A tattoo? No way.

If I had any thoughts about getting a tattoo - which I never did in the first place, but IF I did - they would have evaporated.

I exhausted all my adventurous spirit last weekend after subjecting my poor hair to the torture of straightening irons. It was heart-breaking to see that no matter how much I ironed it, there were still bits of curls defiantly poking out everywhere. I could almost hear them sing, "We shall overcome."

My body has a mind of its own.

Hand-made gone mad

I passed a cafe somewhere in North Sydney that said 'Hand-crafted coffee'.

What in the world is hand-crafted coffee? How can you hand-craft coffee? I'm trying hard to imagine. Perhaps the barista is sitting there grinding coffee beans in a mortar and pestle until the grounds are exactly the right size for whichever style coffee you prefer - espresso, plunger, Turkish, stove-top, drip-filter, mastication, graveling the pavement, mulching the garden, etc. Then he'll scoop up boiling water with his palms and pour it gently on the grounds while stirring it constantly with his big toe...oh, wait, it said HAND-crafted. No toe.

At least it didn't say 'Lovingly hand-crafted coffee'. Otherwise I'd have to imagine him doing all this with a bloody beatific smile on his face. That would have been too much.

One at a time, please

The mind is a fascinating thing, isn't it? Or is it the brain - I don't know where the distinction begins between the two.

You know how they say the two sides of the brain handle different aspects of our thought processes. I just realised yesterday that they throw up their end product simultaneously too, at least with me. Here I was, sitting in the bus thinking about what had happened a week ago, absolutely consumed with a certain grief (What grief, you ask? None of your business, you emotional voyeur). And I was thinking, "This boy standing next to me has one calf fatter than the other. How strange is that?" And both these thoughts were playing out SIMULTANEOUSLY in my head.

How is this possible? Does the brain compete with itself to bring out non-stop editions of breaking news?

"OK, I've got this wonderfully poetic observation on the Aboriginal flag that I'm going to think right now."

"No, wait. Keep that for the next minute, because I've got this terribly logical thought on the North Shore train line delays that I want to let loose first."

I guess usually the two parts of my brain resolve the timing issue amicably, but sometimes - like yesterday - both thoughts just jostle at the door and pop out at once. Which just leaves me feeling really spaced out.

Why didn't the smoke detector go off?

My entire home smells like a burnt offering to the gods. How was I to know that microwaving a piece of corn bread for too long would cause it to emit dense yellow smoke that engulfed the entire place? The only thing I was panicking about was that the smoke alarm would start blaring and the entire neighbourhood would come to see what was wrong.

But no. It remained as calm and serene as ever. I could not see my hand in front of my face, the smoke was so thick. But the detector cared not. Detached objectivity seemed to be its motto. Eventually all the smoke cleared off. But it's two days now and my home still smells like I've just had an ashwamedha yajna done.

Synaptic cross-connection

..so I texted my swim instructor asking her if she could take a class this week.

A while later I get this reply from her - "I've found the hinges for the door."

End of chapter 57

So ends one more chapter of my life. I wonder what the lesson is that is to be learnt from this. Don’t know. At present I’m still savouring the exhilarating feeling of freedom at long last. I’ve got back control of the plot, even if this wasn’t how I wanted this particular act to end.

Perhaps I’ll know what the lesson is eventually. Eventually when the audience has left, the orchestra has packed up, the stage has been swept clean. When the dressing room has been cleared, the set has been broken up and packed away, the posters have been taken down. When the actors have all said their goodbyes and forgotten each other, when a new play comes into town. Maybe then one day as I’m sitting in a park, writing a new storyline, I’ll feel the lesson gently creeping up to me and making itself felt.

I’ll wait.

What would I taste like to a cannibal?

Well, apparently like barbecued tofu, according to a quiz that asked me all sorts of questions including things like if I moisturise or not, and if most of the excess fat in my body is on my face or butt, and so on.

A cannibal would kill me, take a bite, spit it out in disgust and leave my body uneaten. What a waste. Honestly, who would like to eat barbecued tofu, I'd like to know. Not me, a vegetarian, let alone a cannibal.

I'm trying to contact the person who created that quiz to find out what I should do to taste like nargisi kofta.

Just relax…

I’m in my yoga class. The instructor is this sweet aunty who starts off with some relaxation techniques. As we lie down, we are told to relax individual parts of our body. She begins in her soothing voice, “Relax your toes… Relax the top of your feet… Relax the soles of your feet… Relax your ankles… Just relax… Now relax your calf muscles… Relax your shins…” and so on, moving upwards, covering all body parts. And it is truly relaxing.

Her voice is receding slightly now as my mind slows down. Thoughts are jostling for space with rather less fervour now. My breathing gets slower, I automatically breathe into my belly rather than my lungs. “Relax your hips… relax your lower back…” My shoulders actually feel the knots loosening, listening to her instructions. Ahh…the world is soft and fluffy again.

Aunty continues her upward journey. “Relax your chest… Relax the back of your neck… Relax your face…” I feel myself sinking into the ground and floating an inch above the ground at the same time. Blissful. “Relax your cheeks… Relax your tongue… Relax your teeth..-” Say WHAT?

Panic. How do I relax my teeth? Did she mean relax your jaws? No, cos she said relax your jaws earlier. It is definitely teeth. But how? I cannot control my teeth. And in any case I can’t remember my teeth feeling tensed up ever. What to do? What to do? And now I’ve missed the next bit that she’s asking us to relax. I’ve also realised I’ve come back to earth with a resounding thud, all the softness and fluffiness gone. My shoulders feel as stiff as a plank. The knots have come back with a vengeance.

With great effort, I try to forget my teeth and concentrate on relaxing. Ah, found her voice amidst my inner chaotic voices. “Just relax... Relax your forehead…” OK, I’m back, everyone. I’ll find my groove in a mo. All good. Yes, Aunty, please carry on in your restful voice. “Relax the back of your head…” Yep, doing it. “Relax the top of your head…” Done it, totally. “Relax your hair..-” HAIR?!

Alright, that’s it. I give up.

Today is my day of receivement

Sarah lent me a hammer, Paula lent me a book, I found a little chocolate bar in my letter box last night with a note saying, “Happy Friday!”

The frangipani trees are sending out leaves, the jacaranda trees are starting to bloom purple, the star jasmine buds are bursting with anticipation. What more could I want?

Chhutta hai kya, madam?

What's with the change situation in Bombay? No one, but no one seems to have change. OK, maana ki if you give a 100-rupee note, it might be difficult for the other person to give you Rs87 back. A little awkward.

But come on. The fare is Rs17 and when I give him a 20-rupee note, the taxiwala asks if I don't have change. What, am I supposed to have Rs17 exactly or is HE supposed to have three? And the Shopper's Stop checkout girl was the limit. The bill was for 1850 and when I handed over two 1,000-rupee notes, she - you guessed right - wonders if I have change. How does a chain of stores grow so big in spite of asking for change in every bloody transaction?

And what do they do with all the change they extort from helpless customers, all these taxiwalas and shopkeepers? Do they stash it away buried in a little corner of their building compound and go forth looking for more change?

I was in the bus one day, and it was nearing the end of the route. The conductor was seated near me, sorting all the money in his satchel. He then waved a bunch of ten-rupee notes and said, "Would anyone like change for a hundred?" I'm sure all the people who reached for their wallets/purses would have hugged him if they could. They must have felt such a sense of relief receiving the change, thinking how they could probably scrape through tomorrow at least.

Yup, that's how the good citizens of Bombay live - a little change at a time.

A tale of the bovine ilk

So Payal, Sarika and I (names changed) decide to do a dinner-and-movie at Govindas in Darlinghurst. It never ceases to surprise me that a place like Govindas is situated in a place like Darlinghurst. Maybe they had this idealistic dream of converting the whole of the drug and alcohol ridden place into soy burger-eating, almond milk-drinking Lord Krsna devotees. If so, then last I saw, it has not quite gone according to plan. They have a fair way to go.

Anyway, so the three of us go to the place on a Saturday evening. Upstairs is the dining room. We fill up our plates with food and settle down at our table. Ah, nice. The room looks congenial with large portraits of our dear Lord Krsna. There is one of him with Radha. There is one of him with his beloved cow. Sarika just loves cow-related subjects. I think she finds this Hindu devotion to cows fascinating. If you find the conversation lagging a bit, just mutter “cow” under your breath. It will perk up her ears and bring out the best in her. It was just then that Payal looked slightly mortified. And she said with horror, “Oh no! I’m wearing a leather jacket, leather boots and carrying a leather purse! And I’m here, at Govindas.” Were they going to kick us out of the place? Were we in danger of being permanently barred from the premises? From the whole of Kings Cross? Moods were tense for a few moments. But no one seemed to be giving us hateful looks. We had an uneventful dinner.

After dinner there was about an hour and a half to kill before the movie, so we decided to go to have a drink or two. No dearth of bars in Kings Cross. We entered one that turned out to have a strange disco/grunge/urban chic kind of setting. The music was loud and the speaker was turned in our precise direction, but the waitress was charming. There was a very interesting looking cocktail list with the strangest of names like Mary Bleeds Again, and Mother’s Milk, and I don’t remember what else. I settled for a martini, Sarika got herself an exotic cocktail whose name I don’t recall, and Payal ordered a gin and tonic. The waiter came with two of our orders after a while.
“Martini?”
“Yes, that’ll be me, thanks.”
“Here you go. And the Beefeater?”
“Sorry?”
“Beefeater.”
Confused looks. Then Sarika realised what it was. “Yes, the gin and tonic, Beefeater, that’s Payal there.”
And we burst out laughing. The cows were haunting her that evening.

At the end of the movie, Payal and I had to take the rail bus back to Central and take our respective buses from there. Kings Cross was unbelievably crowded and noisy. Each person there trying to stand out in a crowd of a million others who were trying to stand out in the crowd. A bunch of kids beside us in the bus were so irritating, it started giving Payal a headache and we decided to get down at Town Hall. She got her bus straightaway, and I was waiting for mine. I happened to look up and gasp! the Town Hall clock had stopped. It was weird. I’ve never seen it stopped before. On a whim, I SMSed it to Sarika, who wrote back, “clock stopped in gods angry response to payal wearing dead cow”

I think Payal will think of cows whenever she sees leather for a fair while now.

My blue fabric shoes

My very first uploaded image here!

These shoes are very pretty. And theoretically, fabric shoes are supposed to be as comfy as can be. Except that these seem to be particularly feral.

The first time I walked in them, at the end of less than two minutes, the back of my ankles were bleeding profusely. Now, I’ve always been prone to shoebites, even old shoes. Shoes just bite me whenever they are in the mood. I’m quite used to it. But this pair is just vicious. When oil wouldn’t soften them, I tried on cotton socks, nylon socks, anything that would protect my skin. But no. They continue nipping away.

But I’m not one to give up. Guess what I do now. I take them to work in my bag and wear them in office only, where I don’t walk around much. I’m hoping doing this a few times will finally tame them.

We have a sadomasochist relationship, me and my blue shoes. They are the sadist for inflicting the pain, and I’m the masochist for tolerating it.

How can I not forgive him?

He always does that. He’s done it far too many times now for it to be my fertile imagination. Every time the day looks like it’s not been fun and bubbly, if I’ve been subdued for some or no reason, if I haven’t sent silly mails or said nice things, or any such thing to indicate that maybe, just maybe I’m a tiny bit displeased with him – he’ll make sure to say goodbye to me when he logs off. Something he normally doesn’t do. Aise mein, even if I was a little cross with him (like I was today), I can’t help but smile and wish him joy.

Or maybe it really is my fertile imagination. After all I’m a daughter of the tropical Konkan coast.

A slice of lime with that?

It is uncanny how smells take me instantaneously back in time and space. I was cutting up a lime the other day for my tonic water and it was almost as if that Moscow Mule guy was standing next to me. All he did was mix up a cocktail and talk about it in the most gorgeous East European/Middle Eastern/Australian accent for half an hour in our office one afternoon and he was gone from my life. And yet, now it seems like the fragrance of lime is him. Fresh, light, bright kind of a memory it evokes. A smiley, tingly memory.

Very few smells represent one single person to me. Mostly they’re encompassing. Like jasmine fragrances are always aunty fragrances, wedding and Udupi smells. Wet earth is always that first day of school smell, little rivulets flowing down the gully beside my building with rainbow patterns on them due to the oil of a leaking car engine, and the water from the school terrace gushing down the pipes and all of us letting it flow over our feet cos it felt so nice and cool. Eucalyptus oil is still that entire holiday at Ooty and Coonoor.

There’s only one other smell I think that evokes memories of one single person. The cologne of a man - the only man I was ever frightened of, whose memories still stunt me emotionally… But that story for another day.

Today, let me enjoy some lime-flavoured effervescent, zippy, zingy whimsy.

Am I open enough?

The more things change, the more they remain the same. No matter how well I open my heart to the world, that safety barrier shoots up at the smallest sign of insecurity. And I have the audacity to wonder why others don’t let me into their hearts.

I had two perfect days recently. Two separate days, separate places, separate companions. So perfect, I didn’t even have space in my heart to think thoughts such as I must be the luckiest person, etc, etc. So perfect, it just seemed like the most normal thing to happen. But even though time is infinite, like a cycle - kaal chakra - moments are linear. They have to end.

हर अघाज़ का अंजाम क्यों होता है?

Why can’t moments be infinite? Maybe they are. After all the day and night still come, the rain of that day still falls, the river still flows, people still laugh and snooze and kiss on that lawn, the big, gnarled tree still grows. Only one person is missing from each place.

It’s funny how the heart feels lighter the more people come into it, and feels heavier the more people leave.

Why is it so difficult for people to show their affection? What holds us back? And why is it even more difficult to tell people that we wish for their affection? Why does wanting love mean it is a sign of weakness? Why do we act like if we showed too much love, we might soon run out? Why does our love have to be strictly for one group of people only?

नहीं कोई इंसान मोहोब्बत से खाली।
हर इक रूह प्यासी, हर इक दिल सवाली।

Loo habits

We have a draper in the office!! Not sure who it might be.

You know what a draper does. In the loo, when they’re near the end of a toilet roll, they’ll not replace it, but drape the last few squares of the roll over the empty core and leave it there. I think they’re worse than the people who just leave the empty core in all its naked splendour behind. It is defiant. The draper projects a more furtive image. I think if you want to be a jerk, make a show of it, don’t make feeble attempts at pretending otherwise.

Awesome lyrics

(I'd nearly forgotten I had a blog!)

I have to record this somewhere. Apparently when Gulzar wrote the lyrics, “Mausam, mausam, lovely mausam”, critics were shocked. How could he use an English word in a Hindi song? Today, we find it perfectly normal. Remember “Rain is falling chhamaa chham chham”? And my personal favourite, “Dekho barish ho rahi hai, it’s raining, it’s raining, it’s raaaiiining”. Kidding. But I do adore “Ankhein bhi kamaal karti hain, personal se sawaal karti hain”. In fact, English words are almost expected at least in one or two songs in every movie.

But I don’t find this one quite so normal – “Mausam yeh awesome bada” which is in a song in Kidnap, which movie they say is sublimely ridiculous. It doesn’t blend in like the first example, it doesn’t sound roguish like the second one, it doesn’t sound downright stupid and hence adorable like the third, and it doesn’t sound quirky like the fourth. Sounds like the lyricist spends too much time with his teenage son or daughter who follows the standard vocabulary that all teenagers follow.

Patience

It’s true what they say. If you wait long enough for something to go away, it will. And I’m talking about a bathroom leak, of all things. I saw water dripping from the hatch in my bathroom ceiling. It opens to all the ventilation ducts and water pipes of the building.

I had no clue why the leak occurred.

For some reason, quite uncharacteristically for me, I decided to wait it out rather than call my landlady straightaway. Wonder of wonders, two days later, today, it has stopped.

I have no clue why the leak stopped.

I’ll try to remember this lesson for use in life whenever required. If you wait for something to go away, eventually it will.

What’s the date today?

I forgot a good friend’s birthday. The past few years, I’ve been forgetting more and more birthdays, anniversaries, and all that. Initially, I used to agonise for months on end if I forgot a date, and felt like I had committed a sin almost. Finally, sometime last year to make it official, I just said aloud to myself that I am not good at remembering dates, and have felt much better ever since. I just remember a handful of dates now, the birthdays of my parents, my bro, and a few friends, and I am quite prepared to face the fact that soon, I may forget those too.

I never was good at dates anyway. In school I hated history only because of the dates. I loved the subject otherwise. I used to have nightmares about facing a history exam consisting solely of date-related questions.

When did the British set up the East India Company? When did Shivaji attack Afzal Khan? When was the prince of whatisname country assassinated that lead to the first world war? When was the third visit of Hitler to a concentration camp? When did Roosevelt first catch a cold during the second world war? When did Churchill raise his finger in glee when he saw his favourite team bowl out the last batsman in a county cricket match, which was noted down as a V sign by historians spying on him in the stands? When did Nehru have his 50th Nehru jacket stitched?

I don’t know!!! Stop tormenting me!

Would it have made a world of difference if King Puru had been defeated a day later than the date I filled in that blank? Would Huan Tsang have not gained much knowledge if he had come a week earlier than what I wrote in the paper? Well, perhaps, yes. But why punish me for not remembering some numbers? To add to it, they clumped history and geography together in school. So even though I was so good in geography (Oh, you should have seen me wielding a globe), I always scored poorly in the combined total. Scarred my tender mind forever. And don’t even get me started on civics.

What are dates anyway? It’s the moments that matter, isn’t it? WHEN Vasco da Gama arrived at the Malabar coast is not important, I think. What’s important is how he FELT. They should ask questions related to those things. What was Churchill’s reaction when he first saw Stalin’s moustache? What about Hitler’s moustache? What lead to the perpetual scowl on his (Churchill’s) hairless face? Did he feel any solidarity with the clean-shaven Roosevelt on matters other than the war? History should give more consideration to these peoples’ feelings. They’d appreciate it.

Oh shit, I missed the due date for payment of my electricity bill!

Go away! Leave me alone.

I’m trying to squeeze a thought out of my mind. An unpleasant thought. But very stubborn, keeps coming back.

Why so? Well, it’s a bit like this I think.

Sometimes you see something perfect. If you’re lucky, you get to see it for a while. If you’re very lucky, you are even allowed to touch it. And if you’re incredibly, ridiculously lucky, you get to actually hold it, feel it, taste it.

But then of course, in keeping with the rules of Murphy et al, it gets taken away from you, just like that. Gone. And like when the light suddenly goes kaput in a dazzlingly bright room, you are left a bit disoriented and blinded, groping in the dark, but with the vision of that light still stamped on your retina like some ghost image.

But then of course, continuing with the Murphy’s law theme, the more you want to know why that happened, the more you are not given an answer. So to pass the time, you start wishing wishes. Keep visiting those painfully few moments of the past where the universe was not too hot, not too cold, just right. It’s a bit like when you are hungry for a snack and you keep going back to the refrigerator in the irrational hope that something will materialise if you opened the fridge door yet again.

So here is this thought, this question, waiting for its companion answer, refusing to believe that some questions are made one-piece, with no answer-half to them. Begone, bothersome thought! I’ve got better thoughts to think about. Like where on earth do all those actors disappear? Like that guy with the curly hair in that serial whose name I forgot, the one where everyone was after a diamond necklace, I think, with Saeed Jaffrey and Kiron Kher and Anu Agrawal and others. And Anu Agrawal for that matter, or Mohan Bhandari who I think was a good actor. Just like there is a sock universe where all the socks disappear into, I wonder if there is an actor universe.