(Pls re-read the male version of the poem below before reading the rejoinder)
My darling, my sweetheart, my adorable hunk
Minus your bank balance you’re just a piece of junk
I love you oh so much honey
But not as much as I love your money
Promise me you’ll never never go away
If you do, I’ll take all your dough, anyway
My heart yearns when you leave me and go
But honestly, I just pretend to feel so
I love to keep house, raise your kids and cook
I wouldn’t be doing this minus your cheque book
I love that nice, round beer belly
After 10 years I still find you smelly
And I simply flip for that receding hair line
I can lie some more if you get me some wine
I love you so much, oh Gerald
I’ll say that till I get my new Emerald
They melt me from within, those eyes
Damn it, my heart is frozen like ice
What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Some creativity and lots of time.
(written by someone who leads a one-woman army against the male of the species !!!!)
---------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON POST COMPETITION ASKED FOR A TWO-LINE RHYME WITH…
THE MOST ROMANTIC FIRST LINE, BUT THE LEAST ROMANTIC SECOND LINE This is the winner:- My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife, Marrying you screwed up my life. I see your face when I am dreaming. That's why I always wake up screaming. Kind, intelligent, loving and hot; This describes everything you are not. I thought that I could love no other -- that is until I met your brother. Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you. But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl's empty and so is your head. I want to feel your sweet embrace; But don't take that paper bag off your face. I love your smile, your face, and your eyes -- Damn, I'm good at telling lies! My love, you take my breath away. What have you stepped in to smell this way? My feelings for you no words can tell, Except for maybe “'Go to hell.”' What inspired this amorous rhyme? Two parts tequila, one part lime JJJ
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
What's on your mind?
What’s on your mind?
Having recently been introduced to the world of Facebook and Twitter (oh, I know I’m a late entrant and the rest of you are almost ready to move on to the next happening thing in the e-world ) BTW, what comes after ‘tweeting’? Bleating? ………Meeting? (mind the vowels though), Dating?
Hmm…….. I’ll wait and watch.
Anyway, I digress. Coming to the ‘what’s on your mind’ feature on Facebook and Twitter ( I think they call it ‘what are you thinking right now?’ Or ‘what are you doing right now’?) : I’m equally intrigued and piqued. Why would someone want to know what’s on someone’s mind, every 5 minutes (that’s the frequency with which some of these addicts update their ‘status’ or view the status of their friends.)
Well ……………………… we did play a different version of this in our times : there would be the lazy Saturday afternoon when the hubby would be lying spread-eagled on the couch or burrowed in the bean bag with a vacant look on his face thinking the same 3 things that all guys think about, (don’t I know) and I’d side up to him and say ‘penny for your thoughts’. He’d shake himself out of his reverie and mumble something about wondering where to take me out for shopping. “Liar” I’d mutter under my breath, giving him my sweetest smile and then cozy up, to make sure it was someplace really nice and sinfully expensive.
‘What are you thinking’ I’d ask in more worried tones, when I saw the blank look again as he waited at the check-out counter. I went weak-kneed wondering if he’d left his wallet at home and was toying between escaping past the counter-clerk without paying or escaping my wrath if we returned home minus the half-dozen bags that lay at my feet crying for a home and a wardrobe.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I’d ask my daughter when she stared at her geometry book as if it was a work of art by a Monet or a Picasso. The blank face and the faraway look in the eyes spoke less about an art critic in the making and more about an impending encounter with the Maths teacher.
So, I’m quite curious to know how this question gets answered by millions of people world-wide. Talking of us Indians, while I can’t say I can speak for the billion of us, I do know that what’s on my mind every minute of the day, can’t be very different from what’s on all our minds as we struggle to survive in a nation that’s insanely chaotic, dysfunctional and falling to pieces on its best day….. I shudder to reminisce about its worst days : they’re best forgotten like a bad dream or, to be more specific, the holocaust.
6 am : blurry eyed, having spent a sleepless night as an unwilling member of a 1-woman audience (on the other side of the wall) for my neighbor’s all-night jamming session (“you wanted to live in a Complex with young people remember?” hubby unfeelingly pointed out the last time when I complained about having had to listen to a remix of Saigal and Usha Uthup till 2 am) , I open the front door. My day begins
Time
Activity
What’s on my mind?
6 am
Collect the milk packet left by the front door, looking rather like the One-eyed Jack . The other eye still has to wake up and hubby had better stop making these wise-cracks
I hope this milk isn’t adulterated. I pray that whoever in Govt. is responsible for checking this, is doing his job. I hope there is no further scam brewing. I hope they got their arrears per the 6th pay commission (or is it the 7th ? I’ve lost count) and aren’t looking to make a quick buck or two from milk adulteration. Remember that article in the Times of India some years back that talked about what a sophisticated industry it is ? Not the Dairy industry silly – the adulteration industry. Somewhat like the parallel organization that Ramalinga Raju created when he scripted the Satyam Saga. (‘Oh what a tangled org. structure we weave when we first practice to deceive’ I drolly parodied Shakespeare).
You do, of course, read about the small raids they conduct every now and then : more to fill some newspaper columns (when the journalist runs out of newsworthy events (can that ever happen in this great country) or has had his fill of murders, molestations, mishaps, mayhem (oooh…. That’s onomaetopic, My English teacher will be pleased) .
Since the objective is to fill column inches and not really cleanse the system of its ills and strepto cocci, they don’t go beyond arresting a couple of poor lads in ill-fitting pants who gleefully pose with a milk-packet in one hand and a syringe in another : only because they probably pay them for posing or it makes them instant celebrities in their little ‘basti’ or ‘chawl.’
And then there was this other mail that said milk feeds the dreaded C - cells that lie dormant in all our bodies. So may be we should switch to soya milk? Eeuuu …. That’s a yucky alternative though. Doesn’t it make more sense to innoculate the cow with some anti-cancer vaccine so that it can’t pass on anything other than healthy calcium to us?
6.05 am
I switch on the gas
I hope the gas cylinder doesn’t explode. I hope they don’t recycle the cylinders past their expiry date. Is there a Mumbai Mirror or an Aaj Tak expose waiting to be written about? Remember the email doing the rounds that tells you where and how to check for this???? I pushed it into the ‘junk folder’ – oh dear, how terribly stupid and irresponsible of me. My family trusts me to read all such mails diligently and act on them, and here I am creating auto-rules that rid me of my responsibilities without even the burden of guilt. I make a mental promise to retrieve it first thing on Monday morning and then check my cylinder.
Would piped gas be an alternative? Should I talk about this at the next Society meeting? But then, with the BMC, MTNL, Tata Sky, Reliance and the neighborhood dog constantly prospecting for oil reserves (or a non-existent bone, in case of the dog) , wouldn’t we run the risk of gas leaks every day? What if somebody swung his hammer real high and brought it down on a valve? I shuddered to think of gallons of gas spewing out while Society members argued about who would call the Mahanagar Gas guys only to find nobody had the number in the first place. And then, more gas leaking out while we compared it with the Bhopal Gas tragedy and tut-tutted at a Government that seems to have learnt no lessons.
I settle for the cylinder… (a) at least the gas quantity is finite so any damage will be limited and (b) I can ensure a greater degree of safety with my cylinder than I can with the pipeline under the street
6.11 am
The milk boils : the creamy yellow fat rises to the top
The mother in me goes into overdrive : I hope that is cream and not DDT or sodium monosulphate or potassium nitrate or whatever else it is they use to adulterate milk while retaining its visual properties. When I urge my child to drink her daily glassful, am I slowly poisoning her? Should I consider buying my own cow? In a 2-bedroom flat ? May be I could extend the balcony a little bit when no one’s looking? (after all, the Sharmas, the Gadiyars, the Wadhwas and even timid Mrs Krishnan, have all done it). But what about additional property tax? Could I sell some of the milk and make up?
I look to hubby for some guidance but the grim look on his face, as he digests the latest news of the stock market, tells me my cow must necessarily wait for a more opportune time, at least until after he’s done with the Bulls and Bears.
6.30 am
I settle down with my morning cuppa (my cup of poison.? .uh..uh…) and the newspapers in hand
I have the Times of India, Bombay Times, Economic Times and Mumbai Mirror : each more depressing than the other (ok – I’m a liar. ET is an exception most days when I can figure out what they’re saying).
If there is one thing in this world that can drive me to the depths of despair and tempt me to drop a cube of cocaine instead of sugar into my morning tea, it is the drivel that the Indian media shovels down my throat every morning. Or may be I’m shooting the messenger for the message. But when I’m done with the papers, most days, it makes me want to do one of the following (depending on the day of the week)
(a) jump down from my 4th floor window
(b) migrate to Nigeria or Ethiopia or better still some place where they haven’t discovered newspapers
(c) shoot everyone
(d) shoot myself (more practical than option ‘c’)
(e) stop reading the newspaper and listening to the news (definitely the most patriotic and ahimsaic option
(Gandhiji would be proud of me) – so would hubby – coz he wouldn’t have to share the newspaper with me or have me change channels when Ponting is getting ready to swing for a six
Ok – I digress – but that’s how my mind works…multi-threading, we call it in software parlance.
The wheels-within-wheels of Indian politics and the machinations of our elected representatives, is something that my frail, womanly sensibilities can neither fathom nor digest – at least not so early in the morning. Later in the day I can be quite clever but not at 6.30. Besides, I don’t look at newspaper reading as a test of IQ or a CAT examination.
I can’t figure out family relationships beyond my first cousins, so understanding the Sharad Pawar-Sonia Gandhi-Raj Thackery-Udhav Thackery-NCP-MNS-Congress nexus (with a BSP and an Amar Singh thrown in for good measure) is where I throw in the towel, the gauntlet – in the fact the entire contents of my washing machine.
And so, the first page gets the Playboy centre -spread treatment : a furtive look prompted by curiosity and then a hasty turning of the page out of sheer disgust or disinterest.
Scams : counter scams
Judge found with disproportionate assets.
CBI raids Income Tax officer’s house : 10 crores found in cash. Only 10 crores ? that’s just the household-spend-money for the missus, silly…. Check the drain pipe and the false ceiling ;: that’s where the other 90 is.
Politicians making and retracting statements so quickly that the clarification sometimes gets published before the quote ! They’re now thinking of instituting some kind of version control (again, QMS requirement in the software industry) on what politicians say so they can track their statements in logical sequence.
Bombay Times has me marveling and deploring the ridiculously tragic anomaly that exists in our country : society glams and page 3 wannabes jostle for space with multi-millionaires and play-boys as they talk about haute couture and trousseau shopping in London. Someone complains about the shortage of good watering holes while millions in their country – or perhaps in the slum right next door, struggle to shop for their daily bread and clean drinking water that isn’t mixed with sewage or that won’t kill them faster than cyanide.
Lunch
While I wolf down my bread, I’m simultaneously planning the lunch menu : if you ever want to learn about planning, organizing, directing, controlling, measuring, evaluating, implementing and monitoring –in short, everything they teach you at IIM, walk into my kitchen on a weekday morning.
So what’s for lunch?
Veggies : grown by the railway tracks ? Remember the tape worm in Leander Paes’ head that found its way into his brain through some vegetables? The gleaming brinjal takes me back to the article in the Mumbai Mirror that said vegetable vendors apply grease/diesel to make the brinjals shine (and to think my mother thought it was the goodness of the black soil of Maharashtra).
Is the green on the capsicum natural? I run my finger nail on it but of course, it only cuts into the skin.
I do make it a point never to buy the Rs.5 a bundle palak that is sold on the streets – I am sure it comes from Andheri /Bandra station, but what about the one I buy for double the price? Does it come from a farm or am I just paying a premium for clever marketing ploy?
I finally settle for curd rice in my lunch box : but what about the milk it came from ? and the cow that gave the milk ? oh drat it – we go back to the same line of thought. Is hubby free now to discuss the cow- in-the-balcony issue?
He’s mad because the Society has cut the water supply in the middle of his shaving : BMC has no water to meet the needs leave alone the greed, of all Mumbaikars. There is no tanker water as some Society members have not paid their dues ((but that’s another story for another day).
Do we need to approach the World Bank to pay for our tanker water? What happened to rain water harvesting? This is a new building so didn’t they insist on it as they claimed they were? But where’s the rain ? Probably some scam there too, but we’ll leave that for later.
Poor hubby : looks quite cute though : trying to look angry with a lathered face. Kind of like a white sunflower with a moustache.
I blow him a small kiss.
8 am
I pack the imp off to school
I hope she will reach safely : even though school is exactly 400 metres from home I fret like only a mother can and I worry about things that only a fellow Indian would understand.
I hope she will remember to carefully evade manhole # 3 (we have practised it 5 times) which has a missing cover (why would people systematically hammer at a concrete manhole cover until it caves in??) .
I hope there’s no new manhole whose cover has gone missing overnight. She knows that she has to watch the traffic till she reaches manhole # 3 and then look down to avoid falling into it while walking like a ballet dancer along the 9 inch space between the boundary wall and the edge of the manhole, spreading her arms to indicate to all drivers and sundry folks on the street that she can’t be expected to look down and look ahead simultaneously. Once she crosses the death-trap, she has to put her hands down and look ahead (not up to admire the crows, like Little-Johnny-Head-in-air) but into the eyes of every auto driver and 15-year-old-driving-his-father’s-stolen-car to indicate she is a pedestrian and has her rights.
I hope the drivers on the road have a licence that has been earned after 30 days in a driving school and not by greasing the palms of a lowly clerk in the RTO.
I hope the traffic signal works (most days it doesn’t and I haven’t figured out why It doesn’t work at 8 am in the morning most days when school children need it the most, but works with amazing precision at 11 in the night – must be some complex algorithm).
An exasperated hubby did suggest I send her by bus if I was so worried. But then I started fretting about the safety of the school bus, the driver’s credentials, his eye-sight, his reflex actions, the attendant’s age and whether he had a criminal background etc. etc.. I wanted to check whether they had a fire extinguisher on the bus and whether it had been checked and tested in the last 6 months.
The transporter suggested I start a bus service myself and take the driver’s seat and hubby, to my chagrin, agreed with him. To think that’s the loyalty I get for putting up with his nightly snoring for 15 years !
I reach work and step into my room – a few smart taps on my IBM Notepad signals the beginning of a 12-13 hour workday when as Head of Human Resources in a Multi-national, I manage to earn my bread. There are days when this helps preserve my sanity, and then there are days when it takes everything in my power to just hold on to it. But that can wait for another day and time.
11 pm : As I rest my wearied head on my pillow, it sags beneath the weight of all the thoughts in my mind. I doze off with Henry Louis Vivian Derozio echoing in my cerebellum :
To India – my native land
“My country , in thy day of glory past,
a beauteous halo circled round thy brow and
worshipped as a deity thou wast.
Where is that glory where that reverence now?
Thy eagle pinion is chained down at last
And groveling in the lowly dust art thou”
…………………………………………
………………………………………..
‘Be the change you want to see’ admonished the Mahatma wagging a bony finger at me. But how do I go about doing that? How does one go about transforming a nation? Should I stand for elections? “Will you vote for me?” I suddenly ask the figure by my side, gently falling into slumberland . ‘Huh?....zzzz…. yes, yes, whatever’. ‘So how many more votes do I need to win an election from Powai?’……a gentle snort greets my question - hubby has reached Mach 1 – and crossed the line between consciousness and the sublime peace that sleep brings to a wearied man.
I give him a peck : one down, how many more voters to woo?
The neighbours have chosen to watch ‘Sholay’ tonight. I sink further into the pillow to prepare myself for 3 hours of free, unsolicited entertainment and wonder if Mrs Menon would care to send me some pop corn….. .caramel, if you please.
3 am : good movie. Yaaaawn………..,my all -time favourite. They don’t …yaaaaaaawn…. make movies like that any more… yawn.
Zzzzzz……. What’s on my mind : a kaleidoscope of images : bridges falling, buildings caving in, trains running into each other, man holes sprouting up like giant craters on the moon, traffic signals with winking lights like a discotheque……I wake up in a cold sweat : a deep sigh emanating from the right tells me at least one person in the room is sleeping well.
6 am the next day : I drag myself to the bathroom and then sleep-walk to the front door. The packet of milk lies by the door way : the day starts and so do a zillion thoughts.
So what’s on your mind?
Having recently been introduced to the world of Facebook and Twitter (oh, I know I’m a late entrant and the rest of you are almost ready to move on to the next happening thing in the e-world ) BTW, what comes after ‘tweeting’? Bleating? ………Meeting? (mind the vowels though), Dating?
Hmm…….. I’ll wait and watch.
Anyway, I digress. Coming to the ‘what’s on your mind’ feature on Facebook and Twitter ( I think they call it ‘what are you thinking right now?’ Or ‘what are you doing right now’?) : I’m equally intrigued and piqued. Why would someone want to know what’s on someone’s mind, every 5 minutes (that’s the frequency with which some of these addicts update their ‘status’ or view the status of their friends.)
Well ……………………… we did play a different version of this in our times : there would be the lazy Saturday afternoon when the hubby would be lying spread-eagled on the couch or burrowed in the bean bag with a vacant look on his face thinking the same 3 things that all guys think about, (don’t I know) and I’d side up to him and say ‘penny for your thoughts’. He’d shake himself out of his reverie and mumble something about wondering where to take me out for shopping. “Liar” I’d mutter under my breath, giving him my sweetest smile and then cozy up, to make sure it was someplace really nice and sinfully expensive.
‘What are you thinking’ I’d ask in more worried tones, when I saw the blank look again as he waited at the check-out counter. I went weak-kneed wondering if he’d left his wallet at home and was toying between escaping past the counter-clerk without paying or escaping my wrath if we returned home minus the half-dozen bags that lay at my feet crying for a home and a wardrobe.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I’d ask my daughter when she stared at her geometry book as if it was a work of art by a Monet or a Picasso. The blank face and the faraway look in the eyes spoke less about an art critic in the making and more about an impending encounter with the Maths teacher.
So, I’m quite curious to know how this question gets answered by millions of people world-wide. Talking of us Indians, while I can’t say I can speak for the billion of us, I do know that what’s on my mind every minute of the day, can’t be very different from what’s on all our minds as we struggle to survive in a nation that’s insanely chaotic, dysfunctional and falling to pieces on its best day….. I shudder to reminisce about its worst days : they’re best forgotten like a bad dream or, to be more specific, the holocaust.
6 am : blurry eyed, having spent a sleepless night as an unwilling member of a 1-woman audience (on the other side of the wall) for my neighbor’s all-night jamming session (“you wanted to live in a Complex with young people remember?” hubby unfeelingly pointed out the last time when I complained about having had to listen to a remix of Saigal and Usha Uthup till 2 am) , I open the front door. My day begins
Time
Activity
What’s on my mind?
6 am
Collect the milk packet left by the front door, looking rather like the One-eyed Jack . The other eye still has to wake up and hubby had better stop making these wise-cracks
I hope this milk isn’t adulterated. I pray that whoever in Govt. is responsible for checking this, is doing his job. I hope there is no further scam brewing. I hope they got their arrears per the 6th pay commission (or is it the 7th ? I’ve lost count) and aren’t looking to make a quick buck or two from milk adulteration. Remember that article in the Times of India some years back that talked about what a sophisticated industry it is ? Not the Dairy industry silly – the adulteration industry. Somewhat like the parallel organization that Ramalinga Raju created when he scripted the Satyam Saga. (‘Oh what a tangled org. structure we weave when we first practice to deceive’ I drolly parodied Shakespeare).
You do, of course, read about the small raids they conduct every now and then : more to fill some newspaper columns (when the journalist runs out of newsworthy events (can that ever happen in this great country) or has had his fill of murders, molestations, mishaps, mayhem (oooh…. That’s onomaetopic, My English teacher will be pleased) .
Since the objective is to fill column inches and not really cleanse the system of its ills and strepto cocci, they don’t go beyond arresting a couple of poor lads in ill-fitting pants who gleefully pose with a milk-packet in one hand and a syringe in another : only because they probably pay them for posing or it makes them instant celebrities in their little ‘basti’ or ‘chawl.’
And then there was this other mail that said milk feeds the dreaded C - cells that lie dormant in all our bodies. So may be we should switch to soya milk? Eeuuu …. That’s a yucky alternative though. Doesn’t it make more sense to innoculate the cow with some anti-cancer vaccine so that it can’t pass on anything other than healthy calcium to us?
6.05 am
I switch on the gas
I hope the gas cylinder doesn’t explode. I hope they don’t recycle the cylinders past their expiry date. Is there a Mumbai Mirror or an Aaj Tak expose waiting to be written about? Remember the email doing the rounds that tells you where and how to check for this???? I pushed it into the ‘junk folder’ – oh dear, how terribly stupid and irresponsible of me. My family trusts me to read all such mails diligently and act on them, and here I am creating auto-rules that rid me of my responsibilities without even the burden of guilt. I make a mental promise to retrieve it first thing on Monday morning and then check my cylinder.
Would piped gas be an alternative? Should I talk about this at the next Society meeting? But then, with the BMC, MTNL, Tata Sky, Reliance and the neighborhood dog constantly prospecting for oil reserves (or a non-existent bone, in case of the dog) , wouldn’t we run the risk of gas leaks every day? What if somebody swung his hammer real high and brought it down on a valve? I shuddered to think of gallons of gas spewing out while Society members argued about who would call the Mahanagar Gas guys only to find nobody had the number in the first place. And then, more gas leaking out while we compared it with the Bhopal Gas tragedy and tut-tutted at a Government that seems to have learnt no lessons.
I settle for the cylinder… (a) at least the gas quantity is finite so any damage will be limited and (b) I can ensure a greater degree of safety with my cylinder than I can with the pipeline under the street
6.11 am
The milk boils : the creamy yellow fat rises to the top
The mother in me goes into overdrive : I hope that is cream and not DDT or sodium monosulphate or potassium nitrate or whatever else it is they use to adulterate milk while retaining its visual properties. When I urge my child to drink her daily glassful, am I slowly poisoning her? Should I consider buying my own cow? In a 2-bedroom flat ? May be I could extend the balcony a little bit when no one’s looking? (after all, the Sharmas, the Gadiyars, the Wadhwas and even timid Mrs Krishnan, have all done it). But what about additional property tax? Could I sell some of the milk and make up?
I look to hubby for some guidance but the grim look on his face, as he digests the latest news of the stock market, tells me my cow must necessarily wait for a more opportune time, at least until after he’s done with the Bulls and Bears.
6.30 am
I settle down with my morning cuppa (my cup of poison.? .uh..uh…) and the newspapers in hand
I have the Times of India, Bombay Times, Economic Times and Mumbai Mirror : each more depressing than the other (ok – I’m a liar. ET is an exception most days when I can figure out what they’re saying).
If there is one thing in this world that can drive me to the depths of despair and tempt me to drop a cube of cocaine instead of sugar into my morning tea, it is the drivel that the Indian media shovels down my throat every morning. Or may be I’m shooting the messenger for the message. But when I’m done with the papers, most days, it makes me want to do one of the following (depending on the day of the week)
(a) jump down from my 4th floor window
(b) migrate to Nigeria or Ethiopia or better still some place where they haven’t discovered newspapers
(c) shoot everyone
(d) shoot myself (more practical than option ‘c’)
(e) stop reading the newspaper and listening to the news (definitely the most patriotic and ahimsaic option
(Gandhiji would be proud of me) – so would hubby – coz he wouldn’t have to share the newspaper with me or have me change channels when Ponting is getting ready to swing for a six
Ok – I digress – but that’s how my mind works…multi-threading, we call it in software parlance.
The wheels-within-wheels of Indian politics and the machinations of our elected representatives, is something that my frail, womanly sensibilities can neither fathom nor digest – at least not so early in the morning. Later in the day I can be quite clever but not at 6.30. Besides, I don’t look at newspaper reading as a test of IQ or a CAT examination.
I can’t figure out family relationships beyond my first cousins, so understanding the Sharad Pawar-Sonia Gandhi-Raj Thackery-Udhav Thackery-NCP-MNS-Congress nexus (with a BSP and an Amar Singh thrown in for good measure) is where I throw in the towel, the gauntlet – in the fact the entire contents of my washing machine.
And so, the first page gets the Playboy centre -spread treatment : a furtive look prompted by curiosity and then a hasty turning of the page out of sheer disgust or disinterest.
Scams : counter scams
Judge found with disproportionate assets.
CBI raids Income Tax officer’s house : 10 crores found in cash. Only 10 crores ? that’s just the household-spend-money for the missus, silly…. Check the drain pipe and the false ceiling ;: that’s where the other 90 is.
Politicians making and retracting statements so quickly that the clarification sometimes gets published before the quote ! They’re now thinking of instituting some kind of version control (again, QMS requirement in the software industry) on what politicians say so they can track their statements in logical sequence.
Bombay Times has me marveling and deploring the ridiculously tragic anomaly that exists in our country : society glams and page 3 wannabes jostle for space with multi-millionaires and play-boys as they talk about haute couture and trousseau shopping in London. Someone complains about the shortage of good watering holes while millions in their country – or perhaps in the slum right next door, struggle to shop for their daily bread and clean drinking water that isn’t mixed with sewage or that won’t kill them faster than cyanide.
Lunch
While I wolf down my bread, I’m simultaneously planning the lunch menu : if you ever want to learn about planning, organizing, directing, controlling, measuring, evaluating, implementing and monitoring –in short, everything they teach you at IIM, walk into my kitchen on a weekday morning.
So what’s for lunch?
Veggies : grown by the railway tracks ? Remember the tape worm in Leander Paes’ head that found its way into his brain through some vegetables? The gleaming brinjal takes me back to the article in the Mumbai Mirror that said vegetable vendors apply grease/diesel to make the brinjals shine (and to think my mother thought it was the goodness of the black soil of Maharashtra).
Is the green on the capsicum natural? I run my finger nail on it but of course, it only cuts into the skin.
I do make it a point never to buy the Rs.5 a bundle palak that is sold on the streets – I am sure it comes from Andheri /Bandra station, but what about the one I buy for double the price? Does it come from a farm or am I just paying a premium for clever marketing ploy?
I finally settle for curd rice in my lunch box : but what about the milk it came from ? and the cow that gave the milk ? oh drat it – we go back to the same line of thought. Is hubby free now to discuss the cow- in-the-balcony issue?
He’s mad because the Society has cut the water supply in the middle of his shaving : BMC has no water to meet the needs leave alone the greed, of all Mumbaikars. There is no tanker water as some Society members have not paid their dues ((but that’s another story for another day).
Do we need to approach the World Bank to pay for our tanker water? What happened to rain water harvesting? This is a new building so didn’t they insist on it as they claimed they were? But where’s the rain ? Probably some scam there too, but we’ll leave that for later.
Poor hubby : looks quite cute though : trying to look angry with a lathered face. Kind of like a white sunflower with a moustache.
I blow him a small kiss.
8 am
I pack the imp off to school
I hope she will reach safely : even though school is exactly 400 metres from home I fret like only a mother can and I worry about things that only a fellow Indian would understand.
I hope she will remember to carefully evade manhole # 3 (we have practised it 5 times) which has a missing cover (why would people systematically hammer at a concrete manhole cover until it caves in??) .
I hope there’s no new manhole whose cover has gone missing overnight. She knows that she has to watch the traffic till she reaches manhole # 3 and then look down to avoid falling into it while walking like a ballet dancer along the 9 inch space between the boundary wall and the edge of the manhole, spreading her arms to indicate to all drivers and sundry folks on the street that she can’t be expected to look down and look ahead simultaneously. Once she crosses the death-trap, she has to put her hands down and look ahead (not up to admire the crows, like Little-Johnny-Head-in-air) but into the eyes of every auto driver and 15-year-old-driving-his-father’s-stolen-car to indicate she is a pedestrian and has her rights.
I hope the drivers on the road have a licence that has been earned after 30 days in a driving school and not by greasing the palms of a lowly clerk in the RTO.
I hope the traffic signal works (most days it doesn’t and I haven’t figured out why It doesn’t work at 8 am in the morning most days when school children need it the most, but works with amazing precision at 11 in the night – must be some complex algorithm).
An exasperated hubby did suggest I send her by bus if I was so worried. But then I started fretting about the safety of the school bus, the driver’s credentials, his eye-sight, his reflex actions, the attendant’s age and whether he had a criminal background etc. etc.. I wanted to check whether they had a fire extinguisher on the bus and whether it had been checked and tested in the last 6 months.
The transporter suggested I start a bus service myself and take the driver’s seat and hubby, to my chagrin, agreed with him. To think that’s the loyalty I get for putting up with his nightly snoring for 15 years !
I reach work and step into my room – a few smart taps on my IBM Notepad signals the beginning of a 12-13 hour workday when as Head of Human Resources in a Multi-national, I manage to earn my bread. There are days when this helps preserve my sanity, and then there are days when it takes everything in my power to just hold on to it. But that can wait for another day and time.
11 pm : As I rest my wearied head on my pillow, it sags beneath the weight of all the thoughts in my mind. I doze off with Henry Louis Vivian Derozio echoing in my cerebellum :
To India – my native land
“My country , in thy day of glory past,
a beauteous halo circled round thy brow and
worshipped as a deity thou wast.
Where is that glory where that reverence now?
Thy eagle pinion is chained down at last
And groveling in the lowly dust art thou”
…………………………………………
………………………………………..
‘Be the change you want to see’ admonished the Mahatma wagging a bony finger at me. But how do I go about doing that? How does one go about transforming a nation? Should I stand for elections? “Will you vote for me?” I suddenly ask the figure by my side, gently falling into slumberland . ‘Huh?....zzzz…. yes, yes, whatever’. ‘So how many more votes do I need to win an election from Powai?’……a gentle snort greets my question - hubby has reached Mach 1 – and crossed the line between consciousness and the sublime peace that sleep brings to a wearied man.
I give him a peck : one down, how many more voters to woo?
The neighbours have chosen to watch ‘Sholay’ tonight. I sink further into the pillow to prepare myself for 3 hours of free, unsolicited entertainment and wonder if Mrs Menon would care to send me some pop corn….. .caramel, if you please.
3 am : good movie. Yaaaawn………..,my all -time favourite. They don’t …yaaaaaaawn…. make movies like that any more… yawn.
Zzzzzz……. What’s on my mind : a kaleidoscope of images : bridges falling, buildings caving in, trains running into each other, man holes sprouting up like giant craters on the moon, traffic signals with winking lights like a discotheque……I wake up in a cold sweat : a deep sigh emanating from the right tells me at least one person in the room is sleeping well.
6 am the next day : I drag myself to the bathroom and then sleep-walk to the front door. The packet of milk lies by the door way : the day starts and so do a zillion thoughts.
So what’s on your mind?
Friday, October 16, 2009
We're like this only ............why, oh why?
My dis-illusionment with my fellow Indians and the extent to which they exhibit the depravity of the human soul, touches new heights (or is it depths?) every day. To be honest, there are moments (several of them) when I’m alternately embarrassed , pained, anguished or aghast at what I see and experience !
I am not attempting to adopt the moral or intellectual high ground (I’m as Indian as everyone else is) but we seem to be living in a society where it is Darwinism at its best : struggle for survival and survival of the fittest (the strongest elbow wins the race!). And our circle of concern ends at the tip of our nose or at best, the sweep of our arms - no further than that.
These are the stories in my hall of shame :
Society meeting : Having recently achieved the exalted and much-envied status of owning my own house in Mumbai, I attended my first Society meeting last week. I naively took with me a wish-list of items for discussion : Could we plant more flowers in the garden and could I work with the gardener on this? Could we fix the loose tiles on the pavement outside our building so it looked nice and my mother (and I’m sure everyone else’s as well) didn’t risk tripping over them every second day? And oh, could we re-plant the withering palm trees lining the street so the approach to our building looked pretty? And so on…………you get the drift, don’t you?
So it was with naïvete and unbridled enthusiasm that I plonked myself on a plastic chair on the front row. Understandably, hubby and I were one of the first few to be present. We waited and waited and waited… 30 minutes later, we had not met the quorum. Another 30 minutes later, per Society rules, it was decided to run the meeting with only 20 members present (out of a possible 83 attendees !!).
Issue # 1 : Extending the grill outside the window : the builder has provided a grill outside the glass windows for safety. Given that we’re never short of ideas and also given Mumbai’s insatiable appetite for additional carpet area, people have gone ahead and extended the grill. Some enterprising souls have gone further ahead and put a slab on the extra space creating a nice little sit-out . Isn’t that nice? You pay for 1000 sq.ft of carpet area and then extend it by another 20 sq ft with nary a concern for the legal or safety aspects of your action. Did our enterprising architects think about the additional property tax that the Society would be liable for? Worse still, did they think about what would happen if everyone decided to adopt their brilliant floor-plan idea and do likewise? What would happen to the structural stability of the building when the builder clearly mentioned that he had not provided adequate load-bearing pillars for extensions such as this?
Worse still, when I questioned this, someone mentioned that the individuals concerned had given a letter to the Society taking individual responsibility for such alterations. So, some one flat no. so and so gives a declaration stating he is taking responsibility for my life and that of my family’s if the building were to come crashing down?????? Is that what this means? And did I give him the right to take responsibility for my life? The whole thing seemed so ridiculous I didn’t know whether to cry and jump out the window (since the meeting was in the Refuge Area, there were no barricades on the windows !) or do some deep breathing exercises to prevent a cardiac arrest.
Issue # 2 : Shoe rack kept outside the main door, in the lift lobby : someone buys a 3-bedroom house measuring some 1200 sq.ft and then discovers he cannot accommodate his shoe-rack inside the house. So what does he do? He smartly places it in the common area outside his house. And then spends the next 20 minutes puzzling over why this should concern anyone and why it has to be brought up in the Society meeting . So I said today it is the shoe rack which is outside, tomorrow it might be the washing machine and day after, may be the kitchen stove. If we all decided to keep our stuff outside, we might as well have days when we take the kids and camp outside, in the lift lobby (especially on days when the domestic help decides to put you through the ‘so where are you without your domestic help’ test). At least you won’t have to clean up !
Issue # 3 : Condition of servants’ washrooms on every floor : I don’t know whether I want to even talk about this. Suffice it to say we spent 45 minutes discussing the sorry condition of the washrooms (understandably, the drivers/maids and security personnel used the marble-and-vitrified-tiles washrooms the way they used the unconstructed but instantly available public washrooms liberally dotting the Indian landscape : you can do anything anywhere and you don’t need to clean up afterwards ). There was much noise from residents whose olfactory organs were deeply offended by the resultant odour.
Oh, and some folks, with due consideration for our perennial water problems, had decided that dry bathrooms were the best way to save water - so they helped themselves to all the bathroom fittings.
Finally (and not surprisingly) it was decided that we would, in the short term, open a few bathrooms in turns, and seal the others. Everybody had to gear up for 6 weeks of odour-filled living, or plan on a vacation (since the schedule for opening bathrooms was to be displayed on the notice board !). A young mother in row no.2 started to ask whether the scheudule could be tweaked to synchronise the opening of the bathroom on her floor with the summer vacation but was quickly silenced by the combined glares of 20 pairs of eyes.
For the long term, it was decided to shut down all the bathrooms and build a new bathroom in the basement (away from the sensitive noses and peering eyes of all residents ). All’s well that ends well you might say except for a small point : the total area of all the 30 bathrooms is around 7000 sq.ft – for which, we residents had paid a not-so-insignificant sum of money and here we were, not only squandering away all that real-estate but also planning on spending more to construct a new bathroom.
Talk of money down the drain – literally so, it would appear.
In the land of the Mahatma who extolled that we must be the change that we wish to see, not one hand was raised when the call went out for a volunteer to collect some information from all members.
After about 6 long minutes, unable to bear the pregnant silence and the tightly clenched fists held firmly by the sides, I raised a timorous hand. Hubby sighed in the practised manner of one who knew exactly what was coming.
And finally, after discussing many issues of a similar nature, the meeting ended. I came home with a head the heaviness of which was only matched by that of my heart.
Why this utter and abominable apathy to rules and norms of civilized society ? Why do we feel virtuous about breaking rules? When we gleefully jump a red light, do we stop to think of what would happen if every driver on the road thought and acted likewise? Or do we believe we alone have the right, by some divine ordination, to behave as we please ? Why can we not respect public property? I would think a blighter who has no place to pee would be happy to be saved the ignominy at least a few times in a day. Or is he, like our Ministers and sundry politicians, so used to being exposed that it no longer matters?
Oh, yes…. I forgot one more important point on the agenda : Rs.3.50 lakhs due towards Society charges from a few members !!!!! The flat was rented, the owner lived in Dubai and conveniently forgot to pay the society dues. So while the rest of us forked out the 8K monthly society charges (mind you, this isn’t pocket money for anyone – not even someone who’s bought a flat for 80 lakhs) , some wise Alec in Dubai was presumably having a huge laugh at us idiots who actually believed Society bills had to be paid on time ! I can imagine his dinner-time conversation with his wife : ‘Darling (or may be, ‘aji sunte ho’) I caught up with Sharmaji who lives in our flat in India and would you believe it? He said the society was asking us to pay the maintenance dues !! No, no wait : I haven’t come to the punch line yet : all the other sodden folks have apparently been paying this every month!!” And I can hear the peal of Mrs Dubai’s laughter as she marvels at her husband’s cleverness and goes tut-tut at our stupidity.
And so the Society decided to hire a lawyer to figure out how to get people to pay their dues..
Throw the blighter out and cut off the electricity and water supply, we said. Not so easy said a wizened veteran from the back-benches. The law doesn’t allow you to do that.
Seething with rage and frustration I poured out my heart to some friends only to have them raise a quizzical eyebrow at my consternation. “So what’s the problem?” they asked. “This happens in every Society.”
What to do - we are like this only - but why, dear God, why?
I am not attempting to adopt the moral or intellectual high ground (I’m as Indian as everyone else is) but we seem to be living in a society where it is Darwinism at its best : struggle for survival and survival of the fittest (the strongest elbow wins the race!). And our circle of concern ends at the tip of our nose or at best, the sweep of our arms - no further than that.
These are the stories in my hall of shame :
Society meeting : Having recently achieved the exalted and much-envied status of owning my own house in Mumbai, I attended my first Society meeting last week. I naively took with me a wish-list of items for discussion : Could we plant more flowers in the garden and could I work with the gardener on this? Could we fix the loose tiles on the pavement outside our building so it looked nice and my mother (and I’m sure everyone else’s as well) didn’t risk tripping over them every second day? And oh, could we re-plant the withering palm trees lining the street so the approach to our building looked pretty? And so on…………you get the drift, don’t you?
So it was with naïvete and unbridled enthusiasm that I plonked myself on a plastic chair on the front row. Understandably, hubby and I were one of the first few to be present. We waited and waited and waited… 30 minutes later, we had not met the quorum. Another 30 minutes later, per Society rules, it was decided to run the meeting with only 20 members present (out of a possible 83 attendees !!).
Issue # 1 : Extending the grill outside the window : the builder has provided a grill outside the glass windows for safety. Given that we’re never short of ideas and also given Mumbai’s insatiable appetite for additional carpet area, people have gone ahead and extended the grill. Some enterprising souls have gone further ahead and put a slab on the extra space creating a nice little sit-out . Isn’t that nice? You pay for 1000 sq.ft of carpet area and then extend it by another 20 sq ft with nary a concern for the legal or safety aspects of your action. Did our enterprising architects think about the additional property tax that the Society would be liable for? Worse still, did they think about what would happen if everyone decided to adopt their brilliant floor-plan idea and do likewise? What would happen to the structural stability of the building when the builder clearly mentioned that he had not provided adequate load-bearing pillars for extensions such as this?
Worse still, when I questioned this, someone mentioned that the individuals concerned had given a letter to the Society taking individual responsibility for such alterations. So, some one flat no. so and so gives a declaration stating he is taking responsibility for my life and that of my family’s if the building were to come crashing down?????? Is that what this means? And did I give him the right to take responsibility for my life? The whole thing seemed so ridiculous I didn’t know whether to cry and jump out the window (since the meeting was in the Refuge Area, there were no barricades on the windows !) or do some deep breathing exercises to prevent a cardiac arrest.
Issue # 2 : Shoe rack kept outside the main door, in the lift lobby : someone buys a 3-bedroom house measuring some 1200 sq.ft and then discovers he cannot accommodate his shoe-rack inside the house. So what does he do? He smartly places it in the common area outside his house. And then spends the next 20 minutes puzzling over why this should concern anyone and why it has to be brought up in the Society meeting . So I said today it is the shoe rack which is outside, tomorrow it might be the washing machine and day after, may be the kitchen stove. If we all decided to keep our stuff outside, we might as well have days when we take the kids and camp outside, in the lift lobby (especially on days when the domestic help decides to put you through the ‘so where are you without your domestic help’ test). At least you won’t have to clean up !
Issue # 3 : Condition of servants’ washrooms on every floor : I don’t know whether I want to even talk about this. Suffice it to say we spent 45 minutes discussing the sorry condition of the washrooms (understandably, the drivers/maids and security personnel used the marble-and-vitrified-tiles washrooms the way they used the unconstructed but instantly available public washrooms liberally dotting the Indian landscape : you can do anything anywhere and you don’t need to clean up afterwards ). There was much noise from residents whose olfactory organs were deeply offended by the resultant odour.
Oh, and some folks, with due consideration for our perennial water problems, had decided that dry bathrooms were the best way to save water - so they helped themselves to all the bathroom fittings.
Finally (and not surprisingly) it was decided that we would, in the short term, open a few bathrooms in turns, and seal the others. Everybody had to gear up for 6 weeks of odour-filled living, or plan on a vacation (since the schedule for opening bathrooms was to be displayed on the notice board !). A young mother in row no.2 started to ask whether the scheudule could be tweaked to synchronise the opening of the bathroom on her floor with the summer vacation but was quickly silenced by the combined glares of 20 pairs of eyes.
For the long term, it was decided to shut down all the bathrooms and build a new bathroom in the basement (away from the sensitive noses and peering eyes of all residents ). All’s well that ends well you might say except for a small point : the total area of all the 30 bathrooms is around 7000 sq.ft – for which, we residents had paid a not-so-insignificant sum of money and here we were, not only squandering away all that real-estate but also planning on spending more to construct a new bathroom.
Talk of money down the drain – literally so, it would appear.
In the land of the Mahatma who extolled that we must be the change that we wish to see, not one hand was raised when the call went out for a volunteer to collect some information from all members.
After about 6 long minutes, unable to bear the pregnant silence and the tightly clenched fists held firmly by the sides, I raised a timorous hand. Hubby sighed in the practised manner of one who knew exactly what was coming.
And finally, after discussing many issues of a similar nature, the meeting ended. I came home with a head the heaviness of which was only matched by that of my heart.
Why this utter and abominable apathy to rules and norms of civilized society ? Why do we feel virtuous about breaking rules? When we gleefully jump a red light, do we stop to think of what would happen if every driver on the road thought and acted likewise? Or do we believe we alone have the right, by some divine ordination, to behave as we please ? Why can we not respect public property? I would think a blighter who has no place to pee would be happy to be saved the ignominy at least a few times in a day. Or is he, like our Ministers and sundry politicians, so used to being exposed that it no longer matters?
Oh, yes…. I forgot one more important point on the agenda : Rs.3.50 lakhs due towards Society charges from a few members !!!!! The flat was rented, the owner lived in Dubai and conveniently forgot to pay the society dues. So while the rest of us forked out the 8K monthly society charges (mind you, this isn’t pocket money for anyone – not even someone who’s bought a flat for 80 lakhs) , some wise Alec in Dubai was presumably having a huge laugh at us idiots who actually believed Society bills had to be paid on time ! I can imagine his dinner-time conversation with his wife : ‘Darling (or may be, ‘aji sunte ho’) I caught up with Sharmaji who lives in our flat in India and would you believe it? He said the society was asking us to pay the maintenance dues !! No, no wait : I haven’t come to the punch line yet : all the other sodden folks have apparently been paying this every month!!” And I can hear the peal of Mrs Dubai’s laughter as she marvels at her husband’s cleverness and goes tut-tut at our stupidity.
And so the Society decided to hire a lawyer to figure out how to get people to pay their dues..
Throw the blighter out and cut off the electricity and water supply, we said. Not so easy said a wizened veteran from the back-benches. The law doesn’t allow you to do that.
Seething with rage and frustration I poured out my heart to some friends only to have them raise a quizzical eyebrow at my consternation. “So what’s the problem?” they asked. “This happens in every Society.”
What to do - we are like this only - but why, dear God, why?
Monday, October 12, 2009
Getting Started on my blog
Whew ! That was easy ....almost embarrassingly so, if you ask me. Well..............ok.............there was this friendly you-tube demo that showed me exactly which buttons to click to get started. So there you are ! Reading my very own and my very first blog !! Feel quite techno-savvy and incredibly clever :)
Hmmm............................................can you get a Writers' Block even before you begin? 'coz I think I have one right now. Actually................ it's not a block : it's more of a tangled web of thoughts and I'm trying to decide which thread to pick up right now.
May be I should just start at the beginning as the hare said to Alice. Now where in the world is the beginning??????????? More tangles to unravel..... uh... uh... may be I'll do it later. Gotta go.
Hmmm............................................can you get a Writers' Block even before you begin? 'coz I think I have one right now. Actually................ it's not a block : it's more of a tangled web of thoughts and I'm trying to decide which thread to pick up right now.
May be I should just start at the beginning as the hare said to Alice. Now where in the world is the beginning??????????? More tangles to unravel..... uh... uh... may be I'll do it later. Gotta go.
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