Will you step into my 'parlour'..

I hate going to the parlour. Any girl will get it in the first go, but for the benefit of the male readers who by now, must be already wondering why I hate icecreams or video games, I am talking about 'beauty parlours'. The term itself sounds kinda weird to me, as some of the other classic terms associated with the business and hence, acknowledged and accepted by ladies nationwide. What sense does 'eyebrow' make to you? Or better still, 'underarms'? They strike terror in my heart... Nazi's treated Jews better than these parlour ladies treat their clientele.
I enter the parlour with a heart beating really hard, and they greet me with the kindest smile. But these angels turn into draculas the moment they get down to business, eager to sink their greedy teeth in my 'uncared for' skin. The best part is that they always succeed in persuading me into getting done more than what I would have planned and been prepared for. I would just go to get my eyebrows tidied, and return with the whole body waxed. Or if I go for a cleanup, I would get coerced into a 7 course, one-and-a-half hour long elaborate facial. I am not sure about the glow that they promise would come in a couple of days, but it surely leaves me bored to death. Still, I must admit I do feel lighter, with all the excess hair, dead skin, dirt and grime with black/white/grey-heads gone, along with some real hard cash. The irony of the whole thing is that all of these will come back real quick but the money won't, sigh! The trick is simple yet highly effective. While I get my eyebrows done, one of the girls there would comment on how dull my skin looks, and suggest me some facial. And during the facial, somebody would ask me if I would want to get my body hair removed, since it is so overgrown. I would reluctantly agree, just to cover up for my embarassment. Besides, it is not just wasting time or parting with money that hurts me so much, there is some solid physical torture involved. Plucking one hair at a time from the eyebrow is the most gruesome form of torture. Pouring hot wax all over you, and then plucking bunches of hair in multiple jerky efforts stands next. Infact I have heard of similar technique used with prisoners of war where their hair and nails are plucked ruthlessly to force military secrets out of them. At times like this, I try to recall all the not-so-good things that I have ever done, and suffer in silence hoping God would count it against my sins. Anyways, even as I write this, I am sure I need to visit the parlour soon. And it might be as early as tomorrow itself. So long..

Engineering begins early..

I have been awfully busy and slightly lazy the whole of last and current month. Not writing any new posts, I couldn't even publish an already completed one. No, posting doesn't take much time but I want to put a picture with that post like this one, and that has to be trasferred from my camera to the computer, and subsequently to the blog. Quite some work, isn't it? But I would really like to share this little incident that left me thoroughly amused. My daughter has this little, rather noisy toy, with a bear pedalling down having a drum in the front, which has several tiny aircrafts that revolve around an axis, simultaneously dipping and rising too. What I could make out of this is that the bear is vending airplanes on an icecream trolley kinda thing, and singing a little too loudly to attract customers. Sounds terribly weird, ain't? But my little lady loves it. And though the bear is quite capable of travelling on a pair of duracells, she likes to carry it around in her arms, dropping it often in the process. One such fall broke one of its legs, and the drum in the front couldn't rotate anymore, creating an irritating mechanical noise in the effort. This quickly got on my nerves, and I pestered my husband out of his couch to fix it. Since it had to do with daughter dearest, he promptly swung into action armed with his tool box. Now, my husband has this truly remarkable quality of treating the smallest of mechanical chores with utmost importance and he took to fixing this toy with lot of seriousness and zest. An engineer working on NASA's to-be-launched-asap-spacecraft cannot work with more precision and concentration. He carefully removed the intact leg, studied the mechanism there and then started on the broken one. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally got up putting everything together, and declared positively--'This cannot be done!'
Me: Why?
Husband: Mechanical + technical + laws of physics == gibberish.
Me: There should be some way to do it.
Husband: More gibberish.
Me: Why don't you try putting some glue, or probably tape?
Husband: Won't help. (Supplementary bullshit.)
Me: What if I skim the trash and get you the broken leg back?
Husband: Grrrrrrrrrrrr.......#$^%&*@#$... Do it yourself!
Me: !!! (rush back to the kitchen)

By this time, the baby had lost all patience, and she walked off with her toy to another room. And seeing the way she was forcefully twisting the drum trying to make it rotate, I thought the bear is on its way to eternity..



I didn't see the toy again till the following evening when my husband suddenly remarked with a twinkle in his eye and perceptible distrust in his voice, 'She has fixed it!'. The drum was rotating perfectly. We continued to stare at the toy, the bear was pedalling down merrily, singing loudly and following suit with a huge grin was our budding engineer.

Till technology do us apart...

It is almost 10.30, Wednesday night. I am at my laptop checking mails, catching up with some blogs, and intermittently chatting to 2 friends one of which, incidently happens to be my husband as well... No, he is not away to the US on one of those 'short' month-long official trips. He is in the same house, the next room to be precise. Given the dimensions of my modest abode, it is not possible for him to be more than 25 feet away. Infact, but for the incessant blaring of the tv, I dont even need to shout to be heard. And yet, we chat.. Needless to say, none of us are working or doing anything even close to serious. I know for myself, and he cannot work even if he wants too, reason being straight, he has had no work for the last 4 weeks. He is most likely reading soccer news or some sports article on the web with ESPN running on the tv. Can't be playing one of those computer games else he would have been too busy to even chat. He sends me funny emoticons, and suggestive audibles, and I reply back with spunk. Nothing amiss there, normal playful bantering which makes this evening slighly more interesting. My little one comes to me, and tries to play piano notes on the delicate keypad. I send her to her father. She readily agrees since she knows he has a better laptop and departs. And now I see her going to her nanny with a grim ready-to-scream face.. looks like daddy also refused the budding musician much opportunity and access to his system. Poor kids, nobody really cares for their sentiments and never buys them anything that they really want.. It must be really tough being a kid. By Jove! My husband just got offline.. now, he shall be here any moment. I'll better sign off.. Good Night.

p.s. It really surprises me how technology successfully brings people from all walks of the world so close, and yet creates virtual distances between those closest!

It doesn't get any better..

I have been pretty irregular at updating this blog. Not that anybody expected it otherwise. My friends consider me the epitome of laziness, and I expect my tombstone to read something like 'May her soul rest in as much peace as her body did even before it got shifted here', all courtesy these same prejudiced 'friends', sigh! However I have different thoughts. I personally believe that I am not lazy, just kinda.. uhhh... inactive, the sort of people who remain overly busy even while doing nothing. The blogging gets missed because I always have so much to do, especially on weekdays. Lets ignore the fact that I invariably end up not doing most of it, that is always due to some unavoidable circumstances and hardly affects the truth of the previous statement. I regularly read a number of blogs and irregularly post a few. The credit goes to the slow processes which comprise a huge chunk of my daily work in the office. By the time a process completes I am generally manage to finish reading a full length post or write about half a post. And there begins the misfortune of my blog. Had the processes been a little more slow, my blog would have been flooded with posts. The large number of incomplete posts in my blog are because when I start the second process, somebody usually calls me for coffee. And then I come back, start the third process, and get invited for a game of pool. By the time the 4th process starts, it is already time for lunch.. then foosball, snacks, and finally its time for the cab back home. Now surely, I cannot miss the office cab, not at least on the way back and so the poor post keeps dangling somewhere in mid air. This company is killing my blog, and I am seriously looking for a change. There are other trivial reasons also for my low productivity like the complete lack of ideas and interest in writing, not to mention the absolute scarcity of audience. Despite my best efforts, only few (read 2) people on planet earth could be persuaded to read my blog. Actually there are 3 if you include my poor husband, but I'll be honest and not count him in since he reads it for completely different albeit much more powerful reasons than interest in my blog. Coming back to the two readers, though they are kind enough to read it regularly, they invariably drop some not-so-kind comments and that is hardly an encouragement. Still, in the true spirit of a blogger, I continue to shoulder my responsibility towards my dear faithful readers and here is my effort towards providing them with better means to kill time. I just happened to find truly outstanding blog, and it is something that I can vouch for. Humour just cannot get better than this.. Hats off to Rahul!

Ninindale...

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

I just happened to listen to this truly amazing song in the office cab sometime back, and am yet to get over it.. It is sheer magic. Mano Murthy's music has left me spellbound, and the fact that I can't understand a word, it is in Kannada, makes it all the more special. The poetry simply doesn't bother me unlike Hindi songs where I start pondering over the words and lose out on the ecstasy that music alone offers. There is just nothing that would interfere with the music, it flows like a river down a mountain. I enjoyed it exactly how my little girl enjoys music, pure and unadulterated. And given the current trend, I guess it will not be long before some bollywood music director draws 'inspiration' from this song, and gives us a Hindi version. Then probably, I can sing along too. If you happen to try it, do not get deterred by the 'hey hey' a-la-Kumar Sanu beginning, it ends just too soon. And if the lead voice sounds unusually familiar, you are more than right. It is our very own Sonu Nigam!

My Little Sister..

Today, she will be appearing for her 1st board exam.. All of 15 years, she is 6 inches taller to me, and quite naturally few pounds heavier too.. But I seldom see this gauche lanky teenager when I think of my sister. Probably because its been almost 5 years since I left home when she was a too much of a kid, partly 'coz I don't get to see her often now, and mostly coz' I don't make an effort to. I relate better to that tiny imp I used to tease to tears than this rather grown up girl. This post is meant to be a quick trip down the memory lane..

I saw her the day after she got born, and wasn't actually impressed. I was in the 6th standard and some of my classmates had little sisters who were in the kindergarten of our school. They were all pretty dainty things in pink and blue pinafores. My sister was too tiny for me to even hold properly, let alone having fun with her. I had not seen any newborns till then and was hugely disappointed with her.
But she did grow up fast, and in around 6 months she had us all wrapped around her little finger. I had little to do apart from attending school which would get over around 2 pm. Post school all my time, attention and energies were devoted to dear sis. Now, when I look at my daughter, I fervently wish I could spend even half of that time with her.

Vatu, as we call her was an extremely active baby, and me and my brother share the credit jointly for it. We always kept her overly busy with our pranks. One particularly favourite one was that which we played when she had just learnt walking, less than an yr old... we would lie on the bed, and dangle some part of the body in the air, and then call out for her.. 'My arm has fallen off, can you please pick it up'.. she would come running to our aid and by the time she would put the arm back on the bed, we would dangle a leg and repeat the trick. This might not make much sense now, but we enjoyed it immensely as kids. And our pranks did graduate to a higher level. Sample this one, we opened a bank called 'Didi-Bhaiya bank' and led Vatu into depositing whatever money she had got in our bank. We maintained an account book and also provided her with a check book for withdrawal! Offcourse, we never returned any of her money. And then, we made her work for us as was her duty towards revered older siblings. If we dropped a pencil under our desk, we would not get up to retrieve it. Rather, we would summon Vatu who would be in the other room or the next floor, we couldn't care less, to pick the pencil for us. Or we would lie on the bed, and call Vatu to put off the lights and the television. Sounds kinda outrageous now, but believe me, it was so much fun!

There is so much more that I can put down, like the time when she wore a brown silk frock with a creamish underskirt on her birthday and we told her that she looked like a 'gulabjamun' or preparing her for her first day of school by teaching her how to become a 'murga' and to do sit-ups holding her ears.. the list is just endless.. Lemme sign off for now, may be some later day I shall share more about my adventures with my little sis..

Jodhaa Akbar..

A disclaimer before I begin- This is not a movie review.

Frankly, I don't think highly enough of myself to play a critic to somebody's creativity, more so when the person in question is a master of his craft. I loved 'Swades' and was simply bowled over by 'Lagaan'. But for some reason, I couldn't quite connect with A.Gowarikar's latest offering, 'Jodhaa Akbar'. It can be hugely attributed to my attachment to Mughal-e-Azam, having already watched it for God-knows-how-many times, I can watch it twice daily for the rest of my life without having enough of it..(I intend to keep the 3rd show slot for Sholay, and given the length of both the films, there is no chance for a 4th show :D). Even my POTC loving husband has been made to watch it so many times.. it is one of the important things he does to express solidarity with me.

I can talk endlessly about Mughal-e-Azam but it shall be wrong to do so in a post titled Jodhaa Akbar. Returning to the movie, it would have been easier to relate to it had it been named ambigously or probably after some lesser known blue-bloodeds. Even Roopmati-Baaj Bahadur would have done the trick. Akbar is too prominent a figure to be wrapped in total fiction, and all of us have preconceived notions about his larger than life persona. In an effort to keep with times, the plot gets too contemporary to be relevant.. Before long, the movie loses credibility and the viewers lose interest. Also, the lead actors being the best looking people we have ever had, look truly amazing but sadly, they do not look their part.
Still, I must admit that I had a nice time watching the movie. Firstly, it was after a long time that I sat 'just-like-that' with my otherwise busy-as-hell husband for so long at a stretch, full three-and-a-half hours, and the movie not being so interesting, we got to spend some quality time together. Also, I must thank fellow bloggers for putting some salient points in the movie in an altogether different light, making it enjoyable. There was no trace of humor in the film but we still got to laugh heartily whenever some of it came up. Thanks GB for that gem of a review..