Happy Vday

Sigh…As I celebrate more than two decades of singledom, I wish all the losers in love with full bitterness a very happy valentine’s. However, there are things that can possibly be banned on Vday without hurting sentiments of love-sick puppies:

Red accessories: Almost every idiot on the street wears a wannabe red shirt. In fact, girls are no less. I saw one with red nail polish and earrings.

Celebrity interviews on TV: Yes. A lot of these frustrated single celebs, who go on and on about how Vday is for everybody and give free advice on how to gift flowers for mom, gran, and the dog next door. Ough!! Repeat after me: Valentine is not for everybody. It is meant for people who are so much into themselves that they can afford to blow up money in tacky places stuffed with pink balloons and red confetti.

Flowers: Last year, my roomie got flowers from her ‘actually-he-is-not-my-boyfriend-because-it-is-not-a-right-thing-to-do-according-to-indian-culture-but-he-pays-for-my-shopping-trips-so-just-to-please-him-let-us-call-him-my-very-very-very-close-companion’ friend and decided to put it right next to our bed. After 24 hours, the room started smelling of dead rats and I hinted that she throw them out. She looked at me like I was not human and scooped up those flowers to smell them. “These flowers remind me of him”, she decided finally after stuffing them into her nose for a whole minute. I was tempted to reply, “Eww. Does he smell that way?”, but I kept quiet for the fear of changing her mind about the flowers. “With people like you, the world will soon come to an end”, she finished and took her flowers away. Thank god.

Talk shows: Last year, there was a debate on the lines of how falling in love could ruin your possibilities of running for presidency and how youngsters insult the illustrious lineage of their ancestors (who all had two wives)by putting their family names at stake. The dude mediating the show was clad in a suit with a tie, but patronized the viewers endlessly on the ill effects of western influence.

Hearts: Every damn thing is heart-shaped on Vday. I know love comes from the heart, but heart-shaped hair clips is taking it too far. They look incredibly stupid, and should be banned.

History of Vday on papers: Who cares! Everybody parrots the same lines, “Vday is actually celebrated in memory of St.Valentine” This is a gimmick to justify that Vday is not a figment of imagination and that there was a solid dude whom we can blame for dying and thereby single-handedly destroying the very and probably the only premise of conservative Indian culture, “All Indians are my brothers and sisters”

Yes. This was written out of pure boredom as I consciously stay away from the outdoors to avoid frequent gagging and disgust on Vday. Well, this may all become tolerable one day maybe, if I manage to keep this post away from dad. Thinking of that, the guy at the bus stop with a red tee was kinda cute. Hmmm…maybe next year...

Acrobatic lizards and anxious lasses

It has been more than three weeks of peak workload, leaving me very little time to blog, mail, or even read. So, when I did get some time to leave a bit early, I decided to work myself out of the 'Will-I-end-up-like-this-for-the-rest-of-my-life?" mood, by cleaning the kitchen.

So, I started with the stove. The stove in our common kitchen is buried under layers of spilt milk, noodles masala, burnt rice, dust, grime, and dirt (Of course it is not all that bad, but I love making embroidered statements). So I painstakingly removed layer-by-layer of the dirt, until I saw the first glimpse of the silvery aluminium.
Satisfied with my handiwork, and egged on by the gleaming aluminium, I ventured to clean the trivet and burner of the stove. The burner successfully transformed the kitchen sink into a dark hole, and I ended up cleaning the sink, only to find my scrubber turn jet black from light green. Then I washed the scrubber, to find my hands turn into a ravishing shade of grubby brown.

It was only when I started cleaning the trivet, did the dramatic, or rather a swift termination to my cleaning spree come. I pulled the trivet out, to find a lizard hanging upside down from it!!! As expected, I screeched as loudly as possible and put it down. The acrobatic lizard with the mighty swung, got back to its feet and scaled to the top of the stove smoothly.

I couldn’t but appreciate the impudence it had, to stay there quietly amidst all the clatter I had created. Before even it could think of doing something funny, I slowly tapped the stove with the gas lighter, silently urging the dear Lizzie to back off.

Yes. I named the lizard too, in the middle of all the commotion.

Lizzie did not budge. I hit the stove harder. This time she only backed off a few steps. (I decided the lizard would be a 'she' because she was captivated by the kitchen stove and exhibited unusual daring). Then I began a slow rhythmic tapping against the stove. Lizzie moved into a trance-like state, inching backwards with every tap, and before I could stop her...She slipped and fell into one of the holes inside the stove.

I swallowed hard. Did I kill her? I pictured headlines in the 'The Creepy Crawly Times'. “Chef Lizzie burnt to death. Lizzie, a successful chef and also the co-author of the book, '100 Tasty Insects And Where To Catch Them' was cruelly hypnotized by a two-legged slaughterer and burnt to death inside a stove. Investigations revealed that the two-legged being is still on the prowl, brutally putting an end to all the successful career-minded woman lizards. "She is a shame to the two-legged community. She is an obstacle to the empowerment of lizards” said the spokesperson of ‘The lizard on the wall’, an NGO for displaced woman lizards."

In a second I had become a serial killer, shunned by the lizard community. Still panicking, I peeped into the hole for any sign of life. Gradually I could see two beady eyes glowering from inside the hole, admonishing me for my deed. A wave of relief spread over me as I watched Lizzie slowly clamber over the hole, struggling to find a hold. And when she finally did, she fixated a stare at me. It was an acutely piercing angry glare. No doubt.

I muttered a hurried apology and quickly switched off the lights.

If you start with a bad-hair day....

...then your social cum work cum love life is doomed. After spending fruitless 15 minutes into taming my hair into an agreeable mess (the privileged others who have straight hair call it a pony tail), I was wondering what else could go wrong when...

a. I choked on a piece of idly; I was trying to gorge down in nano-seconds. Normalcy was restored only after a few gulps of water, two hard thumps on my back from mommy dearest and a long-winded ‘how-idlys-can-be-life-changing-if-you-eat-them-slowly' speech.
b. A group of frustrated men in the bus suddenly decided to vent out their pent-up emotions. What ensued was a 'not-too-pretty-to-watch' brawl involving a group of huffy-cheeked men against another group of huffier-cheeked men.
c. The impact of losing all my contacts on my mobile phone hit me fully only after I started getting the routine, customary, and almost revoltingly sweet ‘good-morning’ messages from friends today. I hardly recognized the numbers and was forced to ask them their names. This little activity of mine managed to get the majority of them pug-faced. I also earned the ‘How-can-you-forget-MY-number’ wrath from all of them.
d. A seemingly cute guy in the atrium of our office building decided to walk through me like I never existed. Cursing silently I reached the lift, only to find him inside, still looking away.
e. Tripped in front of a million colleagues, and had to swerve in the most uncomfortable way to avoid falling flat on the face, and ended up looking like a crooked, contorted Oscar statuette.
f. One more attempt at taming my hair in the office loo went astray as my comb decided to plop into the wash basin with a loud clang. The other peacocks, pruning their feathers gave me their looks of purest contempt.

It was then, that I gave up!

Moral: Maybe the guy didn’t look because my puerile hair looked like a bramble bush that had a magnetic attraction to anything even remotely dusty?? (Nah…Not a good enough moral you say?)

Well, then....The real moral: If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway...Courtesy Murphy.

Whats wrong with us????????

Obama Pooja :)

My darkest secret ever...

I was thinking of what to write next when I realized that my creativity just decided to take a vacation the minute I started a blog. (Proof: Read last two entries)
Highly annoyed with myself, I tried to snoop around my friends’ blogs for ideas. You might call it plagiarism but I call it collective collaboration of thoughts. Here are a few ideas that I thought i could write about:

1. What i like and don’t like about xyz place?

Wow! That sounded like the ideal topic to start. But i ended up with one very forgettable page of 'What i like’, which even i couldn’t read without stifling a yawn. And also being a lousy Chennai fanatic, i couldn’t bring myself to write the ‘don’t like’ part without feeling ungrateful.

2. Post cartoon strips and give smart comments.

To start with, smart comments are really not my thing. I also couldn’t think of anything better than 'ROFL', 'check this out' 'this is hilarious’ and so on. Further all the cartoons i found were either too cheesy for my taste or too corny for anybody's taste.

3. Write a poem.

I couldn’t help but lol’ing at the very ‘idea’, let alone write. My poetic skills stop with making rhymes that are a way too juvenile for a blog post.

4. Delete the blog.

This sounded like the best idea so far. Then again, all my principles about 'never quitting once i start', started going round my head, making me go on a roller coaster guilt trip.

With all the ideas trashed mercilessly, i was wondering what to do next when i swiftly realized i could actually fill up this space with the trashed ideas! After all it was my blog, my trash, and people read it at their own risk.

So thus ends my next blog entry after three hundred words of sheer nonsense, hackneyed humor, two cups of tea and of course plenty of wasted energy.

Moral of the story: Never get carried away by the 'attention seeking' headline gimmick. You will surely end up reading crap like this! (This entry might have irritated you and probably made you swear that you would never come back to this blog again. Any harm caused by curling fists or tearing hair-roots out was purely intentional).