The Award

Well, I am sure you must have never seen any award of this kind in another blog. Yours truly filched it from Google and added the text 'Award' and now, I own the design. Now, you may like to know why? I see a lot of bloggers showing off their awards on their pages. One blogger giving it away to another blogger for being the sensible blogger, the thinking blogger, the good mommy blogger, the funny blogger, the I-have-an-opinion-about-everything blogger et al. Reality shows are just not ending with the television. It is omnipresent and has entered the blog world too with a lot of quizzes and quiz like things and talent shows being floated around.

They don’t understand how much it is hurting the sentiments of creative minds like mine. Vying for that oh-so-nice trophy displayed, I try to answer some of the questions. I think inside the box, out of the box, out of the room and compound and finally come up with an answer. The correct answer is ‘cyclone’ I say just to find out that they have been asking about a wet dog shaking itself. So you see, the wavelengths never match and I never win an award.

They also ask, who is Pappu and why can’t he dance? I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know!
I read the answers given by a lot of people and laugh hee haw hee haw in the privacy of my cubicle realising that the trophy has gone out of my reach.

I have been blogging for more than 4 yrs. That means I have been reading some of you for a long time even through your PMS- induced (males can read as hormone. Women who do not want to read PMS can also read hormone) whims and fancies as you hopped, skipped and jumped from rediff to blogger and wordpress and back to wherever you started with or a domain of your own. It is nice to see you guys thanking me as a reader once in a while as you also thank your lift man on some f**** Monday mornings but no, you never gave me an award.

Now, what I am coming up to? Nothing, basically. People do thank their readers naturally. What I want to do today is give myself an award and show off in my page. Well, the award is not for anything. It is called just that- AWARD.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have won an award and the award is called Award.

Their last date

She knew this was the last time they were meeting and wanted to be nice, and honest.

They sat in the same place they often used to sit, bang in the middle of a crowded café overlooking the concourse. In the midst of the crowd, they had always managed to find their solitude, their voices, and their stories as if they were protected by the eiderdown. She wanted the last time to be like the first meeting and the many in-betweens.

“So, I am getting married” she started, suddenly remembering this is not how she wanted to start nor could she explain why she felt the sudden throbbing pain inside. He just looked at her, held her eyes for sometime and looked away. Then he stirred his coffee very slowly, as if his life depended on that steady action and replied,”If that is what you want.” She wanted to scream, pounce on him and strangle him and die with him that moment but continued the balderdash about how nice the man she was about to marry was, and how much in love they were. He listened quietly, observing how her cheeks turned crimson red and how her eyes were so wonderful tonight, all animated with a tear threatening to fall, something that made him feel like crushing her is his arms. He began to smoke leaving the coffee un-sipped.

Having nothing else to say or hear, she stood up saying, he needn’t see her off.

Walking through the boulevard, she suddenly remembered a time when they had walked leisurely after leaving the coffee house, sharing peanuts from a cone and singing a duet. She had laughed saying, ‘If people were to hear only our voices, they’d certainly think two guys are singing.’ To which, he had replied,’oh, let me check then if I am walking with a guy or a girl’. She kicked him and ran; with him running right behind her, laughing.

Collecting herself, she hastened her steps and coughed away her tears. He stood at a distance, perhaps thinking the same thoughts, smoking.

P.S: I started writing only with the woman’s angle, but I realized I am often unfair to the other sex so, I have added the guy's part too.

My colleague has started blogging, please read her.

The Dark Knight watcher

Movies like, ‘The Dark Knight’ make some grown-ups behave like a kid. S had been waiting for its release fervently. He read some reviews and how well it opened in the U.S and fed his own anxiety. Dinners in the last week consisted of updates about the movie and its reviews, how Christian Bale is a very good actor and how Heath has played the role of the joker with elan(imagine the special symbol and pronounce correctly. I am not able to do it. :-) ). I said,”yes, Christian Bale is finally getting his due. I liked him in ‘Equilibrium’ and ‘Machinist’ specially, but I haven’t watched ‘Batman Begins’. He looked at me as if I just confessed murder.

Making up his mind that I have a shitty choice for movies, he continued raving about Heath Ledger. I said,” I don’t watch gay movies no matter how good they are. Tell me something else.” (I just couldn’t recall his face.) “Oh yes, ‘A knight’s tale’ and the rock music and how I had commented on his looks. (I watched it with him. Hence, another proof of his good choice and my Shittyness in the subject).

Over the dining table, we mourned his death as if my husband has lost a bum chum buddy, the proverbial ‘langotiya yaar.’

S booked the movie in advance and we watched it finally. He hates loafing around in malls and window shopping but for a change, he asked me to get dressed early and said, ‘let us collect the ticket and while away some time.’

We were among the first few people to enter the theater. I guess he needed that time to do some breathing exercise to control anxiety lest he faint the moment the movie starts.

He absorbed each and every scene and came back.

On the way back, he started testing my IQ test on the super heroes and asked if I didn’t read their comics, as if he had suddenly remembered what was it that he wanted to know about me while courting, but not being able to put a finger on, had somehow decided to get married. I confessed I did not read Superman, Batman or Daredevil but read a lot of Phantoms hoping we are still married.

He continued explaining why Batman is not like other super heroes forgetting I have just watched the movie sitting right next to him and that we have our personal collection of the Superman series. He mumbled something like, “It was too good na, how the joker said, ‘I will not kill you because you are too much fun and you will not kill me because you are too self righteous’” and added, “I feel like buying the comic and reading it again.”

So, if you see a man at the tender age of 31 with a Batman comic, he could very well be my husband.

Indian Blog Titles- This is funny

Fly You Fools - An Indian Webcomic about Life.

Sad Story 2008

It takes no time for sad happy to become happy sad and any such nonsense, which only the kid of 'Cheeni Kum' could understand. It took no time for LoveStory 2050 to become the SadStory 2008, a 50 crore disaster. I feel sad for them that they wasted so much of money making this. The film starts at 2008. The ladies watch a cycling race. They sit in one place but they seem to be cheering the guys when they ride over rocks and boulders. How could they see it all?

Mr. Baweja or Karan chases Sana urf Piggy Chops Urf Priyanka who is seated in a train by jumping through buildings, roads, traffic, cars and what not? They do the entire dance and song sequence, the bollywood jig and play the wooing game. She is in the railway station; he is supposed to go to the airport, but decided to go to the railway station instead. Oh by the way, they are in Australia. The year is 2008, but he doesn’t have a mobile phone and he simply runs again to stop her and she waits patiently in the station. Silly, how can there be a mobile phone? This is a sci-fi movie and you cannot ask for an obsolete stuff called mobile phone. Wait and watch where you are transported to!

Piggy dies in the first half in a fatal accident. The impact looked like she’d be torn into pieces but all you can see is blood oozing out of her head and she is conscious enough to say ‘I love you’. He doesn’t think of taking her to a hospital but holds her and reaffirms his undying love to the dying lady. I am a person who can even cry over a Govinda movie. Hell, this was a love story and the lady love was dying, but I did not even feel like sneezing.

Boman Irani, the scientist Uncle of the hero creates a time machine and Karan goes to search and get back his lady love from Mumbai 2050. You are transported to a world of video games. You have robots and virtual maids and a lot of Phirangs in the streets of Mumbai. Piggy Chops is a rock star with red hair and teddy bear and I decided to sleep, literally.

I won the Gallantry award for having the courage to watch it and stay awake till wherever I watched.

Where compliments are due, I must say Harman dances well but his talking, body language and style was similar to Hrithik Roshan to uncomfortable limits. Sometimes, I felt he tried to copy SRK's exuberance of DDLJ too. All in all, this was a movie to sell Harman even when the romance or the story took desultory prominence. I personally didn’t like him but he may get noticed because of his dancing skills.

I have already got the gallantry award, so don't even be motivated to take your chance.

When the rains came

The weather has been amazing in namma Bangaluru. People often say the monsoon gives respite from the sweltering heat but the heat was shortlived this year and we actually did not get much opportunity to chide the summer. It is very pleasant to walk down the promanade to the pick-up point every morning that you will always notice a spring in my steps, a cavort(ing) gait and eyes wandering to take in everything that the morning has to offer.

It rained yesterday and it took me to the days of yonder when I used to look through the window on some rainy days and sing my heart out. The window was behind the sofa. I used to kneel on it backwards and hold the window grill and peer through it. Ah childhood!

I admired the mangoes, promising life and how the water droplets would slide through the skin and fall from the tip. The yellow orchids clung to a branch of the mango and bloomed to glory. Beside the mango tree were the hydrengias, the roses, the lilies, the nine-o-clock flowers, the bottle brush and many more. Cousin and I would run in the rain and play in the mud skating bare foot, skidding, falling, getting up, skidding, falling, getting up until grandma would scold us and say that she wants our mothers to stop working and control us. We would jump and pluck a bottle brush flower, run inside, tap the flower on our palms and lick the nectar. What must have been our aspirations or struggles in those days? Maybe, just do homework and get promoted to the next class.

It rained yesterday and I wanted to sing out loud and be that child once more. Presence of the brother-in-law stopped me.

I see myself being moulded to the role of a provider from being the provided. Took the brother-in-law shopping and made him buy whatever he wanted for passing out of the Academy. I enjoyed the experience of caring for someone younger than me, of being responsible for him. Led the mom-in-law to places she wanted to go in Bangalore. Her child-like enthusiasm reflected on her face as she explored the unventured places. On the other hand, sis told me that mom was complaining that I hadn’t called her last week.

I caught up with Lin and Ju, my childhood friends over the chat. We used to read Archies tucked inside text books, Photo Romance tucked inside the Atlas map book, talk boys, share lunch, play together and compare marks as to who got how much and who topped the class. The comforts of childhood and endearments still very much intact, we chatted about our married lives, plans of having a child, responsibilities and mother-in-laws and wondered, when did we all grow up so much?