Gone To The Dogs... Singular In This Case And What A Singular Case This Is!

So i get up one Sunday morning. The birds are chirping, the buffalos are mooing and all is right with the world (cue for a random soothing beethoven concerto). I take a warm shower while singing the latest and greatest from himesh buddy's hits (and hence driving away all single and multiple celled organisms in the radius of half a kilometer. Forunately yours truly is not inhabiting a very prosperous community and so there's no danger of breaking wine glasses here). I hum the same tune in low key while dressing up so as not to drive away my parents who are waiting for me in the next room so that we could go to church together. And then it happens... i step out to get my shoes and notice that (horror of horrors...) that there's only my left shoe is there in front of me. I quickly put on my sherlock holmes hat and start searching around the vicinity for the missing object and if possible the guilty culprit. Nopes... no sign of former-latter and i am about to explode into some choice unreadables... and thats when dad walks up to me and hands me the previously-lost-but-now-found shoe minus some bits of leather round the leg input part. What have we here? I zoom to the part where the bits of the shoe are missing and it looks like some random stray dog had adopted the thing to be its play toy of the day (or night, in this case). Out of all the shoes spread like tantalizing mines between the gate and the door, the creature had the sense of mind to swoop on the most expensive one on which i had shelled out more than 1.5k. And it lasted more than 2 years too and... then i burst out laughing when i realize that the brand of the shoe was "red tape" of all things. Yeah right! If anything had to go to the dogs, then that would be one of the tops in the list. With that out of the way, i rub my hands and wiggle my toes while thinking up what my next pair of shoes should be (no laces and plain black will do, i guess). With a smirk on my face, i put on a pair of "back ups" (you know, the ones one wears when one feels like giving one's feet a suicide mission). Ah well... what's life without a few pains in the you-know-where. Provides good blog fodder though (as my good-old-blogger friends already know and what our bad-new-newbies will find out very soon ;).

The Mallu From The Middle East

The prerequisite to understanding this post is to read hem's "paean to the city of sharjah"... man! i wish i had more friends with whom i could get nostalgic over that city... here's some more comparisons w.r.t. my... er our sharjah:

First steps: check!

Fell in love in: check!
It was a one-way love: uncheck!

Malayali-run cafe's: check! and how come u r skinny while i grew to weigh the equivalent of a teenage elephant?

Exile in school: CHECK! damn desert ;)

Fire, quakes and explosions: nopes... must be just u then, hems

Alcohol: nopes again... i had to wait to get to bangalore to get the relevant experience

Mobile street: that reminds me of the street across the roundabout facing mega mall...

Censorship: grrrr!

Academic learning: yup... big check! and dad needed a big cheque too :)

Bachelors and underpaid laborers: sick and thats why we ran out of living near rolla square, i guess

Safety: this was an excellent feature... i loved it!

Platonic hugs: i was too huge to try it out there... hmmm... was this why mom and dad wanted me to remain horizonatally challenged?

Piercings: nopes

First job: does an internship count?

Accidents: one and only one and it just scratched the paint job on my car... the opposing party had to let us go since they couldnt find a dent on theirs

Vows: check! hell, i broke a lot of vows...

Languages: learnt hindi everytime i hanged around those urdu cab drivers... wish i had paid more attention to those arabic classes though

Tea and AC: hehe... i totally get this one

Photographs: egad! i dont ever wanna let anyone see my childhood photos... i look SOOO geeky

Running away: when i left, i never looked back but i keep returning to you... after all, it was you who made me the mallu-from-the-middle-east...

Meet The Parents

My parents do come down to Bangalore now and then to see how their only-begotten-son is doing. During one of their first visits, i had just lost a couple of kilos and was looking like a refugee camper (65 kgs was too little i would admit to myself later), which left pop and mom devasted. Since then, they used to always enquire about my eating habits and mom used to try pumping me up to my former shape every time they visit me. In a way that was a good thing cause i now know how much i should weigh in order to not have relatives jumping on my head to terrorize me on my weight loss and to not look like i am going to disappear into thin air ;). So, i made a vow to remain in the 75 to 80 category and told them about it which, thank the Light, reduced their fussing. So, when they came down here this time, they were relieved to see that i was not making any empty promises. Ofcourse, that didn't stop mom from commenting how tired my face looked to which i retorted that body-parts don't shrink randomly but do so altogether. Seems like my mouth's not gonna go small any time soon :P.

And then there are the lighter moments when we get together. Here's a few which this time and that made me roar with laughter:

1. We were travelling in those big red luxury volve public buses here and Pappa accidently lifted his leg to rest it on the opposite seat which was facing him. I tapped his foot lightly and said "Pappa, we are not at home". Mummy was trying hard to control her laughter and Pappa was starting to turn a shade of beetroot red :).

2. We were visiting our relatives (mom's sis's family to be exact) and my little cousin was playing hard-to-eat-the-lunch. So mom performed one of those "crow eats the food" trick to get Deol to gulp the food down. Here's how its done and am sure it might come in handy if you have been trying to get your own kids to eat their greens:

mom (hand outstretched with rice rolled into a small ball and eyes-closed): "Better eat the food or the crow might eat it"

Deol swoops and eats it

mom (after waiting a few moments for deol to make his getaway opens her eyes and exclaims): "uhoh! Seems like the crow has gotten the food!"
By now, the "victim" has gotten the gist of the game and he/she plays the part of the "crow" according to mom's script :).

3. And then there was the time when Deol literally climbs up on my back to try all sort of his spiderman inspired stunts. During one such dare-devilry, he notices that i have this small spot at the back of my head where i am starting to go bald. So he announces the same in this very matter of fact voice and tries to close the gap by (and this is the only way i can say it without making it sound weird) tugging at my hair in a particular direction :)

Ah! Family... its all worth it in the end...

Goodbye Robert And Thanks For All The Books!

The unfortunate and untimely demise of Robert Jordan, author of the acclaimed and/or much criticized Wheel of Time fantasy series (depending on which side of the fence you are sitting on) on September 16, 2007...... man! i can't get past the damn formality so here goes the casual one: We will miss you Robert and just hope that whoever finishes book 12 will make it worth the read... and since you were kind enough to think of us, your readers, before you went away, by making sure someone got to know how you wanted The Book to end, we would like to proclaim you a Swell Dude and bless you in your own words:

"The Light illumine your soul, and may you shelter in the Creator's hand untill you are born again"

... and when you are born again, do write your next series "in a more linear approach" just like you regretted not doing ;)

God bless!

RJ's blog:
http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/

Slashdot's tribute to the man
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/09/17/0243230.shtml