived.

The current street chic of wearing short kurtis with jersey churidars has me flummoxed too, favoured as they are by women who are not six feet of never ending legs, and 19 inch waistlines. This trend is seen most on women who have patted their waistlines in, tyre by tyre into their kurtis which skim the hipline, and seem in sheer danger of bursting a bloodvessel, or worse, a seam, if they dare breathe. And this corpulence is balanced on skin fitted churidars, which makes the total look one of avert your eyes right now or risk permanent retinal damage. And the ganji trend. Worn by sleek worked out bodies, I voice no objection, and on well buffed male bodies, I can even be counted on to painstaking remove and polish spectacles for a better look. But on bodies with jiggly bat arms, painstakingly accumulated tyres and assorted corpulence, or on the flip, matchstick bodies, with spare ribs on full display, I would be the first to run to said visual offender with any available piece of cloth to spare us wusses the sight that only bravehearts can stomach.

The newest trend that confounds me is them dratted bags with scarves tied to them. Are them bags at the risk of dying from sunstroke? Or will exposure to the air, bring them down with a cold and cough? Why on earth would bags need scarves wrapped carefully around them. Be sensible, wrap your head in a scarf in old Hollywood glamour style, top the look with a pair of oversized sunglasses in true retro bug eyed fashion (Tom Ford’s Samantha is a great bet, as are the new gold rimmed Prada aviators or resin square framed ones), and slick on deep matte red lipstick (carefully outlined of course) for a shot of insta glamour. Why waste all that potentiality on your bag? Or are we now required to build up wardrobes for our bags as well?

Yup. Am getting truly and absolutely old when I demand to see the practicality of any fashion statement. When I look at the scarf purely as a weapon to save oneself from a sunstroke, and pair of sunglasses as the good lord intended it to be, to protect the eyes from the blinding glare of the summer sun and these contact lensed eyes from vagrant dust particles that exist in the lower atmosphere for the sole purpose of winging into my unprotected eye and causing tearing, hopping mad with the world syndrome and I will never wear these damn lenses again moments.

I’m so not waiting for the day I get into granny heels, ditching them stilettoes I now live in, saying shoes are meant for walking and not mincing around. Come to think of it, I think I’m halfway there already. The day some serious walking around needs to be done, I’m the first to ditch them stilettoes for saner walking shoes. Or slippers. Or moccasins. Damn. Bring on them granny shoes already. Who am I kidding?

Damn this recession

I have to stop shopping. Which is not a good thing. Because it means that production of important goods like shoes and bags have to be cut down, given that their single largest consumer has withdrawn support, which in turn means that the shoe making elves are sitting tapping on vacant tables with no shoes to keep their hands and minds occupied, which means these elves will be running riot in our streets making mischief and running off with babies, and giving us back changelings.

Gasp.

Yes, I am pretty jobless today. Also blame the recession. I run an advertising agency. And clients are twiddling their thumbs on campaigns and releases and not paying up money owed to us since the time they were infants roaming in diapers, which naturally means we have to now extract our teeth to sell our fillings for chewing gum money. Yes, I had my fillings done in an era when fillings were done of molten silver and a gold tooth was a status symbol. Luckily, recession in childhood ensured that the tooth extracted was never substituted by a gold one up front, it just lay like a vacant plot until the surrounding teeth yawned and stretched themselves a bit, and basically took over the vacant plot. And current recession and terror of dentists will ensure I never open my mouth in prone helpless position in said dentists chair ever again, voluntarily.

The stores are having to let staff go because they no longer need more than one person to handle screaming fat lady running in and gathering clothes to herself, including those that only one half of her body could fit into at a stretch.

You see I held up half the retail economy of the country. When the economists come on CNBC TV 18, extremely prune juice OD faced, and talk about the effect of recession on the retail industry and the declining consumer demand and its effects on jobs, I run and hide in the bathroom. I know they’re talking about me, and accusing me of derailing the burgeoning retail industry with my sudden disinclination to spend appropriate amounts to revive flagging growth rates.

This also means that I can slack off on the new season look. Yup. These are old threads. It means it is currently chic to be last season. And even chic-er (is there even a word?) to be season before last. Which means all the fashion designers can all give up the ghost simultaneously and wind up their baroque ornate stores with three clothes hanging on the shelves, with snooty assistants who treat you like street turd scraped off the shoe going jobless. What glee. Yes, ye at the Gucci showroom at the Grand Hyatt. I may sauntered in with a Linking road kurta and osho chappals, but I was serious about buying one of your bags you know. I changed my mind when you decided you hated me from the time we were in first grade, and were not talking to me.  Now that I’ve got that hurt out of my system, I hope you’re out of a job too. Ye at the Ferragamo showroom, may God make you store manager. Even though I didnt really like any of your bags or shoes enough to pull out the rest of my teeth for.

I am recycling my clothes. Nice dupattas bereft of the suits they were meant for and being turned into scarf tops. The easiest stitching I ever did. I think a career as a professional scarf top designer is the next logical step forward. Then I would need a fancy ornately done shop to house them scarf tops. And then would need to hire a snooty, pinch faced, exquisitely made up salesgirl who would sneer dismissively when I walked in and tried to look interested at the scarf tops on display.

How are you coping with shopping deprivation blues?

A shoe well flung…

but badly aimed.  And well ducked.

Gently, gently, the irate shoe flinger was escorted from the conference presided over by P Chidambaram, where the journalist asked Mr Chidambaram about Jagdish Tytler being given a clean chit by the CBI on his involvement in the Anti Sikh riots that followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984. A quarter of a century has passed, but have the victims got justice? Do more shoes need to be thrown before they do get justice? And finally, justice delayed is justice denied, isnt it?