The Reluctant Gardener

Everyone in my family is born with a green thumb. My grandmother had this huge garden, one side of it dominated entirely by flowers and the other side with less ornamental but more practical things like chilies, spinach, carrot, cauliflower, tomato and other assorted vegetables, not to forget the lemon, mango and papaya trees. The lemons out of my grandmother’s tree were as big as oranges and there was not a more teekhi mirchi or a sweeter carrot for miles around.

Living in Delhi and nostalgic for the gardens of their childhood, my parents tried to replicate the same greenery in our small flat in Delhi. We always had plants, shade loving ones inside the house and the more sturdy ones outside in the verandah. There was even a corner dedicated to herbs like mint and coriander and lemongrass. Every weekend they painstakingly watered and mulched and pulled weeds, doing pretty much everything but crooning to the plants.

My role in all this was small. I hauled plants from one place to another and helped weed and water them under the eagle eye of my mother.

I realized how much plants really meant to me when I moved to Japan. In Tokyo I was surrounded by concrete and glass with just some sad looking trees here and there. I could live with that but I hated waking up to a balcony that was devoid of any sort of greenery. It seemed too forlorn and the window sills seemed desolate without any plants. I tried filling the void by buying flowers every week and putting vases full of them all over the house. But I still yearned for plants. The house looked too empty and too impersonal without them.
So I went to a flower shop cum nursery near my house and randomly picked up a few pretty looking plants and came back with detailed instructions from the owner on how to look after them.

It was then that I realized that plants die on me. Like just curl up and Die. Whatever I did, water them diligently, move them religiously from sun to shade and shade to sun, talk to them, sing to them they just refused to smile.

There was one particular plant I really loved. It had little pale pink and reddish leaves that looked all dainty and pretty. I took special care of it and kept in a sunny corner of the window where I could admire it all the time. One fine day I came back from work and found it drooping. I assumed I had been giving it less water and watered it some more. By next evening the plant was lying lifeless and no amount of watering or putting it in the sun could save it. I was broken hearted. Next to follow was a bonsai like flowering plant. It started shedding leaves and then there was just a stump left that withered and died within a few days.

After a few months of steadily killing the plants I had bought, I went back to the shop and asked for some sturdy plants that needed the least care. The shop owner gave me a dirty look that screamed “Plant Killer” but nonetheless gave me a few plants which she said could never die. All I had to do water them regularly.

Of course the plants died. No matter what I did over the months, the plants kept dying as if they had a personal vendetta against me.

The green thumb in the family seemed to have skipped a generation.

By the time I was back home in India, my parents had decided to shift to another city. My mother was very concerned about leaving her plants in my tender care but she really had no choice. I was given detailed instructions on when to water, how much to water and when to move to plants in and out of shade.

It goes without saying that over the years, with my parents increasingly out of town, our plant population has gone considerably downhill, leaving only a few tough plants that have managed to survive inspite of me.

Meanwhile, I realized that I sorely missed gardening. I missed the cool calm mornings spent watering the plants, the smell of wet mud and the joy of seeing a rose or jasmine plant bloom. I missed those days when the house overflowed with plants and the neighbors dropped in just to admire them.

Things were not made easy by my friends who all seemed to be avid gardeners and inundated the social media with their prettily flowering plants and bragged about their leafy palak and rotund pumpkins.

I was determined to make plants love me, come what may.I decided to give gardening another shot and bought a few plants over the internet. The picture showed smiling plants in the best of health but what I got was their drooping wilted versions. Obviously they were beyond any resuscitation. Then I went ahead and ordered a particular plant because I loved the flowers on it. When the plant arrived it was bare save a few leaves. The Gardner who looks after the society lawn told me that this plant flowers once a year and I would have to wait six months for that. Before the six months were up, the plant was history!

But I wanted plants. I really did. It’s not as if I wanted to turn great stretches of arid land into a beautiful landscape (Well in the distant future, I dream of doing that actually), all I wanted was a verandah full of greenery, some flowers and most importantly the simple pleasure of gardening, and watching things grow and bloom.

But I really didn’t want any more plant deaths on my head!

To console myself, I continued to visit Lodhi Garden – The mecca of Gardens in Delhi and rejoiced when the famous Sundar Nursery opened near Humayun’s tomb. But something in me was still not happy.

So I decided to give my relationship with plants one last chance. I spoke to the gardeners in my family, for once taking their advice seriously. I started with baby steps, In the beginning just trying not to kill the existing plants, before moving on to planting new ones.

Among the plants that my parents already have, there is now a sweet little marigold cheerfully waving it’s  flowers, a rose plant showing great promise of white roses and some mint and coriander leaves peeping out of the soil. And yesterday, I plucked a few home grown lettuce for my salad.

I think the plants and I are slowly becoming friends.

Simple steps, hopefully that will lead to a greener and more colorful future !

The work from home Chronicles

I hurt my knee a month back and instead of limping to work every morning, I decided to work from home. I saw it as a respite from the never ending commute and traffic and had lovely visions of myself simply rolling out of bed, padding over to my desk in pajamas and starting work. I was so kicked by the fact that my journey to work would be reduced to 1 minute from I hour.

No more power dressing, no need to iron all those formal clothes, hell no need to even comb my hair if I didn’t feel like it. No more standing in line at the office microwave to heat my packed lunch, no more tepid coffee from the office dispensing machine.

No one to see you if you are checking your mails with the toothbrush still in your mouth or if you are watching Mr. Bean videos on the side as you type serious mails to your team.

Life was going to be so good.

The reality my friends is something totally different.

Within a week I was so bored and desperate for company, I was holding imaginary conversations with my plants. I was so used to getting up, getting dressed and being out of the house that I just couldn’t handle the change. I didn’t know I would crave so much for what I always thought of as a mechanical life.

You sigh with deep longing when you look at your work clothes, all those neatly ironed trousers and formal shirts, ethnic kurtas hanging neatly in your cupboard and wonder if you will ever wear them again. You read articles about dressing up well even when you are working from home but somehow getting dressed in good clothes and then going nowhere seems to make you even sadder.

You miss the buzz that an office gives you, the in and out of colleagues from your cubicle, the constant chatter. The silence and peace that you longed for so long now just depresses you. You know you are in serious trouble when you even start missing those snotty juniors who you were always admonishing for making too much noise.

Getting up and making tea and eating all those healthy snacks by yourself is not as much fun as you thought it would be. It was so much better to walk to the cafeteria and share your food with colleagues and enjoy the chat sessions around the water cooler you till now thought of as banal and a waste of time.

When you are working from home, you end up working more because you are never really out of office. In office, Lunch or tea breaks and even loo breaks mean being away from your desk, chatting with people for a while. Now unless you learn to strictly set time away from the laptop, you will end up spending all your time there, even eating in front of it.

You also realize that Conference calls are the bane of your existence.

It’s amazing but with uncanny precision, just when you have gone off mute and started to speak the damn street dog will start barking just outside your window and a zillion cars will honk together – You are not really supposed to blow your car horn inside a residential colony but then which self-respecting delhi-ite follows rules!

Meanwhile, your manager and team mates are sitting in one conference room, right next to each other, with the speaker phone on just for you and you are using every muscle in your body to try and hear what they are saying. The connection is so bad, the only way you can hear them is if they shout right into the phone which obviously they don’t so finally you just resign yourself to laughing when every-one is laughing and then saying “I have no questions, Thank you” in the end while desperately hoping that nothing substantial has been discussed in the call.

I can never forget that one fateful morning when I attended an important client call in my night shirt with my hair standing up in tufts and suddenly in the middle of the call the client wanted it to turn it into a video call instead of a telephonic one. I set a world record for changing clothes, combing my hair and dabbing on some makeup that day, all the while pretending that there was something wrong with the laptop camera.

Since you are at home all the time, your family kind of forgets that you work. You might be busy making an important presentation or struggling with formulas in an Excel sheet and your mother will disturb you just then because she can’t figure out how to make a whatsapp call, wants dabbas taken down from high shelves, wants to know what to get cooked for lunch or if she can wear this saree when she goes out today.

You in turn will shout at them all the time to lower the TV volume, not to talk loudly, not to call people over, walk on tip toes and not even breathe if they can help it.

Work from home has its good moments too. You can take quick breaks and walk around the garden, check FB or twitter without your colleagues peeping over your shoulder, even brew yourself some coffee while on mute during meetings. If you are working on assignments that require no support from others, you can pretty much tweak your work hours to your convenience or sneak out for a few hours to work from a café.

Work from home is a wonderful concept. Specially for people who have kids to take care of or even those of us who want a little bit of flexibility and time for ourselves in our lives. Believe me not having to commute everyday does take away a lot of stress and adds a whole lot of time to your day. And largely uninterrupted work hours do wonders to your productivity and creativity.

Having said that, I have realized I am the kind of person who needs to be up and out of the house and interact with others to a certain extent. An ideal situation for me would be a work from home once or twice a week when I can work according to my own schedules and avoid the commute.

In my opinion, work from home works very well for free lancers and self-employed people but not always for people who are employed full time in one organization and need to connect with the rest of the employees a lot. Unless that organization has a widely accepted culture of work from home, and I honestly think that’s still lacking in India, You just end up making a lot of effort to stay connected and network.

I guess, I will go back to working full time from office sooner or later, but till then let me make the most of it by writing mundane blog posts and teaching my plants how to speak Japanese.

The one with elusive peacocks and angry bees

About a month back four of us decided to escape the Delhi heat by going off to the mountains for a few days. The fact that at this time the mountains are almost submerged under a deluge of rain didn’t deter us at all.

Weeks of relentless rain and a few cloudbursts finally convinced us that a journey up in the mountains can be a little more adventurous than what even we would like. So we cancelled it and thus began our search for alternate destinations. From Shekhawati to Pushkar to Jaipur to Landour to Kasauni each destination was scrutinized and rejected for one reason or the other.

Finally we decided to spend our weekend on a farm near Alwar. We planned our trip with visions of taking lovely walks through the farm and eating healthy organically grown food.

Of course the fact that in monsoons the whole farm will be a muddy squelchy mess didn’t cross our minds neither did the fact that there are barely any vegetables growing in monsoons forget organic ones.

So on the rainiest day Delhi had seen in a decade we set off. Inspite of incessant rain and flooded roads, we still managed to cover a considerable distance in two hours. Our problems began after we started looking for the turn towards the village where the farm was located. Navigation both human and google was rather inept and after innumerable missed turns and wrong directions from locals who kept directing us to the wrong place simply because they could not understand our pronunciation of the village name; we finally reached the village.

The gate to the farm was so small that we almost missed it. Once inside, our car entered a veritable tunnel of verdant green foliage. There was a stone wall on one side with a vibrant bougainvillea trailing it. Trees on both sides of the unpaved lane were bent almost double with rain and wind and formed a canopy over us. The narrow bumpy road opened up to a parking area on one side and rooms on the other. Beyond the rooms was more farmland.

Ever since we had arrived we could hear the sound of various birds but the koels and the Peacocks were the loudest. So after we had fueled ourselves with tea and paranthas we set off to explore the farm and hopefully see some peacocks. The ground was so wet that it was like walking on a huge muddy sponge. The rain had infused new life in everything and young plants and shoots sprouted everywhere. The leaves on the trees were thick and glossy and the raindrops glistened on them like diamonds. It was as if the world was just made up of different shades of green with occasional bursts of other colors in the form of flowers.

We were quite enjoying our walk inspite of having to squelch through ankle high grass. What we had not accounted for were the creepy crawly insects that come out in this season. Very Soon all parts of our bodies that were exposed turned red, swollen and itchy with mosquito and insect bites. We were either swatting away at mosquitoes or gingerly stepping and hopping over innumerable snails and earthworms on our path. But all this was nothing compared to the beast that awaited us just at the next turn.

We realized that the sound of peacocks was very loud from one particular direction and we hurried there in the hope of seeing a few. What we did see instead was a ferocious dog bounding towards us. Two of us screamed and froze on the spot. The third brandished her umbrella like a sword and I was torn between laughter at their antics and alarm because honestly I am not too fond of dogs myself.

The four of us decided that the best policy would be to keep as still as possible and hope that the dog goes away. We stood there stock still, hardly daring to breathe while the dog stood and stared back at us; tail raised, quivering all over and making strange throaty noises that we hoped were sounds of welcome but looked more like warning growls.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he went off in the direction he had come from and we fled back towards our rooms, all thoughts of photographing dancing peacocks abandoned.

Non-stop rain and blood thirsty mosquitoes made further forays into the woods impossible. So we just sat in the verandah and enjoyed the tranquility. The farm was away from all civilization and the only sounds were of the soft rain falling, the rustle of leaves and the songs of the birds; sounds that we rarely hear in the rush and madness of our urban existence. It was the perfect place to be still and enjoy the sound of nature.

But that was not to be.

Suddenly the quiet afternoon was shattered by the earsplitting sounds of a machine. We looked up to see a tractor coming over the hillock near our rooms. A few farm hands sat on the tractor, along with our driver. Apparently he had made friends with them and they were all enjoying a ride together.

They continued to come up the hillock, tearing through the over grown grass and shrubs. Suddenly there was a loud yelp, the tractor came to a grinding halt and everyone sitting on it jumped off and ran in different directions as fast as their legs could carry them. One minute they were sitting on the tractor laughing and joking and the next instant they were running through the trees with their arms flaying over their heads. It was comical to watch.

Meanwhile, the engine of the tractor was still on and the monstrous beast stood there making strange chugging noises. It seemed that in their rush to run from whatever they were running from, the men had not even stopped to turn the engine off. After some time they came out from their various hiding places and cautiously approached the tractor. we watched totally intrigued as they quickly switched off the engine and retreated to safety again. None of them made the effort to climb on the tractor and take it away. It just lay there, like a huge red beetle among the trees. Later, we found out that they had inadvertently disturbed a bee hive and the angry bees had descended on them like a huge buzzing missile. Most of them had managed to escape being stung but an over zealous bee had followed our driver right up to his room. He emerged in the evening, the area under his left eye swollen but thankfully his good humour intact.

Everyone on the farm had reassured us that peacocks always come down from the trees in the morning. The cook told us how a couple had seen peacocks dancing in the area adjoining the kitchen while they ate their morning parathas. The farm boys told us stories about how they have to shoo away peacocks from the parking lot every morning and how they dig up and eat up all the plants.

So it was with great expectation that I opened the door to our room the next morning to photograph the peacocks I was sure would be preening all around. Instead, I was greeted with our friend the dog going round and round in circles in the verandah and a few squawking ducks.

The elusive peacocks continued to tease us with their songs throughout our stay but refused to come out of the deep woods. Forget photographing them, we didn’t even get to bring back a single peacock feather.

Oh well, as the saying goes, Jungle mein mor nacha, par kisne dekha !

The Leg Room Chronicles !

For the past few months I have been travelling so much that I have been literally living out of suitcases. I usually love travel, even if it is related to work. What I do not love is the bit where I have to sit cramped in flights forever !

Only someone who is as tall as me (or taller!) will understand how difficult it is to fit all 5 feet 9 inches of me into a conventional airplane seat. What makes my life even more difficult is that majority of my long distance flights are to Japan. In my humble opinion, when that country was designing airplanes, they did not even consider anyone over the height of five feet four inches. 

You get in the flight, already feeling out of place because you are towering over the rest of the passengers and then you try to pour yourself into the cramped space the seat provides. The seats are so small, the leg space so negligible that after you have squeezed in along with the pillows and blankets and headphones the airline so thoughtfully provides, your derriere is half hanging out of the seat and your feet are so cramped that your chin is almost touching your knees.
Not Pleasant! 

Invariably, once you have managed to squeeze yourself in, the person infront of you decides that this would be an ideal time to get his money’s worth and reclines his chair as far as it would go. I’ve had people recline back their seats so much, it almost felt as if they were napping in my lap !

And so begins the war between the “Recliners” and the “Legroomers”. You can either (depending on your mood ) politely tell the person in front to straighten his seat a bit or gently but consistently keep nudging the back of his seat with your knee till he gets the hint.

Domestic flights within India are equally bad. Increase in number of seats has naturally led to a compromise on comfort and one gets the feeling of travelling like cattle herded into a cramped space.

Over the years you develop a strategy on how to make your hours in that airless hell as least uncomfortable as possible. The first thing is of course to try and get the seats right in front of the plane or the ones near the emergency exit. My flights are often late night ones and usually the web check in ( that also allows you to choose your seat) opens 24 hours before take-off. I have set alarms to wake me up in the middle of the night so that I can be the first to log in the airlines site and book myself the seat with the maximum leg space.

The seats on the emergency exit usually do not have a window view but then I would rather stretch my legs than sit all hunched up gazing at the beautiful panaroma of clouds floating by.

If you can’t manage the front seat, the second best option is to get an aisle seat and try to sit slightly diagonally. This requires you to be very careful about your jutting knees and elbows that the stewardess is sure to bang into with her food Trolley.

But the battle is only half won if you have got that aisle seat. As soon as you make yourself comfortable and stretch your cramped legs the sweet old lady next to you would need to use the washroom in what seems like every couple of minutes. As there is no way she can hop over your long legs you will have to get up every time and of course every time you get up you bang your head on the overhead compartment.

And it’s not just about leg room. What do you with those long arms and pointy elbows that refuse to fit just anywhere. There have been many subtle wars with my neighbor in the next seat over elbow space. Both of us looking resolutely ahead while trying very hard to push the other person’s elbow aside in order to occupy that coveted space on the armrest.

In majority of my flights, I usually end up sitting with my feet clamped together and my arms jammed on my sides, not unlike a trussed hen.

More travel lined up in April. Suddenly video conferences and telephone calls (however long they might stretch) seem like such an infinitely better option than getting on a Jet Plane !

The Lament of a Light Sleeper !

I am sleep deprived and bleary eyed as I write this. My brain as soggy as soaked bread. I would do anything, anything for a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Eight hours of restful sleep, we are repeatedly told, is optimal for health. Well I honestly don’t remember when I last got those 8 hrs. I am perpetually moving round like a zombie, in a state of a permanent Jet Lag.

You see, I am what is called a “Light Sleeper”. This means that even a pin falling in a room miles away will wake me up. That for me the sound of water being poured in a glass four rooms away will be like the roar of the Niagara and will jolt me out of sweet slumber. That for me the tick tock of a clock or the gentle whirring of a fan are unbearable noises.

I so envy people who fall asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow. I need to set-up a proper environment to fall asleep . First, I will push and pummel my pillow into a comfortable shape and then toss and turn till I find the perfect position to lie in. Then I need silence. ‘Silence’ you see is the most important thing here. And silence is something I never get. It seems my whole neighborhood has an uncanny way of knowing when I am about to sleep. 

As soon as I hit my head on the pillow, they swing into action with the precision of an army band – a badly tuned army band. The people living upstairs will chose that precise time to move about their furniture and close their doors with a bang. There will a pressure cooker whistling merrily somewhere a few houses away. Not to be outdone, Chopra Uncle from next door will chose that opportune time to hawk and spit and generally gargle away to glory in his bathroom. Every sound of his ablutions crystal clear to me.

Even if I do manage to fall asleep in this cacophony of sounds, most of the nights I am jostled rudely out of my slumber by late-nighters who will bang their car doors loudly, climb the stairs noisily or generally hold loud conversations right under my window about how difficult it is to find parking at night.

And of course once you are up, you can’t go back to sleep. You will count innumerable sheep in all the languages you know, you will pick up the most boring book on your book shelf hoping it will lull you gently back into la la land; but no, sleep will continue to elude you.

Light sleepers like me meet their own private hell when they are travelling.

Invariably, always without fail on long flights I will end up next to a fellow who snores. I will sit there after the lights have been dimmed, wide awake in my cramped airline seat, while next to me the guy will continue his near perfect impersonation of a chainsaw.

I have lost count of the number of hours I have spent in flights and trains trying to amuse myself with the different kinds of snores that I can hear. There is of course the chainsaw impersonation, then there is the continuous gurgling noise deep in the throat that will suddenly morph into something like a huge nasal snort before subsiding down to gurgles again. Then there are some people who lie there with their mouths half open - like fish gasping for water- who will make a continuous gentle soothing sound, which will almost lull you to sleep and suddenly without warning it will morph into an ugly sound like a generator starting. These are the ones that give you a nervous breakdown.

Sometimes it's people whom you least expect to snore that surprise you the most. There was a very delicate, very small Japanese lady next to me on a flight once. She didn’t seem capable of producing even a peep, leave alone snores. But once she fell asleep and started snoring it was like hearing Mt. Fuji rumble just before it erupts into an volcano.

And there really should be a special place in hell reserved for people who will snooze their alarms every 10 minutes but will not get up.

I have shaken out of deep slumber innumerable times in hotels by alarms that are not my own. I sit there, wide wake, my heart thudding violently as the alarm goes on and on. Once the alarm is switched off I try to get back to sleep just to be woken up again by the same alarm every ten minutes. Eventually the damn alarm will rouse the whole hotel and half the city but not the man who snoozes it is supposed to wake.

The one thing, I would kill for, gladly sell my soul for is a sound proof room. And till I get that, I continue to stumble through life in a state of permanent sleep deprivation!

The one in which we go under the Knife !

I had some surgery two weeks back. Nothing major, something rather inconsequential but then knowing me, something funny is bound to happen to me even within the four walls of a hospital! 

For starters I am going through this stage of “I am a self-sufficient person and don’t need to rely on anyone” for quite a while (frankly for the last 15 years or so with no signs of abating). So to keep up this facade I decided I didn’t need my parents to accompany me to the hospital. The idea was to drive to the hospital, check myself in and the parents could make their entry once the surgery was over. Obviously all my objections were overruled and I was declared quite mad by the family. 

I was asked not to eat or drink anything before the surgery and that day of all days my bua (who had made a guest appearance from Chandigarh because she did not want to miss the momentous occasion of her niece going under the knife!) decided to make Paneer Paranthas for breakfast. The family sat at the table hogging as I sat there tapping my foot in impatience and trying very hard not to look at those absolutely delicious looking paranthas. In my humble opinion putting paranthas in front of a Punjabi and that too a hard core parantha lover like me when I can’t eat them amounts to no less than  first degree torture. 

Anyhow, breakfast was done with and we were ready to roll, with me driving and my parents criticizing me for driving too fast .I was in a rather irritated frame of mind and I swung into the hospital a bit too fast, almost scattering the guards and attendants standing at the entry. Now this hospital takes its duties on patient care a bit too seriously. It seems you can’t simply waltz inside and have your surgery. As soon as you enter the hospital you are put into a wheelchair even if you don’t need one - and there was no way I was  going to be wheeled inside when I could walk on my two legs.  As the guard opened the door for me, I saw an attendant ready with the wheelchair. Obviously not believing that this crazy woman could be a patient he asked me “Madam patient kahan hai”. “Main hoon patient” I snapped and bounded up the stairs while the attendant ran after me with vain attempts to put me in that wheelchair.

After the forms were filled out, I was settled in my room and then began the long wait for the surgeon. I waited and waited with my stomach growling louder and louder with each passing minute. After 2 hrs I was told that he was stuck in the surgery and would be delayed. By this time my father – never a patient man was marching up and down the room and muttering evil things about surgeons who don’t know the value of time. He at the best of the times is useless in all medical emergencies and was rather unhappy about being stuck in a hospital room with his daughter. The daughter meanwhile had resigned herself to her fate and was busy reading Kiran Desai’s hullabaloo in the guava orchard (a delightful book by the way – a review shall follow) and making valiant efforts not to think of food and water. But after a while even Kiran Desai was unsuccessful in diverting my mind and I had tantalizing images of crispy paranthas with butter, rajma chawal, pasta and chocolate cakes floating in my mind. I had one look at my father ceaselessly walking about and decided it was time he went home. Hell If I didn't have an IV sticking out of one arm and I could hoist myself out of bed in my food deprived state I would have gone home with them!  

Me: "Dad you should go home. You’ll just get tired sitting here. Anyway it’s time for your lunch I don’t think you should miss it." 

Dad: Nonchalantly patting his stomach – "No, No don’t worry I am not hungry at all. I had two Paneer paranthas for breakfast!"

What the *#%^&*!!

Anyway I finally convinced them to return home and they left after extracting a promise from the nurse to let them know as soon as the surgery starts.

Afterwards ..

Off course, the nurse forgot to inform my parents and I snapped out of the anesthetic almost immediately after the surgery – something no one had expected me to do. I woke up alone with a nurse patting my head soothingly and saying something on the lines of don’t worry your folks will be here soon. To which I responded, "No they wont, they never miss their afternoon nap". (Don’t ask me why I said that) Anyhow, the parents arrived soon after, extremely contrite and upset on reaching late. (yes, yes I am going to milk the situation and make them feel guilty for not being there for the next 20 years or so). 

The nurses at this hospital were very efficient except for one nurse who I am convinced was rather scatter brained and hard of hearing.

Dad had left and it was just me and mom in the room. Mom decided to use the loo. As luck would have it the lock was broken and she got stuck inside. I off course could do nothing to help her from my supine position on the bed. Finally I rang for the nurse. Enter this short nurse peering at me owlishly from behind thick spectacles. Although I was out of the anaesthetic I could barely speak at that time – so I croaked something on the lines of bathroom, mom, lock which this lady off course didn't understand. Finally she understood the word bathroom and thought I needed to go. So she goes towards the bathroom, tries to open the door, says Ohh andar to koi hai and walks off! The funniest thing is I could hear my mother’s frantic knockings from my bed but she didn’t hear a thing!! Luckily another nurse came in soon after and rescued my mom. 

The rest of my stay passed uneventfully except that the attendant once again tried very hard to get me into the wheel chair when I was discharged. Although I could barely walk, I refused, almost snarling at the nurse who said I would be more comfortable in a wheel chair. The poor staff was left shaking their heads after me as I hobbled out of the door. :p

The one in which we burn our chin

Yes, I have a penchant for doing weird things, things that not only put me in some discomfiture but also make my friends roll on the floor with mirth. This time I burnt my chin. And not only did I do something so silly, I also put it up as my facebook status to make sure that the whole world laughs at me. Some of my more curious friends have been busy speculating on how I managed to accomplish this impossible feat. I’ve had guesses ranging from putting my chin on the gas stove, bringing a lit cigarette near my face with the lit end facing inside (I don’t smoke by the way!) to accidentally touching my face to a hot iron.

Since I refuse to assuage their curiosity on Facebook I have been asked if I’ll blog about it(As if putting it up as FB status was not enough!). Obviously I am not going to blog about it! The last thing I need on my very prim and propah blog is people making fun of me. Certainly not!!

So this is what really happened :)

I had a cold. Colds are bad – they make me irritable, cranky and honestly I just can’t think straight when I have one. So in order to unblock my very blocked nose, I decided to try some herbal medicine. The label on the medicine bottle informed me that the medicine must be taken in warm water. Now, the conventional way of heating water is by putting it in a pan and heating it. But you see, I believe in doing things differently. So I put the water in a steel katori (small bowl) and the katori on the Gas burner. After a few seconds I turned off the gas, touched the rim of the bowl with my hand and decided that it was not too hot and I could lift it using my fingers. I poured the medicine in, lifted the bowl to my lips and as fate would have it, sneezed at the very last moment. My hand trembled and the base of the bowl touched my chin – off course the fact that the rim of the bowl might not be too hot but the base will definitely be extremely hot had not crossed my cold befuddled mind. So now I have a bright red burn to show for my stupidity.

We all know Aruna Irani by the mole on her chin and I will now go down in history as the lady with the nasty burn on the chin!

And after you all finish rolling on the floor laughing about it – can someone please tell me how to remove that damn scar from my face?

The enigma called Brothers !

A few months back we had a blog meet. Me, Shail, Abha and Ritu got together to spent a fantastic afternoon where a lot of good food was partaken of and the art of blogging discussed and ruminated upon.

 But the star topic, a topic on which we continued to debate for a long time and have finally agreed to disagree on is the entirely unfair and bossy attitude of an elder sibling over the younger one. Ritu had also brought along Kid#2, her younger son, an extremely delightful young fellow who enthralled me not only by his quick wit but also because we both agree unanimously on the fact that as younger siblings we are poor downtrodden, long suffering souls.

Everybody else seemed unanimous on the decision that elder brothers or sisters are gifts from heaven (and in Shail`s case – elder siblings are not at all Bossy but rather gentle benevolent souls) but we both stuck to our guns. After all we were speaking from years of experience!

In my case my Brother is around 8 years older than me. Now 8 years is a rather long gap. Too long for us to be playmates but just right for him to boss me around.

When I was born, I suppose he had reached a stage where he was comfortably enclosed in his world of toy warships and cars and playing cricket or football and having the entire family revolve around him. Enter younger sister into this idyllic existence and he suddenly didn’t know what to make of me and how to fit an always whining wailing (his version not mine!) sister into the scheme of things. I guess the first few years went fine when I didn’t intrude too much upon his life but when I started school all hell broke loose. He was deputed to mind me for a few hours every week when mom had to work late and boy did he hate it! Like a lost puppy I always tagged along behind him and his friends and the poor fellows tried their level best to shake me off.

I guess somewhere while growing up, from hardly paying me a passing interest Bhaiya suddenly grew very much aware of my existence and discovered that I was the one person on this earth he could boss around. I mean mom and dad told him off when he was not behaving and I guess it rankled that he in turn had no one to boss over. Then his eyes fell on poor me! And there I was a sitting duck to all his lectures on how one should behave and study and generally act. I got a bit of respite when he went away to college but the interrupted program resumed during holidays. Not one act of disobedience or one stray remark would pass without a sermon. In my case it was really the case of “The Big Brother is watching you!”No wonder I was such a goody goody kid. With a teacher for a mother and a brother like him where did I stand a chance for doing anything naughty?

Off course we had vague notions of brotherly and sisterly love and affection for each other but I don’t think we connected very well as kids. There was simply too much of an age gap and the camaraderie that siblings closer in age have with each other as missing. Sometimes when I See siblings play together I feel a little bad, because I never really shared that with my brother.

So why am I moping around on this Rakhi? Why am I so upset that he is not here with me. I thought I had become used to sending him Rakhi through post and not actually tying it since we live in different countries.

Because somewhere down the line as you grow up, without you realizing it or consciously making it happen, Elder brothers somehow become the mainstay of your life. From berating you on lapses in good behavior they actually turn into someone you always go to first when you need a shoulder to lean on. You look up to them like a father figure, you ask their advice and horrors of horrors you actually follow it! And as much as you may deny it, a few words of praise or encouragement from them mean more to you than what anyone else could say.

They may not always be the first ones to call you on your birthday or to shower you with gifts or hugs all the time. You are still being scolded, you are still at the receiving ends of their moody spells, but then you realize that beneath all this is a love that nothing can ever ever break. You realize that there is so much more to a brother sister bond than just getting into escapades together. It’s a deep intrinsic bond, that can’t be explained. It’s just there. Like the air we breathe. It’s just there and it can’t be denied or ever broken!

He may have never told you how much he loves you or what an adorable sister you are, but deep down in your heart you know that when you need him, he will be there. And in the end, that is all that matters. Really !

Lets Gain Some Momentum !

Overheard at work .....

PM to the Admin guy – We are going to get very esteemed visitors tomorrow. Please get some momentum.

Admin guy (looking indignant) – Momentum! sir there is no need to gain momentum. We are well prepared. Everything is moving as per schedule.

PM – what do you mean there is no need for momentum. We must give them momentum. It’s a tradition.

Admin guy (Now very confused) – Tradition? You mean it’s a tradition to show them how efficiently we work?

PM – What do you mean work efficiently? Don’t you have any momentum? I am sure you guys have it locked up somewhere in your cupboards.

Admin guy (with a glazed look in his eyes) – Momentum, locked in the cupboard with us? Sir what kind of momentum ?

PM – Oh u know paintings, small decoration pieces …

Admin Guy (with a sigh of relief) Oh you mean Memento!

PM – Off course. Now you understand. What’s the use of Admin dept when we need to tell you guys everything.

Someone needs a Rapidex English speaking course here :)

The "What Will People Say" Syndrome !

There is this strange syndrome we Indians seem to be afflicted with, and it’s known as the “What will People Say” syndrome. This syndrome afflicts people of all ages and sex but the biggest causality is the Indian woman. The one sentence that the Indian woman fears the most after the much dreaded “Please Adjust” is “What will People Say “. Their whole lives are governed by this statement. Want to stay out and party all night?” Oh No! What will people say” Feel like giving your husband a hug in Public – “Che Che What will people say!” Don’t want to get married? “Oh No! What will people say ! “

I wonder if we realize how much we let this syndrome rules our lives! Our behavior and actions are not a result of what we actually want to do but are molded by our fear of how they will be interpreted by society. This mentality of worrying about what people will say is made worse by the fact that we Indians are by far the most inquisitive and interfering people I have ever come across. In other countries people don’t give a damn if you are single, married or living in, straight or gay, have kids or don’t have kids. Not so in our country! People will not only pry out every intimate juicy detail of your life, they will give you free advice and then make all the information fodder for gossip! Since our society spends half the time meddling in others affairs and the other half gossiping about it, it makes us even more conscious of doing anything without first thinking about “What people will say !”

Thankfully my family is not afflicted with this syndrome and lets me live my life the way I want but our “well wishers” can’t seem to get over our bohemian attitude! Once a neighbor asked my mother, “Aapki daughter akele rehti hai aapko dar nahi lagta log kya Kahenge” (your daughter stays alone aren’t you worried about what will people say!) My mother tartly retorted “kahenge ki inhone apni beti ko kitna independent banaya hai !) (People will say look how independent their daughter is!)

“What will People say” has seeped so much into our mindset that we unconsciously do only the things that society wants or expects us to do. Restrictions are imposed on women after marriage (what they can wear, if they can work or not etc etc) simply became now society expects them to behave in a certain manner! Parents are more concerned about their girls getting married “at the correct age” not because they want them to find a life partner but because people will talk if the girl is unmarried. I know couples who’ve had kids because people expect you to have kids after 1-2 years of marriage. Otherwise they start asking questions. Somehow I always thought you have kids because you want to and not because society wants you to procreate!

On a serious note, I have seen so many examples of the “what will people say” syndrome ruin lives or thwart dreams. A lot of women don’t walk out of unhappy or abusive marriages not because they are scared of staying alone and starting their lives over but because they are terrified of the social stigma they will face. Women don’t mind if their kids grow up in abusive families but they don’t go for a divorce simple because “the flak my child will have to face once people find out he comes from a broken home”. I wonder if this same society of wagging tongues will actually come and help when the woman is going through torture. Or Take the case of a girl who still hasn’t found a husband. She may be perfectly happy working and living with her parents while she waits to meet the right guy but society literally makes her life hell with their persistent questions till she marries the first guy that comes along through sheer frustration ! I have even seen examples of midle aged females living alone who dont encourage their male cousins or friends to visit them for fear of what people will say !

 The biggest irony is that we are worried about what people will say but don’t realize that the same “People” will talk whatever we do. Either way It’s a lose – lose situation. It’s like this very famous story of the Old Man, young boy and the donkey. What we do can never please everyone so we might as well as do what we want !

 I am not suggesting that we defy social norms and live a sort of anarchical existence. Our social dictates as well as fear of social pressure does keep us in check and prevents us from unethical and unacceptable behavior or actions. But I wonder how many people think about what “People will say” when they are breaking rules, littering the roads or even misbehaving with females, asking for dowry etc?

What really surprises me is why we let society overpower us so much. Don’t we have our own sense of right or wrong that we have to look for society’s approval each time? Why can’t we listen to our inner voice and do what we really want to do! It takes a lot of courage to defy society and live the kind of life you want. Ask any woman (or even man for that matter) who have decided to go off the beaten track. But it’s high time we stop being a puppet in the hands of “People” and learn to live our lives the way we want!

Cricket Mania ! (NaBloPoMo Post #7)

Eyes fixed ahead,

Tightly clenched hands

You watch it run by run

Ball by ball

Shouting, cheering, jeering,

and snarling

When we mention

your obsessive absurdity

bored, we squirm and fidget

As we curse your affinity

To the game of cricket!

Written for Three word wednesday. (Prompts - Affinity,Mention,Fidget)

The Borrowers

I was a huge fan of a book called The Borrowers as a kid. It’s a Fantasy novel written by Mary Norton. It talks about little people,about an inch high that live hidden in houses and survive by borrowing things from the human inhabitants of the house. Here is a picture of the book -

I always thought that Borrowers were fictional characters but now I am convinced that they are real. Infact , I am definite a few of them have taken up permanent residence in my house. How else can I explain the things that go missing? I never seem to find a stapler or scotch tape or an eraser when I need it. And pens! Borrowers seem to be inordinately fond of pens! Whenever I need to make a note I spent so much time searching for a pen that I end up forgetting what I was supposed to make a note of.
Its not that they are just after stationary, they like to “Borrow” food as well. The other day I reached for a tea bag to make myself a cup of tea but couldn’t find any. The same thing happens with instant coffee sachets, cheese slices, cookies, chips etc. I am sure I stock up pretty well and I can’t finish all this food so fast now can I? And they simply Love chocolates. There is no other explanation for how the chocolates in my fridge finish so fast? I am sure I just ate 1 or 2, oh well may be 3 chocolates out of that big box but now the whole box is empty!! It’s GOT to be the work of borrowers!
And how about needle and pins? Have you ever wondered where do all the pins and needles that we keep buying go? I wonder what they do with them. Use them as swords to fight?
Another thing they love is socks. I am sure they use them as coverlets to keep warm at night. They seem to tire of socks pretty soon and leave them at the most unlikely places like under the bed or sofa or behind the wash basket before making off with a new one. They have an uncanny sense of timing and they filch a thing just when it’s needed the most, especially things like loose change or passport photographs.
Sometimes they borrow things and return them by putting them in the weirdest of places. Many times I have found the TV remote wedged under the sofa cushions or my favorite silver earrings in a pen stand or my watch in the bathroom. I have lost count of the times when we are all ready to go out but I can’t find the car keys or the house keys. I run around trying to look for them while the rest of the family members stand about frowning and tapping their feet with impatience. I wonder why they frown at me, it’s not me who hides the keys in my jeans or simply plonks them behind that flower vase is it?

You can’t really get rid of the borrowers. They just appear out of nowhere, decide they like it here and then simply make themselves at home. I have heard that there is just one sure-fire way to get rid of them. Just two words that they dread the most – Neat and Organized. But then I really don’t want to get rid of my borrowers. Infact I like them a wee bit. I am so used to sharing my house and things with them now. It would be so mean to become “organized” just to get rid of them. Hell, I hate that word even more than they do !

Quirky Quirks !

I am a rather quirky sort of person, even if I say so myself! Some colleagues at work were discussing quirks the other day and after I had rattled off a few of mine to them the general consensus was that I am the undisputed queen of quirks. That conversation as well as this post by Scribbler inspired me to write a few of my eccentricities here! 

• Now this really weird - I write with my right hand but I sew and use a knife or scissors (to cut things) with my left hand. I can’t write with my left hand or sew or cut with my right-hand tho !
• I absolutely can’t stand it if people dog ear books. If I ever see you dog- earing one of mine – God help you!
• I simply can’t fall asleep without reading at night. If I am not at home and I don’t have a book with me I stay awake for hours.
• Plane journeys are real tortures because all I do is think about sharing the same space and breathing in the same air as so many people. It sort of freaks me out.
• Sometimes I get this urge to re-read certain sections of a book that I have already read. And I can’t rest in peace till I have picked up that book and read that portion. If the book was a borrowed one, I simply have to buy the book and read what I want to.
• I can never bring myself to eat leftovers. If there are leftovers most probably they’ll get thrown/given away ( I know, I know it’s not a good thing)
• I need my space and hate it if I am always surrounded by people. I have to have an hour of “Me Time” everyday or I become horribly cranky.
• As the regular readers of this blog might know, I am a chronic list maker. I simply can’t survive without a list.
• I hate it if my food touches in my plate. If my chapatti is soiled by some curry or vegetable I find it icky. Yes I do dip my chapatti in the curry before I eat it. I just want to do it myself and not have it touch other food on my plate.
• According to me, Rice is supposed to be eaten in combinations with rajma or kadhi or dal makhani. I can’t really understand how people can eat rice with any vegetable or curry. (Yeah I guess thats the North Indian in me speaking!).
• I see dried leaves on the path and I absolutely have to step on them. What to do I love the crunchy feeling!
• I am at my brightest from 4 am to 8 am. All important work, serious thinking, decision making is done at that time .After 9.30 pm my brain cells are just about dead. I simply can’t function!
• I need sunshine as much as I need air to breathe. Sunless days leave me morose and very depressed.
• I get into these funny creative moods. When I think of something I absolutely have to write it down then and there. God help anyone who tries to disturb me when I am in those moods. I will either not answer or I will snap at the person. Actually most probably I’ll just snap! Another thing is, you ask me to write something creative and perhaps for hours, even days my well of creativity will just about run dry and I’ll just sit around dawdling my thumbs. Then suddenly something clicks and I will dash off a good article or blog post in minutes!

Now that you know weird I am, I hope you are not going to run away and desert my blog :)

Overheard at a wedding ….

So we went to a wedding in Chandigarh. A Sikh friend’s daughter was marrying a Goan Christian with the lovely name of Ashley. And no the bride was not called Scarlett or even Melanie for that matter!
 As we queued up waiting to wish the newlyweds, I heard the fat matronly lady in front of me loudly whisper (and if you haven’t heard a Punjabi lady whisper let me assure you that the whisper will carry to the farthest end of a crowded room) Hai Hai nii ! main sochaya munda gora hai. Yeh to Indian nikalya, woh bhi kala !
:)) 

(For non Hindi/Punjabi speakers: although most of the fun might get lost in the translation, here is what it means – Oh my god, I thought the groom is white (as in foreigner). But he’s an Indian and that too a dark one !

One foot in the Grave !

 This is what http://www.urlai.com has to say about my blog :

nirjharani.blogspot.com is probably written by a female somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

So I am a tottering old woman but at least I am a happy one ! :P

Why I haven’t been blogging !

If readers of this blog (If I have any left by now!) are wondering where I’ve been hiding these past few weeks, I haven’t written because I couldn’t think of anything to write. You see blogging is a not such an easy task. No Sir it isn’t. As someone very wise said once “Writing is easy; all you have to do is sit in front of your typewriter until the sweat on your brow turns to droplets of blood.”

So this is why I haven’t been blogging:

• I dipped into my well of creativity but came up with mud instead of ideas.
• Nothing interesting is happening in my life.
• Nothing interesting is happening in my neighbor/friends/colleagues lives.
• Nothing interesting is happening at work.
• Nobody tagged me :(
• Nothing has made me angry, happy, contemplative, thoughtful enough to    write.
• None of the prompt sites have any interesting prompts.
• Couldn’t find any good topics to steal surreptitiously from other blogs !
• I am still waiting to get up in just the correct creative mood in the morning.
• I am waiting till I read some brilliant posts on other blogs and I am ashamed enough of my own procrastination to do something about it.
• I am waiting for that perfectly brewed cup of coffee that I can sip while writing.
• I am off junk food/sugar this month and I am spending too much time on controlling my cravings to write anything.
• I am waiting for my toothache to go away magically (as even wild horses can’t drag me to the dentist!)
• I am waiting for the first flowers of spring so that I can be in a happier mood.

And History repeats itself !

A year back I had written about the travails of travelling by the office cab. Well a lot has happened in that one year. The management finally god fed up of our constant badgering about the downtrodden cab and we got a swanky new cab. Then unfortunately two of my cab mates who had become very good friends changed jobs and the cab journey lost most of its fun. Even more unfortunately three new people joined the cab who I can only describe as The Whiner, The Foren Return and Mr. Punctuality Personified. The whiner whines about everything. She whines when the cab is early, whines when it is late, whines when she has to sit in the front (AC too strong) whines when she has to sit at the back (too bumpy). Mr Foren Return on the other hand has spent four years in Australia and deems that land to be fit only for gods. If the Australian government wishes to redeem its image after the recent racist attacks on Indians, all it has to do is get this guy to act as their PR agent. Every day we endure a new installment on how great Australian infrastructure is, how everyone follows traffic rules and the roads are so clean that `you can eat off them mate`. Mr Punctuality Personified on the other hand is obsessed about reaching office on time. His is the last stop and god forbid if we reach there even a minute late. We are harangued by phone calls asking us where we are, how many minutes it will take us and do we not realize that he can’t afford to waste office time standing on a bus stop.
Any how I digress. What does all this have to do with history repeating itself ? Because today, exactly a year after I wrote this, our cab broke down on exactly the same spot as it had last year on this day. You see, our cab owner went home for navratras and took his swanky new cab with him. The replacement Indica was so decrepit and rickety that even Ratan Tata wouldn’t be seen dead in it. So today morning, I sat in the cab squashed between the whiner and the foren return listening to the whiner complaining about lack of space and the Foren Return pontificating about the spacious cabs in the land down under. Then the unthinkable happened. While the cab was bravely wheezing its way up the Ashram flyover, the engine coughed once, twice and then gave up on its valiant effort to climb the flyover. A policeman already harassed by the rush hour traffic made his way to our cab, extremely irritated by this addition to his work load. He beat his Stick on the bonnet and said arre jaldi hatao kitna jam laga diya. Our driver spewed a stream of paan on the road, swore volubly in haryanavi and asked us get down and push. Now we all reacted in typical fashion –
Whiner – Oh god how can I push, so much traffic , its so hot ……..
Foren Return – (while hardly making any attempts to push) this would never happen in Australia you know. A cab would never break down there man …. Such good traffic man ….
Punctuality Personified – How much time will this take. I really can’t waste time stranded here………..
The cab driver realizing how useless we were in the situation, spotted a few workers on CWG duty and cajoled them to push. Thankfully the car started after a few pushes and we reached office very late and thoroughly irritated.

(8th Oct 2011 – Dare I even think about it! )

Confessions of a Compulsive List Maker

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to making lists. Actually if compulsive list making was a type of OCD, I would be in a padded cell by now. Every morning when most of mankind is groping for their morning cuppa my fingers are itching not towards my cup of coffee but for a pen and paper. I don’t rest in peace till I have written down a list of everything I want to accomplish through the day. It’s not caffeine that gives me my morning kick but making lists.
I have a separate list for everything – grocery shopping, clothes shopping, things I need to clean and sort, books I want to read, cuisines I want to try, places I want to visit, favorite websites. I even have a list of topics I want to blog about. My computer at work has a Post-It with a list for tasks I need to accomplish that day or week. I can face any situation in life provided I have a list ready. At the doctors’ clinic, I am known to whip out a list and ask questions from it much to the doctor’s amusement. I even make lists about what to pack whenever I travel. Once for a cousins wedding, I made a list of what to wear when, and which accessory to wear with which dress. Before meeting a close friend or family member I make a list of things I absolutely must tell them about. For those wondering, yes my memory is in absolute tip top condition thank you. Give me any memory test and I will pass with flying colors ! Its just that whenever you meet someone after a long time you get so carried away that you might forget to mention a few important things that happened in their absence.
And I am a master organizer of these lists. The items in my shopping lists are categorized according to each shop I will visit or sometimes even down to the items in the same aisle getting listed together. I have been known to berate shop attendants when they change the way things are placed on their shelves because it just about ruins my whole list!
Send me shopping without a list and it’s very probable that I will come back with a lot of things that I don’t need and nothing of what I need. If you want me to do something for you, better make me write it down! Important things in my lists are double underlined and have arrows pointing towards them.
You can never make me take a decision unless I have listed down every pros and cons of the issue. My friends are so exasperated with me that they think I need to join a List Makers Anonymous to cure myself of this malady. I rather think it’s a neat habit. And anyway I got it from my mother. She is an obsessive list maker and she got me hooked to it when I was really young. Mom says she got it from her dad. So if anything is to be blamed its heredity. But I am sure I am not alone in this. I am sure most of you make such lists too. Don’t you? Umm you DO Don’t You !
Oh Well I guess I better write down “Find List Makers Anonymous” on my list and double underline it !

In which we shop till we drop at the bangkok airport and almost miss the flight

I went to Tokyo in November. I haven’t posted about this trip because frankly it just went by in a daze. It was a whirlwind of a trip where I worked like a maniac and came back totally exhausted. When I was not working I was taking my two ‘visiting- Japan-for the –first –time colleagues’ sightseeing. One of the disadvantages of knowing a city intimately is that you are expected to take first time visitors around. Not that I mind that but these two guys were a little bit too enthusiastic for my liking. So enthusiastic that they didn’t mind sightseeing at night after a hard days toil even when it was bitterly cold and raining. Tokyo is one city I love but walking the streets of Tokyo in freezing rain with two camera happy guys does not make a very cheerful me. They were so camera happy and so narcissistic that they wanted their snap clicked every damn second. Since I was not too keen on posing for photographs I was assigned the task of clicking them. So I stood there trembling with hands turning almost blue with cold as they preened themselves before posing in front of whatever they chose to be photographed with. Some of the interesting places they posed at besides posing in front of every temple, monument and high rise in Tokyo were:

• At the office reception area - at 8.55 in the morning when a whole lot of people were rushing in to punch in their cards before 9 a.m. People had to dodge past them as they posed right in the middle of the rather narrow reception area. Finally the guard told them politely to move off.
• In the conference room – They tried a variety of poses here such as sitting in the conference room chair,next to the white board pretending to give a presentation,next to the huge glass windows as the view outside is quite spectacular(you can see Tokyo bay and all). All this while the next team that was to occupy the conference room stood outside holding on to their laptops and notebooks and quietly cursing under their breaths.
• Next to the cycles in the cycle stand at Tokyo Station- hey may be they like cycles!
• Next to an old lady selling fish-much to her irritation as they were just holding up customers.
• On top of the directions pole while trying to balance on its railing with one foot. (Please don’t even ask why)
• At every restaurant they asked the waitresses to take photographs of every single thing that they ate, re taking shots till they were satisfied while we sat there holding our chopsticks and trying to smile as the food got progressively cold.

Any how one good thing that came out of this trip was that I got to drink star bucks coffee by the gallon and eat a lot of my favorite Japanese food. I also met a dear friend after almost a year although I could only spend a few hours with her.These things things compensated for a lot of other discomforts. :-)
But I digress, what I really want to talk about is the return journey. While returning,we had a stop over at Bangkok for four hours.This is where I said a not too sorrowful goodbye to my colleagues who were headed towards Mumbai and devoted myself to some serious shopping.
Now, I am not a compulsive shopper and shopping does not feature under my favorite activities but I felt I needed a treat after enduring a lot of work related things and people in Tokyo.My first stop was at the perfumes area. I love perfumes and I walked about as if in a trance my nose quivering in anticipation of sniffing all sort of exotic fragrances. Buy only 1 or 2 perfumes I strictly told myself, because I have many at home that are still unused or unfinished. But I was like a women possessed and ended up buying 3 – Chanel, Estée Lauder and Christian Dior. Then I took myself to Boots body products and bought half the shop much to the delight of the salespeople.The sales lady actually asked me which airlines I was boarding as she was worried if I would be allowed to carry so much liquid stuff inside. Next stop was at a shop selling Thai herbal products and here I went totally berserk.I am a sucker for creams and lotions and didn’t know what to leave and what to buy. And everything seemed so so cheap and reasonable as I was converting from Japanese Yen to Baht.I bought enough stuff to last me two lifetimes. I was feeling very smug and satisfied till I came home and converted from baht to rupees. Thing didn’t look so rosy then ! Anyhow after spending a few happy hours scouring through the shops I decided to end my duty free adventure by buying chocolates. I was busy filling the shopping cart with celebrations and after eights when I happened to glance at my watch. It was 7.10 p.m.The boarding time of my flight was 6.45 p.m.Immediately I went into panic mode and started fluttering about like a chicken with its head cut off. Thankfully I knew where the boarding gate was but it was about 10 minutes away from where I was so I made a mad dash towards it leaving everyone in the vicinity to stare behind me with their mouths agape. The mad dash was in no way easy as I was weighted down by huge shopping bags. I had to go down at least 3 escalators and I think if there is ever a contest of running down escalators carrying a lot of baggage in hand I would win it hands down. I reached the gate and as I stood their panting I realized that there was no one is sight. I mean not a single soul. I was filled with panic at the thought that the flight had already left when I saw a notice saying that my flight was now shifted to gate C1 which was actually on the floor I was originally on. So everyone at the Bangkok airport was once again treated to the riveting sight of a woman laden with shopping bags tearing across floors as if a hound of dogs were after her. Another mad dash and sprint over the escalators and running cross entire floors I reached gate C1 and almost collapsed at the feet of the Thai airways staff. Needless to say I was the last passenger to get in. In retrospection I think all the panic was really uncalled for as obviously they would have announced my name and looked around for me at the departure area had I not reached on time. But all in all the people at the Bangkok airport got a free bit of entertainment. The sight me running crazily across the airport with hair and bags flying in all directions is something they will not forget in a hurry !

Writer's Block !

Why is it that an idea for a blog post always strikes me when I have no access to a laptop or paper. Like when I am driving or travelling. I half form the blog post in my mind; witty catchy sentences and phrases swirl around in my head and I am dying to jot them down. But Once I am in front of my laptop – nothing ! My mind goes blank and I am really at a loss on how to put down my thoughts. The words don’t come and the sentences that sounded witty and brilliant in my head look drab and boring on my computer screen. Now what kind of Writer's Block is that !

Ever happened to any of you?