Holiday. Home. Happiness.

Ohkay I am thrilled – I have watched it 6 times back to back and I cannot wait for May 30th – Sex and the City, the movie’s official trailer is finally out and I am so excited! The Body Shop near my house has a 40% off and I am finally going to be able to afford something there. I am such a chick sometimes!

But! But!! But!!!! - Most importantly, my people and the people of the world – yes yes its official (no, I am not getting married) – I am indeed coming to Delhi for a week long trip. The lord has finally listened to my prayers and I have got a 2 week holiday – where I intend to indulge in utter laziness, eat good food, go shopping, get a haircut, catch up with all my friends, go to Big Chill, and Janpath (oh my lack-of-footwear angst shall finally be over), and then a week in the lap of luxury in Simla – sleep, eat, walk in the woods, watch films, get a pedicure, lounge on the mall, take photos, visit my school – life shall, albeit for 2 weeks, be miraculously turned into my little haven.

So this plan was actually to happen in March but the evil three letters – KRA (Key Result Areas) held me back… and then the tedious dirty process got over and I managed to get a great rating (god only knows how), and now I take off to the better parts of India (yes, I mean North India) while my big fat bonus and the great year end hike gets deposited in my currently sparse bank account. Life is looking up. Now only if my parents weren’t being such a pain in the ear! But I plan to buy ear plugs from Heera Panna tomorrow – I really do!

I had the strangest nightmare the other night – I killed 2 people and then I was petrified that someone may find out so I hid them and then kept feeling guilty and headed to Marks and Spencer to shop (incidentally they were on sale in that sequence and I do think this is a result of ogling at the Body Shop board daily when I return from office!). Anyway, it was creepy and I woke up and messaged Pix who assured me that it was nothing really and that I am Uma Thurman! Uma Thurman it is then – I’d rather that than get Freud to find inklings of a serial killer in me!

Holi was nothing major. Just some dry pink and green gulal. And some red too. How can there not be red! Excellent food but no thandai, no bhaang, no nothing – kaise hai yeh log – see that’s why I miss North India – do you see why now? Do you? Do you?? And do you see why the thought of returning to my familiar pretty Dilli and Simla makes me grin like a fool all day?

Well, suddenly office seems bearable and colleagues seem okay, suddenly I am looking at Mumbai not-so-severely and I am trying to distract myself with the personal complications at hand. I think this is what happens when your office lets you free or atleast temporarily.

Come 11th and I am in apna Dilli for a good gorgeous week – this is a time to celebrate and to take out my little black organiser – so tell me people, for what day should I book you? Dinner? Lunch? A stroll? – tell me peeeeepal…. I am coming home to you!!

To pee or not to pee

I am sitting at my desk at work. Colleague turns around to me.

C: Let’s go
Me: hmm…okay
C: Take your swipe card
Me: Ok let’s go

Or, picture this:

2 ladies at a club
Lady 1: I am going to the loo
L 2: wait, I am coming too
Chorus: excuse us boys

This happened to me once:

Me, sitting for dinner with a “couple” of friends
Friend 1’s hoity-toity girlfriend: I need to go to the restroom
Me – struggling to eat the insides of a crab
Friend 1’s girlfriend: Ahem! (Gives me a dirty look)
Me: (as if almost snapping to realization) Oh…ok, lets go.

I have never really been a fan of going “together together” to the loo – a phenomenon universally prevalent amongst those of my gender and much speculated amongst those not of my gender. “So what’s the big deal about going to the loo in pairs?”, asked a very close ‘not-my-gender’ friend of mine… “What’s the big deal about wanting to know it?” I immediately retorted. It’s not like it’s a whole secret life we live in that tiny close space - but its fun to keep the curiosity alive.

What does one do in pairs in the loo? Surely we don’t discuss the shades of pee. Surely we don’t discuss the do’s and don’ts of a Brazilian wax. But it’s just a thing – to go together to the loo – a funny habit that I find myself mostly falling in. I personally believe that these trips facilitate female camaraderie.

In office I end up smiling at random women who I would never know otherwise. In restaurants, I end up discovering at least one likeable thing about my friend’s hoity-toity girlfriend. In college, I know I can burst into tears and not be stared at funnily. In sex and the city, discussions on size, tampons, orgasms come easy there. Maybe that’s why I had a problem with Ally McBeal – it had a common loo – and somewhere I felt the female bonding went missing there. One also discusses their men, her men, our men, men in general in there. Skin issues, sharing perfume, make up tips, bitching about bosses come next in line. But mostly, it’s a space where one’s guard is down– and every woman loves the other – it’s like a modern day Lesbos.

Cleansed and Buzzed

The day began with a resolution – to clean up my room like never before, to discard all the extra papers hiding in envelopes and folders, to slot out all my important documents in labelled files, and to settle my cupboards.

So the excursion began and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself thoroughly enjoying the deed – I colour coded my clothes (from light shades to dark and keeping them in stacks of their family of colours, my cupboard now looks like a palette for asian paints), and then I settled my shelves (placing the books in order of height and thickness) and proceeded to do the dressing table (that found the products categorised in hand lotions, foot creams, body wash’s, moisturisers, perfumes and lip balms)!

What really made me happy was the way I put the paper work in order – “Medical Bills”, “Medical Reports”, “Payslips”, “Appointment letters”, “Travel details”, “Bank Statements”, “Credit Card Documents”, and then the “Important Bills”, “Semi important bills” and “Photocopies of all documents”. I was so pleased with myself and my rarely surfacing Monica Gellar tendencies that I proceeded to treat myself with an extra long bath and then a trip to Mondys with my friends.

Now Mondys is synonymous to Mumbai for me. There would be no weekends without it! For those who don’t know, Mondys is short for Café Mondegar, perched at the beginning of Colaba Causeway with its white, black and green board calling out to me everytime to go there. And its not just the place but the staff there that makes me go there over and over again. Huxley, the manager, gives us tables really fast (and today we got that special “table with a view”), and he makes us feel super special and super safe (there has been a history of a dirty letchy man getting kicked out by the bouncer and 3 table-ful of big-eyed men getting displaced to 3 corners for us)! The beer is chilled and the pizzas are cheesy! But the true USP of Mondys is the jukebox and its “strictly no-trance, no-hip hop” policy – skim through it and find the Doors knocking at your head, Alanis throwing her lyrics at you and the classic rock numbers making you sway happily!

So Mondys it was – with college friends (who else? I don’t meet office people on weekends as a rule) – and we talked about old times and I laughed until I had tears in my big brown eyes and we ordered one pitcher after another and with a couple of more trips to the loo, we talked and laughed some more. So yes, I’d say this was an ideal Saturday – a cleaning spree, buying 2 dvds, wasting ourselves so wonderfully at Mondys and then lounging around in my lovely spic and span room with my laptop and more music.

And yes, why I still sound so cheerful is because there is tomorrow to sleep and shop and sleep some more. Come Monday and I am going to be depressed until next Saturday and write some cribby, pathetic posts till then. Bear with me friends for the weekend shall return and the joy restated.

The Devil Wears Chappals

I am running dangerously short of footwear. (Dilli dosts help me – send me some love from Janpath and some affection from M block). Mumbai has absolutely no variety – all I see now is kolhapuri chappals of which I have had enough and those silly ballerina shoes that I think are ridiculous! I am so desperate for some variety that I have even considered cleaning the dust off my old red tattered converse shoes – and I would mind you, if it weren’t for the heat and humidity of this damn city.

Well, ok, Mumbai isn’t as bad as I make it out to be. the other day I was waiting to cross this busy road since forever and a huge truck just stopped causing the entire traffic to come to a halt and the driver gestured me to cross the road – it sent warm tingly happy feelings inside me and I thought to myself “This happens only in Mumbai”. Also the cab drivers are very nice and sometimes insist on returning 50 paise also. It again makes me go “aww”! So ya, I guess the city does have its moments. And it has Naturals icecream – with my flavour of the month being Anjeer. And Mondy’s ah Mondys – what would I do without thee?

The other day I was listening to Hemant Kumar… “chup hai dharti chup hai chaand sitaare…” while I was sitting at my window, looking at the opposite building (well, what can one say, that’s the view I have)…so anyway, the salty breeze of the sea was at its best and I was nibbling on aam-papad and I realised that this music taste has been passed on to me by my dad – and that’s when I realised that, try as much as we may, we eventually become what our parents are – and then thinking about it more in detail and to my utter horror, I discovered that many of my mothers traits are now happily perching on my head. And then the lovely song started “waqt ne kiya kya haseen sitam…” and my thoughts wandered off to the fact that maybe the Beatles are not it – that maybe I should start getting more into old hindi music in details… the lyrics of this song almost makes me cry each time I listen to it. Sigh.

I got a tiny stuff toy from my cousin today – and I was so delighted – not like I am one of those “ooooh stuff toys are so cute” kind - on the other hand I think that for a gift for an adult, it is the easiest waste of money – but this was indeed special. For one, it was Hobbes from "Calvin and Hobbes" and that was enough to make my cry in joy and secondly, it was something she had won in one of those game parlours where you try fish out a toy from that plastic box – both these facts added to the gift so much that I am, at this moment, sitting right beside it looking at its loving eyes that seem to speak to me!

Hmm yes, I have no string of thoughts – no paragraph is connected to the other – this post is leading to nowhere land. I don’t think I have anything so important or major that I can keep writing about anymore. I think life is becoming increasingly unexciting. I was invited (twice!) to this fancy club called Blue Frog that has recently opened and is the “place to be” (apparently!) – But I am put off by the fact that it has entry charge – yes entry not cover! – and then again, I was invited by men in my office who I am not friends with – so lets not even try treading that path of drunkenness with strange men. And hence, my evenings are very limited to sometimes catching up with college/school friends who work/live nearby or going home and listening to music until the late night episodes of Friends begin. Getting old, are we? Or we could just call it maturity? I like the latter – it sounds less boring. And for some reason I keep trying to find reasons to sound less boring – like trying to spice up a history text book with an imaginary character like Jodha (isn’t that was Rushdie says?I am not sure)

Oh I played Tekkan, a tennis game and a road rage game on playstation today and it was kick ass! And may I humbly say that I kicked ass! I had underestimated it – for all my view about it being just a video game for kids – today I have new-found respect for the damn thing! It is brilliant – the only down side of the entire exercise are the boils I got on my thumbs (apparently I have delicate hands, says he) – and now as I type I have two blobs of water bags on my thumbs. It’s so ugly. And I still want to play! How? How must we solve this problem?

Okay enough of rattling senselessly – back to my major problem – I need footwear – and those who are my friends would know the kind I want – flat chappal type sasta-tikau funky stuff – with big wooden beads or anything red? Colourful would do but I am assuming I should grow out of the whole multicolour thing. And some heels I prithee? Lovely ladies going to gk, please to be helping – beige? Black heels? Size 5? Oh I am desperate. Please to be responding to my plea! Pronto?

(“mera joota hai japaani yeh patloon inglistaani” plays in the background. It’s a sign I say!)