Ruffling Our Feathers..

Bangalore is beautiful… the weather, that is. The city, I can’t say the same about, much to my dismay. The promenade where I would stroll down with friends and sit on the steps with chai and moongphali…is now a pile of rubble…eagerly, desperately awaiting the new Metro.

The weather…. turbulent winds and rain are sweeping the city. Random outbursts of thunder and lightning through the day and the night. I am cursed…it always starts pouring as soon I step out of the house. The autowalas are having a field day, hawking up their prices by 3 times, and getting it too, from hapless stranded people.

When I go out to our open air cafeteria with friends, to have our customary morning-evening cuppa..I have to tear myself away to come back inside. It is such bliss to feel the wind in my hair, to inhale big lungfuls of air, moist and sweet-smelling from the earth. I miss those days when I could dance in the rain with my friends, and we would come home to the knowledge of clean towels, piping hot coffee and samosas waiting for us.

Now, I will have to get my own towels and tea. And if my mother even heard about samosas, she would kill me… or get my aunt to do so. How the mighty have fallen!! :-D

The weather matches the mood in office. In Pharmaceutical marketing, there is a concept of a drug moving through different phases – I, II, III, Registration – before it can be launched into the market. It is safe to say that the entire middle management levels are in the latter two stages… chance mila toh “bhaaago”, as epitomized by Bollywood’s very own SRK, in his latest feel-good-dancing-around-trees flick.

We all watch and we wait… and meantime, we have come full cycle….

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times; it is the age of wisdom; it is the age of foolishness,
It is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity; it is the season of light; it is the season of darkness.
Charles Dickens – A Tale of Two Cities

The years, that were…

Long ago and oh so far away
I fell in love with you...before the second show
And your guitar, you sound so sweet and clear
But your not really here, it's just the radio

8 years ago, on a bright sunny Sunday, we got a frantic call from my aunt. Her dog, Lucy, had gone into labor, but due to complications, we were going to have to do a C-section on her. Needless to say, the whole extended dog-loving-crazy-family I proudly call mine, rushed pell-mell over to the vet’s.

And half hour later, one “teensy weensy” golden colored pup was born.

He wasn’t breathing back then, and had to be revived with a drop of brandy, at which he “woke up” gasping and spluttering. And my aunt told “Kishoreda” to place him in my arms straightway. From the day I brought him home, and he tottered around my room, scaring the heebi-jeebis out of Sacha, who couldn’t believe our perfidy, it was the start a wonderful love affair.

That brandy truly defined his personality. We called him Leo, after Leonardo Da Vinci.. Ma, being a physics person, thought that it would beget great brains. Sadly, he was more Leonardo DiCaprio… tall, handsome and really really blonde. J

All of Leo’s swaggering about, though, was at home, with people he was comfortable with. We would call him for ages, but he would deign to come, only if he felt like it. However, all his arrogance disappeared outside the house. At the Vet’s, for example, people would be exclaiming over how pretty he was, and he would keep backing into us, and struggling in vain to fit that huge body under our chairs, with looks of complete disapproval at strangers.

The one “person” he ADORED, was Sacha.. our older dog.. who adored him back in return. They would spend endless hours with each other, doing the doggie equivalent “sitting around and chatting”. Wherever Sacha would go, Leo would faithfully follow. One was a tiny Spitz, the other, a humongous Labrador…David and Goliath…yet, the two dogs never ever hurt each other.

Ma loved him and spoilt him, as she always has and always will, with animals. However, she was always a little grieved that he didn’t ever “behave like a dog”, i.e., he did what he wanted to do, how he wanted to do it. He also behaved like the perennial cat.. would come to hug us if he wanted, and if he didn’t, he would shrug us off, and even lift a lip to show he meant business.

With me, it was unconventional. I didn’t really have a hassle about him shrugging us off when he didn’t feel like being hugged.. I am, in a way, the same type. So we left each other alone when we didn’t want to be bothered, and hugged each other when we did. Mom used to tell me, when she was really upset about my lack of emotion, “Ur just like Leo, ur not like Sacha”… I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry..

I went by the honorable adage of being the only one, who he would permit a lot of indignity from. My favorite de-stressing technique used to be sitting there on the floor, dragging him close and checking for ticks, cleaning his nails and ears, and generally spending quality time with him. After a while, he would lie there, upturned, legs paddling away happily in the air, a blissful look on his face, while I scratched his stomach or his sides.

He died yesterday morning. Mom drove down with him to our farmhouse, to have him placed among the flowers, so that he will always be with us.

When I write this, I realize that I will never hug him again, or rap him on the nose for “grr-ing” at me, or see that thrilled “I’m a god” expression on his face when he successfully bows for his biscuit. I will never hug him tight, and feel that fur in my hands, and use him for a pillow at night.

And my heart is splintering..

Shifting Sands

April come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.
--- P. Simon


April and May were the months of shifting.. shifting from one house to another, an office to another. Both new spaces being at Marathahalli, and both old spaces being at opposite end of the world.

Struggled with a mountainous amount of furniture, and thank the Lord that there were friends who helped me pack and unpack, through two weekends. My new flat mates moved in last Friday. We get along great, so I’m very happy with general setup.. fingers crossed. :)

The house still looks like a tornado hit it, tho, with dust huddled together in odd corners, and kitchen utensils and various masalas being dumped randomly on granite shelves. Dust mites roll across the great prairie we call our living room, friends tell us to open the fans, so that the dust will shift away and hide under corners. The same people want to come and play cricket and TT in our living room, so I don’t put too much weight on their words of wisdom.

But it’s been worth it. The house is white and light and spacious. It is so big that one almost rattles around in it. My furniture, which seemed too much, at my old flat, now seems pathetically less.

Come dawn, and sunlight filters in from all angles, hitting my face across slanted shutters. Stumbling sleepily out to the open kitchen, we throw open both balcony doors, and feel the heat and wind on our faces, as we drink our coffee.

Evening brings with it a cool cool breeze, the curtains dancing in the drafts of air, wind chimes doing their tinkling dances. Flopping down on the bean bags and floor cushions, this feels like home.

There’s a nip in the air...

Our lives and loves come back to bite us in the ass.. in my case, almost literally.

Woke up today, all happy and chilled, unaware what was to befall. Pottering around the kitchen, with my cup of coffee, pausing now and then to look, google-eyed, at the strange people parading through the Oprah Show, I stopped, hearing some whining and screeching outside my flat. Opened the door and found 3 humungous (the perfect Bong word would be “humdo”) men, with bamboos, trying to corner a shivering little puppy, who had got in, by mistake, and was now crouched, desperately trying to meld into the foliage.

I saw red..naturally. Ran out, in god-knows-what-I-was-wearing, to fight the puppy’s battles for him, and in very incoherent Hindi, told the guys something to the effect of “Would u like it if you were beaten?” and “God hasn’t sent us here to beat up others” yada yada…

And managed to get puppy out, pick him up, and talk in “baby voice” and get him outside. Which was going FINE..till one idiot man hopped out in front of us, with a damn bamboo. Puppy panicked, and bit the hand that carried it, dropped to the ground, and disappeared somewhere.

Well, called up zillion doctors (there has got to be some advantages of working in a pharma oriented company) got details and got vaccinated, all within the hour. 3 more injections to go, in next 21 days. Slight twinges of pain traveling up and down arm, but otherwise all fine…so, STOP PANICKING, MOM :-D

This had happened to me, 3 yrs ago, when I woke up in my P.G. and found a little squirrel paddling away, half dead, in the pot. Fished it out (as I couldn’t possible flush it away and live with myself) dried it in the sun, with my towel. When it recovered, it bit me on my finger, for all my pains, and ran away.

I seem to see a pattern emerging..

Salaam-e-kick-in-the-butt

As I’m sure you can tell - I’m not impressed with the movie at all. Had to sit through it, late nite show Sunday, and I wept through the disastrous remake of “Love Actually”.

The jist:

1. 3.5 hours and 12 songs
2. 6 couples…each worse than the next. The love stories mostly made no sense whatsoever, and each person was a wasted role
3. Rich and bounteous locales… namely London, upper crust Delhi society, and potshots at Rajasthan, Taj Mahal and rural Haryana (I think)
4. Hopping randomly between couples, and songs breaking whatever story/pace they could have hoped to have had
5. Blonde chicks wearing ghagra choli and dancing at Trafalgar Square, London, while Priyanka Chopra ran amok in between the Baywatch babes, wearing a satin nightgown
6. John Abraham.. all he did was run like crazy trying to find his “beloved” who has amnesia, and howl at the moon
7. Anil Kapoor looked at his watch all the time, throughout the movie and lusted after a cabaret dancer type thing..
8. Govinda saying (this is how you have to pronounce it)...“Mai-dum, I Laaabh Oo” to a foreign chick…

The fun part:

1. In the movie, one Haryanvi couple, who’s primary ambition is to finally consummate their passion after marriage. The groom kept saying “kurr, kurr”. The dialogue was, errr…well, I don’t have words for it actually.. it went something like this..
   “Aag lagg-ing ji.. in the backside”..
   No, that MERELY means that there was a actual fire burning away, behind them, in the “suhhag raat room” or whatever you call it..
2. The red lights in the movie hall flickering on and off, at the very part where they are talking of “Diwali ka raat mein hum dono”
3. The movie reel getting stuck at the point where the doctor explains short term memory loss. So you actually had to hear the same dialogue thrice, almost as if YOU had partial amnesia..
   

Which reminds me.. have to ask my Jatni friend if “kurr, kurr” is a mating call particular to that region…

play me...

read Scout's blog, got all excited, and wanted to see what my own Tarot was..just for kicks really.. and THIS is what it came up with..very nice and flaterring, even though i say so myself :-D

You are The Sun
Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

Child with eyes like black pools

Last nite I dreamt of a little child. With tiny fingers that curled around one of mine. Black hair, and eyes, limpid pools of black.

There was no deep ache in my gut, that signified she was mine. But the way I barked at my mother, when she told me how to apply “Johnson’s Baby Oil”, told me that she was. :-D

It was a strange dream, as I have never been particularly a “baby-person”.

I wonder what it all meant...

In praise of idleness

Spent a lovely week, culminating with the 31st of this year, at my aunt’s place.

It is a lovely place in Whitefield, so much more a haven than “just a house”. With verdant gardens, and lily pools where goldfish frolic. A little turtle pokes his head out from the fronds and enjoys the morning sun. A catfish called Mao (only the Bongs will understand the joke, I think) who swims out to the surface when his name is called, and gobbles up the fish food. I think he is the only “pet” fish that I know of.

I spend the days in relaxed bliss, being looked after, chatting to Dida. The only blips on my radar are the loads of office work, and the daily commute to the city centre.

I wake up in the morning, and coffee appears magically by my side, whenever I stumble downstairs, groggy and half-asleep.

Meandering out into the garden, I collapse on a reclining chair, soaking in the sun. Dida sits by me, and discuss all and any random topic. She thinks I know everything. HAH!! I know zilch, as I tell her, I only know how to say what I know, in a convincing manner. I suspect it’s a genetic flair, got from a late grandfather of mine. At any rate, she loves hearing me speak. :-D

With my own Didubhai, as I used to call my late Gran, I didn’t spend as much quality time with her, as I could have. I was growing up and she was too slow for the pace, I felt back then, for me to slow down, and hold her hand for awhile. Now that she is gone, and I miss her fiercely, and I regret all those moments, wasted, vanished.

So now, I am softer, gentler with the Grans I have left, cherishing the time I spend with them. I think, I hope, that Dida enjoys my company.

Light and dark

In the light, I’m strong, invincible…I know no fear, no boundaries. I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, often for others’ too.

It’s only when it is dark, that the insecurities creep up my spine. I doubt, I wonder, I’m no Superwoman.

Sometimes, in the twilight hours, my pillow comes away wet.

Woman overboard

I bought and I bought and I bought… tons and tons of books, in November. I think I went to town, telling myself it was all valid since I hadn’t bought anything for a long long time. Am happily ploughing through the lot, right now. Winter is the perfect season for curling up with a book, snug under blankets, steaming hot coffee and some munchies by one’s side.

The list:

Jonathan Stroud: The Bartimeous Trilogy (BRILLIANT read, but more about that later)
The Amulet of Samarkand
Golem’s Eye
Ptolemy’s Gate

Bill Watterson: The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes. This marks my 8th C&H till date.. slow and steady buying.

Asterix comics I had left.. this completes my collections (O Happy Day)
Obelix and Co.
Asterix and the Class Act: this one’s a compilation of 14 short stories.

6 Enid Blytons (don’t laugh).. Bought the mystery series…a favorite of my childhood, my friend bought some others. We both discovered we have moms who threw out (i.e., gave away to random people) our books, when they thought we had outgrown them. Which we might have, but there is something very comforting to settle down with those books once in a while, and invite old memories in :)

2 Chetan Bhagat’: I know he is being touted as something mind boggling, but found both books okie. Good flow of writing, witty and fast. But quite forgettable, really. Feel free to disagree with me :)
5-Point Someone
One night at the Call Centre

Louis Theroux: Call of the Weird. All about alternative societies, aka people who believe in aliens, people of the red light areas, people who are Ku-Klux-Gang members. Very interesting read, in a whole new perspective.

Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown

Allan Sealy: The Trotter-Nama. Had read it ages ago, loveod oit, now got it for my own.

Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss

Bulbul Sharma: Stories from a Himalayan Village. Lovely, gentle.. reminds me of the multiple holidays I have spent growing up, in different Himalayan villages

Best Women’s Travel Writing: a collection of lovely prose, by women all over the world, traveling all over the world.

3 Georgette Heyer. Her mystery/murder set. Who would have thought a lady who wrote about Victorian romance, could pen intrigue, with such flair.

..And how the west was won..

As mentioned, was in a really bad mood with the way the party got hijacked. Also, to add to our frustrations, the mails kept coming in, saying “sorry, can’t make it”. And the exasperating thing was that they were coming in from the nice people (yes, I’m prejudiced, so what!!). The irritating elements were still in full swing to attend.

If that wasn’t enough, the Sec went ahead, booked buffets and god knows what, where we “had” to pay up thousand bucks, no matter what, etc etc. no wonder, we were all smouldering.

So, we put our plans into action.

1st, we had to find out who all were coming finally. Sent around the sweetest girl to tell them about high prices (that was true). So she smiled nicely at them, said “so ur not coming, right” and marched back before they got over their bafflement and could protest otherwise.

2nd, we sent out a mail to all, saying the party was cancelled, due to random reasons.

3rd, called the admin people, who had hijacked our party in the first place, saying that it was cancelled, please “un” book the tables, etc.

I’m going into politics soon..


Mood – gleeful, chortling

You put ur left foot in..

It all started with a friend of mine rhapsodizing about some gals in her company doing regular “girls nite out” at random places all over the city.. how cool, how much fun, etc etc.

Carried away with all her stories, we 3 friends, in the company I work in, planned a similar venture. Had initially thought of calling a select few friends, then the 2 others made faces at me, and called me “prejudiced”, and “bitch” and a variety of such other loving names.

So, we threw it open to all the girls in the office, with an edict to “come if you can, no issues either way”..

And got the SHOCK of our lives, when dear “Sec to the Pres” happily told the Pres, and HE wants to join us, thinks it’s a great idea, specially that his dear wifey is out of town. And now we learn, he is bringing some of his sleazy (I’ve met them before at office party) friends aong.

This is one of those silent “WHAT????” moments. I mean, if this isn’t the HEIGHT of ass-kissing (by the Sec), I don’t know what is! If I would verbalize all the swear words, that I’m feeling right now, the page would catch fire..

Thus, now, in sheer desperation, we have opened the invite to a lot of other guys in office, as 1 President with 20 women, on a drink-dance-and-make-merry outing would be just too strange..

What a situation!! I could KILL that woman, I swear!!


Mood – really bad, ass-kicking, pissed off

Glimpses of a City

What the Lonely Planet says of Nairobi:

Nairobi is a spirited city with a hint of danger.

Kenya's capital is cosmopolitan, lively, interesting and pleasantly landscaped. Its central business district is handily compact and it's a great place to tune into modern urban African life. Unfortunately, it's also a great place to get mugged. Security, especially at night, is a definite concern.

Originally little more than a swampy watering hole for Maasai tribes, Nairobi grew with the advent of the railway and had became a substantial town by 1900. Five years later it succeeded Mombasa as the capital of the British protectorate. Today it's the largest city between Cairo and Johannesburg.


What it DOESN’T say (whatever I remember, in random order):

1. Nairobi looks like a city out of a developed nation, not a developing one. Tall gleaming building, sparklingly clean sidewalks, little cafes where one relaxes over coffee and croissants, and multiple-shades-of-pink faces everywhere. Its only when one really looks hard, that we see the non-white ones. An overwhelming impression I carried with me from Africa, to be honest, are of the whites there, throwing around their money. The blacks are still serving them and calling them “sir”, but this time, they are extracting the full dollar for it. And more power to them, too!!

2. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there are forests! In the middle of the city. Rising tall and dark, on either side, as we drive down from one point of the city to the other. Beautiful shades of dark green foliage, little streams flowing with burbling sounds, birds flitting from branch to branch trilling to each other. These forests are carefully maintained, i.e., no cutting is allowed. It grows wild, within a particular area.

3. It’s a city of a million dichotomies. There are either the extravagantly rich or the exceedingly poor. There is practically no “middle-class” at all, unlike other cities. Villas are passé, and Mercs and BMWs and Pradas the cars of choice for the affluent.

4. People who don’t travel in aforesaid Pradas and Mercs, travel in Matatus and City Hoppas. I assume the words are derived from the words Matador (van) and City Hoppers, respectively. Both can happily be called “angels of doom”, and one can totally understand why, when you see these wildly careening around corners and screeching to a halt in front of the bus stands.

5. There are huge slums in Nairobi. But these are contained, not scattered about few houses at a time, like in India. And they’re CLEAN. If I hadn’t been told Kibera was a slum, I wouldn’t have recognized it for one, while passing. Neat little 1 bedroom houses, whitewashed and gleaming, form which people come out in droves and head off to work.

6. The common man, on the road, is so well dressed, that they beat us hollow, any day. The men walking out of the slums, wear blazers. As Joel, my sister’s chauffer (and our guide around Nairobi) put it, “people might be lazing the whole day, not doing anything, but from 9am to 9pm, they’re perfectly attired”. Women go to shop for groceries, dressed to kill. Little fashionable skirts, colored and braided hair, and they are off wheeling trolleys through the aisles and picking up groceries. Jaw-dropping sight, really!!

7. Consumerism is at its height in Nairobi. Nowhere else, not even in India, where pre-teens are doing the moonwalk to Channel V blaring out its discordant tunes, or truly believing that “they don’t need no education”, have I seen a 15 STOREY tall poster, proclaiming Coke to be the drink of the future.

8. Nairobi has no industry at all. Their main income comes from tourism, and they have taken that to a fine art. Each and every little thing shows it, from the level of hygiene maintained at all times, to the cuisine and the shopping. Money also comes from the freight industry. The huge industrial buildings in Nairobi are only used to “put things together’, i.e., trucks, et al.

9. The “Little India” in Nairobi, is chock-a-block, stuffed to the gills, crammed with…the Gujju community. They are about 20% of the population there, and control 80% of the city finances. Big cars, full of youngsters dressed in the latest MTV hip fashion, roll in, to have chaat and tikkis at the “Bombay Choupatty”. Sunidhi Chauhan looks smokily and seductively down from stalls selling tapes of Hindi films, and remixes blare away. However, and sadly, the Indians everywhere are dirty. The place is immediate recognizable, since it’s the only place where people flick personal dirt around the place.

10. Nairobi is a very laid-back place. I saw people on a weekday, lazing around and sleeping in parks, while lovely and exotic looking birds pecked the ground around them. The newspaper vendors sit and happily read those papers themselves, without bothering to sell their wares. At the garden cafes where one has lunch, people sit for hours with a beer and a book, on weekday mornings.

On a side note, these cafes were brilliant. Excellent food, great locales, people serving you, with lovely smiles lighting up their faces. . Best of all, they allow pets in the garden. Imagine.. a chilled beer, a good book, the sun warming your back, and a dog sleeping at your feet. That, I think, is my idea of near-perfect bliss.

November

So I’m waiting for this test to end,
So the lighter days can soon begin,
I'll be alone maybe more carefree,
Like a kite that floats so effortlessly.

But I’m about to give this one more shot,
And find it in myself,
Ill find it in myself. -Azure Ray



We’re shifting.. AGAIN!! To be more precise, we’re being shifted..

It all started when our Dearly Beloved Clients (from now on, called DBC) ran out of budget spectacularly, at the end of October. And thus, DBC decided to suddenly pack up shop. One balmy Monday morning, we found a “termination of services” mail in our inboxes, effective from next year February. As if Monday-morning-blues were not bad enough..

Thankfully, this doesn’t mean that the whole team is dissolved out of our own company. It however means that now our team is amalgamated, willy-nilly, into a bigger (note, not better) team.

This is scheduled to happen in February, after the current contract was dissolved. Lightning bolts struck us when we were told we would be shifted by end of this week, into the new setup. Which really, is hideous, with less space, bad light, no facilities set up yet, et al.

Yes, ok, so I’m grumbling. Add to it, the groans, the moans, the whines, the whimpers…

If my team was despondent about the client thing, this is probably the final nail to the final coffin. None of us want to leave our spaces behind..more importantly, leave our friends in this office, behind.

I know, speaking from prior experience that we WILL settle in just fine, shake our feathers down and fit right in. I should know, us having changed 3 buildings in the same office, over 3 years.

The only really happy people are my friends who are already there, and are looking forward to us being there too.

On my to-do list right now:
Think positive
Remain calm

Let the games begin!!

Olé!!

So, if you remember, I went on the “African safari” thing. The entire fun and frolic of traveling on these safaris are the jeeps. These are vehicles, where there are seats only on either side, beside the windows, i.e., the rest of it forms a long aisle. This allows all people freedom of movement and peaceful viewing. Also, the jeeps have the tops neatly scalped off, and set at a higher level, on hinges. This allows excited populace to peer over them, and point to, say, the lions, in thrilled sibilant whispers, while the lions look back dreamily and contemplate “what if I could eat that one?”

Then of course, we have the drivers, who think they are grand prix drivers. Ours, in particular, thought he was Michel Schumacher’s long lost kin. That would have been good, if the roads we traversed, were smooth highways. However, this was through the savannahs, so there were NO roads at all, just a lot of bumpy terrain. So, there we were, tearing through scrub and bush, without a thought for our bones. Rocky Road will never be “just another ice-cream” again, for me.

Our jeep members consisted of mom and myself, and 2 Spanish couples. These two sets were the strangest, and really, the unfriendly-est Spaniards I had ever had the misfortune to encounter. Not only did they not speak to us (they couldn’t, knowing minimal English, and we having as much knowledge of Spanish, as we had of Greek), they didn’t speak to each other as well, if they could help it. Thank god I have some really wonderful Spanish friends, or else I would have been put off that race, for life.

However, one couple, who had come to honeymoon in sun-burnt-lobster like bliss, offered endless amusement to us. The jeep did not allow them to be joined at the hip all the time (they made up for it, whenever we were not in the jeep, though). So, they decided to be joined at the hands, to make up for it. Now, the jeep having that aisle, hubby dearest had to stretch over and hold his wife’s hand. Thus, whenever our driver would swerve to avoid a huge rut on the road, or some not-so-unassuming piece of shrubland, he would fall off his seat with a large bump, and say “OLA!!”

He never learnt from it, though. Up he would get, wincing a bit, and the same thing would commence. For 6 whole days. Hysterical really…

The ties that bind..

Watched DOR over the weekend. It had been much hyped, and the director is an old favorite anyways…

A story, one could even call “simple”, if it weren’t lifted from that, by the clean sketches that Nagesh Kukunoor etched.

2 women, one strong, the other soft, both in very happy marriages. The husbands, going to Saudi for work, become friends and roommates, till a freak accident kills one, and police suspect foul play. So one sets out on a journey to save her hubby, thru a “maafi-naama” that only the other woman can give, and ends up making amazing friends along the way.

Lovely and haunting music, spectacular locales (H.P. and Rajasthan) and truly amazing acting by each and every cast member made it a movie worth every penny spent and more.

The only irritant was N.K himself, who has developed a penchant for doing cameos in his own movies. Thought it a bit forced and artificial acting, and in the smoothness of the fabric of the movie, it jarred. He is infinitely better as a director, a role he slips into with ease and finesse.

Out of Africa

The muse is dead! Long live the muse!

Yep, she’s back. Yes, it did take a trip to do the trick.

For those who knew, and those who didn’t.. I was off on an African Safari, to Kenya.. sort of a birthday gift, albeit rather an extravagant one, to myself.

Had two weeks of the best time EVER, and will keep writing about it, in bits and pieces. Will also try to upload the pictures on Flickr soon, its just the sheer number of them is bogging me down a bit.

randomness..

It seems like I haven’t written in “forever”. My muse, or whatever it is that makes us do what we do, had taken a long hike. Not that I’m overflowing with genius right now, but I have decided to MAKE myself write.

So, will put up random scribbles for a bit, till I get back into the flow of things. Bear with me.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go..

... but I'm not.. not quite ready to let go, that is...

Ma called today. It seems S. isn’t well.

S. is my dog, more like my baby. Tho, he definitely Ma’s shadow more than he ever was mine. Now 14 years old, he roams around the house, not seeing as well as he used to. Sometimes, one has to call him LOUDLY, as he doesn’t hear that well either.

But whenever I hear that he isn’t well, it always leaves that cold feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I know that we all have no control over life and death, but if I could hold him tight and shield him from all the pain and hurt and “going”, I would. Maybe THIS is the level of emotion that we read about in Indian mythologies. Pick any random one, and the wife is following her usually errant husband into depths of hell or wherever. Could never understand it...

A friends sms-ed, to ask me how my mood is, before chatting any further (he knows me well). Said I was ok.

What would I say? Would telling random people that I suddenly feel “needy” and depressed make me feel better? Would the scared feeling, almost like a tangible lump in my throat making it difficult to breathe, be smaller? Could he do anything about it? Would he even WANT to?

So, I write it away, knowing these letters won’t be left feeing jittery and nervous and uncomfortable at my displays of intense emotion. And for once, I pray a lot…