July 30, 2007

Zindagi Humein Tera Aetbaar Na Raha....

It’s nice how some people have already pronounced me dead. I wonder if they’ve also found replacements.
Anyhow, it’s interesting to know that if I survive, I’ll have a severly curtailed profile. Wonder if the old authorities will have me back… worth a shot, I’d say….

July 29, 2007

Bukhaareshwari On A Slow And Suspect Mend

Bahut aarzoo thi, gali ki teri
So ya se lahoo mein nahaa ke chaley...

July 26, 2007

The English Patient

Long time no blogpost. Have been struck by an unidentified illness that makes my temperature soar thrice a day to personal highs, and the paracetamol and ibuprofen are just about working their feeble magic on it. From an adventure-filled trip to a London hospital to long TV and book-filled days in wendigo’s pretty house, this is turning out to be an unusual vacation.

Watch this space for more. For now, this is about all I have the energy for. Take care of yourself.

July 14, 2007

Phir Milenge!!!!!

Kuchh Khushbooein
fancy
Yaadon Ke Jungle Se Beh Chaleein
heath
Kuchh Khidkiyaan
nealstreet
Lamhon Ki Dastak Pe Khul Gayin
bigben
Kuchh Geet Puraaney
canterbury
Rakhey They Sirhaane
hostel
Kuchh Sur Kahin Khoye They, Bandish Mil Gayi!

Jaaney Ke Ishaarey Mil Gaye! Ticket, Visa Saarey Mil Gaye!

July 13, 2007

If You Don't See This I'll Kill You...

... and if you see it you'll die laughing...


It's 'Twas A Girl!

Got this from The Times Of India:

India plans a national mandatory registry of pregnancies and abortions to stem selective abortions of girl fetuses, a minister said, according to a report on Friday.

Ok. So forget for one minute about the complete insanity of thinking this a viable programme, and tell me this: Do we want the birth of girl children whose parents wish they were dead? Tell me about the right to life, and whether the right to dignity, or the right to happiness figures anywhere in it…

July 10, 2007

Maggi! Maggi! Maggi!

NehaVish (I always think of her like that, for some reason) posted about Maggi when I am sick and Maggi is the only raw material in the house. So Maggi is now officially occupying 100% of my brain space.

Earliest Childhood Memories of Maggi: When the strictly rationed half packet a fortnight, and that too cooked with healthy beans, without Masala tastemaker, and served with ketchup managed to brave the odds and still be the favorite food. Of course, many healthy lunchboxfulls were secretly swapped for congealed Maggi blobs in school. (Note to Mommy: Whatchya gonna do NOW?)

Worst Memories of Maggi: When one childhood upchuck was blamed on Maggi and the Era Of The Blanket Ban began, and lasted for about ten years (The shrink uses this as the explanation for my….condition) The ban was removed when my Sis and I discovered the facts of life, the primary one being that we were two and mom was one, and we were loud and mom could give up under certain decibel conditions.

Best Memories Of Maggi: At the Chhota Canteen in MICA, eaten every Thursday during lunch because the mess made, well, a mess on Thursdays. Made with onions and tomatoes, and cooked just right in a pan that was, in all respects, absolutely wrong. And oh! The discovery of Sakthi Stores in East Ham (again courtesy NehaVish) with 25pence Maggi packets! Maggi ki hai jo khushboo, tu kaise bhulayega…..

My Worst Maggi Experiment: Maggi with sprouted moong dal. Never, EVER, try this at home. Either guilt trip yourself into a healthy meal or have Maggi chupchaap. Ne’er the twain shall meet! Damn! Just thinking of it killed my appetite!

My Safe And Best Maggi Recipe: Sliced onions, tomatoes, capsicum, chilli sauce and chili flakes from Pizza Hut. No frying just boiling in the water. Guaranteed to bhulao most gham. Not for the fainthearted, obviously.

Favorite flavour: Masala
Favorite Consistency: Non-watery
Favorite Eating Equipment: Bowl and fork. (Marriage is all about adjustment, so now plate and fork)

Now this is looking like a meme, and I dunno if anyone reads this blog anymore, but if you do, please take up this meme if you want and leave the URL in the comments box!

July 03, 2007

Template for an iPhone Worship Website

I’ve seen so many of them in the last few days that I think I have cracked the code.

1. Clean Apple-y interface with minimum clutter, big text, and the apple logo discreetly used somewhere.

2. Early entries should be links to Apple’s publicity of the iPhone. All the ads are wow and nobody thinks otherwise.

3. Then have pictures and interviews of people queued up for the iPhone. This must include variants of the following:
a. The man who has been sitting in the queue since the first ad came out…he is seventh in the queue
b. The man who has been in the queue since Steve Jobs was born. He is second in the queue
c. The woman who is sitting in the queue in place of Lindsay Lohan, who will replace her as soon as the store opens.
d. The family that is reconnecting after twenty years of separate dinners. They are almost together now: numbers 13, 15, 19, and 327 in the queue.
e. Interview with the guy who thinks this is the soup kitchen queue and nobody bothered to correct him.


4. Then there will be some pics of the Apple store with people checking out the phones, getting their fancy bags, and everyone looking very happy. Later, someone can download these pictures, Photoshop in an alien or celebrity, and host the pics on their blogs, from where other people will pick it up and Photoshop in a Zune or something instead of the iPhone, by which time people will be queuing up for the next-gen iPhone (iPhone With a Vengeance? iPhone and the Order of the Phoenix? iPhone and the Dead Man’s Chest?)

5. Token photograph of you holding your iPhone in your hand. In your excitement, you’ll forget your crush reads your blog and is right now staring at your unkempt dirty and geeky fingernails. That’s the end of that! To sound cool, say that you disapprove of the too-close-together onscreen keys and the lack of copy-paste (which is the foundation of your career in the IT industry), but the fingernails have done the damage.

6. Then pics of people opening up their iPhones to figure out what’s inside. The following procedures MUST be documented
a. iPhone opened up to line up all component parts in a single line
b. iPhone opened up by curious toddler
c. iPhone thrown under a moving truck to see what happens
d. iPhone put back together creatively to make it look like Steve Jobs

7. Then stats from the users, a.k.a the iPhone Awards
a. The first iPhone accidentally flushed down the toilet
b. The first iPhone thought to be lost or stolen
c. The first iphone thought to be lost or stolen but actually left at home. Duh!
d. The first iPhone broken unfixably. Preferably by throwing under moving truck.
e. The first iPhone used to take naked picture of self.
f. The first iPhone to play a Himesh song. That’s it!

8. Then you can have market anal-ysts fighting it out over how many iPhones sold over the first weekend. Vary the numbers wildly: “Microsoft-R-Us refuses to acknowledge that more than three iPhones were sold over three days”. “Exageneration claims 3 billion iPhones were sold, about twice as many as were manufactured.” Nobody reads these articles through. I bet YOU are so sick of the iPhone that you stopped reading this blogpost ages ago.

July 02, 2007

Bruce Almighty

Saw Bruce Willis ka naya dhamaka - Die Hard 4 - yesterday. There was a time when wild horses couldn’t have dragged me for a movie with that kind of name, but this weekend I stood in a queue for half an hour to procure the tickets, and went in for the movie jumping with joy and anticipation. That’s what marriage (and the guilt of having watched Shrek-3 without the husband who was equally keen) does to you.

I had tested the waters with Die Hard 3 to brace myself for the big screen onslaught, so I was expecting lots of flying cars and bullets, lots of wit and lots of fights and blood. I was not disappointed. It was a smashing movie in all senses of the term!

What was most peculiar and to me most amusing was the premise of the movie. Warning: spoilers ahead if you’re dumb enough to care for the larger plot. So some guy threatens to disrupt the traffic, take away internet and cellphone connectivity, shut down the power, spark off false alarms, and crash the stock market. BIG DEAL. What he’s doing is not finishing off America, he’s just converting it into India. Imagine if the movie were set in India. Instead of widespread panic, there would be widespread normalcy. In fact, Mister Villain should have considered stages four and five… pollution and population explosion. It’s tried and tested and whole countries keep going on despite this five-point programme. If Bruce Willis had not killed him off after so much running about and fighting, the disappointment of his plan would have finished him off!

Still, you should go for the movie if you wanna have fun. But if you’re gonna sit next to your boyfriend and giggle unstoppably at every smart line in the film, then please wait for the DVD… Patience among the audience is in short supply when there is a provocation for violence every second onscreen.

In other news, after seeing the trailer of Ratatouille, I’m wondering if there are others like me who find the thought of a rat as chef completely unpalatable. I’ve made friends with ants, bugs, and creepy crawlies for Disney-Pixar’s sake, but a rat in the kitchen is a bit too much for me….