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.

A jet-sized heckle

Why is everything everywhere compared to a 747 jumbo jet?

“This stadium can hold five 747 jumbo jets nose to tail.”

“The machine that this hobbyist is building nearly a quarter of the size of a 747 jumbo jet.”

“The CERN’s ATLAS Detector which is the world’s largest particle accelerator has a weight of a hundred 747 jumbo jets (when empty).”

And today was the limit. In a science program (I was too late to catch its title), the meteorologist speaks about a cloud formation and says, “..so the total water content of such a cloud is equal to a 747 jumbo jet.”

Huh? Why can’t you just say the total volume is n number of litres or the total weight is n number of tonnes, or whatever. He wasn’t even clear if it was the volume or the weight he was talking about. Why do these people assume that everyone knows how long or big or heavy or moody a 747 jumbo jet is?

I have a headache coming on the size of a 747 jumbo jet.

Obit

Yesterday, I found the spider dead, hanging by a silken thread.

Say goodbye to the cruel world, Spiderguy. You probably lived shorter than most spiders of your kind do, but I hope that you enjoyed it much more than most of them.

We didn’t really get to know each other here, but I’m sure we’ll meet again in some other world.

Yours truly

Spiderguy

A wee little spider has made my shower caddy its home. I don’t mind the smaller spiders; in fact I think some are quite cute. It’s the daddy longlegs variety, the ones with mile-long legs and a pinpoint size body that make my flight instincts go on overdrive.

And the gigantic ones.

There was one such goliath, resident in my last but one aunt’s toilet in Udupi. It was huge, and by huge I mean the extended family variety – about 7 feet across. Well, OK, that was the size of it in my nightmares. In actuality, it was as large as my palm and mind you I have a large palm. It was the muscular kind. You know, six-pack abs and beefy biceps and triceps and forceps and…and hairy all over. Going to the loo was an ordeal for me. I complained once or twice to my folks but they said it was no use chasing it away really. It will come back or another eight-legged citizen will occupy the premises. Loo ceilings it seemed, were much in demand among these buggers.

In Udupi you cannot have a spider-less loo. No mater how fast the town is growing, no matter how up-and-coming it is, at heart, Udupi is still a dear little village with all the rural trappings, including un-despiderable bathrooms. For all I know the beefy spider was just as scared of me with my wary eye glued to it all the while I was in the loo unlike others who probably never gave it a passing glance. Eventually, my aunt moved to a brand new house and so far I have not seen any spiders in her toilet, which is not to say there never will be any.

Coming back to my current co-tenant, I really wonder why he has decided to make his home so close to the shower. Every time I turn on the shower which is literally a foot away from him, I can see him holding on to his web, being swung about from the force of the air, being roughed up to within an inch of his life.

What thrill does he get out of this? Does it make his blood race, this living on the edge? Does he have any blood at all? I’m sure his legs are narrower than the width of a blood cell. His body probably has a grand total of ten red blood cells and two white. I wonder if the doctor will diagnose it as leukaemia should a third white cell appear.

I swear I’m lying

It’s funny how you sometimes see two people sitting side by side and they are a study in contrast. Today I was captioning a Parkinson show and first there was Sharon Osbourne, looking stunningly beautiful and admitting freely that she has had innumerable plastic surgeries done to her body because she is so insecure about her looks. She very honestly admits that she doesn’t seem to be able to respect the body that she has been given, to the extent that she had botox shots just before appearing on the interview. She was remarkably candid about that aspect of her life.

And then came in model Sophie Dahl, young, drop-dead gorgeous and the first thing she says is that she doesn’t think she is beautiful. With a practiced smile, an affected accent and carefully upturned lips, she says she was a deeply ugly child and she doesn’t know that she is beautiful now either. So, here’s a girl who thought she was ugly and so decided to become a model. How much would you lie to seem modest? I wonder what Osbourne was thinking just then.

Beware, you Russians!

There was a program on ABC this morning about poisons used for assassinations. The presenter says, “Poison for assassination is an unfamiliar tool in the West. But in Russia, people have been poisoning each other since the Middle Ages.”

I thought that sounded really funny. Like a scene from ‘Spy vs Spy’ in MAD magazine, with shifty eyed blond Russian spies sneakily dropping poison into each others’ cups, constantly keeling over and up again on their feet with a snigger, putting yet another poison in yet another meal.

Please handle with care

Why does everyone toy around with my heart and toss it into the recycle bin each time? (By everyone, I don’t mean it literally of course.)

Rumi said, Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. But is it any wonder that I have built massive walls all around my heart if each time I let people in, they very considerately shred it to bits?

I came across a beautiful silence some time back. I knew it from the distant past. So far back that I had forgotten about its existence. It just crept into my evening so quietly, so stealthily. Like the twilight changes into a velvety night even as you watch the moon rising slowly. It does not take you by surprise. Just feels very comforting and familiar, as if it never left you.

And now, it’s gone again. Why did it come back for such a fleeting moment? Where is it gone now?

Too many questions? But I really need some answers. Perhaps the Universe reads my blog.

Loo poem

Speaking of plumbing with personalities, our office ladies’ toilet too is highly individualistic. The flush runs continuously. There is a trick to it. So, the other day, one of the girls in the office put up a notice on the side of the flush which had the following written:

“Toilet water continuously running.

Press button to flush

then once again quickly to stop running.”


Later, someone had scribbled on the top: “Is this haiku?”

I strongly suspected it was Sarah. I asked her and my suspicions were confirmed. She said she found the writing almost peaceful. Sarah Hoskin is one of the funniest girls I have met.

Home is where the showerhead is

Spent a week in lovely Tasmania. It’s a place out of the world.

But was I glad to come back home to my bathroom. I love my bathroom. It’s the best in the world. My shower is a bit temperamental, it’s true. But it was nice to be back fiddling with the knobs all the while. The water has to be just the right pressure or else the flow slows down to a trickle, or else gushes with a force that threatens to peel off your skin. Same with the temperature. Only at a critical pressure is the water a good mix of hot and cold. A degree, nay a second more to the left, and the water scalds you. Similarly in the other direction, and the water is freezing. It is all made even more sublimely complex because there are two knobs to be manipulated. I think I am the only one who loves the whole phenomenon. Showering in my bathroom is probably a daily torture for everyone else.

But as a shayar said,

Kisne jaana hai badalte hue mausam ka misaaj
Usko chaaho to samajh paaoge fitrat uski.

A week later...

“The coffee is nice and hot. The cake is yummy.”

“I am glad you like it.”

“Yes, it is very cosy and warm here. The flowers are so pretty, and look at those little noisy birds!”

“Do you go to cafes often?”

“I used to…”

“Right.”

A very comfortable silence as both drink their coffee. It is very peaceful and feels very safe.

“Stranger, would you like to have another coffee with me?”

“Um…sure. But can you give me a minute? I have to go somewhere. I’ll be right back.”

“OK.”

“See you then. Goodbye.”

“Will you be back?”

“Goodbye.”

..leaving behind someone very confused and bewildered.

So, it is back into the little dark corner now.