My big city neighbor

Though I lived in a "big city", I grew up in an old neighborhood. Where everyone knew my grandfather, almost everyone remembered me as the kid paddling around on her tricycle like crazy, trying to break the speed barrier. The kind of neighborhood where aunties and grannies will show up at each others home with bowls of savories. Give meaningful smile when they get to know about the dates of the girl next door. And of course fight endlessly on, who owns the fruits of the tree on the border of the property. So I never really had to do with the "typical city neighborhood".
Then I got married and moved to a bigger city. Now Delhi is known for its fast life style. The dictate is you live by the 3D rule; you will show Dignified Disinterest and Detachment. Really, I mean if you want to scare away people, just offer help, like "may I open the door for you?" "You look like you are carrying one too many bags I can carry one for you". People will give you the look of an about-to-be-murdered-lamb and say a quick "no thanks" and run.
Obviously my parents were very worried for me; I am still their lil girl, all alone, in a big city, where I didn’t know anyone. I, on the other hand, did not have any problem turning into a cold and perfect “citizen”. I knew there was this elderly couple who lived next to us. But other than a polite “hi” or a smile I don’t think we exchanged more than two words in a year. They left for work early, me and my husband come back home very late. As a couple we always take part in apartment gaming events, they were more into puja etc. Those apartments could have been islands stretched in ocean and it would not have made any difference to us... or so I thought.
Couple of months back, I broke my leg. The whole leg was plaster. Now anyone who has gone through this experience, knows it’s not the pain that matters. It’s the discomfort. Suddenly one of your leg weighs couple of tons more than the other one. You can’t get into any trouser, since you have one elephant leg (in florescent green color) and another regular sized one. And if you plan to reach dining hall for dinner you should start around lunch time. Adding to all that my husband, S suddenly turned super protective. I don’t exactly know what happened. May be, he got worried that we are all alone in the city and he wanted me to get better quickly. Or may be he just loved being the boss around the house and for once had me completely under his control. Whatever the reason be, he suddenly shrunk my whole world in my bed. He arranged for laptop next to my bed, so that I can work from bed. Shifted the TV, stereo and my bookshelf in the bedroom, for my entertaining needs. The cook and maid took up the clue and turned into bigger tyrants; my cook would cook my food, serve it and leave the food tray with water and all on my bed. My maid would leave a bucket of water and towels for me to take sponge bath if needed. My only escape from bed was the trips to toilet and I had strong suspicion that my husband was arm twisting my doctor for a grant of catheter to stop those.
Anyway, about a month passed this way. I have never seen S working so much and happier (side effect of the absolute power). Suddenly for couple of days I saw a little discomfort every time he would come home from somewhere. When asked what’s bothering him, he said "I don’t know, the lady from the apartment in front of ours has been giving me odd looks".
I laughed "May be you are looking particularly dashing these days"
"I am not sure that’s it " he said "Its a different kind of look, as if she thinks, I have stole her morning paper or something"
"have you?"
"of course not " he was so uncomfortable that he missed the obvious joke "and she tries to look into our flat every time I open the door!"
Now I was a little concerned "she has never done this before"
"I know!"
Anyway, that was that. Next day, when he was coming back to home, the lady caught him.
"Where is your wife?" she charged.
"Ha!!" my husband was completely stunned.
"Where is your wife? I have not seen that girl for a month. She doesn’t go for morning walks, swimming, office. Where is A?" Obviously aunty has read one too many reports of marital violence and has drawn the one and only conclusion of absence. As Agatha Christie would put it “the simplest crime of all , her husband has done her in”! :)
When my husband explained that I broke my leg and am confined to my bed. She still looked suspicious. And she refused to come into our flat when S asked her. I don’t know it’s the 3D of big city or the fact if a guy can murder his own wife, why should he stop at cleaning out witnesses? Anyway for the first time in the month S helped me out of my bed and took me out of the flat (aaaah sweet freedom!) to meet aunty.
After seeing I was alive but not kicking so much, just like S told her, aunty calmed down a great deal. Of course she slyly asked "so how did it happen?" giving askance looks to S "how did it break?" Now it was my turn to ease her mind now "I fell down the stairs aunty." All the time I had to badly stomp on my urge to add, “After S pushed me …. “ But I realized that would be too big a prank on S. she had that cell in her hand for a reason, she would call the police at the drop of a hat.
I got to know a great deal more about them that day. After someone tries to save you from your murdering husband (ok so he was not one, but then aunty thought he was and in her own mind, she did risk her life), you cant just be politely detached. She is a school teacher and her husband is in government service, just like my parents. Her daughter works in Mumbai .... lives alone in a flat.
Later, S and I were having a good laugh about it, S asked me "how come she knows your name?” And I just couldn’t remember then. Finally, after a couple of days it came back to me. Right after we moved in the flat, I crossed her once or twice on the jogging track in the morning. She had this skeletal look for someone who lost a lot of weight in a day and the way she walked breathlessly hugging herself reminded me of something. I went and asked her one day if she had a bypass surgery recently. Turned out she did, just like my father last year. She was annoyed great deal too about it. She had the frustrated look of someone who is not getting better as soon as she hoped. I told her it will take 2-3 months, but if she keeps up the exercise, it will become much better. Even better than before the surgery. End of the conversation, she suddenly asked "So what’s your name girl?" Something about her commanding tone made me smile. I know that tone, my mother is a teacher. I told her my name that day and made a bet with myself that she is a school teacher.
I hope her daughter’s got a neighbor just like mine.

Da Vinci Code .... the deshi version

Finally found this last years blog, which got lost in web.... :)

After all the controversy surrounding Da Vinci Code, I finally got to see it last night. Barring all other comments one can safely say that its a faithful representation of the book, so it was difficult to keep you concentration as faithfully throughout the movie.Random thoughts run through your head.

Like what if there is an Indian version of Da Vinci ... Say The Hussain code. Probably it will be a saga of thrills and drills a couple go through to find a white horse which bears the octogenarians painting. The places it has been to, what it ate, how it left clues (ahem) to find its next destination. Opus dei can be replaced by a secret society named vajaram bol (it Bengali phrase would mean nonsense talk ... no pun intended). Who are out to hide a life altering secret about the maestros paintings of Saraswati and Bharatmata, the former being the luckier one to maintain her modesty with her veena, Bharatmata had no such luck.

Now the secret will have something to do with true identity of these mythical figures, what happened to their cloths and what is Gajagamini (Is it a bird, is it a car, nooooo its a movie ... hmmm why doesnt anyone look convinced? you people simply has no sense of aesthetics). Come on people! The movie obviously doesnt have any entertainment value, what does it have???? Obviously its leading to the last spot the white horse (please go to the top to find relevance) had its bath. And that spot will reveal itself as the spot where the original burial ground of goddesses, like saraswati and Bharatmata. We can make the ground under some Islam monument like Taj Mahal or Jamma Masjid, and instigate people to demolish it and look under it (hey I am trying to write a best seller here, I need vajarangs to also read it ).

The twist in the tail? The DNA test will reveal, why the maestro's painting of goddess of knowledge has this uncanny similarity with this beautiful famous actress.

I smell this idea can be a best seller waiting to happen. Only problem will be whether any banned is imposed on the book by vajarang bol ... ops sorry.

Disclaimer: All reference to any book, movie or painting is purely fictional. Anything said about any artist, painter, actors and actresses, political parites and any of the above's paternity testing has no relevance whatsoever to anything in the world. Vajarang daal is not a pun, it does not sound like any party that ever existed anywhere in world, let alone in India, and its strong holds are not gujrat or rajasthan. Any movie named anywhere is figment of my imagination (in fact I am still quite sure, gajagamini is one of my odd nightmares). If it has same name or similarity with anything you ever see or do its coincidental. and .. ha ... ummm, what was I talking about? Anyway, the point is if I dont know what I am talking about, obviously its coincidental/fictitious/figment of imagination, and it doesnt have anything to do with anything that ever existed or will ever exist.
There I think I have covered it.

Thou shalt never take a seat near the chronologically challenged (flying part 3)

… otherwise called children.

While the extremely small ones will continually cry in a never changing tone t-h-r-o-u-g-h-o-u-t t-h-e j-o-u-r-n-e-y. Little older ones will keep on asking question. “Mommy what does this button do?” “Papa why you are looking at the aunty in short skirts?” “aunty can I walk on your seat?” and of course the age old question that has entertained every kid (and tormented their parents) through every journey. “ARE WE THERE YET?”

The smiling ones will smile at you first and then take a sudden grab for your hair/specs (whichever you think are more precious, they have a detecting power and then of course grabbing/snatching starts). The whining ones will constantly whine. The spoilt ones will keep on asking for everything owned by everyone around them.
And of course there is the killer duo of “very small baby and mommy”, where the mommies think its too much of a pain to leave the window seat (which she probably took from you, with the fundamental right of being a mother of a baby) and decides to change the nappies seating right next to you. And when this happens, all I can say is “tch tch, I told you to seat away from children infested area”.

I remember there was this time, when a sweet child sat behind me on the flight. The moment after he boarded he asked “mom when do we take off?” and after every 35 sec he took a shot at quenching his hunger for knowledge …. “mom when do we take off?” Finally the boarding was over and flight was poised to take off, he decided this is the time to start counting down “20 .. 19 .. 18 .. “. As luck would have it, that day the flight didn’t get clearance for flying for 49 mins and the child with same enthusiasm, vigor and voice decided to repeat his countdown till the plane took off. Now I have read/heard of lot of art of living gurus, I know to live happy one must be positive. You HAVE to look at life through rose colored glasses. I tried that day. First I told myself the delay was only for my own safety, we know what happens when cars bump into each other; imagine what will happen when airplanes start doing the same. About the end of 18^th minute, I started considering may be … just may be dome pilot will get struck by this instant myopia, could not see our aircraft and may be he can drive through his plane through mine … around the same plane I am sitting. I mean I know its not probable. But the art of living gurus tell me to be hopeful …….

Thou shalt never take an early morning flight! (flying part 2)

Ok now that I have bored you with ever-modest description of myself. Let me share my pearls of wisdom with you.

And I say avoid the morning flights. You ask me why? You tell me that you have office to attend. Take kids to school. Clean your house. And attend other chores. I say if it’s so urgent that the late night flights, till 4am is good. But after that never take a flight before 9am.

You ask me why. Well simple enough dear Watson. Imagine a enclosed limited place packed by at least 50-60 odd people with incomplete bowl movement …. Well you get the drift. And one must take account of the fact that flights are often delayed by one or more hours. Ok, if its getting too horrible to imagine you can stop now. And if you are in an unavoidable situation that you HAVE to take an early morning flight (the situation should be at least amounting to something like “only you have a document which can stop a nuclear war and you must fly economy flight in early morning to delivar it” ) follow these life saving tactics.

As soon as you board, dump your luggage and run for the toilet, if the airhostess tells you must wait till the flight is on air, make a puppy face, briber her … do whatever you have to do, but get your share of toilet then and …. Well generally get done with it, cause for the rest of the flight you are not coming back this way

Always take your seat around the middle to front end of the plane. And if you didn’t get those seats, take out your perfumed hanky and get something like a talibani face gear and meditate. I am not saying that would work …. But they nothing does anyway.

It is a small world (flying part one)

Last 4-5 years has seen some major changes in lifestyle of general population. Sudden advent of “mall” culture (I still am not sure what it means though) ... suddenly every kid in the block has there hands on this magical device called mobile ( something I didn’t even know existed some time ago, and today my life would be completely paralyzed if each member of my family doesn’t own one).
But “the thing” that has changed my life most is the invention of economy airlines! They have definitely made this world very small. I am one of the unfortunates who have to work away from home. Thanks to this new business mantra of low budget airlines I can still visit my family frequently enough to feel … well somewhat at home.

Anyway, the point I am getting at is, gone are the days when I used to be very wide-eyed about the whole “flying” affair. You know, when taking a flight meant, choosing that extra-special casual wear, a hint of more makeup …. Instead now I can just run out of my office, with my raffled hair, and slightly smelly from my ping pong games and stride into the aircraft without so much of a thought.

Of course I still get confused every time the flight is about to take off. How the hell did we come up with a plan of lifting such a huge mass in air!!! And no, I am not talking about my ever increasing weight; it’s the aircrafts heft that I ponder upon. Yah, that and the amazing sight of seeing cities blinking lights going away from you, or the range of Himalayan flying across you like a sidewalk. Other than these I have got the art of flying good chalked out to the minutest details. Its an easy to follow handout book really. I can actually write something like a “flying for dummies” sort of book.