Grrr!

I am verrrrrrrrrrrry angry. I could crack a few skulls.

But hey, I saw this sign outside a doctor's office today: "Health is the remedy for Happiness"
Maybe more of us should fall ill.

Debris

Rantypants! Rantypants! What do you say?
Nothing, O Nothing, I threw my pen away
Rantypants! Rantypants! Why don’t you blog?
My ink is all dry, and my mind is a fog

Don is bad. Dor is good. Delhi weather is good. Bangalore weather is good. Delhi airport is good. Bangalore airport is bad. Kingfisher is good. Jet is ok. Delhi sweets are good. Bangalore sweets are ok. Finance is ok. Fiance is good. Bas.

And oh, I have not replied to a single Diwali wish I got by email or sms. Just don’t feel like doing it.

Inkyji

That is all he sees. No wonder...

Spill

Had a long and terrifying nightmare about an egg-shaped tumor in my head, and a heartless doctor telling me I had a one percent chance of living if I let her drill a y-shaped bore in my skull and destroy the tumor, after which I’d have to spend 90 days in the hospital. All I wanted was a hand to hold, and that is not a luxury that people who live alone have; even in their dreams.

Ok. Too much sadness. Now for grossness. I woke up from the dream with a faint but familiar bad odour assaulting my nose. I tried to turn over, but the bed…under…my…bum…was…wet.

Ok. I decided not to panic. Maybe I had wet my bed. If people can have heart attacks because of dreams, bed-wetting is minor. Who am I kidding! Eeeeyaargh….I had wet my bed!!!!! I NEVER wet my bed as a baby! And now???

I moved my leg and the whole sheet was wet! Holy Moly! Surely one cannot pee that much and not know!!!! Or can one??? Omigod…I decided to go to a kidney doc and a brain doc as soon as I got up!

Grossed out, I sat up in bed. When I did that, I could not believe what I saw.

The whole room was swimming in two inches of water. The end of my sheet lay there dipped in the room-soup.

Only a dinosaur can have that kind of bladder! I was elated! I had not wet my bed! Capillary action had!

The roof was not leaking. The bathroom taps were firmly turned off. I sloshed out of the room and followed a thin trail of water…which was coming from the guest house kitchen, where a pile of dishes were blocking the sink, into which a tap was silently peeing.

Bleaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

I woke up the attendants. (Good thing I was too tired to change last night). Between the two of them, they shut the unshuttable sink tap. Then I helped them get the water out of my room (left alone, they were unlikely to finish before the polar ice caps melted, and then they’d have to begin all over again…sheesh! I made a global warming joke…very bad). Armed with buckets, mops, and dust pans (for scooping water!), we removed SEVEN big buckets of water from my room in about an hour.

So hey, if you plan to dream about someone boring holes in your head, check the kitchen taps, and wear a diaper or something…

Krrrrrrrr KrrKrrKrr

Nothing. Just needed a scratching post.

Slice-Of-Life

..Or, “Did that whole previous phase ever really happen?”

The boy took me out for a fancy lunch last weekend. Dessert was ice cream with some Goan specialty called “bibinca”. He assured me it was a million times better than apple pie (which is a big compliment, and even I’ve not been called better than apple pie yet). So coming back to bibinca, it’s apparently made of bread (see comments for details, and google before shooting your mouth off on your blog), and it was basically thin strips of bread-y stuff hesistantly sticking together. One strike of my hungry spoon sent them flying in different directions, their bonds with each other turning out to be not much more than the fact that they were together in being called bibinca, and would not be called so otherwise.

And that’s how it feels with my life right now…there’s so little that holds together London and Bangalore, SE1 and BTM, Regent’s Park and Lal Bagh, Foucault and Sachin Tendulkar…except they’re part of the bibinca called Inky…oye! ……Bibinka!!!!

TeeVee!

Have been lying around every evening watching TV, “connecting with my audience” as part of my after-work training-cum-entertainment programme. Must say the activity is much more fun that I remembered it to be. There is a lot to be said about the molten feeling of peeping through sleepy eyelids at the inane TV programme and then having just that bit of wakingness left in you that is needed to switch off the TV (first, unsuccessfully with the cellphone and then successfully with the remote control) and sink into deep sleep.

P.S. The astonishing number of hair oil and banian ads on TV seems surreal. There’s this whole parallel universe where people keep soiling their banians with the excessive oil dripping from their heads.

Unrelated: Am planning office uniform for myself: Oversized kurta (increasingly difficult to procure), contrast churidar, mismatched dupatta, Bata flat sandals, laptop bag (side/back) cellphone and badge maala, flowers in hair and silver earrings. Not bad, eh?

Bangalore 101

1. Idlis have the magical property of disappearing from your tummy an hour after you have eaten them. Two idlis do not a breakfast make. Supplement with something.

2. The speed of walking on the rugged terrain of the main road pavement is considerably enhanced by wearing flat shoes instead of heals, so factor this in if you are planning to avoid being the first one in office (loser!)

3. Apparently, if you want to wear jasmine in your hair in the morning, you need to buy it the night before, when people are actually selling it, and not in the morning, when your best shot is yanking some off the head of a lady running to catch a bus.

4. Paying five extra bucks for breakfast to have it sitting down is not a bad deal, since no enthu kid comes and wipes the drop of sambhar off your table seven nanoseconds after you spill it, making you feel guilty for existing. Also, you catch interesting conversation, and do not look odd as the only woman in a herd of men having stand-up breakfast.

5. All the food is vegetarian and cheap. 25 pence each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Awesome!

6. The autorickshaws are not half as mean as the Delhi ones, and it is quite appropriate to stick your tongue out at Bangaloreans who claim that they have terrible traffic jams each morning. They should try being in a vehicle on the Strand, or on Waterloo Bridge!

Not Officially Back To Blogging

That menacing electronic contraption they have for attracting and electrocuting flies? I want one for my thoughts.
Fzzzzzzzzzzzzt: Fear
Prrrrrrt Prrrrrrt: Guilt
Phsssssssssst: Anger

P.S.: If they put me in Eden, I’d sit around all day complaining the apples were out of bounds. Ungrateful wretch!

Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna

On September 21 last year, I was driven around Central London (with all my bags and baggage) in a pink and silver taxi by a very talkative Black youngster, who assured me that I would be happy and comfortable in London and would hate to leave when my year here was through. Tomorrow, I shall spend frenzied hours packing, all the while wondering at the magic of Central London, the simultaneous shortness and long-ness of a year, and the uncanny wisdom of Central London cabbies.

(If there are no updates for some time, it will be because I am coming to terms with the fact that my dates are up.)

London Aayi

Quasi-Heretical Rant

I tried to get into St Paul's Cathedral around three on the afternoon today, and there was a blue ribbon barrier and a poster demanding that I pay up nine pounds if I want to get in. Apparently, taking poor students' money will ensure that Saint Paul's is still standing when future generations come to visit. However nine pounds each time I want to visit God means I shall not have any money to raise future generations of my own. Maybe my little urchins on the street will be rescued by the Saint Paul's charity brigade, now that will be full circle, won't it?

At the entrance, a poster says that photography is not allowed (Chanduppa shuddered in his case in fear when I read it out to him) so as to preserve the sanctity of the place of worship. Some sanctimonious place of worship it is, with Mammon acting as God's gatekeeper. So how does this equation work? I hand my money and then I get two minutes with God? And since I am paying, am I entitled to demand instead of supplicating? Like "Yo God, that dissertation I am about to hand in tomorrow? You better get me a distinction, or else no more moolah from me OR my future generations, geddit?" Now there's an idea. Maybe I can sell it as an advertising campaign to the authorities of the cathedral. For nine pounds.

Had written a poem when I first went to the cathedral. Seems even more relevant now:

On Visiting St Paul’s Cathedral

Heavenly Father, who in Heaven must be:
for in Wren’s cathedral, though I do see
matchless splendour, there’s no divinity.

Those angels hovering in the air
are to my willful eye passing fair.
And it will not shut itself in prayer.

The feast is laid, and the senses will dine

Pardon me, for I must stray awhile
to return that darling cherub’s smile
and to admire old architectural style

At midnight sharp, by St Paul’s clock
I shall sit by the river on the sidewalk
And there, in silence, we shall talk

You in your Heaven, and me in mine

In which Chanduppa...

...the baby camera goes berserk among the revellers at the Notting Hill Carnival

HRH Bollard One

This accidental piece of art was spotted on a trash can along Regent's Canal, where all the millionaires of London park their boats, and the banks of which make the perfect long walk after a hectic day at the Notting Hill Carnival.
Carnival pictures on flickr in a set. Too lazy to link.

Mr. All Sorts

I'm Lovin' It

There's something profoundly disturbing about ordering a vegetarian meal at an Oxford Street McDonalds at 9:30pm, and waiting for five minutes (letting people go ahead of you in the queue) while your Grilled Veggie Melt (one of the very few to be sold that day) is grilling and melting, and then taking your food (yes, it's still called that, though barely) to the basement (200 extra seats! Caution! Wet Floor!) and choosing a table far in some obscure corner, where the obscurest table is already taken by a self-conscious young man neatly picking at his McFlurry, and then loading the calories without a book in hand (not because you don't have one but because you do not think you'll be there long enough to find the page where you left it, since the bookmark was forgotten at home) with an eye on the waitress who has her eye on the neat man (not for flirting but for rapidly cleaning the table the moment he leaves, and putting up the chair so that no new customer dares to take a seat close to closing time) and another eye on the door of the ladies room (which is right across the hall, and each time it opens it shows two girls engrossed in make-up) wondering if the four pounds you spent on this meal were worth it, and then remembering that you came in because you did not want to cook, not because you had better things to so, but because you had already cooked twice today, and repeated domesticky tasks can kill you, like that waitress, for instance: the cleaning fluid must seep through the cloth in her swift hand, and the chemical must be rotting her skin as she ceaselessly clears the remnants of happy meals from tables.

Newton Ki Billi

With Chanduppa, the baby camera, the temptation to just post pictures and not write is becoming too strong.
One anecdote, however, was brought back to my mind at the British Library today, when I took a picture of this sculpture of Newton in the courtyard.
When I was three or four, my grandfather used to tell me stories about Newton and his dedication to his work. I had no clue about who Newton was, and I think I called him Nutren, but I remember that he was a chap who, when his cat ruined a heap of his writing, sighed and put the cat aside and began writing again, without throwing a tantrum. Now the purpose of this story was to instil in me the virtue of patience and the ability to stay cool if my hard work is destroyed, but all I got out of it was this: One day I came home from school crying because someone had bullied me in class, and the teacher had not seen or done anything about it, because "she was busy reading and working like Nutren".
Education, however, has not given up and is still trying to make friends the right way with me. Which is one of the reasons why I was at the library. Nutren was busy as usual.

Things Hang On It

"Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that "nothing hangs on it" it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing - how am I to put it? - which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever."

- Where Angels Fear To Tread, E.M. Forster; quoted in White Teeth, Zadie Smith

(Inky Heart Wendigo) Heart River

That just about sums up the last eleven months...

What The...

A to Me: "You're marrying such a good looking guy, and you wear such gender-neutral clothing... if you don't expose even a little bit then how will you retain his attention? He will stray for sure. You must go and try that frock."

The REASON I went camera shopping with a GUY was so that I went to a CAMERA shop and not a CLOTHES shop, but something about me screams: "SHE HELPS BUY CLOTHES" and I was quite wet in the rain and down in the dumps by the time I reached Jessops, where I got the world's worst service but a darling little camera !

And obviously, I do not have money for a skimpy frock now, so I will risk the straying, I guess. :)