Remember… the summer?

I’m tagged! I don’t take up all meme’s, only the ones I like or only the ones that are a little challenging. This one falls under the latter category because I absolutely hate the summer. Soo, its quite a challenge for me to come up with a list. Wow! The excuses I come up with, I cant believe them myself :-P

Anyhow, here’s an attempt:

1. Watermelon juices (has to top the list)


2. Summer holidays, which I wish were on for the rest of our lives; especially for the Carrom tournaments, Monopoly, beach trips on weekdays (this used to be fun), visiting our gramms at the village, running across the fields, eating ripe tamarind and getting a tummy ache. Given a chance I’d re-live those moments all over again.


3. Warm lazy nights, cloudless starry sky, lying on the overhead water tank, listening to Roxette! Errrr…Have I mentioned this before? :D


4. Loooooooooooooong showers, sometimes even thrice a day. I’d rather just stay in the shower for as long as I can!


5. Iced tea!


6. Mango milk, mango juice, mango pickle… actually all things mango. This season the mango yield was substantially low here. But thanks to Auntie M who brought us a box full of ripe mangoes from Hyderabad.


7. Train journeys. We used to wait endlessly, for these were a boon during the summer when we get to visit our gramms.


8. Sorry, I tried real hard; just couldn’t come up with 1 more thing I love about summer!

To be perfectly candid, I’m sure this tag was started by someone from a more wintry part of the world. How else can you justify this tag?

Now that we’re on it, I think I’d like to list a few things I loathe/loathed about summer too. Hee hee.

1. The most obvious point? The heat itself!


2. Bus rides. I hate them, cos the inside of the bus has this strong odour of a combination of sweat and urine of at least 50 different people. And when I get out, I’m sweaty and stinky too. Yuckkk!


3. The traffic and the unmanageable temper of the commuters. I’ve noticed that this is more during the summer than during other seasons.


4. Waiting for exam results. I absolutely hated this!


5. Headaches. It would frequent during the summer. :-/

Now that was easy!

Whom should I tag? Anyone who would like to take it. Also, if you want to list things you dislike about summer instead of the things you like, go ahead and do it. :)

A Stranger’s Masquerade

This post is in response to this week's prompt at Sunday Scribblings: Masks.

She grew up learning that they all needed to wear masks. She was practically fed with details every single day on what masks to wear and when.

When she was three, her mum asked her to say “please” when she had to request something, or “thank you” when she had to display her gratitude, especially with people whom we grammatically categorize as “third person”; nonetheless she never bothered to say a “please” or “thank you” at home with her parents or siblings.
She was told to wear a mask.

When she was seven, her parents told her to smile and be gentle with relatives, friends (other inconsequential people); people that didn’t mean anything to her, but she had to behave that way so she didn’t eventually hurt anyone.
She was told to wear a mask.

When she was twelve, she was told not to brag about her test scores (the fact was, she was over-confident that she was scoring better than more than half of the students in her class). But no, she shouldn’t! She should be polite.
She was told to wear a mask.

When she was sixteen, she was told to hide her emotions and pretend that all was well, when in reality, nothing was. Again, she was told to wear a mask, or not!

Over the years, she has come to realize that now she’s actually being herself outside home and wearing a mask at home!

Click here for more masks at Sunday Scribblings.

Older Men?

People at work have decided to go watch Spidey 3 and I thought that it was a good idea to take my 14-year old cousin V who is supposedly bored at home during the summer, save her only entertainment; her IIT preparatory classes. This was part of the conversation we had.

Me: Our office has decided to take us to Spiderman 3 on Monday, wanna join?

Cousin V: oooh! You’re gonna go watch that movie? It wasn’t all that great you know, more like our Indian masala.

Me: Ok. So you’ve watched it! Any chance that you may want to go once again? (Duh! She just sounded like she wished she didn’t watch it the first time.)

Cousin V: Noooo. Won’t your office to take you to The Pirates of Caribbean - 3? Then I could join.

Me: No, but we could go if you want to. (I didn’t even know there was a 3rd part :|)

She sighed, we talked about this and that (Johnny Depp taking up a big portion of our time), and hung-up.

So basically, while I go watch Tobey Maguire, she’s drooling over older men like Johhny Depp! :-/ Am I to learn a lesson here?

Not dead yet... a second chance

When Emily hurriedly left from home that afternoon, she had a feeling that something was not quite right. She didn’t often receive such premonitions; precisely the reason why she couldn’t bring herself to think that “something was wrong”, instead she just thought that her inner feeling meant that “something was not quite right!”

Her 3:00 ‘o clock appointment on Sunday afternoon was long gone; and not met. She could scarcely remember what day or time it was now. She was barely 22, tall, about five feet eight, slender, had the body of a angel and the eyes of an adolescent. She wore a knee-length fitting black skirt and a beige open neck shirt that vaunted her full bosom. But right now, none of the boasting beauty showed in her eyes. She was unconscious and all that was left of her beautiful face was a gag in her mouth. Her legs haphazardly placed and her hands bound against her back and held together with piano wires. Her cheeks were blotched red, possibly as a result of hours of crying.

She half opened her eyes praying hard and hoping it were all a dream and that when she woke up, she’d be in her warm cozy bed with her dog Patsy excitedly licking at her face. Sadly, it wasn’t.

Oh God, please let this not be true, she prayed.

The harsh reality struck on her when she realized that these weren’t the walls of her room after all. When she finally woke up, her head still reeling from what she thought was the aftermath of some kind of strong drug that would have been induced upon her, it seemed to her that she could vaguely smell the sea, very close to where she was kept. She instantly became fully awake, tried to clear her head and thought of the last dreaded time he entered this same room.

“How much do you love me”, he had asked her. And when she hadn’t answered, he had grotesquely tortured her until she screamed out for help. And then, he had drugged her and tied her up.

She could still see two of everything. Her mind wasn’t clear yet. She tried to wriggle out of her bound hands but her body refused to co-operate; she fell back asleep knowing there is absolutely nothing she could do to free herself from the confinement.

She didn’t know how many hours, or days perhaps, she had been lying there until she didn’t feel the pain anymore. She was in the same room when she opened her eyes once again. Only this time, she wasn't gagged and her hands were unfastened. The man had been here, in this very same room, untied her hands.

The scent of the sea returned, along with the musty smell of the walls. She couldn’t hear it, but she was sure it was close. She couldn’t possibly be wrong on that one. How many many days had she spent on the sparkling sands of the beach 13 (or was it 14) years ago.

All those memories came flooding back to her; her parents and she driving to the beach two hours away from their home, Emily nonchalantly kicking sand behind her while running across the sandy beach, watching her delicate feet sink into the damp sand while the waves left the shore, inhaling the sent of the sea, letting the sea water lap against her hair while she playfully dipped her head into the waves, making the weirdest shaped sand castles with her castle equipment and cleverly asking her daddy if she did a good job (knowing well that she was daddy’s girl and he’d never do or say anything to hurt her).

All this and more came crashing down her memory lane, while lying in the bare bed. Her body was beaten, sore, and numb from the trashing she endured before. She regretted leaving her cozy apartment, leaving her faithful dog Patsy behind, leaving for her 3:00 ‘o clock appointment a little later than required, rushing to catch a cab, jumping out of the cab in a hurry, jaywalking, getting kidnapped!!!

She tried to scream out for help but all that her physical condition allowed her to do was let out a dull croak that merely came out as a whisper from her throat; she finally drifted off to sleep praying again that someone would find her, someone would save her, that in the remotest of possibilities she would (might?) be able to go all the way over and alter her course of actions. If only she had a second chance, to change her plans… Then, she would probably be able to play along the sands of her favorite beach once again, once again, until the next time!

PS: A work of fiction for Sunday Scribblings.

Happy Birthday, KK

Today is my BIL's Happy Birthdayyy :D. So here's a lil poem (that I stole) for him...

Instead of counting candles,
Or tallying the years,
Contemplate your blessings,
As your birthday nears.
Consider special people
Who love you, and who care,
And others who’ve enriched your life
Just by being there.
Think about the memories
Passing years can never mar,
Experiences great and small
That have made you who you are.
Another year is a happy gift,
So cut your cake, and say,
"Instead of counting birthdays,
I count blessings every day!"

Source: Internet

Essentials - I

An excerpt from The Kite Runner. One of the many lessons…

We were upstairs in Baba’s study, the smoking room, when I told him what Mullah Fatiullah Khan had taught us in class. Baba was pouring himself a whiskey from the bar he had built in the corner of the room. He listened, nodded, took a sip from his drink. Then he lowered himself into the leather sofa, put down his drink, and propped me up on his lap. I felt as if I were sitting on a pair of tree trunks. He took a deep breath and exhaled through his nose, the air hissing through his mustache for what seemed an eternity I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to hug him or leap from his lap in mortal fear.

“I see you’ve confused what you’re learning in school with actual education,” he said in his thick voice.

“But if what he said is true then does it make you a sinner, Baba?”

“Hmm.” Baba crushed an ice cube between his teeth. “Do you want to know what your father thinks about sin?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Baba said, “but first understand this and understand it now, Amir: You’ll never learn anything of value from those bearded idiots.”

“You mean Mullah Fatiullah Khan?”

Baba gestured with his glass. The ice clinked. “I mean all of them. Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys.”

I began to giggle. The image of Baba pissing on the beard of any monkey, self-righteous or otherwise, was too much.

“They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written in a tongue they don’t even understand.” He took a sip. “God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands.”

“But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice,” I managed between bursts of tittering.

“So did Genghis Khan,” Baba said. “But enough about that. You asked about sin and I want to tell you. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” I said, pressing my lips together. But a chortle escaped through my nose and made a snorting sound. That got me giggling again.

Baba’s stony eyes bore into mine and, just like that, I wasn’t laughing anymore. “I mean to speak to you man to man. Do you think you can handle that for once?”

“Yes, Baba jan,” I muttered, marveling, not for the first time, at how badly Baba could sting me with so few words. We’d had a fleeting good moment--it wasn’t often Baba talked to me, let alone on his lap--and I’d been a fool to waste it.

“Good,” Baba said, but his eyes wondered. “Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?”

“No, Baba jan,” I said, desperately wishing I did. I didn’t want to disappoint him again.
Baba heaved a sigh of impatience. That stung too, because he was not an impatient man.

“When you kill a man, you steal a life,” Baba said. “You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

I did.

“There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir,” Baba said. “A man who takes what’s not his to take, be it a life or a loaf of naan... I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him. Do you understand?”

I found the idea of Baba clobbering a thief both exhilarating and terribly frightening. “Yes, Baba.”

“If there’s a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork. Now, hop down. All this talk about sin has made me thirsty again.”

Colour me saffron, or whatever else

While some people are still trying to figure this out, and while some others are praying hard that Peter Parker of the all-time Spidey fame doesn’t get killed in Spiderman – 3 (Oh grow up will 'ya. How else will they make millions of more dollars if they don't make SM-4 and SM-5?), here are the waves of water-colours that have been happening with me…

- Three Mondays back, on a hot sultry afternoon, after seven and a half hours of standing in many different queues and open grounds, waiting diligently for my turn on the test drive, I got my driver’s license at 4:30 in the evening. So, Yaay!!!

- Started reading and then discontinued a book called “The Seven Minutes” by Irving Wallace. I didn’t think it was even worth retaining that book and paying that extra money to the library! :-/ No really, I was waiting and waiting and waiting endlessly for it to catch on some speed, in vain! I rather liked “The Seventh Secret” by the same author. A fantastic read I should say; read it about 4 or 5 years back and wouldn’t mind reading it again, but my library doesn’t seem to have it (*sniff*) maybe because of the controversial nature of the plot; but they’ve stacked loads of hard-bound and paperback versions of The Da Vinci Code all the same!

- I’m also reading “Shock” by Robin Cook and it isn’t any different from an earlier read “Brain”. I’m hoping this would have a credible storyline.

- Recovered from a migraine that lasted 40 hours, one sleepless night, and a whole day of internal audit meetings and all things relating to the assessment. Get what I’m saying? It was a miracle I didn’t throw things at the auditors. :D. But clearly, I'd been rude to someone, 'cos he oh-so-sweetly sent me this!

- Watched Rang De Basanti again!!! :) One of the very very few Hindi movies that I watched not only in the theatre but also watched it again at home! :)

And oh, the song I picked for this week may not be as chirpy as schnappi, but will guarantee to bring a smile to your lips. Thank God for friends! :)

No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me.
Seems like you're the only one who knows what it's like to be me.
Someone to face the day with, make it through all the rest with,
Someone I'll always laugh with, even at my worst, I'm best with you.

It's like you're always stuck in second gear,
Well, it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.
But I'll be there for you

PS: But really, how can a superhero (a cute one at that) die? :-/ Please tell me he’s not gonna die! :-P


Picture Courtesy: Google

The Nostalgic Factory!

In an attempt to try and recover from this, and taking advantage of the same, I’m using bits and pieces of words to come up with this list. I’m gonna apologize in advance to those of you that aren’t an ex-colleague or a bum pal of mine, since most of this may not make sense to some of you.

Some of them cherished, some of them bitter-sweet, glad that I stopped with good memories. I’m sorry it’s a long list, but the memory traces back to 6 years or so; I just couldn’t help but list out the things closest to my heart…

1. Office pantry – 3 guys, 3 girls, the war of the sexes, albeit a pleasant one and mostly the girls winning over the guys by simply calling it quits. :-P You might think that’s lame, but you’ve gotta be one of us to get what I’m saying! :)


2. The Dal Roti bill dated 18/5/2006 neatly folded and tucked away in my purse. Probably the last time I had dinner there.


3. Hot afternoons, “Nature Fresh”, countless watermelon juices, Strawberry milkshakes, and chocolate milkshakes; need no explanation. (Should I add the pani puri I hated to take?)


4. Afternoon walks!


5. 10:30 AM, office pantry, tea time, Nitin says “I’m bored, I wanna go home.”


6. 3:30 PM, office pantry, tea time, Nitin says “I’m bored, I wanna go home.” :) That guy always wanted to leave from work as soon as he’d get in.


7. 1:00 AM — office conference room, two people around the conference table, one of them quietly working/browsing (waiting for the office cab), me on a conference call.


8. Alternate working Saturdays, 20 of us, lunches at a restaurant.


9. Day offs when I was sick at home, friends dropping by with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of sweet surprises! I wish I were sick more often. :-/


10. 11:00 PM, frenzied fingers fighting over the mobile phone buttons, sending SMS.


11. Paying bills, finding a home by myself, getting LPG connection [grin], unlocking the doors to my home by myself (I loathed doing this), paying rent, managing expenses/budgets, endless futile walks to the BSNL telephone company for the broadband connection I never acquired.


12. Awful office food, hungry afternoons, a Woody’s dosa and strawberry milk! :D (self-explanatory)


13. Yahoo messenger, cyber hugs in indecipherable Mandarin Chinese which later turned out to be the official language of cyber hugs, cyber kisses, and all things lovey dovey! Thanks to “you-know-who-you-are” :)


14. 6:00 PM, office TV room, two pairs of hands absently typing away on our respective laptops, F.R.I.E.N.D.S.


15. 6:30 PM, office TV room, Seinfeld.


16. An electricity bill receipt dated 17/2/2006, again tucked away in my purse to keep reminding me of that snug little place I stayed in for a brief 5 months.


17. Snickers, snickers, and more snickers. I was just insatiable (then) and miraculously, his pocket would have enough money for them every single time. :)


18. Lunch at the office terrace, Sandy the scapegoat! Fun unlimited!


19. Sometime in May last year, basement bike park bye-byes and promises that eventually broke!


20. Alternate working Saturdays, me coyly trying to get permission from parents to spend those hot summer evenings at Besant Nagar beach with two half-wits (friends that happened to me) that I’m grateful for even to this day!


21. Two girls hopelessly oblivious to the world around them, chatting, giggling, and sharing the week's events while gracing Brigade road by foot, eVeRy SiNgLe WeEkEnD. Actually, I can’t seem to think of a single weekend that I didn’t follow that norm! Miss Punctual here would ensure I showed up!


22. V-factor and W-factor. It has been a little close to 3 years now and I still am clueless on what they mean, but I know it included Big B, Nitin, and me in some form. Any clues guys?
    


23. June 8th 2006, office terrace, two hung heads, an unspeakable truth, a tearful goodbye.


24. The second Saturday of September, Madras Boat Club, two pairs’ boats, two fours’ boats, more than half a dozen corporate crews (of at least 15 oarsmen and oarswomen in each crew), 6:00 AM, sweaty and stinky from the land workout, squinting our eyes from the morning sun, the half-broken raft taking in more sunburnt stomping legs than it can accommodate, threatening to sink any moment; frenzied fervor of the M&B semi-final races! I miss them tonnnnnnnneeess! In fact I rather liked the knock-outs and semi’s more than the finals itself.


25. The second Saturday of September, 4:00 PM, the Madras Boat Club filled with club members, hopeful friends, parents, media, the works; Men’s Fours finals, the race starts under the bridge, four men rowers, one woman coxswain, feverishly praying that we take the opponent. Of sweet success! :) I think I did justice by mentioning the M&B as a grand finale, didn’t I? ;)

Phew! That was some list! And if you thought this one was long, I think I’ll still have more to add even moments after I post it. Sorry about the long sentence construct in most of them. Remember I'm still suffering from this? ;)

And oh, thanks for your patience. I feel like a river of memoirs has just flown out of me.