Viva la Vivah

Met a friend whose parents are worried sick about getting her married off. Her complicated extended family would rather hinder than help, and between her mother’s desire to have her married off in Delhi and her astrologer’s orders to see her married this year, the situation is a mess. To top it all, no advertisement has been placed in a matrimonial column yet.

Since I was staying with them overnight, I offered to write the advert, and everyone co-operated and the blasted thing was ready in an hour. I kept casting sidelong glances at my friend, and she did not cross over from mildly hostile into livid, so I guess she did not mind my interference. Insha Allah, the ad will appear in next week’s papers (don’t bother replying if you’re the sorts who reads this blog).

Opened the matrimonials section of the paper this morning to see if I can find a suitable match for her. Headed to the Punjabi Khatri section directly, skipping my regular favorite: the cosmopolitan section, which has the funniest ads. There are a good 50 eligible mundas willing to sacrifice their lives and happiness. They’re looking for exactly the kind of girl she is. They’re fabulous packages: all handsome, all rich, all well-educated, all from status flys (I love this expression). Horoscopes will cause ninety percent of them to be rejected. (Digression: I recently matched my parents’ horoscopes online, something their parents had neglected to do. They scored 10/36, and the “passing mark” is 18/36. They now conveniently blame their late parents for yoking them together). Those who make the cut will be rejected because they are shallow people or because their cars are too small, or their houses too big.

I thought the decision would be easy for normal, middle-of-the-road people. But no. Kaun Banega Meri Saheli Ka Pati seems to run on and on like an Ekta Kapoor soap!

Rants

I’m seeing teasers of movies and programs that will be telecast on TV after I’m gone. It feels strange.

A whole lot of things are happening for the last time before I go. It’s a death of sorts.

I’m dreaming the strangest of dreams every afternoon. Through them, I am realizing who are the people and what are the things that matter to me the most. I’ve become addicted to my afternoon nap because in this strange way, it gives me clarity.

Every time I have fled home in the past, it felt like a temporary break. This time I have a premonition that nothing is ever going to be the same again.

And yes: I have lost all my friends and loved ones to that stupid game I wrote about. Why did I have to post that link?

Warning

Anyone who clicks this will be found dead in his/her seat for lack of nutrition and fresh air, and for having resisted the urge to go to the bathroom far too long.
Also, your friends and loved ones will probably never talk to you again.
Remember, you have been warned.

Javedakhtar Stuckinmyhead

Saare sapne kahin kho gaye
Hai hum kya se kya ho gaye

Dil se tanhaai ka dard jeeta
Kya kahein hum pe kya kya na beeta
Tum na aaye magar jo gaye
Hai hum kya se kya ho gaye

Tumne humse kahin thi jo baatein
Unko dohraati hain gham ki raatein
Tumse milne ke din to gaye
Hai hum kya se kya ho gaye

Koi shikva na koi gila hai
Tumse kab humko yeh gham mila hai
Haan naseeb apne hi so gaye
Hai hum kya se kya ho gaye

And if one's own supply of blues ain't enough to make it heartbreaking, some Iyer dude will indelibly link himself and his truckloads of woe with the song! No thanks man!

The Argument

Why did I get into a battle with the lady mentioned in the previous post? Well, she works for an organization that does ghost-work for people. I do not wish to get into the details, but people pay to get work done and pass it off as their own.

I casually remarked that this kind of work was inherently dishonest and based on treachery. It caters to a department of life that many, including me, hold in some esteem, and is not something I would like to be found cheating in. I went on to joke that if I made it my career, I would probably make it a lifelong source of income by blackmailing my clients after I had quit the job. (Ok. I am a Changeling.)

She first tried to convince me that since the service was being offered everywhere, it was not wrong. Sis and I insisted that everyone doing something does not make it correct. So the lady then said that if we are to be so moralistic, we should apply it to every area of our lives… never pay a bribe or “toe a line” to get anything done.

I beg to differ. I think we should choose our battles against the system of corruption. It is all very well to resist paying a bribe to get a phone connection one week early. It is foolhardiness to stand in a Haryana police station refusing to pay 50 bucks to get that FIR that is essential to save your ass in case a terrorist has got hold of your lost cellphone. Paying 250 bucks to the university for 5 extra marks in your revaluation is a crime. Making your mom stand in the queue for a duplicate marksheet because the lazy window clerk does not unnecessarily bully people with grey hair is intelligence.

Is getting a letter of recommendation to a university ghost-written by a professional the same as getting your mother to knit a sock for your SUPW homework? I am sorry, but I do not think so. I consider the letter of recommendation to be a document that should represent my worth correctly, and the stupid SUPW sock as a minor irritant forced upon me by a system that thinks I have time to knit stuff between preparing for my board examinations and retaining my sanity.

The lady went on to say that she had never ever paid a bribe and led a difficult life on her own terms. I replied that under those circumstances, her choice of a profession was even more starkly incorrect.

At this point she lost all respect for me. And she told me so in very eloquent language.

I did not argue further, but left the room.

So that’s that. Say something if you want to. And if you have lost respect for me, thanks for having had it in the first place.

Ashamed

I realized today that I live in a skewed world where everyone is young. There are no babies who need to be managed, no children who need to be straitjacketed, no middle aged people to be consulted, and no elderly people to be respected. Of course my parents are around, but Dad calls Mom “Murder” and she answers “Yo man!” so I categorize them as pals, not parents.

One of my teachers from school (she is Mom’s friend) came over for lunch today. I got into an argument with her. It ended quite bitterly, with her being very disturbed about the way I talked. I refuse to believe that my point was not valid, but perhaps the way I talked to her was not appropriate. She told me in no uncertain terms that she lost all respect for me today.

I realized with a shock that I have been shooting my mouth off indiscriminately for years now, because I am surrounded by people with whom I can get away with anything. Somewhere down the line, someone must have tried to teach me manners and etiquette, but they failed miserably. Most young people dismiss my blasé behavior as an attitude issue, and those who don’t tolerate it slip out of my circle of acquaintances. So I’ve got this complacent feeling that all I’m saying is right.

This was a wake-up call. I do not wish to earn the respect of this lady back. But I need to rein in that vicious tongue of mine, before I cause serious damage.

I’ve always maintained that people who say “it’s not what you said, it’s the way you said it” are just making their last feeble jab after losing an argument. Apparently it is not so.

Mend thy ways Inky, mend thy ways now.

Iqbal

Was dragged to the cinema hall by the partially-educated fully-unemployed youth of my country to see “Iqbal”. Despite the rave reviews, I had my reservations. Anyone wishing to pelt me with stones is welcome, but I do not like Hyderabad Blues or Rockford. Kukunoor redeemed himself with Teen Deewarein, but I had assumed that was a flash in the pan.

No Sir! The man knows how to make a movie. A simple story with a handful of well-sketched characters and a predictable linear plot: that is the newest recipe for magic!

Don’t shake your head because you cannot figure out what part of the country the movie is set in. Don’t bother with the run-of-the-mill songs or the slight inconsistencies in the plot. And don’t burn the theater down because you see a crumpled Indian flag lying on the ground (Patriotism is not about yelling Mangal Mangal to wake up sleeping audiences ten minutes before they can walk free again).

Watch out for the acting. And the little touches that make you smile and wipe an occasional tear off your cheek. Watch a glamour-free world where women wear clothes and men do other things than trying to get rid of those clothes. Watch a movie about cricket that does not assume you are equally obsessed about the game. Watch the determination and triumph of a single spirit light up many lives. Including yours.

Back From Hades

At 3:45pm this afternoon, I died momentarily. I was in a half-sleep, the kind you are in when you’ve suddenly woken up from your siesta to scold you sister and warn her not to touch your “resting” laptop, and then gone back to sleep. In this half sleep, I was sitting in a café in a corner seat with glass walls on both sides. Suddenly, I was pulled out of my body through the top of my head with such force that every un-epilated hair on my arm could feel pain of a most intense but non-excruciating kind. And there was white light everywhere. I tried to breathe but I could not. I could no longer feel my limbs but kept getting pulled into the white light. And a clear voice told me that I was dead.
But then the power went off and I woke up alive, feeling suffocated.

It's Amazing How...

I can watch Notting Hill a million times.

And happiness isn’t happiness without a violin-playing goat.

Harry Potter

Finally read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The Dementors have done too much soul-sucking around the place for me to enjoy the book. And where all manner of humor or happiness has vanished from the world of the book, “snogging” has entered big time, and fifteen year olds are asserting their rights to kiss whoever they want wherever they want. Jolly good for a Star World soap, pathetic for a book about witches and wizards. If you’re trying to tell me they’re human too, I wish they would also display human common sense. Addle-brained Harry makes me livid, and so does practically everyone else.
Dear all who spent the night to get hold of a copy of the book 15 nanoseconds after it was released, would you like a pirated CD of Mangle Pandey?

John Donne: The Token

Send me some tokens, that my hope may live
Or that my easeless thoughts may sleep and rest ;
Send me some honey, to make sweet my hive,
That in my passions I may hope the best.
I beg nor ribbon wrought with thine own hands,
To knit our loves in the fantastic strain
Of new-touch'd youth ; nor ring to show the stands
Of our affection, that, as that's round and plain,
So should our loves meet in simplicity ;
No, nor the corals, which thy wrist enfold,
Laced up together in congruity,
To show our thoughts should rest in the same hold ;
No, nor thy picture, though most gracious,
And most desired, 'cause 'tis like the best
Nor witty lines, which are most copious,
Within the writings which thou hast address'd.
Send me nor this nor that, to increase my score,
But swear thou think'st I love thee, and no more.

...and nothing but....

ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

But watching Ameesha Patel trying to act in Mangle Pandey was more painful.

The tooth, the whole tooth…

So when you’re going abroad for a longish time, you’re supposed to get all your dental work done before you leave. And coincidentally, the half-fallen filling that was happily making do in your tooth decides to act up around the same time. So you VOLUNTARILY (yes! How asinine can you get?) go to a dentist to have things done about it. You call up a hospital (2 bucks for the phonecall) and go to the OPD (100 bucks of your dad’s hard-earned money for the masochistic pleasure of having a doctor poke your injured tooth and see the reaction in a small round mirror).

On the way to the hospital, I was all edgy and fretty (my word), and I decided to switch on the car radio and take the next song that played as a cosmic sign of what lay in store for me.

Radio Mirchi was playing “Ik pal ka jeena, phir to hai jaana”

I burst into laughter. It is a confused mind’s way of bursting into tears.

“Are you comfortable?” the doc asked me as soon as I told him what my problem was (no, not the one about my compulsive need to be sarcastic, the one about the half fallen filling). “Has anyone EVER been comfortable in this chair of yours?” was my reply.

This is a trick test that all my doctors have to go through. If they laugh, I’m happy (as happy as I can be under the given situation). If they smile, I pull through. This guy made no reaction. He was poker-faced. That spells trouble. A comatose porcupine has a better sense of humor. (Ok. I overdid that. I’m hyperventilating: forgive me. You’re not the one in the dentist’s chair, you smug pests!)

So he did the needle and mirror routine, and uttered the two words that make my innards shrivel up and dehydrate and turn into an uncooked pack of Maggi 2-minute noodles, with my brain as a the Masala Tastemaker.

Root Canal.

On Friday, I am having a root canal.

I thought accidental admissions to fancy universities, inexplicable finger twitches, and root canals happen to other people. But no. They all happen to me.

Stay tuned for Friday’s follow up entry:

“…and nothing but the tooth”

The Metro Reloaded

Dunno if I posted about my first ride on the Delhi Metro, so am recapping the experience in ten words: what fun inside sparkling clean belly of fast moving dragon.

Yesterday was round two of Metro-ing, and oh! What a disappointment! The train was empty from Central Secretariat to Kashmere Gare, but there were vicious mosquitoes and a fly! A young lady was carefully combing her tresses, and some of her hair was falling to the floor of the compartment. She’s doing her bit to make the Metro get used to its adoptive parent-city.

At Kashmere Gate, we witnessed the wonderful sight of hundreds of commuters jumping on to a train, being herded with a lathi by a furiously whistling guard. The Metro has already fallen short of space! How much can the frequency be increased without making the train a continuous chain of bogeys from Delhi University to Central Secretariat?

Grateful that we were not on that crowded train, and dreading the return journey when we would be, we climbed a gazillion steps to take the overhead Metro to Shastri Nagar. The boring gray steps of the escalator have been livened up with paan juice art. Once over the ground, the Metro is a whole new story where cleanliness is a rapidly disappearing virtue, and new heights of uncouth behaviour are crying out to be reached.

Visitors to our city, whom we were trying to impress with our Metro, must have loved the view of the city from the train: Delhi looked like a cross between Armageddon, The War of The Worlds, and Godzilla.

Mercifully Joker Anna, the tourist who was with us, was more interested in buying souvenir tickets, and a ten-minute wait to obtain the same from an empty counter kept him occupied.

On the way back, there was eve-teasing on the crowded train.

Hail Delhi! Thou Shalt Conquer All!

On Gulzar's Birthday

(from Kinara)

O Maanjhi re, apna kinara, nadiya ki dhara hai
O Maanjhi re

Saahilon pe behne waale
kabhi suna to hoga kahin
ho, kaagazon ki kashtiyon ka
kahin kinara hota nahin
ho maanjhi re, maanjhi re
koi kinara jo kinare se mile woh,
Apna kinara hai ...
O Maanjhi re...

Princess Fiona

I searched for a picture of Princess Fiona (the non-pretty one) to use for my MSN profile. A Google Image search for Fiona led to pictures of various ladies in progressive stages of undress (I do not hyperlink, or I would lose all my readers at this point). A search for Princess Fiona led to images from the movie, but they were all either shots of the pretty, low-cal, princessy Fiona, or shots of Shrek and Fiona together. I tried the websites of both the Shrek movies, and though there are some amazing things happening on both of them, the picture I was looking for did not exist.



Google is giving me a clear message. An ugly woman is presentable only with her equally ugly man. Fiona does not pose for pictures alone, because nobody wants to see an ugly woman for who she is. Shrek, on the other hand, revels in his lack of beauty, and is happy to grace your screensaver/desktop/lunchbox/backpack/whatever it is you want. Ugliness is cute in a guy, not in a girl.



As a couple, they are hugely successful. The movies seem to make a point of that. They are both obsessed with looking better, but the other’s looks do not matter. They could have had a movie where low-cal Fiona prevails in the end, but they chose not to. But I am not sure they’d have an ogre Fiona with a Brad Pitt Shrek. Nah. Never.



After the credits roll and the Donkey-Dragon babies are gone, Fiona the ogress is not to be tolerated alone. She is destined to be half of a pair, and, by implication, lucky to be there at all.

Confession

I’m on medication to recover from the trauma of having to watch “Mangle Pandey” and the drugs are making me speak unspeakable truths. Therefore, I am avoiding human company and most forms of communication, but the pressure that is building up inside is going to blow out my brains, so I have to say this:

I LOVE the song “Kajrare Kajrare” from Bunty Aur Babli.

I went through an I-love-“Patli-Kamar-Chikna-Badan”-from-Jungle-Am-I-Homosexual phase a couple of years ago, but this one is slightly less disturbing. Ash’s blatant skin show and the Bachchan duo’s pelvic thrusts cannot cheapen or taint the beauty of Gulzar’s lyrics:

“Surme se likhe tere vaade/ Aankhon ki zubaani aate hain/ Mere roomalon pe lab tere/Baandh ke nishaani jaate hain…”

The song is playing all over and is being written about in every publication (Dear TOI, it is “kajrare”, not “kajra re”.) Normally the stuff belted out by the paanwalah’s radio is the Gadar-Dhadkan-Raja Hindustani variety, which makes one’s soul cringe and fold into a Japanese fan. But this time, they’ve managed to make an anthem out of a song I’m not ashamed to hum. Finally, street music meets poetry.

“Aankhen bhi kamala karti hain/Personal se sawaal karti hain” is Gulzar having so much fun and being so cool! “Teri baaton mein kimaam ki khushboo hai” applies to Gulzar himself!

All the civilized people who probably look down upon the song are welcome to laugh at me/break up with me/throw stuff at me.

I love “Kajrare”.

P.S. Anyone who liked Mangle Pandey need not visit this blog ever again. That applies to you too, Aamir.

Mangal Pandey: Review

Never before was a movie so aptly titled. The Rising. Halfway through the movie, I Rose. And left.

Thanks!

A big thanks to all bloggers who wished me luck!
Thanks Joker, Colours, Aditi, JW, Pleo, Patrix, Kahini, Patrix, First Rain, Kaju Katli, Halequin, Shoe Fiend, HoH, Ash, Rash, Parna, CoolCat, KK, Ostrich, Jasmine for leaving wishes.
Thanks Godpapa, Deepak and Chugs for the mails.
Thanks Heretic for the call.

:)
I'm going senile, so if I missed someone out, it's not intentional.

26

It’s been the most eventful year of my reasonably long life, and a great many wonderful things have happened to me since my last birthday. Here are twenty-five things I learned about myself and the world in my twenty-fifth year.

1. It’s not worth being in a miserable job in a miserable organization. They’ll scare the living daylights out of you if you try to quit, but you need to stick to your guns. Don’t work for people you don’t respect.
2. Setting up your own house with your family’s help is setting up a satellite house for the family. They’ll live their fantasies through you, and if they can all live their fantasies in one house, why can’t you, as a family, do it in your own home? It’s most amusing.
3. Having lunch alone at work saves you a lot of time for surfing the net and playing word games online.
4. When you live alone, you become heavily dependent on friends. And this can be good, or very bad. However, hour-long telephone calls to compare architecture and poetry at 12 in the night are possible only when you live alone.
5. When you sign a cheque to pay the rent for your flat, it is the wonderful feeling of being a self-sufficient unit that gives you a major kick!
6. I need 24-hour water supply to retain my sanity. Don’t ask me why. I’m still trying to figure out this one. Maybe it’s because of the hot baths I need many times a day.
7. You can’t fall in love by wanting to. And when you do, you know why.
8. It is important and impossible to hold your own against oversmart Bong ladies who live next door.
9. Being a pillion rider on a motorcycle at five in the morning on the superhighway is my closest brush with adventure, and a wonderful one that I will remember for the rest of my life.
10. Music is important.
11. I cannot listen to music and work seriously at the same time.
12. Work is also important.
13. Fortunately, I can strike a balance.
14. Working for a boss who knows your strengths and uses them can be a most rewarding experience. Fancy offices and fun colleagues do not make a wonderful work environment. The stuff in your MS Word window does.
15. Labels matter. People look up to you immediately if you can drop names. That’s life.
16. Poets and writers are self-obsessed specimens who are too much in love with themselves and their opinions.
17. I am a self-obsessed specimen who is too much in love with herself and her opinions.
18. Five days after knowing me, people find out I am a clown. And almost everyone considers it their fundamental right to pull my cheeks. It is not funny.
19. Hurting someone you care for hurts more than hurting yourself. Doing something just to avoid hurting people is also wrong. Dunno what is right.
20. I can rtoe without lookinf art the keoboard. No. I tale that baxck.
21. I cry too much at the movies. Way too much.
22. I get hassled by paperwork and I need a level-headed person to guide me through it. Sis is a good resource and I should keep in her good books.
23. I have double standards. One for me, one for Sis.
24. I am many different people, and I don’t like many of them.
25. I can make long lists if I want to.

Am expecting life-altering adventures this year. Wish me luck!