Some Bull

Aaah, yet another important lesson that I really have to learn is that I should not make bombastic declarations in the heat of an improved mood or feeble flash of energy like "I will put up a blog entry tonight no matter what" because after a particularly hard day of chores and baby-work when all you want to do is get some shut-eye, that resolution then hangs round your neck like a millstone, becoming a matter of honor and when you are reluctantly sitting in front of the computer like I am right now, uninspired, full-bladdered, itchy-eyed and bad tempered, picking zits, tiny chin hairs and overgrown eyebrows for ideas, and nothing arresting is coming out of it all except that irritating spasm that you intermittently feel in your calf from shifting on a folded leg, all you can think of is how to keep this stupid exercise going with a few more words strung together, keeping intact the logic of the sentences looped, so that the reader ( if there is anyone out there in the first place!) will think you have written a creative piece of Hysterical Realism when all you have done is serve some steaming hot bullshit in the from of a post at 10:37 p.m when all your neurons have shut down for the day and your better sense is telling you to admit you have Writer's Block tonight and thus hit the sack immediately rather than make an ass of yourself rambling on any further.

Mission accomplished.

Sid, Christ and Resolution

Here's my version of my friend Sid. He looks so much like Christ- the hair, the beard, the same compassion in his eyes. Christ, I think, was one of the sexiest guys who ever lived...

I'm working on two series simultaneously- the Faces one and now, one on Christ. A real good offer hangs above my head and I've been asked to do a 4 canvas series on Christ. I'll talk about the project once it has been completed but all I can say at the moment is that I am ecstacic because this could mean that big break that I have been looking for...

I've been itching to write. In fact, I have three blog posts completed and ready. Unfortunately it is all in my head as of now, the way Sanjaya would have recited the entire Mahabharatha to King Dhritarashtra. By the time I reach the comp at the end of a busy day, I am drooling away to sleep on the keyboard.

I shall put up an entry tonight no matter what. Hope the Californian Governor hasn't patented this but "I'll be BACK"!

Take my Stress Away

I made this painting for my Pranic Healer a few months back. The photo is not a patch on the original but even then, I kind of use it to de-stress. There is something very calming about the sky and warming about the water. Look at me shamelessly blowing my own trumpet about my work!!!

I am too wound up at the moment to compose anything coherent, so this post is going to be disappointingly stream of consciousness. I have had a very stressful week with a very sick baby, lots of visitors and a zillion errands to run. Thankfully kiddo is better now but I am feeling pooped out. Blogging has been my release from the regimented routine but I haven't been able to do that as much as I would like to.

I am working on a charcoal series. A series on Faces. Not Faeces ( I have been cleaning loads of that for the past one week courtesy my poor kiddo's attack of diarrhea. However there could be a Freudean link to my sudden inspiration, eh?). Faces, just Random Faces. Features that emerge from the impulsive scribbling of charcoal.

Heard from a friend in the U.S who is working on his doctoral degree. He was travelling all of the past six months. Published papers, got some honors. He is checking into a mental health facility for the next two weeks. Some mid-life crisis he says. Lack of companionship, immense work load, stressful research...

Mid-life crisis at 29? When you are working on a doctoral degree and have won some honors and published papers? I thought I was going to have one because I was NOT working on a doctoral degree and NOT publishing papers. Looks like everybody is on edge irrespective of whether they are pursuing doctorates or plain folding nappies...

Love in the Time of Diarrhea

I was looking at this painting that I had made while I was expecting.

Samarra, Vivek and I. In a unified, close knit composition. Joy, warmth, love.

For most of the past five days, Vivek and I have all been in this pose.

Although the couple with the baby in this painting symbolise good cheer, it has been anything but that. Our little one has been very sick with the runs.

In lay terms it is called teething diarrhea. Babies this age go crawling all over the place putting things in their mouths to relieve the irritation of emerging teeth. There is no point buying them teethers or other toys that they are supposed to put in their mouths because most of the time, the baby is interested in a muddy shoe or bathroom slippers or dusty furniture legs. Then they pick up some stomach bug that takes its toll, completely draining them of energy and drive. Guess it is just another phase that parents have to go through.

Sigh. Get well soon my love...

It's been a rough patch but the only thing that gets me through really bad times is my sense of making light of the whole thing. So, all due apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The pun was itchingly good to resist!

Two "feel good" Paintings

I made these two for my aunt's living room. She is a "flowers" person and wanted something bright and happy for her room. I saw two works that I liked and made them for myself. Of course, I took liberties and added a few things and subtracted others. Of late, I have been doing commissions. I always hope and pray that they are not flowers or landscapes. Most of my clients are still stuck with the two subjects when it comes to putting up art on their walls. However, there is one client who has approached me to make him a work symbolizing energy and light. He has left subject matter and medium to me. I am thinking about painting a fantasy interpretation of the Eagle Nebula. Now that will be challenging and fun. Watch this space!

The Dream Of the Blue Turtles

I finally put the finishing touches on this large Diptych for my bro's room which was inspired by Sting's album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. Sting apparently had a dream in which he saw massive blue mutant turtles coming out of the water and heading towards a lush garden full of flowers. The turtles began to devour the foliage. The dream had Jungian connotations- the garden was a symbol for the psyche and the turtles symbolized the immense potential within all human beings, the artistic core that lay in slumber, waiting to awaken and flower, to devour the world with its power.

My bro was revamping his room and had got these beautiful sea green curtains and cerulean blue bed spread. He wanted a Diptych for his room that stood for energy and positivity. I racked my brains for a good theme. I first thought I would make a diptych with the characters of all his friends being carried in the air by Phoenixes! It freaked most of them out. I tried convincing them them that the Phoneixes were not carrying them away to have them for dinner and that the bird was one of good omen. But for most of them, my theme was the stuff of nightmares. Since my bro's room is their hang out and they were going to be there most of their free time, I decided it did not make sense to put something on the walls that made them feel like they were on the menu of some mythical bird. I decided to be a little more conventional. But I simply had to paint something that "came out of my mind", so here they are, the two paintings and how, I suppose, Sting would have dreamt them?

Of Books and Thrones...

Now this is one that has foxed me for years.

I've met people who swear that it is the most natural thing to do and that there is even a certain pleasure associated with combining the two. In fact, they aver that there is almost a symbiotic relationship between the two completely different activities. I have always viewed it as disgusting, almost perverse. Now, married to one who indulges everyday in the same enterprise, the question becomes all the more intriguing- how can people can exercise the intellect and work the anal sphincters at the same time? Simply put, how can one possibly crap and read simultaneously?

I think of myself as a multi-tasker. Being a busy mom and working from home, doing several activities, it is the only way I can have some sort of a greasy grip on my life. But one thing I can never do, is read while on the throne. For me the entire process of elimination is a very simple three step process-run to the crapper, take a dignified seat and give myself ten minutes at the most. If nothing significant happens, I leave and come back when I am more inspired. If there is anything I abhor, it is sitting and sitting till the marble gives your gluteus maximus rigor mortis.

My husband has a completely different approach to the art, though. He'll be headed off with something that really requires the brain to be present and functional, like Godel, Escher, Bach or Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point or some other dense read of the sort tucked under his arm. He will alight after an hour( on a good day) and will be beaming on two jobs well done. Now, I've read both the books and if I quizz him, he will be able answer my queries. That means, he has actually read while engaged in the other activity. Like Archimedes, who was also inspired while in the bathroom, though not exactly while on the comode, some of his best ideas happen while in there. I can never figure out how!

People have all kinds of anxieties- stranger anxiety, performance anxiety , what not. I have Crapper-anxiety. I think it goes back to the days when we had to crap in the desert during the time we spent as refugees, in Baghdad and in Amman during the Guf War. So, I put it down to some kind of post-traumatic stress. The thought of sitting on the comode for more than ten minutes makes my skin crawl. Crap is crap and it is difficult to be tolerant of even one's own! So, the moment it is curtain call, I am out of the place. Which is why I can never understand how people can sit "over it" and wait for some sort of second wind. Eeeeugh!

When I was in college and was staying in a dorm, my roomie and I used to split the newspaper money. The moment the paper boy hurled it onto our balcony, my roomie would grab it and march off to the toilet, with towel wrapped round her waist. It would come back, soggy in parts and thoroughly crumpled. It would disgust me to hold it and read it later. That's because we had the "Indian style" toilet in the dorms. Each toilet was a dingy, grey, jail cell in which a person could barely fit. There would be no light sometimes and quite often there would be something dripping ominously from the roof ( there were toilets right above on the next floor, so no points for guessing what the drip was) . The toilet was a marble slab onto which you, well, did "your stuff", while squatting on the floor. And then, you had to wash it off with water in a mug.

Given the facilities, I would make a mental picture of my roomie reading the newspaper, squatting over the slab and wondered how she managed paper and water and mug and the coordination with just two hands. Even worse, the paper would sometimes come back with patches of soap on it. We Indians do not use toilet paper to clean ourselves. We use water and soap.

The psychological horror was too much. I quit reading the newspaper.

While staying with a high-flying journalist friend on another occasion, I happened to look through her book case. She had the most amazing collection- Communist Manifesto, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Collected works of Rudyard Kipling and yes, even The World Scriptures. All beautifully arranged in a glass book shelf. In her toilet.

I was quite scandalised. Being a creature of cultural conditioning, I admonished her for keeping "holy books" like the scriptures or for that matter, any book, in her bathroom. We had been brought up to believe that Saraswathi the supreme faculty of knowlegde and books, the embodiment of it, are sacred. All she could say was with all due respect to Saraswathi, Goddess of learning, the only time she got to read and review a book, was while on the Crapper. The only way she could keep her job was if she read and the only time she got to read was while nature called.

I am increasingly beginning to believe that reading in the toilet is genetically determined. No one in my family or even my extended kin reads while in the toilet. I know of one aunt who married into the family, who took a Cosmopolitan into the bathroom and got a thrashing from her husband and mother-in-law for "gross disrespect" to a book. I think the lady was so stunned, she gave up reading any written matter all together. If books are found on the floor or even on the kitchen counter, my father will throw a fit. Even manuals to pressure cookers and water filters have to be disposed off with dignity. So, the question of reading in the toilet does not even arise.

I wonder what Samarra's genetic composition is when it comes to the "reading-in-the-toilet" genome. My husband, is an avid toilet-reader while I, being an extremist on this topic, think all toilet-readers should be guilliotined. Not so much for religious or cultural reasons as it is for the hygiene of it. If there is anything that makes me queasy, it is seeing a book with wet patches and soap suds, knowing that the person who was reading it happened to be soaping his bum minutes before...

MUTT-erings

Five months back, when the doctor okayed me for exercise, I hit the road at 5:00a.m, with jogging shoes, track pants and 33 dimpled pregnancy pounds still wobbling wickedly on my rear end.

Kalyan Nagar is full of joggers and even at 5:00a.m, the dirt road adjacent to the Highway is full of enthusiastic health freaks, ploughing down, panting away the pounds. New to the whole jogging game, I went equipped with everything possible- good gear, a rich moisturizer slathered on, lip-salve, removable hood to beat the drizzle, cell phone and of course, a small bottle of water. But I completely forgot to carry the most important things that any jogger in Bangalore should carry- sticks and stones.

Bangalore, especially Kalyan Nagar, is ruled by gangs. Vicious ones at that. You can hear them right outside your gates every night- large, intimidating groups of them, making a Godawful racket. Gang wars happen in the wee hours of the morning. Attacks on rival gangs are a daily occurance and one can see the tell-tale casualties in the morning in the form of patches of blood or skin. Residents are fearful of stepping out and being attacked. Last week,a scooterist venturing out late at night was chased down the road by a gang of four. In a desperate bid to get away, he went flying over a speed breaker and landed in a drain breaking a few ribs and some vertebrae. What's funny about these gangs is that they are not interested in your wallet or your jewellery at all. They don't even necessarily harm you everytime time they chase you and corner you. Sometimes, all they want to do is nothing more than scare the shit out of you with their barks.

Kalyan Nagar, you see, is ruled by stray dogs.

Every jogger in Kalyan Nagar knows that the best way to escape the rabies shots is to go armed with a long, stout stick and a few large stones.It looks ridiculous- people going for a thirty minute walk dressed like they are trekking thirty miles of hard terrain! On day 1, I was half way up the road when Canine number one aproached me, baring gums and yes, the canines! He was a big solid fellow, with a dash of pedigree somewhere. Perhaps the bastard son of one of the pure bred "resident" dogs, who went for daily walks with his master and enjoyed an occasional roll in the hay with one of the attractive lady-strays, heh heh? I darted to the other side of the road. Drat! Bad move, there were two more of them waiting over there. Canine number one picked up speed and bad temper and lunged for me. I let out the most piercing scream, expecting to be dismembered, only to find that he had whizzed past me and was ripping up the other two dogs! Perhaps some unfinished bone-picking from the previous night? I immdeiately scooped up a few stones, lined my pockets and hit the dirt road where there were other human beings for company.

The next few days were pretty uneventful. I had found a stick by now and had my arsenal of stones. So, everytime I anticipated trouble in a dogged situation, I just flashed the stick or hurled a stone. Once in a while a stone hurled at a dog would miss and hit a jogger and there would be glares. But no one really took major offence.Enduring a stone, in Kalyan Nagar Jogger Jargon, was better than being bitten.

Soon, I found out that it was not just the strays that were bothersome but also the ones on leashes that some of the human beings brought along. I swear, I once saw an elderly gentleman jogger being flown through the air like a kite by his German Shepherd in hot pursuit of a stray! And I will never forget the time this obese lady came up right behind me with her equally well padded dog. The mutt started taking an interest in sniffing my behind and kept getting too close for comfort. It did not make me feel any better that it wasn't a stray or that it was on a leash.It was my behind and it frightened me to have a cold muzzle so dangerously close, investigating it.It did not matter to the lady that I kept looking back in anxiety. She glared straight through me and her dog kept tailing my behind with renewed interest. I finally shooed-shooed the dog and it started barking wildly. At which point I jumped out of my skin and mouthed some expletives. The obese lady shot at me " My dog wasn't talking to you, okay!". Gees,did you know that dogs in Kalyan Nagar can talk?

One of the most iritating things the strays do is crap all over the place. They will be dotting the sidewalks, multi-hued and freshly piped with pointy tapering ochre tips.I've hosed clean my sneakers many a time in the garden, having stepped on some steaming cone of dog pooie. Strays can still be forgiven as they have obviously had no one to teach them good etiquette. But what about the educated people who live in my colony who let their dogs crap anywhere and everywhere? Unlike abroad, where you have to clean your dog's shit off the sidewalk if the creature decides to take a dump, there are no such rules in India. I have actually seen people in my colony let the dog crap on the road just outside my gate.They will look the other way while the dog completes its job with the most foolish expression of relief. Then both mutt and master will make off leaving behind the relic for some else to step on and discover plastered under his shoe...

To rephrase Shakepseare, in India, All the world is a Toilet. For both man and mutt.

Damn Blogger!

Why the hell is Blogger not allowing comments on this site? I'v spent a good forty five minutes of my time fiddling with settings, template and every other wretched button possible to try and enable comments but all I get is "Comments have been disabled by the Administrator" on this blog entry. Damn it, I am the Administrator, right? And I HAVEN'T said I don't want comments on my blog!Technology is such a pain... Anyone else having problems with the Blogger settings? I spent half an hour last night trying to find the tool bar. It suddenly disappeared. By the way, this entry is going to look scrambled because the Goddamned Tool Bar is Missing again!!! Oh noe, there it has reappeared. Gone again! What is happening? Some alien Mothership playing havoc with my comp?

Tailoring Tales

I know zilch about stitching. However, I just finished making two silk tops for myself and have ventured to cut an empire-yoke top which I am in the process of fumbling with.

My method for figuring out a pattern is to stare and stare at a photo and then mentally undress the poor model. Then, I'll fit the pieces of cloth back together like a big quilted puzzle in my head and proceed to make paper patterns.

My mom's a designer and an incredibly good one at that. She has some stiff, irritatingly mathematical, scientific approaches to designing which are too clinical for my liking. For example, to find the exact point where you have to get the arm hole depth on a blouse , she will say something like "one quarter of chest measurement minus one half of neck depth plus two inches". And what is amazing about the seemingly ridiculous formula is that you can use it to find arm hole depth of creatures as varied in size as Kate Moss and Queen Latifah to the accuracy of six decimal points and be assured that it will fit both perfectly at their respective arm holes without a hint of undergarment showing!!! Sounds like the Golden Mean or The Divine Ratio? Fibonacci would get a complex! The builders of the Great Pyramids would run away hanging their heads in shame. Wonder which modern day tailoring Pythagoras arrived at it, because mom certainly did not. It was handed down to her by an extremely emaciated "master" as she calls him, somewhere in a small town in Kerala.

Although I have what I call her Divine Notes to Dress making, I still like to do it the struggling artist style. There is a certain pleasure in sweating it out and getting the pattern right. And for botched efforts, there is always that piece of lace that goes underneath or an applique that goes on top and abracadabra, you have a new top anyway. What started off as pants becomes blouse but no one really needs to know that.

I think I first tried my hand at stitching when I was about 15. I made a petticoat for myself. Being mom's disciple, I made it using her Divine Notes. Everything was perfect- I measured every part using the corresponding rocket science formulae, cut it all out, sewed and ironed and realized that I did not fit into it. I had forgotten to leave the golden "stitching allowance" which went by the formula " two inches this-side that-side". So, there was no way I could get into the petticoat without tearing it at the seams. I had a life sized stuffed toy of Big Bird and my first creation was worn by Big Bird. Although it was entirely my fault that my precious petticoat was a disaster, in a classic case of bad worker blaming tools, I decided to get off the Notes path and play it by instinct with future tailoring ventures.

So far, my creations have not really let me down. Literally. Except on two occasions. During my pregnancy, I made myself a pair of maternity pants. I simply cut off the front of an existing pair and sewed some elastic material onto it and wore it in a wrap and pin style. As my tummy grew, the elastic got stretched and stretched to give me a snug fit. That's till the day I went in for a check up at the doctor's. I bent down to take my socks and shoes off and there was a kkkkkrrrrrr ping! sound. The pin flew off and hit some files in the gynecologist's office. There I was, with my elastic band hanging down my legs like a flat elephant's trunk. The doctor and his assistant rifled through the files for some good ten minutes to find the silly clip but gave up finally. After my check up, the doctor gave me a needle and surgical thread to sew the elastic band on temporarily till I got home!

Then there was my infamous invention- the maternity panties. In my opinion, panties are more irritating than useful for an expectant mom. Unless you go and get maternity panties that go up all the way to your rib cage, you can spend a good nine months pulling and tugging and adjusting them in public. They cost quite a bit too. So, I decided to cut corners and did exactly that- I cut the corners! I slit the sides of my normal panties and wow! the stomach with it's new inflated avatar, held the pair in place perfectly. They did not go all the way up, obviously, but stayed lovingly round the hips like an off-shoulder top would. Once the baby was out, I should have had the good sense to stitch the sides back or even better, throw them away and get a new pair. But I left them lying around. One day, while getting ready after a bath, in a tearing hurry to go to the supermarket, I happened to find one of my split friends in the closet and put them on. And of all the wretched things I have in my closet, that fateful day, I decided to wear a SKIRT.

I ran out the door and was halfway down the road when disaster struck. With no bloated tummy or thunder thighs to hold it in place, the suckers started SLIDING DOWN! Before I could do anything, they fell plonk to my knees. The friendly neighbor was outside, watering her plants. I faked a knee spasm, held tightly onto the offending garment through my skirt and hobbled back home before she could come and help me! Imagine what would have happened if they had fallen down to my ankles in the middle of the boulevard, which is what happened when I put the key in the door... My creation actually fell on its face.

Expert Opinions

I'm seeing red. I haven't been in this foul a mood in a long time, I say. I have a lot of peeves and I find that with age, the list of pet peeves keeps increasing. I also have more than normal tolerance levels but some things just grate on my nerves like nobody's business.

And one of them, in fact, the topmost one on the list, would be the people who claim to know everything about you, have an opinion on your life, your choices and relationships...

They are everywhere. Nosey Parkers, who waltz into your life in many motely guises- relatives, associates, acquaintances, mother's friends, father's wards, and tragically, oh-so-tragically, even friends.

They profess to know everything about you from the time you were a 16-celled morula, rolling down into your mother's womb. What's so irritating about these people is that they see a snippet of your life- maybe an hour spent at your home; or a weekend with your family and then they draw elaborate sets of conclusions, decide how exactly you are wired, what makes you tick and what your relationship with and role in the entire cosmic scheme is.

Take for example one of my mom's good friends and yes, to some extant, a friend of mine too ( It never ceases to amaze me how "friend" is such an abused word). Person lands up from another city last week after a space of five years. Person gives me a ring. Person asks me about me, the hubby, the kid, the weather and the stock market. I tell Person that my folks will be visiting next week and I am so looking forward to them being here because it has been over four months since they last saw the baby. Also, the last time my mom was here, we had had a blast and I really missed goofing around with her. She's my best buddy after all.

Person goes silent at the other end. Then drawls in a very CONDESCENDING and JUDGMENTAL voice " Oh, you mean to say you have patched up with your mother? Very good, very good. She is a model woman, you know, and you should appreciate her more! You gave her a hard time you know, they way you were. She was wonderful through it all. You were a tough cookie, you know. You ought to be grateful for her tolerance. You were awful, really down and out. You were so difficult to live with". That's just a snippet of the conversation. The gist of it all was- mom was great, I was a mean low-life, Mephistopheles, destined for hell and how in blazes had we patched up?

A little parenthesis here- I hate Bangalore. The city, the people, the lethargy, the lack of depth, the materialistc culture. I had to come to this hell hole under very awful circumstances, having had some devastating personal downfalls from which, at the time, I thought I would never rise. Fruitful employment in my field ( a field which does not even exist in this city, in my opinion), was hard to find. I went into severe depression. This was like an ancient, rotting, 7 years ago. At that time, it so happened that my mother and I developed some serious ideological differences and couldn't see eye to eye on many things. In fact, anything. We had cold wars, verbal showdowns. I just wanted to defy her because I felt she did not understand or help me. And many a time, visitors to the house could also sense this disconnect. Not that we were having cat fights on the terrace, but it was thick in the air, the resentment. But what the judgmental Nosey Parkers among them did not see ( because they were not present at the appropriate time and situation to draw ANOTHER set of conclusions) was that EVEN during this time, my mother and I did many fun things together, shopped, goofed around. Even during our rough patches we never lost the mother-daughter connection. What these people do not understand is that blood is thicker than water and ulimately no matter how wide the hiatus, there is always the umbilical tie that binds a parent and child. And no one has a right to pass an opinion on that bond.

I must bitch about Person, pissed off as I am. Person's mother is a control freak,a mimi-ogre in his own words, who goes to the unimaginable extant of rifling through his pockets and folders the moment he arrives from work - to see if he has any love-letters from any women tucked in anywhere. Person, in spite of being 30Plus, has to report to mother about his whereabouts everyday at a particular time. Person cannot talk on the phone to anyone unless mother dearest takes the call first and makes sure it is not a woman at the other end. I know for a fact that Person resents all this. Which human being wouldn't? In fact, the last time I met him, Person had bitched about mother no end. He had horrendous hurdles communicating with her. At one point, severely harassed, he even told me he wished that she was dead...

Aaaaah, the mind, memory. Such a fickle thing. Such a mysterious faculty. What a wonder of science that we remember only other people's shit...

Now, meeting Person after 5 years, I could have very well taken him down memory lane, recited a few of his anguished lines of yester-years for his refreshment and asked " Yo, is your mom still a pain in the ass, man? Does she still have a GPS slapped on your bum?". I could have taken a dig at how things were with him and his mom, years ago. I happened to be very intersted in Archaeology, especially Paleontology but digging up other people's skeletons is not one of my favorite pastimes. I could have also passed some scholarly judgments like his. But I did not. Because that is not me. I am not saying that I do not form my own opinions, right or wrong, when I see things. We all do. We are constantly judging and drawing conclusions. But the difference is, I just don't open my big fat mouth and spout expert opinions. Because it is not my place and I could be terribly mistaken about things ( just like the Nosey Parkers are thoroughly mistaken about me).

There is something called Evolution. Not in the Darwinian context but the constant process of change and maturation which all human beings, hopefully, go through. Even assholes don't stay assholes forever. People change. In my expert opinion( I think I should pass one, considering that everyone's shooting one) , Person is stuck in a rut. And that is so sad...

I think people who say they have never had any difference of opinion of any sort with their parents fall in the same 1% bracket as those folks who say they never spank the monkey.

They are lying. Heh heh...

A Clothes Skunk

I went to Commercial Street yesterday armed with 3500 Rs. That's about 70$. I was all set to buy a Kashmiri Jacket which has been an object of deep desire for the past 10 years.

I walked into an emporium and tried on a few styles. They were all amazing. Just as the shop keeper was about to ask me which one I would finally take, I got cold feet. Chilled feet, in fact. I suddenly had some surreal visions of starving kids in Somalia and cold, foodless winters in Siberia. Of course, expensive is a relative term and most of my friends would have called me a miser. Each article of their clothing would cost that much and more. You see, I don't mind throwing away 3500 bucks on books, paints or music. But on a jacket...

I apologized to the shop keeper, made some sorry excuse like the cut was not to my liking and it made me look ten pounds heavier. I shuffled and showed a clean pair of heels before he hurled the cash register at me.

I should not have gone to that shop in the first place because I very well knew that an embroidered jacket would cost me an arm and a leg. But I went there thinking that I could, for once, snuff out that side of me that screamed no-no at expensive things.

I was back on the street wondering what to do next. I have this uppity-shuppity party to go to next week. A guy from Vivek's high-flying alumni association is throwing a bash and we are all cordially invited. I need something good to wear.

I won't be seen dead in brands. Or the famous silk saris of the south. Or the expensive salwar-kurtas that are doing the rounds this year. I only feel comfortable in bargains. I am the kind who will go to export-reject shops and pick up that amazing looking scarf that has an itsy-bitsy stain somewhere on the side and is hence going for a third of the price. I'll pick up the pair of jeans with the incredible cut and wash which no one wants because the zipper does not go up as smooth as butter. I'll buy the damned thing for a heavy discount, take it home and rub some vegetable oil on it and hey presto, there is an amazing bargain draping my bum! I do the rounds of shops that are clearing away stock at discounted prices. I reserve shopping sprees for the end of the season when shops are literally crying out to people to almost take away sweaters and blazers for free in a desperate bid to clear their shelves for new stock.

I am a Leo and I believe that I am anything but a cheapo. But unlike all the Leos I have known and what ever the hell the Zodiac says of my tribe, I am just not comfortable in expensive stuff. I like adventurous stuff, slighty bold stuff too but costly stuff is out for me. However, I AM seen in fashionable, eye-catching designs. Vivek's aunt, who was a diva in her time ( and who does not know my deep dark secret of bargain-hunting), complimented the way I dress and said that I am trendy. I was very proudly sharing it with my bro who knows that my strategy is heading for the bargain basement and desperately hoping that there is something there that looks nice. Hence my so called "trendy" wardrobe is the product of pure chance, the miniscule, stray ink drop on the edge of a sleeve or the missing stitch in a trouser leg. He feels I am not Trendy but a THENDI ( Malayalam for cheapskate...)

I walked into an arcade that had some fancy tops and blouses. I saw a really cool lace top with all kinds of strings. Looked more like lingere but yeah, very party. I tried it on and yeah, it was very sexy. I asked for the price and damn, it was was way out of my league! I was not prepared to part with a 1000 bucks for something that didn't have more cloth on it than a thong! Gees, what is the world coming to? Do I have to shell out exorbitant amounts to look good? How am I going to manage that with the pittance I get paid? No wonder no one is going for a teaching job these days...

I finally decided that enough was enough. It was humiliating walking into shops, trying things on and then making some foolish excuse like there is a thread sticking out somewhere and hence I don't want it... Either I had to change with the times or change my strategy to dressing like I wanted to. I decided on the latter. I walked into a modest shop that had all kinds of sewing materials. I got some glass and wooden beads, some gold thread, lace and crotchet borders. Then I got a length of rich silk which cost me a bit but was worth it. I got back home, checked up the Net for sexy designs. Once baby hit the bed at 9p.m, I got down to measuring, cutting and stitching. Am bad at using a sewing machine, so I did everything by hand. By today afternoon, my top for the party next week was ready. It looks really nice and it cost me UNDER 150 bucks. That is 3$.

I made a resolution today. If there is some pattern I really like and desperately want to wear, I shall simply cut and sew and make it, trial and error. It has worked so far. Expensive shopping is not for me. If there is one thing I wear with pride, it is my personality. I'm happy with that.

Enough of Thendi-dom...

Chinese and Chennai

Today was a really good day. I made some tasty Masala Upma for breakfast, Samarra had all her feeds without a fuss, her father did not leave clothes lying in the middle of the room, the water in the sump did not run out and I tracked and killed the blasted cockroach that was hiding in my drawer and eating my chiffon tops. The best part though, was my Ao Dai, the Vietnamese dress that I have been laboring over for sometime now. I had somehow managed to sew one by looking at pictures on the Net. It fitted well and looked really nice. I put finishing touches on it, embroidering a large Chinese Dragon on the chest. Vivek said I looked like I was wearing a Superhero costume, while my brother thought I looked like a waiter at Three Quarter Chinese, the plush restaurant. Idiots...

I was supposed to be in Chennai this weekend and had planned to stay on for about ten days with my doting mom-in-law ( she's really great; this is NOT a sarcastic dig at the poor woman!). Hours before the journey, Samarra came down with a mild cold. I decided it did not make much sense to travel with a sick baby and canceled my tickets. Chennai is one hell of a city. Pun intended. It is so infernally hot there for about ten months of the year, I wonder how people manage to stay sane! The city is well planned, good roads, decent human beings, but everytime that I have been there, I have sworn that I have heard my brain gurgle and bubble. I have changed clothes umpteen times a day, stewing in my own sweat. What's unnerving is how the people there wear silk saris all year round and still look as fresh as daisies while walking bare headed in the mid-day sun. On enquiry, they will say "We are used to the heat". I don't think I will ever get "used to" being barbecued day in and day out.

When Vivek proposed to me, the first thing I said ( even before saying yes) was " I will not have to live in Chennai right?" . I still remember the first time he took me to the city. He had told his folks that he had met the woman he wanted to marry and would be bringing her over to meet them. We got tickets on an air conditioned coach and all was well till we reached Chennai Central Station. The doors opened. And that was the last thing I remembered coherently. There were people milling, sweat beads flying. It stung to breathe as if someone had put a feeding tube up my nose. The air was pure water vapor. Vivek was saying something in a zombie voice. After a while there was no voice. Just his lips moving ridiculously. I felt my entire life pass before me like a movie and then, I passed out. Not kidding...

The debate on the location of Eden on earth has been raging on for centuries now. Finally, historians have zeroed in on Lebanon. There will never be any debate about where Hell would be if it was located on earth. Chennai would win hands down...

And Purgatory would be in Bangalore but I will reserve that topic for later...

Choose Life

I was reading about the amazing life of Jim MacLaren. It was so hard to stay dry-eyed. Jim had everything going for him- star student at an Ivy league, athlete, aspiring actor. Then one day, he got hit by a bus and his leg had to be amputated. Not to be deterred, he fought back and became a triathlete, competing with a prosthetic leg. He beat even able bodied athletes at their game! Then, lightning struck twice- he got hit AGAIN by a vehicle while competing in a triathlon event and was paralyzed. He became a quadriplegic. After dealing with the depression, he made yet another come back, enduring gruelling therapy and astounded his doctors by regaining some motor function. Jim is still in wheel chair but his spirit is as strong as ever. He is now a motivational speaker and heads the Choose Living Foundation...

Wow.

Most of us would have given up and died physically, emotionally and mentally with the first accident itself. But this man beat the odds and became an achiever in spite of his handicap. For someone who made such super-human efforts to get back to life, the second accident could have got him thinking that some "strange force" was conspiring to maim and cripple him. He could have dwindled into a mass of self pity, negativity and cynicism. He could have even decided to commit suicide. But he "chose life" instead.

I felt so humbled reading about Jim...

I was looking at my own life the other day and making a mental note of the things I have cribbed about and branded myself a failure for not achieving:

1. not being able to go to an Ivy League because we did not have the money at the time
2. not being able to sell paintings on a large scale and be a well-known artist
3. not being able to have the career I want in a city like Bangalore
   

As I kept listing, I started feeling ashamed... And petty. There were people in the world making come backs after devastatingly unimaginable lows purely on the strength of their conviction. And here was I, with legs, hands, nose, eyes, family, health, house, spouse, everything intact and functioning, wasting my time cribbing and feeling like a loser when I could do so much with my life. Of course, the war experience that I went through taught me that life is a blessing and that simply being alive is a gift in itself. But somewhere along the line, I had forgotten those priceless lessons. I had started to measure myself against the inflated expectations of those around me- my parents who wanted their "golden prodigy" to do so much more in life than I had achieved, proud relatives who wanted me to be in a "position of power", doting friends who were sure I would "reach for the skies". I did in my own way, I guess but it was never good enough. Over the years, I lost my confidence and my head once held high was buried in my chest. I became a complicated mass of complexes. Yes, we are finally crowned successful or condemned as burn outs based on whether we have achieved fame and fortune. But the lesson that Jim MacLaren's, or for that matter Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah's, Lance Armstrong's, or any other inspirational figure's lives exemplify is that life has to be a celebration- of life. That in itself is an achievement!

I want to make a fresh start in life.

I choose to choose life!

---

That said, one has to admit that life is without a doubt a mesh of multi-layered ironies. There will be frustrations and set backs for us common folk in our own small ways, every day. One of the best ways of dealing with it all, my mother taught me, is to look at life tongue in cheek with humor and good cheer. Not only will it give your blog ruminating space, it will also prevent high blood pressure and heart attacks. So,I shall soon be bitching about what happened at an Art gallery in Bangalore when I went there with my work and shall be taking digs at Bangalore the City itself. But please note, blog readers and potential bashers, the operative word is "good cheer". Am not exercising double standards! It is bye-bye negativity, hello humor.

Ting ting ting, Let the free for all begin!

Doggone!

Samarra saw dogs for the first time yesterday at her great-uncle's place. She was not one bit scared of them and kept lunging for their snouts and tails. The dogs, Betty and Shenzi, were terrified of her. Shenzi especially kept backing off as she tried to tweak his ears off the way she tries to maul noses off our faces.He had the most pathetic look on his face as she got onto his back for a forced piggy back ride for which he was most unwilling..

I've come down with a terrible cold. I opened the drawers to pick some clothes out for my trip to Chennai tomorrow and the smell of moth balls plus camphor triggered an infernal sneezing fit. Here I am sitting at my comp with slitty, watery eyes and runny nose wondering how I'll travel feeling this awful...

What do you do?

What do you do when a fellow blogger you have been tracking for over two months and whose thoughts/meditations are the best writing you have come across in all your life, suddenly puts up a post that reeks of suicide plans?

He actually leaves a suicide note and says it is his last post.

What do you do? You can't dial 911 sitting in a different country. You have no idea who he is or who his friends are so that you can alert some of them. He exists in a mesh of wires and electronic impulses called the Inernet. He is a virtual being...

All you can do is sit in front of your computer, halfway acros the globe and feel helpless. And very upset. Because over the course of two months, you have formed some kind of an emotional attachment. The kind you would feel for your friends in real life. A cyber friend who shares so much of his innermost thoughts and feelings does affect you on a emotional plane after a while.

Well, after a night of interrupted, disturbed sleep, my husband and I got up very early in the morning to check his blog. And he was there with a new post! He made it through another night...

I do not believe in the human constructs of Heaven and Hell and all that jazz. Or for that matter that those who commit suicide go to Hell or rot in Purgatory or whatever less the religious books threaten. I just know that it devastates those you leave behind and it is not fair to them.

All I believe is that it is never ever so bad that one has to call it quits on the world. Never...

Paper Paper Everywhere

If I die tomorrow, what would my greatest regret be? I thought long and hard on this and got the answer; it would be if I died without seeing the world...

Let's face one truth- we all get to live just once. At least that is what we understand. Maybe there are multi-verses and nine/eleven lives depending on whether you are cat or mouse, but then, those theories have not been proven. So whatever I get to do, I get to do in this life, in the here and the now, as I know it...

I've seen a bit of the world, having had the opportunity to travel. But that's like just the miniscule tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of destinations that I have just heard of that are beautiful and awe-inspiring. And in all probabilty, I am going to die one day having "seen" these destinations on just the TV, the Internet or on postcards..

Traveling is such a pain with all the paper work and official channels to clear. I really want to meet the human beings who invented the concept of the visa and the passport. Go to a particular country, something goes wrong for some reason at immigration ( you are not smiling as widely as you are in your passport photo or your middle parting is off center) and Stamp! Your "visa" has been rejected and you are "denied entry". Wonder if Early Men also had some kind of paper work of their own to clear when they crossed over from Africa to the rest of the world.

Of course, official channels, just like laws, are so necessary in the societies that we live in. But nevertheless, they are a pain! Imagine how it would have been in pre-historic times. One Early Man would have heard a defeaning splashing sound some miles away and walked in that dierction to discover the Niagra Falls. He would come back and tell other Early Men about how beautiful the foaming waters were. News would spread by word of mouth about this amazing natural jaccuzi where they could all have a bath and Early Men from very very far away would trugde all the way there to have a look at the place.Today, if I want to go see the Niagra Falls, I can't do it as innocently as getting up and getting there. My path from Kalyan Nagar, Bangalore to the Niagra Falls would be all littered with paper work!

I am applying for a Visa to go to Australia. That is provided I submit immediately the Passport Renewal Papers. That is provided I get Police Verification Papers. That is provided I get Proof of Address Papers. That is provided the gas company issues me the relevant Customer Indentification Papers... Aaargh paper work!