Chocolate! Fire alarms! Paris!! Spell!!!

Dear Reader,

I am battling bloggers block and the urge to eat chocolate, a combination that has a tendency to drive a person mad. I get ideas when I am about to be claimed by sleep, and by the time I wake up, poof! All fantastic (at least in my semi conscious state, they seem so) post ideas are gone. So as I sit here before my laptop and wonder what to type, I am struck by random, random thoughts. Should I inflict them upon you, or should I sift through them and pick up one that I could elaborate, tweak and beat into submission, into something that vaguely resembles some coherent flow of thought? I wonder, I ponder and I decide: Blitz Krieg!

In Paris (yes, you lot are going to hear about this place so much, you might as well give in), in Paris, I went to a pub with the group I was travelling with. In the dark pub that was lit only by UV lights, everything became very interesting (anyone remember that Friends episode where Ross whitens his teeth for a date?) Our t-shirts, teeth, eyes glowed a ghostly white and the ambience was seductive. A pianist, super cheerful with a glass of whiskey next to him, played out tunes in a surprisingly accent free voice. People around us were steadily getting drunk, while he sang soulful songs. But after every song, there would be just a couple of people clapping, and as I sat there looking at him, I wondered how he did this job. Imagine sitting there, playing for a bunch of people for whom your music was just white noise? My soul would die a bit each night if I were him. Whiskey would help prop up my spirits too though, I suppose...

You know what technology – text messaging, online chatting, facebook - has done to this world? Besides making us into complete idiots who depend on technology for the simplest of things, it has ruined our ability to spell (mum, don’t laugh, I can spell, ok?). I often wonder what would happen if people (and I don’t mean annoying teenagers, I mean fellow 20+ year olds) type ‘you’ instead of ‘u’? or ‘this’ instead of ‘dis’? it is amaaazzzzzziiiinn dat ppl r unabl 2 typ cmplte wrds. I wonder how much effort it takes to type that odd vowel? I assure the followers of this culture, that contrary to popular belief, those ‘a’s, ‘e’s and ‘I’s are important. Really, they are.

I love fire alarms. Everyone I know and lived with for the past one year in halls greeted them with pure, unadulterated loathing, while I would run out of my room with a huge grin. I consider fire alarms to be a fantastic opportunity to catch up with friends. Others did not agree though. The general hatred towards the alarms was compounded by the fact that it always went off at odd hours, usually between 1 am and 6 am when some fellow creature of the night was burning food or smoking stealthily (and unsuccessfully) in their rooms. In my case, this meant I was wide awake every time, since I don’t keep to human times. Shelby called me a “bloody prophet” because the alarms uncannily went off often on days when I would mention them. “Ooh Shel, love those pyjamas, I hope the fire alarm goes off so that people see them”/ “Sigh. Last days, and no fire alarms. So sad.” Were followed by the ear splitting “teeooooteeeoooteeeoo” of the alarm. I think my flatmates hated me a bit because of this.

Strange and highly disorganised monologue done. Thank you for reading.

Love,

Me.

Family

I am reminded of home by the simplest of things, things I had not thought of for almost a year. My aunt is using her mixer grinder, or as we know it, the Mixie, and that sound just transported me back to my living room in Bombay, where that sound was a fixture on Sunday mornings. Dad talking on the phone, surrounded by every English newspaper published in Bombay, Ma in the kitchen, yelling for dad to come help cook something. if I ventured in there, she’d promptly send me off, telling me she did not have the time to clean up whatever mess I’d make in there, in other words “you are useless, go get your dad to help me”. Dad would go into the kitchen with a long suffering expression, and then relegate mom to the post of a dishwasher, or the sous chef, i.e. cutting veggies while he dumped copious amounts of Maggie tastemaker and every spice he could lay his hands on into what was cooking.

So this post is about my crazy parents, who, I think, are the two most influential people in my life, not to mention the most entertaining.

I often tell my friends that it is a miracle I survived my childhood. From being forgotten in the house as a baby (Ma: Ok, I’m ready, let’s go. Dad: Where is the baby? Ma: Oh right!), to dad’s occasional lack of attention to details (Friend: Oh, so this is your daughter? How old is she? Dad: Four or five. Ma (glaring at dad): She’s four!!) to Ma’s experiments (Ma: Ok, my two year old child, put your head through this oddly shaped window grille here, let’s see if it fits. Me: happily following orders. Ma: damn it! Her head is stuck in the grille!!! Me: happily waving at people walking four floors below us and at birds flying past. Dad comes back home: What the hell happened here?! Ma: Oh she did that when I was not looking. Get the baby oil, we’ll ease her head out of there). Cycling, that is another thing I remember. Dad tried his best to teach me, but while under his supervision, I mowed over a kid who was playing cricket :D

They were cool when it came to religious instruction though. They taught me the basic concepts, you know, God, karma and the ‘thou shall not kill’ rule, brought me Amar Chitra Katha comics so that I would know the mythologies and then pretty much left me to my own devices. ‘Interpret as you please’ was the rule. It never was an issue that I did not pray every day, or that my faith is ambiguous on the best of days. Dad is currently a Buddhist, while Ma finds comfort in the rituals of daily prayer. She also finds comfort in teasing dad when he prays daily, despite his having stated that he does not believe in Hindu rituals anymore. Dad tries his best not to laugh when she starts a hilarious running commentary when he goes to pray.

Unlike a lot of Indian parents, mine encouraged me to make independent decisions from childhood. That, I think, is what I am most grateful to them for. I was not a bad student, so marks never mattered to dad, as long as I learnt something, while Ma was happy that I kept my head out of trouble.

This is most definitely not my best post, but I am posting it anyway. For those two clowns back home. Kisses.