Horror In Real Life

My hands were icky from the auto ride when I reached The Forum to catch up with friends this evening. I went into the ground floor ladies' room of the mall, and it being just shy of 7pm on a weekday, the mall was not crowded, and the ladies room was empty except for a determined cleaning lady who was mopping.

I pushed the soap dispenser's button to get some soap, but no luck. I tried all the other basins, but the soap seemed to have run out. I asked the cleaning lady: "Soap illa?"

I should have known that a paragraph of Kannada would be unleashed upon me. Shame-facedly mumbling "Sorry gotilla", I wondered how much my hands had become ickier because of all the dispensers!

Suddenly the lady said: "She has the soap."

I looked at her, and then looked at who she was looking at. She was staring at the place right next to the first basin, where NOBODY was standing.

"Who?"

"She has it" the lady said again, half-irritated.

There was nobody in the whole area except for us. The only reason I did not crap my pants was because I KNEW there was no soap to clean up with later.

I prepared to leave, and true to the horror tradition, the lady came after me……

….and jabbed the first basin's soap dispenser button hard about a dozen times. Till a few drops of soap began to trickle out.

So ladies, gentlemen and babies, remember that in Bangalore, all accessories in a Ladies' loo are feminine. I wiped my hand on Mademoiselle Paper Tissue delivered into my hands by her mommy Madame Kimberly Clark, and fled.

Idling

Five mornings of sleeping in till one of four parents loses patience and calls

Two of catching crimson sunrises through eyes crimson with a cold

Seventeen afternoons of making mental grocery lists while looking busy at work

And three of obscenely long siestas after overeating one's own cooking

Fourteen evenings spent reading in coffee shops

Waiting for friends, calls, and that darned cappuccino I ordered 15 minutes ago

Umpteen nights of racing cars and growing tomatoes on the computer

While the washing machine spins and spins and spins

And each day a pointless pin driven into the velvet pincushion of eternity

Overheard

In a restaurant called The Tibetan Kitchen, Leh. Guy with 5 girls at a table

Guy: Can we have some fresh apple juice

Waiter: No sir, only bottled juice

Guy (suddenly getting firang accent): Is it Snapple?

Waiter: What?

Guy (maintaining accent): Snapple. The juice you're going to give us. Is the brand Snapple?

Waiter: No sir. Gulbadan.

 

At the Big B-School of B'lore, Staff Canteen, where Sis (Thinky) took me for coffee

Professor: Hey Thinky, what does the number on your T-Shirt signify?

Thinky: Oh that's my birthdate!

Professor: A guy once told me a joke. Give me any number and I'll represent it as "A to the power B plus B to the power A"

<some gibberish exchange later>

Professor: Like 24 is 23 to the power 1 plus 1 to the power 23

Professor, Thinky and I: Hahahahahahahaha

Later, I: Puke Puke Puke

 

In office today:

Dude: There is no comedy in my life!

 

Leh Gayi Leh Gayi

Despite the fervent wishes of many ex-readers, I am still hale and hearty (neither of the two words mean anything, I suspect) and the blog has been neglected because I've been busy travelling to Ladakh for about 9 days, and then I've been fishing out Ravalgaon candy wrappers from 9 days' worth of laundry all of last week. Ah, the sweet and sour joys of altitude and motion sickness (on our return, they've reverted to being attitude and notion sickness).

I could ooh and aah about the Ladakh scenery - the gigantic bare mountains with little veins of snow and ice on their wrinkled foreheads, the blue blue sky with little puffs of clouds, the riot of flowers where vegetation gets a fighting chance – but I'll leave that for the husband and his fotus. Instead, let's talk about the tons and tons of exquisite turquoise, coral and lapis jewellery in Leh bazaar? Or Jasmine tea and veg momos? Ok. I'm packing up and going back there right now!

Time for some evidence:

From the hotel, which I heartily recommend to anyone planning a trip.

Nine nights of waking up gasping for breath, bleeding noses and a hopeless inability to climb more than two flights of steps… matlab Lung Se Jung!

"Yak"een nahin hota that such beautiful places exist on Earth!

The breathtaking Pangong lake. I believe the film 3 Idiots was shot here recently…

We did manage to catch the shooting of the Ladakhi version!

...and this is one of the 274 reasons, my camera tells me, that I will go back!