Starting over...again

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions; so it would seem my aims to start a regular blog.


Well, better late than never, if ever! :-)


So, for the record, here I am …stuck in bed at home, ordered to lie down by the doctor (for reasons that I might disclose later on in this blog), about to lose my sole means of income for the inability to commute to work and going stir-crazy without much else to occupy my mind and time.


The previously thought-about food blog does not seem to be anywhere on the horizon and while I again intend to post regularly, remains to be seen whether I garner enough will power to follow through.

Random musings

After spending so much wondering what I can actually do in the space of writing, I hit upon something that seems to sustain my interest unabated ... the world of food blogging!!

Methinks ... am gonna start a food blog too! ;-) What better output for me than something to do with food ... a favourtie topic with me ... any time, any where!!

Wish me luck.

Ciao

Wedding Blooz - Part II

On the eve of the D-day I try my best to act as if it's someone else's wedding on the morrow. Certainly not me. Denial - stage 3. Well, it almost works ... till my brood of boisterous cousins finds me hiding out on the terrace. So then starts the most awful bit of ragging that I've ever had the misfortune to undergo. Even college was safe compared to this!

I could free myself from those merciless goons only when it was nearing midnight and that too coz mom came and shooed them out saying I needed my sleep. Then she sat down to tell me to get a good night's sleep, eat something in the morning - 'What do you want for breakfast?' - not to worry about anything (as if!).... yadda, yadda, yap, yap. Finally, I said 'Ma, you are the one working into a tizzy, not me. I'm alright.'

On the morning of my wedding day, there was a state-wide 'bandh'. Well, in Kerala every other day is a Bandh for something or the other. This time it was over the Petroleum minister's called for resignation over the rise in fuel prices - like the man was lining his pockets with the amount raised (which could very well be likely, for all we idiots know about how politics works). The bandh was enough to send blood pressures soaring through the roof. I thought mom would faint. Thankfully, all my myriad uncles (blood relations as well as those married into the family) got together to draw up plans for the marriage cavalcade. Yes indeed! A cavalcade that involved my car being the flagship ... er, flag-bearer ... erm, chief patsy ... well, whatever ... the lead car, followed by 3 hired ATVs (carrying my assortment of uncles, aunts, cousins, babes and drivers) followed by a Volvo bus filled with another variation of the same assortment followed yet by a last car ... the rear end of this cartoon procession. All the vehicles had 'Marriage' printed in Malayalam, stuck to their windscreens.

When we see a video of a marriage, everyone Oohs and Aahs over everything. For once, I was facing the heat, literally!! Video shooting is a sweaty business!! Yuck! There I was ... decked to the nines in a ton of gold and wearing a heavy brocade curtain ... sorry, sari with yet another ton of gold threads on it. All in all, I'd be sure to break the weighing scales. Through all this, the one fact that I was most cognisant of was this - sweat running down your spine and seeping into your underclothes has got to be the most savagely ticklish event in the entire blessed Universe!!! And you cannot scratch in public!! LOLOLOL

Part III to follow soon. Toodles again.

Confused Confucious say 'Wedding Blooz be no colour to think of'

Actually, there's no relevance between the Title and whatever gibberish I intend to spout in here. LOL

Over the last two months, life did a couple of dizzying cartwheels - I got married and then fell in love - in precisely that order! LOLOLOL It's a dizzy feeling, so forgive me if I sound ditzy!

When one attends weddings, all we see is the beautiful decor, the gorgeous bride, the handsome groom, well-dressed relatives, the scrumptious reception lunch/dinner, et al. For a change, I was on the other side of the fence, and believe me, it's a harrowing experience!!

First, the engagement - book hall 3 months in advance, pay upfront half the (bomb) amount of the booking, get the caterers to do what you want (though come D-day, they do what they want) for the menu, get on the phone and call up all and sundry in the family (get ready for some very pissed-off people who count themselves as 'family' regardless of blood status!). 3 days before the Engagement - find a hair dresser who won't end up making you look like the Wicked Witch of the East on a bad hair day. Then on the day, you coax (threaten), cajole (arm-twist) and convince (blackmail) your best buddy to apply that gunk called 'make-up' on your mug ... sorry, face. Which she does and you can't believe you look like THAT ... that can't be me. Well ... ahem... ok.

Then comes the Wedding Preparations. No matter what you have amassed to this day, consider its value to be zilch, especially if you are being married in Kerala. That state, believe me, is the be-all and end-all consumer of Gold. There's so much gold in a Mallu wedding, it nauseates me!! Argh!!

Anyway, since I too had to be part of the circus, I couldn't avoid it. My aunts dragged me to a gold shop (yet another one in a long, winding line of jewellery shoppings) because they deemed that the length of one of my necklaces (!!!!) wasn't enough!! Oh, madre dios!! (That's Spanish for 'Dear mother of God' - trivia...)

As if that rigmarole wasn't enough, they also dragged me to UMPTEEN sessions with a beautician whose sole aim in life at that time was to drag my already fragile hair through a highway of curlers, rollers, iron clips and whatnots. Plus, she and her minions pounded, kneaded, rubbed, massaged and plucked my face into their version of 'glowing' and 'bride-like' ... OUCH!!!

Then the blouse-fitting ... 'if aint cutting off your breath, it aint tight enough' - this seemed to be the credo adopted by my mother and her 3 sisters. All of them made me wear, take-off, wear, take-off, wear, take-off the wedding saree/blouses at least 8 times in the remaining 2 days before the wedding.

By this time, I am so ready to scream that normally hunky-dory cousins start tip-toeing around me for fear of setting me off. I am already off food for lack of privacy and there everyone from mom to aunts to papa to uncles - all want me to try this and taste that!! Aaaaaarrrrrgggghhh!!! (Leave me alone!!)

Part II to follow soon. Toodles.

Crime spree... this is pretty serious.

I remember coming to I C Colony around 17 years back. When my building was just some brick and mortar starting to climb up from the red dust that was near the Gorai creek line, I thought 'Is papa seriously thinking of shifting us to this ... this ... Sahara Desert?' For it sure looked like a desert to me ... all red clay, no a soul for miles around, no shops and definitely no transport hubs.

By the time our home was complete and ready for us to move into, there were other constructions already on. Pretty soon, I C Colony lost its fresh jungle look. As the years went on, more and more sophistication settled in and now its allegedly one of the posher areas in Borivli.

With that much of progress, me and most of the happy people in I C were pretty happy that we did not see many burglaries, save the odd one during the still of the summer vacations.

All that has changed within a span of a year. 3 gruesome murders within a span of a year and a half, and one of them a little baby. I hear whispered comments of 'I C is no longer a safe haven.' I happen to disagree. I believe that you are as safe as you try to make your life. Barring accidents, which I classify as acts of Destiny, there is nothing to make life dangerous in I C Colony's quite lanes.

When I try to think of what could have happened to increase the incidence of crime in this colony, I can only come up with one reason - Conspicuous Consumption of wealth. A lot of very very rich people live in this area, own flats, drive swanky vehicles. But while these are the obvious signs of prosperity, there is also a dark underbelly to life in I C. These are the immigrant workers, the lay unskilled man on the street who makes his living by hiring out himself to building contractors, and last but not the least, the children of the less-than-well-to-do people.

I do not paint all of them with the same brush of being blinded by the conspicuous wealth on display, but the fact remains that there are some who are unable to hold off the temptation to try and make some quick money.

For instance, the double murder of Glenda Lobo's mother and her infant son Dylan. Those are teenage kids accused of the most horrible kind of crime, for God's sake!! While one can understand a poor man trying to make off with valuables and knocking off someone in the process (though a crime is a crime is a crime any way you look at it), I can't digest kids murdering ladies and babies for pocket money!!

Makes me wonder what kind of sc$#ed up generation I live in. Peer pressure is easy to blame but I don't believe that it holds water any more. Do your friends tell you that if you aren't wearing so-and-so brand, you are 'uncool'? It's just a perception, for God's sake! I am as cool as I perceive myself (maybe it's just me and being pretty unconventional here) and I don't feel the need to conform to a common standard of 'passable maal'.

But I guess for today's spoilt brats (and not all Gen X kids are brats) to control their anger, they need to be weaned off AXN and Steven Seagal and of course, the omnipresent RPG ... the one I hear most quoted is Quake. And I see what it makes of the people I work with, when they are in game play mode.

Come off it, people!! Life is a different reality.

Two days later...

After the two-day hiatus, I'm back but without much to add. What does one add to a Blog? Does one update it regularly? Define 'regular'.

Ah ... just remembered something. I like watching those Ads. Sure, they are a nuisance when you are in the middle of a nail-biting climax in the movie, but they are a welcome break in between those boring shots of two stunted dudes running between 2 pairs of wickets on a baked pitch somewhere in Australia. LOL

Currently, the Hutch Ad tops my list of favourites. Its fun to watch that pudgy dog follow the kid over a rickety bridge and when the dog gets the kid caught at hide-and-seek. LOL

The next favourite is the Cadbury's one featuring Amitach Bachchan ... the one where he gives a lift to a young lady, who does not realise who her co-passenger is till the car is moving. :-) The Perk ad is a good one too ... the lady gym instructor gets her just desserts after chastising a later comer. Rrrrrip!! LOL

There's something about well-made ads. By well-made I do not mean jazzy, hi-fi shots (this is most visible in bike ads) .. just a good concept and sensible execution.

That's it for today I think. Or maybe more later ... LOL

I'm Me

Pretty much the average Indian metropolitan neurotic female with a good job and a social life that sucks, really bad. Late twenties, not much to look at but hey, my wit kills me. LOL

I like messaging shortforms like LOL (Laughing Out Loud, for the uninitiated) which incidentally appears a lot in nearly all text that's written by moi (causing a few frowns and umpteen #@#$#@#$#).

Not at all poetically inclined, but I like prose. I love to read, read and read some more and I get to live this coz I'm a content editor. Sometimes I end up cleaning a lot of garbage, but most of the time, it's a rewarding job, both monetarily and in terms of satisfaction. Considering the fact that I spend most of my days staring at text on the screen, it isn't the least bit boring thanks to my love of reading.

I also like the virtual online community for the anonymity that it provides. Hey, when online, you are as beautiful, clever, wealthy ..no, make that filthy rich... you are everything you want to be and aren't ... your words are you, not your mugshot. LOL

I'm also vertically challenged with a propensity to grow outwards (!) when depressed. LOL Which is why I try to keep myself happy all the time (and succeed pretty much in making everyone else guffaw!) LOL

I have some beautiful friends (I'm thankful to God for that) who are my life support, especially in the crucial time that I'm going through. I read somewhere that best friends are the siblings God forgot to give us. True. LOL I'm fond of saying 'I'm fit and fat, how about you?' LOLOL

That's me.