return!

The T is back to having adventures again. What I'm not sure of is whether the T is back in entirety, or if she only surfaces when I'm writing about her.

I went to the Himalayas. It was a time. There were many adventures with an Elf Express and lost horses and sleeping bags that fell in a stream and a cold goatherd's hut by night with snow leopards roaming the icy slopes eyeing sheep and goats. There was abandonment and reconciliation and a sari and a beard. It was a wonderful, magnificent, unforgettable time. I think I will forgo talking about it.

What else has been happening! So much. Let us enumerate...

There were the Iranians:

"This morning u ask me about I am your boy friend or not. Yes i am ur boy friend. Now cal me."

There was the gentleman at the theatre on my day off:

"The next time you go for a movie alone you should call me!"

There was the auto driver who refused to take my money (I did finally pay him) and then sent me morning SMSes:

"Smile-ever sad--never Speak--ever silence--never Share--ever hide--never Care--ever forget-never because we are BEST Friends forever. :)"

There was the recording I made for the M. K. Retail summer offers:

"Now save Rs. threeee hundred. Happy shopping!"

The recording is currently playing at all outlets in the city. :)

There was the woman who chased me across Shivajinagar bus terminal for Rs.5, the auto driver who gave me a lecture on what women should wear and then gave me credit because I didn't have change, the sunglasses I kept leaving everywhere I went, helpful strangers everywhere, the four blind people wandering around bus stands looking for their buses...

Life is back to being interesting. :)

women's days

I have been working three weeks without a holiday, and yet I have found the time to visit India Gate at midnight and eat meetha paan while boys with accents played hotel California on out-of-tune acoustic guitars nearby and great shiny lights lit shiny construction sites; and I have found the time to take walks through the market during Tuesday haat with flatmates and drink bitter carrot juice at roadside stalls and be overcharged by fruitsellers; and I have found the time to be a Shoulder to people who told me and told me and then told me they felt better because they'd told me; and I have found the time to watch Slumdog Millionaire on somebody's laptop on a bed with people i had known for less than a week; and I have found the time to split a meal four ways with strangers when I ordered vegetarian and the others did not, and the time to complain to other strangers about it.

And today and tonight I met old and new geeks I would be a groupie for; and made hypocritical conversations on the bejewelled sofa of my landlady; and wandered the streets alone in the dark with clenched fists afraid that someone would step out of the shadows and I would be stuck in a strange city with nobody to turn to; and I called and called the one person whom I promised I would not, because I knew he would be the Shoulder I needed when I needed, and I needed him.

I am tired and sleep-deprived and overworked and underpaid and all I'm thinking is that I miss the one I love.
What does it mean to be a woman?

And I have to speculate that God himself
Did make us into corresponding shapes like
Puzzle pieces from the clay
True, it may seem like a stretch, but
Its thoughts like this that catch my troubled
Head when you're away when I am missing you to death

:) Ow.

in delhi

Time! Time! I need more time! But I will make use of the little I've stolen, now. Oh constant reader (and at this point, that's certainly the adjective. Or perhaps manically optimistic? But there - I do not want to drive away the few that remained.), do bear with me while I attempt to talk of the drama, and drama, and melodrama (and perhaps a little light comedy) that I've been immersed in over the last few weeks...


The office I work for has two bases: one in Delhi (where the boss is from) and the other in Bangalore (where the boss lives). Seeing that I had been working in the Bangalore office for over ten months, I decided it was high time I learned what it was like to work in another city, and I firmly told my boss so.
All right, fine. She offered a chance to work in Delhi, and I grabbed it. The main reason I grabbed it was because the agreement was that I would serve out my term (which ends in June, and I do not use the term (ha ha) lightly) in Delhi, after which I would decide where I would go next.

I didn't get a raise, in case anyone was wondering. The office doesn't work that way. all I was promised was that any expenses incurred purely because of my displacement would be borne by the office. This meant rent, and food, and a round trip ticket by third AC to Delhi from Bangalore. Everything else I was taking care of at Bangalore, I had to continue to take care of. This meant a new Delhi phone number and all its attendant expenses, any medical expenses incurred, and all travel to and from the office. [This last is really not considerable (in that it cannot be considered), because I was either travelling with her, or staying less than a minute away from the office, as I am now.]
The initial plan included a stop-over at a site we were working on in Chhattisgarh. I was not very keen on this, because not only are there no direct trains from Bangalore to Raipur, but I was carrying with me three months' worth of baggage, and until two days before I was due to leave, I had no idea who was to accompany me, a lone female, to the State with the highest crime rate in India. (I'm indebted for this piece of information to the boyfriend - she expects you to stop over at the state with the highest crime rate on your way to the place with the second highest?)
The long and short of it was that I got out of the plan the easy way.
I asked my father to talk to my boss. (The repercussion of this is that she now says she won't send me anywhere, which is unfair because one of the reasons I wanted to be in North India were our projects here. Oh, well.)

Thus it was that, on the 11th of February 2009, two days after the T boarded the one-point-three-day-long Delhi-Bangalore Rajdhani Express with one suitcase, one handbag, one backpack, and one paper bag with items her mother insisted she would need. (She didn't really, none except one.)
But the rest in the next installment!

winnowing worms: an unsavoury interlude

Probably not as disturbing as that old chestnut *click at your own risk!!!*, but please consider yourself warned.

The T spent a sizable portion of her Saturday evening picking these fellows out of the night's quota (and a little extra for fun) of rice.

There are 36 worms in there. My mother and sister were highly disgusted and squealed things along the lines of "Take it away take it away take it away" (sister) and "No I cannot enjoy the wonder of the worms" (mother). My father said nothing but, "They're quite big, eh?"
I was rather pleased with the whole exercise because:

1. They are worms that are NO LONGER IN THE RICE and it is ALL BECAUSE OF ME.
2. This episode reinforces my confidence in my ability to detect motion of the littlest magnitude when wonderful things are to be seen. (other reinforcing episodes all involved birds, e.g. the bird I spotted just entering its hole in the trunk of a tree when we were on a bird-watching walk in Whitefield. The chief ornithologist said, "Well spotted!", yay! Everyone seems to think birds are much cooler, but a bird is not 36 worms.)

Some observations about rice-worms:
The worms begin as hefty little fellows - a clear millimeter across at least - wriggling their way all over the container and performing feats of acrobatics that can entertain for hours.
Within ten minutes or thereabouts, however, they have lost their rotundity somewhat, and their energy a great deal more.
By the time the twentieth worm is found, therefore, the first few have reduced in size to minuscule versions of their former selves. Some of this size were actually found by me while winnowing. I am very proud of this fact, because they are tiny.
Each worm has some black spots near the front, and some legs. Perhaps they are not worms, at that. They have - wossname - striations? all along their length and look rather like light-coloured very small earthworms only with eyes. And they move like worms in cartoons, and are rather fun to watch until they reach the lip of the cup and try to get away.

I have very much work to do and my sister's off to college on monday, but I still *had* to make the time to create this. Enjoy!

*WARNING. MOTION OF WORMS FOLLOWS*

P.S. Kindly do not hate me because I do not agree with you on all the things you find disgusting.

The end.

really rather questionable content; or, "a shrubbery!"

It has been a regular pastime of mine to moan about why people don't like me. It always seems to me that humans whose company I'm more fond of than not end up treating me as though I had life-threatening communicable diseases, and it has never yet failed to send me crying to my bed in agonies of whys and what's wrong with mes.

Over the last month, however, my standard state of despairing acceptance has been challenged by a number of romantic overtures. The actual, concrete number, from people who have actually met me in three dimensions is two, but the total, based on various vibes, and including the unofficial and unspoken, numbers closer to five. Naturally, the T urges me most strongly to disregard the promptings of my 'female intuition' on the grounds that it doesn't really exist, but I BEG TO DIFFER, T merely because now I have proof that AT LEAST TWO of those promptings weren't so awry after all...

Funnily enough, the two kind gentlemen who've asked me out to dinner and given me dizzying (because they are unprecedented, you see) compliments on my looks and interestingness are both of the kind I would have run a mile from in other circumstances. Players, in fact. And they asked me! Me! I am exhilarated, and flattered, and convinced, once and for all, that there is NOTHING ABSOLUTELY WRONG WITH ME BESIDES THE INABILITY TO CHOOSE A GOOD JOB.

The only sad part is that I am not really interested in these nice boys; though they are both smart, and funny, and talented, and really rather good looking. And while I go around in a happy haze thinking thank god someone actually *likes* me, i can't help but notice the minuscule part of my brain that's going, so why doesn't *he*? why doesn't *he*??
Oh, well. So the story goes. When this fever's gone I hope to be less delirious.
And use fewer italics; but that's not a promise, so don't count on it.

:)

with a vengeance

I missed the cat-fight at the office yesterday. Perhaps there will be a repeat performance if we set out a single cup of milk the next time they're seen together.
It is a sign of the times, I think, that I am positively gleeful at the complete absence of metaphor (woo.) in that last paragraph.

Meanwhile, as it indicates, the T is once more part of the working masses, spending her weeks at a Landscape firm, designing interiors. Today she wore a sari to work just because. The T's a beautiful woman in a sari. She is, really. These are the things she does to break monotony.
Not that it is very monotonous - T seems to have a knack of ending up in offices with plenty of sunshine, complete freedom (or as near as makes no difference) of musical expression, and much greenery around. No air-conditioned hellholes for this alter ego!!!

* * *

I wish I could talk about all the adventures I've been having. I've had loads - weekend meetings at parks and analysis of poems and Mensa MHKs and new people and old people with the average coincidence thrown in once in a while, the usual getting lost in unknown places and dropping in uninvited and people who love me because I amuse them.
Regular life-o'-mine, in fact. Only so much more so that I cannot quite summon up the energy to be witty and sparkling about it. So unfair!

I've been feeling a great weight lately. Almost as if I'm moving from day to day waiting for something - something huge and overwhelming and life-changing.
I cannot wait to see what it is. ^_^ I amine-smile at the thought.
Here's to awaiting developments of unknown film, ladies and gentlemen. And the triumphant return of metaphor.

a bucketful of smoke

The T had an adventure Seven Weeks ago.
(When I started writing this, it was only four weeks and a day past the adventure; also incidentally a month after it by date. Just before this post, in fact.)
The 17th of February, 2008.

At that point of time in life, the T was behaving rather mopishly and refusing to write, so I had to make do with a promise and a few pleasant phrases like "the last day of my life" and "die in horrible ways, oh my poor mother" to remind me of the whole thing. I later wrote out a (later revealed to be incomplete) account to a dear friend in a colourful letter that was written two weeks later, when the T was on another adventure (this time in Chennai).
To return to Sunday, the 17th of February, then.

The back-story to the day seemed innocuous enough. There was a party, there was a sleep-over, there were friends that someone's mother hadn't met yet, there was a reluctance to ask for permission to attend aforementioned party... and there was a request for T's company.
Since
a. It was a Sunday
b. The T wasn't really doing anything much in life at that moment
c. This was an old school friend the T hadn't hung around with in ages
d. There was going to be a PARTY!!11!!one!
T said, "Sure, I'll come."

Following which a half-lie was told, a flowery top and skirt packed, a toothbrush almost forgotten, and a long walk undertaken in some excitement. Hurrah, yes?
Not so much.

It was not until T got to ... let's call her V, shall we? ... V's house that she discovered that the party was to consist of herself, V, V's friend F (whose birthday it was) and an unknown element X who "might or might not show up". The "party", in fact, was beginning to sound decidedly unpromising.
Those who know the T, however, will remember that, once embarked on an adventure (however sordid) she refuses to back down under any circumstances whatsoever.


And so it was that I found myself in an auto at 7 PM, clutching my overnight bag, making desultory conversation about skirts and tops and "there's a sale on at lifestyle right now", and wondering what kind of evening it was going to turn out to be.
In the course of the conversation, V mentioned that F read a lot, and I made the (surely forgivable?) mistake of looking forward to some lively discussion that might take my mind off...well, whatever my mind was on, anyway.
Alas, alack, egad! The entertainment for the evening consisted almost entirely of cigarettes and alcohol, punctuated by some of the music we'd happened to bring along. So I sat on the mouldy old sofa and listened to A Perfect Circle while clouds of smoke were blown in my general direction - and tried not to compare my companions unfavourably with other people.
Then! Diversion! X (after multiple phone calls) arrived! Then I learned that we were to go dancing, and perked up for almost three whole minutes. By the end of that time I'd figured out that none of those present were the kind to arrive early anywhere, and after a third cigarette was lit, I escaped the house to go for a walk. Once outside, I admired the moon and petted a friendly dog which then attempted to hump my leg.
At forty-five minutes past nine, after we'd cut a cake and had some "fun" with "magic candles", we proceeded to the wossname. The club. Which was just a lot of smoke, followed by some more smoke, some flashing lights and cool fluorescent effects which made me glad I wasn't wearing white, and some more smoke which I couldn't get away from because those smoking were the ones I was there with. They did try telling me to "not think about it" when my eyes had gotten so raw that I escaped into the relatively smoke-free lobby, but I naturally paid no attention to that insensitive remark and continued to behave in a mildly cranky fashion the rest of the night.

The next morning I was dropped home on the back of a borrowed bike (ridden by a guy who'd gotten perhaps two hours of sleep), with an enormous borrowed helmet that kept knocking me on the side of a head, and various thoughts of messy accidents running through it.

That was the morning that I discovered that dumping an entire outfit in a bucket can make even water smell like smoke.
And about the fiasco at my University that meant I'd been failed in my final thesis project.
(This resolved itself into a comfortable 70%, by the way, so no worries.)


Sigh.
T will forgo adventures of this sort, if she may be so bold.

a raven and a secretary

It's half-past one in the morning, and I am just returned from bidding farewell to my mother at the airport (she's on an educational tour of the UK). Dad and I watched her from the "visitor's lounge",
(which looks like so:

)
behind which barrier she brought pride to all the family by removing her sweater and draping it artistically over her bag, thereafter allowing it to slide gradually off the bag to trail behind her with one arm on the floor for a few yards and finally drop to the ground altogether and lie there forgotten until a kind gentleman restored it to her. Through all this I hopped up and down on the other side of the barrier beside my mildly amused male parent, talking out loud to anyone in the vicinity and generally behaving quite unlike a credit to the family.
It was my sweater, though.

... to be continued (the title's not explained yet :) )

I spent most of the evening before I could send my dear mother off on her adventure making phone calls in the capacity of secretary to Mrs. Mum. Her visa was the only one of eleven which hadn't yet been confirmed, and she'd been getting the runaround for two days. She was getting into that panicky state which usually set everyone in the house on edge and made living darned unpleasant.
Hence it was that I cancelled plans to see Taare Zameen Par (again, by gum!) and sat at home (while my father went out to buy socks and my mom and sister to borrow shoes) making phone calls to multiple people and organizations until! I got confirmation that the visa was indeed on its way to Bangalore, just two hours before my mother was to check-in.
Hurrah for my superior clerical skills!

I have been reading A Tangled Tale and imagining what it might have felt like to read each week's (month's? fortnight's) installment and try to solve the puzzle it set; to send in your solutions and see them discussed and your name (a name like SIMPLE SUSAN, or DINAH MITE, or OLD CAT) in the Class List.
What did it feel like to be a part of the knot-untiers, I wonder.

It was such a polite time. Not necessarily nicer, just more outwardly pleasant. Who today will write in to Maddox to tell him that he or she "think[s] it would be in better taste if [he] were to abstain" from insulting whichever particular issue the letter-writer holds dear to his or heart? Nobody, that's who. They are far more likely to send in an ungrammatical and poorly-spelled piece of poison calling the other person a retard or a homosexual and advising them to get laid.
Sigh. I fear I am far too old-fashioned in my expectations of human behaviour and etiquette.
I would like to read Lynn Truss's Talk to the Hand now, I think. Does anyone have a copy they can lend me?

The secret is this: there is a b in both while a secretary is a writing desk.

a muscle that can move the world

I wonder what qualifies as a bad day in other peoples' lives.

It could be, perhaps, a day involving such memorable moments as:
1. Spending three hours waiting for someone to get home so you can have a conversation that you know will not end well.
2. Spending the whole afternoon crying because the person didn't show up.
3. Sending stupid emails of the kind you swore a year ago never to send again.
4. Deciding to watch a movie at the Film Festival by yourself even though the rest of your family's going to watch Taare Zammen Par together - the first film the entire family's gone to see since Family.
5. Arriving at the Festival only to find out that there are no individual tickets - only entire passes that cost Rs. 100 more than you have on you.
6. Discovering that the movie you went to see has been postponed to the time you expected to be home.
7. Sitting in a park near your old office close to tears (fine, I was practically bawling. i cry easily. are you happy now?) at the realization that you are alone in a park in the dark while all your friends are where they're supposed to be and your dear parents and sister are watching a picture you've been wanting to see since you heard about it and you still have to get home at some point.
8. Receiving a call from a friend from forn parts who's at your empty house expecting to see you there.
9. Deciding that you'll spend your miserable time at the park under one of the lamps reading the Stephen King you promised to a friend who was supposed to meet you after the film. Getting bitten by mosquitoes.
10. Catching a bus that takes you all the way home - but having to stand for the entire hour's journey.
11. Discovering when you get home that you've forgotten your house key.

Sigh. For the longest time in the middle (mainly while I was walking two kilometres from the park to the bus stand) I wasn't sure I could actually laugh about this day.
The wonderful thing, however, is that sometimes good habits die as hard as bad ones.
All sympathy is welcomed.

incompleteds

Once in a while I have a thought that begs to be shared so pitifully that I force myself to sit in front of this here box and attempt to pull it bodily out of my brain. Alas, often my skill will not allow it to be done, and at other times it is my laziness at fault, and so I'm stuck with tens of drafts that I will never complete as long as they're sitting there unpublished.
Here they are, then. With dates attached. I think I might just keep adding to them as I go along.


My city has become a menagerie of shouting people.
3/14/07

wts txt spk? is dat whn u tlk lik dis? i cant do it 2 wel........its tuff to think of ways to shrtn the wrds apart 4m removing vowels dammit a relapse.
But that's text speak, and I want to talk about the postrophe. Lynn Truss wrote an entire book about it, but I don't care. How do perfectly intelligent, erudite, well-read persons end up confusing its and it's?

What's the likelihood that there'll be an entire book on text-speak soon? Very high, I'd say. People talk about it all the time. Mostly the ones talking are the ones bemoaning the loss of sensible spelling, and I've read at least four newspaper editorials on the subject.

I'm not doing

What I can't get around is the staggering amount of apostrophe abuse around. I don't think I'll be able to say it any better than Lynn Truss, so I shan't try. I will just choose one certain little annoying trend I've noticed in

I can't understand its and it's, though. Some of the smartest and best read people I know make that error. It's horrendous. Its horrendous.

I hate the way it pulls you up right in the middle of whatever you're reading. Inexcusable, in my opinion, especially when they spend their time poking fun at people with poor grammar and then turn around and say "whatever" when you point the error out to them yourself....

I mean, don't you read whatever you've just written before you post it???

Damn, some people are stubborn and stupid.

3/18/07 9:07 PM


Something that was brought home to me the other day was the fact that far too much depends on appearances. How much do we change by walking down the street proclaiming we can do as we want, wear what we want, say what we want? Perhaps not as much as we aim for.
The truth is that the way you walk says so much more about you than the clothes you wear. Unless, of course, you're wearing something designed to be so eye-catching that it detracts from everything else!

Is there a line that "decent" girls should not cross? Yes. There is. But it isn't the same line for everyone. My idea of clothes I will not step out of the house wearing are different from those of my sister, for example.
Just the other day, I watched a young man at a traffic signal pull out a comb and style his hair into something closely resembling a bush of some sort, but he seemed exrtremely pleased with the result. So that's my line. Wear something that makes you look good.
Something in colours that complement. A cut that accentuates. Be pretty.
3/29/07 7:04 AM

My boss thinks women should protect themselves from male eyes.
He asked me about Blank Noise. "Why do you think men do those things? It's because of the way women dress! Between a woman wearing a miniskirt and a woman wearing a sari, who do you think is more likely to be molested? If you don't respect yourself how can a man respect you?"
"Men and women are made to attract each other", he says. He thinks women can prevent harassment by covering themselves up. "If you wear a burkha", he says, "then you're completely protected."
There was something so entirely disturbing about the way he told me this; the manner in which he posed it as a self-evident truth shocked me so much; that I found myself unable to defend my position at all.

Is it a male conspiracy, this celebrating a woman's freedom to deck her body? I do not know. Perhaps men do go along with women's rights because they think that they will get a chance to see more skin. But then again, women should be able to show their skin even if they know men will look.

What do we ask for, with the clothes we wear? Respect? Attention? Flattery?
Does it make a difference?
What we wear should reflect where we're going, what we're doing, what season it is. I think the question of poorly dressed does not arise as long as you are dressed to fit the occasion. Isn't it rude to attend a wedding in shorts, for example? It isn't about covering yourself, or being decent. It is about fitting the profile, about looking as though you belong. And as long as we are part of society, it is necessary to make sure we respect the boundaries that circumstances demand.
The only thing that's changing is the idea of everyday wear. What is it appropriate to wear, if you're not doing anything special? One wears shorts or jogging tracks to walk in the morning, to go to the gym, to play tennis. One wears a sari to a wedding, one wears formal clothes to interviews. One wears jeans to construction sites. We dress sensibly as long as we know the boundaries created by societal norms or dictated by comfort and common sense.
What happens with a regular outfit, though? What are you "allowed" to wear when you're out on the street on an ordinary day? Things that send the wrong message? Who decides that? I think each of us do. What I think every woman must do, in my opinion, is to look at herself once before she leaves the house. Stand in front of the mirror. Lift your arms, bend over. If your clothes stay where they're supposed to, and you don't expose any more skin, any fat, any hidden parts that were covered when you were standing still, then you're okay to go.
If you do expose those things, well, then, you're just not well dressed.
The women on the street I find badly dressed are the ones wearing things that don't suit their figures. Tight shirts showing tires of fat. Low pants that fit so poorly you can see underwear when they sit down. The beautiful thing about a salwar kameez is the fact that it suits anyone if cut properly, and the main reason we wear clothes is to be comfortable, isn't it?

I have rules about things I would not wear in public. I will not wear something that reveals my nipples, because of the fear of titillating the man on the street. I will not wear clothes that display cleavage, because of the same reason. I will not wear clothes that show my thighs above the knee, because I believe shorts or short skirts absolutely do not flatter my figure.

The mental thumb rule for me, then, is this: do not draw attention to any one part of your body as a part belonging to a woman. Not unless your objective is to do so. People attach to all outfits a purpose for wearing them. Why would you wear shorts? Or display cleavage? Why would you? If you have a reason, and one can see that reason, then i think no one can question or comment on your choice of dress.

This is just so much patriarchal rubbish. :( I'm a brainwash.
5/8/07

I once promised a friend I would write a post about the misuse of punctuation
5/9/07

I've been wondering lately about how limited all forms of expression are when compared to the real thing.
How do you describe in words the exact tilt of someone's head and the lilt in their voice and the way you feel when they smile to punctuate?
6/3/07 6:05 AM

My sister has a friend who used to call home and ask to speak to her.
She would say, "Hello, is MySister'sName there?"
My mother would later rail and rant over the loss of politeness in the young, and I? I would agree with her.
Lately, though, T has been wondering about boundaries and the way people follow rules in different places. T has been wondering this as she works in an office on the grounds of a traditional Muslim house. How true that it is only
6/11/07
Do we treat other people the way we hope, in our heart of hearts, to be treated? I submit that it is a more than distinct possibility in my own case. After all, do I not give every new and old friend the benefit of the doubt, and their space, and hugs whenever I feel like they need some? Butyes!
It's not really a solution to anything, though. If everyone went around treating everyone else the way they wished to be treated, no one would get treated the way they wanted to be treated.
7/26/07

There is a microphone in the house now.

I don't like it so much.
7/30/07

meta-letter
I think the real problem with writing with Squid Piss™ on Dead Trees™ is that
8/2/07

Brad Bird's The Incredibles has a line that might have struck me more if it hadn't been as oft-quoted as it was - "Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no one will be."
And again: "They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity, but if someone is genuinely exceptional..."

I have watched performances by people who are disabled or autistic or children, and I never until recently questioned that a chance had to be given to those less privileged. Do we really value quality so little that we celebrate effort more than achievement?
Does all achievement have to be weighted against opportunity and upbringing and situation? When put like that, of course, it sounds a stupid question: the very basis for academic equality in the best institutions is based on that weightage.

It strikes me, however, that it is only in the field of education that merit speaks for itself - the concrete proofs of your excellence are valued as they ought to be. It is in the fields of the performing arts that the distinction has become blurred - where the mediocre gets more recognition than the
8/15/07
I had an adventure today. It was only a small adventure; minuscule, really; but I've been stuck indoors so long that anything out of the ordinary excites me...
I went for a walk today. I wore my brand new pink reebok sneakers (I know, I know. Pink sneakers. But they're new.)
And I sat there on the stone wall and wrote a letter. With a little lizard in it.
10/10/07 6:16 PM (this is a special day.)

the so-strangest thought
i have had one of those, i have.

Bear with me. My theories are often based on little more than random burblings of my mind when tired or hungry or travelling or some such, but they are usually interesting theories and this one...has promise.
I feel as though I have been...putty. Malleable,
12/18/07 11:38 PM (this is when the heart broke)

P.S. It is very nice to have three adventures in two days and then stay awake until five a.m. reading. :)

another "night at café"

Sometimes I think the things I say are far more powerful than they appear - insofar as their effectiveness in attracting the Irony Gods™ goes, anyway.
As anyone who's been following the blog (yes, yes, I mean that one poor person who has the RSS feed) knows, I borrowed a book from someone's home in another city a while ago. Then, this morning, I made some rather pompous allusions to my tendency to entertain empty hopes. What more did I need? Nothing, that's what.
Voilà! Instant karma.

So it turns out the Gem of a Boy is in Bangalore. Not that he called to tell me - I had to find it out through other channels. He finally did call me (after his sending me an email confessing he'd lost my phone number and another from me furnishing him with it) this evening. I'd been expecting the call for a day and a half, and had wonderfully witty things all ready to say. Then, a moment before he called, someone else asked me for my phone number, and when the phone rang I was caught all unprepared, alas, egad, ecod! Still, hellos were said, suggestions of a meeting were made; I'll call you back, he said. An hour or so later (during which i called him to ask if anything was actually going to happen you see it's late already and i need to make plans and arrange transport etc), he did. He was meeting a friend of his at Koshy's later, would I care to join them? I'd put my shoes on already, so I said yes, of course I will, what a pleasure whee.
So I wrapped up the present (shhh it's still a secret) and combed my hair and checked my bag for my umbrella, phone and wallet. Ready! I thought.

Then I had to call him back to find out what he looked like (he does not have a photograph of himself anywhere on the internet). I have a goatee, he said. I told him all the waiters at Koshy's had goatees; that wasn't enough to go on. You like adventures, don't you? he said. He sounded rather irritated at having to receive all those calls, so I shut up and hung up and left the house.
It was half-past-six. We were to meet at half-past-seven.

The moment I'd stepped out of the house, my phone rang.
My parents, who (oh my, did i forget to mention?) were out of town, were calling to check up on me. I walked back up the ten steps I'd walked down, opened the door and managed to walk all the way to where my sister was watching television and hand the phone to her at exactly the right moment in the conversation. The truth was avoided, the parental worries appeased, and I finally got out of the house at a quarter to seven.
Thus, boys and girls, I was late leaving the house.

The next thing I did was in all probability the only intelligent thing I did the entire evening - I decided to take the bus anyway. I had a pleasant time on the bus, for once - a place to sit, a nice conductor, a knowledge of exactly how I was to get to where I was to get. I got off roughly two kilometres from my destination; the nearest stop to it, in fact. I walked along, alone by the light of the moon, and my head cooled to alarming degrees as I passed great trees along the parade ground walls. I thought a couple of interesting thoughts about trees and temperature and weather and climate, some about shady characters smoking by the side of the road, some more about the fact that I was twenty minutes late; and then I was there, hurrah!

But you see, it's Christmas Eve. And I hadn't considered, in my wildest dreams, that the interior of the restaurant would be dimly and murkily lit by a large number of candles that made it impossible to tell one goateed gentleman from another, or that I would spend the next forty minutes alternating between sitting outside and writing sad things in my journal and taking turns around the interior of the establishment (with my cheeks burning and to the accompaniment of a constant monotone of my god is there anything more embarrassing could there possibly anything as embarrassing) staring at the faces of people inside.

(
Let us dwell, for a moment, on the phone call I made, halfway through my waiting, to his residence to find out from his sister what he was wearing, and, oh god, what he looked like:
He has a long face. And he has a goatee, but also a bit of a beard. <--I suppose she meant the length of the goatee? Who knows. Hopefully I will find out tomorrow
And... he's a little bald -
You mean in front? says T, because she's thinking that now she'll have to go in and start staring at the backs of people's heads...
)

I should have stood at the door and shouted "Firstname Lastname!" so that I'd know where he was. People would have smiled and I would have embarrassed him, hopefully, and then it would have been a show and everything would have been all right and tight. But then I got distracted by all the holiday cheer and the smells of families and the intimate candle-light and the thought that I was out there because of a lie two lies all lies; to meet two people I'd never seen before in my life.

Sigh. So I left and caught a bus, and then another bus; and I got home all in one piece, thank goodness.
Perhaps this was my Christmas Miracle.

You owe me, Mister Man.

soon you'll know about the persian cats

We've been in Chennai for the weekend - mum and I. We went in our car, with one driver to go and another to return; and had two half-days to call a visit. On the way a road was being widened, and the buildings gaped open like dolls' houses in old television shows:


On Saturday the Rabbit and the T ate unhealthy fried things and sat on the sand at Elliot's Beach until half-past ten. They sat there until all the lovers had gone home and the dogs had wandered away because there was no food forthcoming. They lay on their backs on the seashore and got sand in their hair and sang along to songs by the light of stars that the Rabbit kept thinking were aeroplanes
(look, the orange one is flashing and moving)
but the orange one was only Betelgeuse, and all it did was twinkle at two foolish girls wishing for brighter futures by the sea.

On Sunday, the T had adventures!
(And she is very sorry she didn't see all the nice boys she'd promised to visit; but she hopes they'll all drop in when they move to Bangalore for their jobs.)
Someone I know from Some Blog lives in Chennai. His family does, at any rate. He lives in forn parts. Now once, when he had been to other forn parts from the ones he lived in, he purchased a book, which he then recommended to the T. "I'll bring it for you the next time I come to India and lend it to you when I come to Bangalore", he promised, all generous-like. That was to have been December, and the T was perfectly happy with the arrangement.
But suddenly the T was to be in Chennai when the Someone was not; but the Book was in Chennai at the same time as the T! So she got Someone's sister's cellphone number and the home address, which happened to be very close to where she was staying in Chennai. Weekend surprise plans!!!
(
yeah, you could come and pick up the book if you want
Oooh! But. That'd be weird
would it? But you're weird. :)
)
hmph. thanks a lot.

The plan was this: I would land at my aunt's house on Saturday, call Miss S, and then run over and pick up the book. All straightforward, yes? Except that I forgot to recharge my phone and had to call his sister from my aunt's home phone, which she decided not to answer because she figured it was some random person calling to waste her time.

Sigh. So T was stuck without a book and very pissed off until she went to the beach and got high.
She got back with sand in her hair, did a Facebook search (yay Facebook!) and sent some messages, and then went to bed.
On Sunday, she left the house at ten past eight in the morning to "go for a walk". What she meant was, "He's given me that address; he's got another think coming if he thinks I won't be checking it out." She walked down a large number of roads looking for 8th Cross street. She passed 7, went down 11, came out on 13, which then turned onto 14; and she realized she'd gone all around the park. So she asked this helpful gentleman on a bicycle, and he pointed her in the opposite direction.
But naturally, said T.
And she went down to the street she was supposed to go down and she found legends that said No 9 (Old No 5). Old Number what! said T. He didn't say anything about Old number and she turned around, and there was the number, with the name, and T said, "I think I might need to sit down." She walked up and down the road for half a minute and pretended not to look at the house, and finally decided to just walk home. She took the scenic route back, which in T-speak does not mean that she got lost, but rather that she found the short-cut with lots of trees that came out opposite the street her aunt's house was on.

Before she went home she went to the beach and stared at the sun, and the beach looked something like so:and T thought to herself that having her nose prickle with sweat and dust blow in her face was not quite as horrible when there was a warm bath to look forward to just a couple of minutes' walk down that-a-way.

(Later, of course, there was a Facebook message replied to, and a drive in the car; and tea in a wonderful old house, and The Brass Bottle, and many coincidences and "it's a small world after all" and an invitation to an arangetram and a "gem of a boy"; but I think it's better if I end it this way, yes?)

:)

and some wisdom...

That, m'dears, is the third molar that was removed this afternoon from my upper left jaw. Note the three roots and their perfection. Most molars at the back of the mouth have one great big root (or at the most two) and my having three perfect roots means the following:
a. I am very unusual. Yay, me!
b. I have a very good dentist. That's some delicate twisted tissue we got there.

When I walked back home I stopped at the medical store to buy my pain medication, and the teller happened to catch a glimpse of the tooth in my fist. (Oh, all right. He caught a glimpse because i 'accidentally' showed it to the snooty lady standing next to me. What? she was staring at my poor swollen face!)
First he asked what it was, and then he wanted to know if it was made of plastic. I showed him the blood and pointed out my extended cheek, and he was suitably enthralled.
When he was writing out the bill, he asked me to show him the tooth again.
I felt like the bearded lady.
:)


I awaits me some ice-cream now.

my right foot; a brief yet tedious history

When I was six years old, I got fitted out with my very first pair of glasses. By the time I passed out of school, I was wearing the equivalent of a pair of small telescopes on my eyes. Having a pair of glasses that fell off my face at slightest provocation due to their weight and without whom I was nearly blind meant that I tended to avoid strenuous sports in favour of tamer and more elegant pursuits; the kind where the chances of, e.g., me getting hit in the head because I couldn't see to defend myself (at least, the chance of getting hit in the head literally...) were fewer. *

I compromised on this tragic scenario by walking. Walking was a way to keep moving without the fear of bodily harm, and this appealed to me. (I am not a fan of bodily harm.) I walked a lot - to school and back, to the houses of friends, up and down stairs - everywhere I could, really.
When I was fifteen years old, however, I took a wrong step and fell down the stairs in my house.
Yes, really.
Slipped at the top of a flight, slithered down, and landed on the side of my right foot, twisting it to a crazy and unnatural degree. (it was perhaps the only time I actually remember screaming in pain.)
The ankle was in a cast for two months, and the ligament was never the same again.

A few years later, in my second year in college, I twisted the foot again. (There was an incident, sometime between the two aforementioned, involving my left foot as well. It featured such salient points as a game of basketball with the neighbours, a hole in the ground, and a wildly swollen foot. Also a cast and a scrape on my leg when the attendant used the electric saw carelessly; but I digress.)
It still counted only as a sprain, but the previous injury had left my ankle prone to injury at the least twist, and not noticing a change in levels a step while running around strange buildings surely counted as one.

After that, I had mild aches in my foot for a long time, but assumed it was because of all the walking I was doing - to and from bus stops; between bus stops, around the college campus, around sites... I had frequent visions of acupuncture, Ayurvedic oil massages and amputation, and finally did visit a renowned chiropractor. He, however, put me on to a series of painful and seemingly meaningless therapy sessions that emptied my parents' pockets and did nothing for the foot. Besides, he never once told me what he thought was wrong with my foot, and I just cannot trust doctors who do that.

This year, my foot returned to the forefront in splendour and glory. On April 29, I took a step forward and my foot took a step down, and the confusion in gravity proved too much for the ligament, which promptly tore again. This time I was in a cast for a month. It was large, heavy and orange. Here is a picture.
Once the cast was off, I was adjured to walk around with my foot in a bandage and put as little weight on the ankle as possible. And all was fine and dandy, and I limped gamely around town; going so far as to run behind buses and skip merrily in public; until the foot suddenly began sending me alarming signals of pain on an almost daily basis.

Finally, after a few months of tying the foot up in new and interesting ways, we visited another doctor who then introduced me to my new pet medical term - sesamoid. With the little that the doctors shared and some perusing of articles on the internet (yes, i know, i know. but still) I figured out that my medial sesamoid is either bipartate or fractured.
This makes for fun times and daily physiotherapy and plenty of pain and a constant, passionate desire to shoot myself through the foot.

And now I am on the verge of my next appointment with the doctor to find out if I need a cast, or a bone scan, or (oh, help) surgery. Hurrah for modern medicine!



* I did eventually get corrective eye surgery, which meant I could no longer hide behind the glass and was exposed to the world and boys might want to ask me out etc but they never did. But now I can run without fear.
Unless I am
a. running because of fear,
b. still in possession of a broken sesamoid bone,
c. wearing loose clothes, or
d. wearing tight clothes.
Hmm.

on strangeness

Weddings are such unexpected places, aren't they?
I don't mean the kinds of weddings where you're related to half the invitees and remotely connected by a number of familial ties to the other half (not to mention the fact that you are probably eligible to be married to most of the single gentlemen present. :) Erm.) Those weddings are wonderful if only because they bring home extremely forcefully the immutability of families and traditions and the fact that any more than two old ladies together equals a dissection of past, present and future that will mesmerise and terrify and leave you wishing you never turn out like your grandmother.
No, I do not mean that kind of wedding. I mean, rather, the kind of wedding where you wander in with feelings of great trepidation, holding the colourful invitation in front of you like a shield; the kind of wedding where you walk around the reception hall and are slowly but surely overwhelmed by the feeling that you recognize absolutely nobody present, and you cannot find the bride, who is in all probability the only person who actually knows you were invited.
The few forays you make into discussions reveals that everyone present is either Bengali, or Oriya, or worked for Wipro at some point of time in their life. Which is when you walk up and down an edge of the hall in as discreet a manner as possible (getting in the way of all the waiters), muttering to yourself about how you shouldn't have come and do i know *nobody* here except the bride? and how am i supposed to get home *now*? until you run into people you know, and suddenly there are things to talk about and you feel less like a great gaby in a sari.
And then you greet the bride and groom and you run into a number of persons you haven't seen in years and make a few new friends and end up with nice boys flirting with you.
Probably. :)
And the day ends in DC after dessert, which is the way all good days should end, yes.

Meanwhile, I would like to give thanks for the amply padded posterior that saved my spine from permanent injury during my undignified tumble down a set of stairs yesterday on the way to my exam.
Yes. :(
But nothing was broken, not even any bones, so yay.

When somebody says at the end of a viva, "You didn't make a view? Birds-eye view... Such a nice project, you don't want to show it off?", you know the review has gone well, do you not?
:D

fractures

where are we supposed to go from here? emergency? it isn't an emergency? casualty? perhaps, but only of my own clumsiness. and how long do i have to wait here among all these people whose blood is all on the outside instead of where self-respecting blood should be?
wheelchair, downstairs, elevator to the OPD. forms to fill, and cards to fill, down stairs, down stairs, but Father, I am not 23 yet, and who's listening?
doctor, it has been two hours since I got here and an hour since the X-ray and the upstairs downstairs, is there nobody with this girl, and where is the man with the plaster cast? i have eaten my stale idlis in my hot sambhar while Father stood by smelling of smoke and am i surprised? and where? where is my bandage?
i have read all the charts, sister, and i have redesigned the administrative block, and i am dying for a bit of construction paper and a pair of scissors and could you get me some tape with that? and i watch you wrap those instruments in cloth and i ask, sister, are those to be boiled and you nod yes; i doubt you understood me, but you smile prettily, congratulations.
and sister, sister, o Nurse? see, i can see that run in your stocking.

it's up to three hours now, doctor, close to three and a half, and why must i pay an entire month's salary for a cast in fibreglass that will not even give me a canvas on which to get people to spout drivel to show their love for me, no substitutes i bet you get a hefty commission doctor, but so it goes so it goes, and i spend half my Sunday being ignored in a hospital and the other half being ignored at home
(no, i will not apologize.)
and Coventry is not such a bad place to be if you have the internet and a phone.

Really, it's not.
So. Someone call me, please?

nothing could come between us

A couple of weeks ago, the newest neighbours were locked out of their apartment without a key between them. So it was that in the middle of the night we had an extension cord plugged into our hall point and the sound of drilling above our heads. Today they came over to charge their new digital camera because.. okay, I'm not precisely sure, because I was asleep in the afternoon, but when I awoke there was a camera plugged into the computer.
Also, the long sibling and I were just invited to a DVD party at the neighbour's next week. Monday, to be exact. I was also invited to bring along a boyfriend. Sob, if only!
Herewith is an open invitation to any young gentlemen who would not be averse to spending an evening with me, my sister, the neighbour and the neighbour's husband. Your primary role will be to tilt the gender balance closer to the middle and provide company to the last mentioned.
Call me if interested. :D

I like people.
They make life infinitely worth it.
:)

placebo post

Last Monday morning, someone told me, "Find a way to celebrate."
So T went to office early. This was exciting because she had practically no work to do and absolutely no company at all. Hence the first couple of hours at the office were spent flopping like a fish and sending emails. Probably bad ideas, in retrospect.
And after that was lunch.

Finally, at half-past three, she decided enough was enough, and it was time to go out looking for adventure! She told the boss she needed to buy some things. And she took her helmet and her keys and her Levi Strauss Signature® gift coupons, and got out into the bright sunshine.
Barely ten minutes into the ride, T found adventure staring her in the face. Well, not precisely in the face. In fact, she came upon an entire crowd of people outside some school, all staring, in the most congenial manner, up into a tree.
So she stopped and took a picture of all of them. She refused on principle, however, to look up into the actual tree, which she regrets purely on a satisfying-curiosity basis. Besides, nothing would look quite as stupid as T with her helmet off and her mouth open and her eyes looking at a tree. Nothing she cares to discuss.

T drove across to Residency Road, to the Levi Strauss Signature® Store at Mota Royal Arcade. She went the long way around, and found parking in a very coincidental manner, with a vehicle being removed just as she passed by etcetera etcetera. She walked down, occasionally bumping into people with her helmet, meeting many many juniors from college, getting stared at by random people...the usual.
When she got to the store, she found it full of people. This was surprising, because, well, let's say you'd know if you went to the store. A moment later, however, she spotted a tell-tale blue gift coupon in the hands of each of those other young persons. Every fest this year, apparently! :)
This thrilled her so much that she left the store laughing and had to go back to pick up her forgotten helmet.

T followed up this adventurous outing, the mad shopping spree, with a post-lunch 'taco' at Pecos. With a few smoking boys, some clairvoyant waiters, and a couple of rude customers thrown in for free. And some music.
:)

disconnected things

I find it extremely annoying that I am so easily swayed by sob stories. It is just so easy to get me listening to a story of how you had ten kids, out of whom four are dead; and of the remaining none does a thing for their mother; and how your sister, on the other hand, has three daughters, all of whom are successful, and actually refused to get married so they could work and pay for an operation for their mother, who had lung cancer... yes, well. I pay rather more attention when people talk than I should, I think. It's just that it's rude not to give your complete attention to a person's performance, don't you think? And then I feel guilty for having listened to the entire thing and not helping because I'm just too selfish.
I just can't win in this world.

Meanwhile, all Transport is Trauma. Came home in the bus today, and the bag was heavily laden (oh! oh! new books! new! okay tell you later) and very painful to hang on the shoulder while awkwardly positioned in the midst of tired fat ladies. Hence I asked some girl to hold the bag for me. And spent the entire rest of the ride trying to keep an eye on the bag over shoulders and between chunnis and under arms. Sigh, paranoia.
I want to be able to trust strangers. And be justified.

Also managed to Stare a Boy Down while walking home from the bus stop post-paranoia. Was walking along all self-aware and such; keeping a wary corner of the eye out for undesirable elements (such as men) on the dark empty streets. Passed a gang of college-type boys while I was strutting my stuff (^-^), and naturally one of them started humming something at the back of my head all filmi-style. So I stopped and looked at him. That's all I did, just looked. Didn't ask him to shut up, or stop, or what he was doing. I just stopped and looked him in the eye.
Isn't it odd what confrontation does to a person?
One of these days I'm going to get myself into something I can't get out of.

For some reason I seem to get very 'xasperated when I fail at male-type actions. e.g. starting a bike, in front of boys. It irks me to imagine them going, "Oh, a girl". It IRKS ME, I say. I'm not a fan of damsel in distress unless it's emotional, I think. That's just so romantic, I think. Plus it works both ways.

You know what's awful? Laughing at a cruel joke someone makes just so you don't rock the boat, that's what. Agreeing with someone just so that you aren't put to the trouble of defending your own personal opinion. Where do you draw lines, after all? People's opinions are their own, right? And laughing at someone's accent, or clothing, or hair, or makeup, or height... it's just human nature, right?
sigh.

monday mindgames

Pardon in advance, please, any bad or not-very-well-written sentences. Also any spelling errors, because I'm writing from work, and I have not much time.

Today is Monday. I'm here at work early because Boss B's in Kerala but the carpenter for the project will be here at nine-thirty to pick up the drawings so that work can begin on site. So I'm here to hand them over.
I'm here early, and fuming.
I took the scooter to work today. Regular (leave me my timid fantasies, dears) readers of the blog may remember the aforementioned as a rather elderly Kinetic Honda, scene to King stories. I'd remembered that there was no petrol in the scooter, so I left extra early to fill some at the petrol pump near home.

And there, at half-past eight in the morning, I was ignominiously cheated.

Well, an attempt was made. I still, at first pass, ended up paying Rs. 102 for something approaching one-third a litre of petrol. Of course it was partly my fault for not instantly screaming about the failure of the attendant to show me the zero mark. But I was in a hurry, I hadn't been paying attention, and I was wary of creating a scene. And this is how these people always end up getting away with this kind of behaviour in the first place!

So I stood there, like a silly little smark, and I decided that, despite my immediate feeling that I had been made gull of (oh, and believe me, it was immediate. the attendant had been pouring the petrol into the tank for no more than a few seconds, and the tank looked startlingly empty, and i thought "fuck, i've been cheated"), I would wait to make sure that I was before I began yelling. (i am rather wary of open-foot-insert-mouth. it makes for too much embarrassment.)

So I drove along and watched the tank indicator. It didn't move past the quarter mark. And then I knew. To confirm, and to gain some more courage, I drove home to check with the father. The father confirmed my fears, but, to my horror, seemed to think I would let the matter slide. Do you want some more money to fill petrol, he said. Go somewhere else and do it, he added. Shock!

I refused to stand for such tame acceptance, so I scorned his kindly attempts at consolation, picked up my jacket from the house (one of T's little life lessons: never pass up an opportunity to pick up things you have forgotten.) and drove back to the petrol pump.

There, I proceeded to throw a right royal tantrum (which T enjoyed very much, the crazy creature that she is.), demanding to know whether they thought I was an idiot, whether they thought they could fool me just because I was a woman, showing them the petrol level in the tank and asking them in what planet that looked like two litres, threatening to call the cops...

It was a short, but powerful, performance. I wish I could have seen it from the outside.

"Put one and a half litres of petrol in this tank right now, or I'm calling the cops!", I screamed. (incidentally, arjun, there was a repeat performance of the spittle-on-visor incident. Alas for you that you missed it again.)

After five sentences, one of the attendants filled the tank with thirty rupees worth of petrol. I drove away feeling distinctly that I had been cheated again.

I'm going back there this evening to get a litre's worth. I have the entire monologue written out in my head, so I should be fine.

The T absolutely refuses to be an easy mark.

Await developments, please. Moral support is welcome. :)


Update at half past five:
The T is disappointed at the anticlimactic end to her tale. She returned to vent the rest of her anger, and found that the morning attendants were off duty.
She then went in and complained, in an exceedingly boring and dignified manner, to the supervisor. He then put a litre of petrol in her vehicle, and gave her a bill for the morning's two litres into the bargain.
Either the T is very persuasive, or this thing happens often enough that a litre makes no earthly difference.

Meanwhile, the T is also more than slightly staggered at being apparently excessively memorable. Strangers are coming up to her at unusual places and saying, "Aren't you <insert T's real name>? Hi! I'm so-and-so from school/your Spanish class/some other vague place."
One lovely person recognised my voice. And I'd only seen her twice in my life!!!

The T knows not what to say. She is flattered.
:)