Time to Shop

I think I must go shopping one of these days. But I have no list to refer to. Of course, eventually, once I land up in a shop that appeals to me, I will buy things, but it helps to have a list initially. That way you don’t veer too much off the cuff and stay well within never mind that you have have spent at least a thousand bucks more than what you promised yourself to.

So let me see what am I going to buy. Underwear? Well, I have a bag full of them – in nearly all shapes and sizes. The one that isn’t included as yet is the g-string. But that will enter the undie bag  soon. Perhaps, I’ll look for this.

Then of course, I think I need a new pair of tight blue jeans. The one I had ripped itself apart near the thigh and Mother, being the puritan that she is, promptly relegated it to the dustbin – without my knowledge. Of course, I don’t know where it is. I am presuming she has thrown it in the bin. She always does. Well, let me ask her today. That asking is going to cost me a lot of lung power but ask I will.

So apart from these, what else? A phone perhaps. The Samsung Corby touchscreen phone. Oh I love the way it looks and I love its sleek smart style. But it’s 8000 bucks and I have promised myself to be stingy in these times of recession.

Okay, that gets struck off the list.  So underwear and jeans. You, my dear reader, may think me to be sleazy for such a short sexy list. But really, this is all I think I need to buy.

Oh how can I forget! I need trousers too. I hardly have a pair to wear to office. Yes, I must add that too.

Ah, that makes the list look rather decent now, doesn’t it?:)

Gone With My Whimsical Acts

My back’s aching – not aching actually,  scratching. Not even scratching; it’s itching, but slightly. It’s not as if I have to tear down my clothes and rip through the itching area. My back never allows me to do so nor does it give me a chance to do so either.

I was thinking about the times I spent with my ex-boyfriend (Harry). Oh he did not scratch my back, but he did excite me no end. I was so happy being with him. Of course, had it not been for my break-up before I met Harry, I would have still been with him. I broke up with Harry because I realized I wasn’t over the ass I had dated before him.

Today, as I sat in the bus and listened to a Philharmonic Orchestra playing Christmas carols, I began to drift back in time to the days Harry and I were dating. We would meet at places in Bandra and we did coochie-coo like rabbits.

Sigh! I miss intimacy. I miss it like hell. It’s the one thing that I hankered after for so long and when it did come my way, because I was in a skewed state of mind, I dumped it and how! I called Harry and broke up with him on the phone!

Silly of me, really, but then I have reason to say that this is just one of the numerous silly deeds I have participated in in the 30 years of my life here on Earth.

On Meryl Streep and Julie and Julia

I love Julie and Julia. And it’s all because of Meryl Streep. I wonder how many times people may have made statements such as the ones I just made after the movie released. The woman is a star beyond compare.

And what’s more, she has let the character come alive rather than let herself shine therein. This feat itself is highly commendable. Rarely – if not never – has an actress managed to keep her charisma aside, don that of the character and not intermingle it all to let her stardom show. Meryl has let Julia Child take complete control of her and not even once do you feel a Meryl mannerism has flitted by. They are all Julia’s and they remain so right till the end.

Meryl is a dream come true to the world of cinema. She is an actress who melts into the role she has been assigned to and pulls it out of the pan fresh and golden.

The Durrells of Another Kind

Mother likes the fact that we – as a family – are know as a gentle educated family. She hates it if people think otherwise.

I think everyone ought to know we are all anything but gentle all of the time with each other. Of course, we are educated: I have a degree in Computer Engineering and my sister displays her Masters Degree in Statistics with the air of a conjurer who has just made the whole world disappear. Mother too is a double graduate and Father is well-versed in printing technologies. Well, Father doesn’t have a degree; it’s a diploma he earned. But then at least he earned that. I know of Fathers who have merely earned rotten abuses because of their alcoholic habits – My Father has none of those habits.

So, we are educated, but we cannot spend an evening without a quarrel. We argue and we do storm out of the venue of the conversation, but come a knock on the door, we morph into the most amiable family you have ever come across. We are all smiles and we will go out of our way to ensure that you think that there’s not a split in the seams formed by us being stitched together.

But come sometime unannounced and invisible to visit us and you will see what we actually are.

Mother dreads this being discovered and so, always ensures we never quarrel outside the house. Father does make a wan face and at times spoils it so bad, we have difficulty figuring out whether he is thinking or is just in a bad mood.

Well, Mother hates it when he makes those faces but she cannot do anything about it. So, she pretends to assume that no one will notice them and sallies forth as if her family were the best in the world.

I have told so many times to get rid of this best-family title that she so assiduously sticks to. But no, she never will.

Mothers! I think they are born to nurture and born to care. But I also think they are born stubborn!

Yawn Yawn!

Oh Lord! I am yawning. I am that tired sitting without a thing to do. Well, yes there is stuff to do but it’s not as if the world will sue me if I don’t do it all today.

Seriously, I think I must think my way out of this. Either that or a handsome company must offer me the handsomest job of my life!

JobsNotThere.com

I am bored. And I definitely need another job. But where the hell are the jobs? Either the agencies call, ask for my resume, and then evaporate into oblivion or I e-mail my resume to e-mail addresses, wait for weeks, and then let my hope evaporate into oblivion.

Oh I am a good employee. I don’t mind boasting about that. And I do my work with sincerity that I find lacking in my colleagues.

Yet, with such a respectable reputation, I cannot land up with a new job! It’s so annoying – not to mention humiliating too.

Well, I am overreacting – I know. But tell me, who wouldn’t if they were fed up to the teeth with what they are into right now?!

About Baba and Barbara

I remember the first time I saw Barbara Walters on television, she was reclining on a huge chair that looked as stern as Jack Nicholson’s gaze in A Few Good Men. This was way back in the eighties or the early nineties. And I paid not much attention to her. I do of course remember saying to myself she loved to melt in all things pale. Pale hair, pale pink suits, pale dresses, etc, etc.

She sprang to my notice after all these years yet again when I stumbled upon Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live (SNL) doing her Baba Wawa act that mocked Walters’s funny accent.

Gilda was an ace in what she did and she caricatured Walters well – right down to the hair and her manner of sitting and acting very very prim and proper. Not surprisingly then, Walters hated Gilda’s act: “I don’t talk that way. And that’s not me.”

Oh but she does! Pay close attention to her when she is mouthing her words at jet speed and you’ll know why Gilda replaced l’s and r’s with w’s in her Baba Wawa acts.

Walters never ever dreamt of such an SNL. And I doubt she ever considered the fact that she – saccharine-sweet and diplomatic in her work – would ever be spoofed. But well, Gilda did think her spoof-worthy and there it was in all its splendour exposing Walters as a lady who really knew not how to bring out the stuff that lay beneath the saccharine coating of her celebrity guests.

Walters hasn’t changed at all. I ran into clips of the The View on Youtube a few days ago and there she was – all grandiloquent about how she was a great admirer of David Letterman and that ‘the joke’ was something that went quite wrong.

Any other host would have not even agreed to talk of admiration in the same sentence that denounces the joke, but trust Walters to be on both sides of the fence at the same time.

The only time she departed from this sugar coated behaviour of hers was when Star Jones left The View. Well that day, Star said she was free to disclose her departure and the next day, Walters reads out this long-winding episode of how Star was supposed to be kicked out and that her contract was not renewed anyway.

Well, it’s typical of Walters to douse her viewers with a whole tub of ‘truth and nothing but the truth’. And for all you know she might be telling the truth.

But, ladies and gentlemen, this is Showbiz and it thrives, every day, at a television network on air, on controversy raked out of truth and lies.

And Walters feeds it rather well.

An Investigation

Oh jeez! I feel so wasted. And in the bargain, I think I need to re-think – umm not re-think. I think I need to take a good look at the friends I term as friends and throw some out of the window.

In other words, I need to overhaul my friends list.

You see I befriended people merely because at the time when I was to befriend people, I wanted to be nice and sweet and admired and loved by all.

Not anymore.

I did so much for them and did so many things because of them. Things that I would never have contemplated were they not to put them in my head. I had sex out of wedlock, I began to watch porn, I tried to find humour in crass lewd, third-rate films, and I forced myself to laugh at jokes that I never ever wanted to.

I did so much and what did they do for me? Well, some gave me a ear and a shoulder to cry on when my boyfriend ripped me apart and left. And that same set did make me reason out with myself whenever I quarreled with  my family. These I admit were and are true friends. And they are not the ones who encouraged sex out of wedlock nor introduced me to porn.

The other set – the one that just shut up and kept silent when I was awash with problems is the one I want out now. They are the ones who insist on being around only in happier times. They drink, smoke, leer, lech, and just because they read a few intellectual books term themselves liberated. I think that’s the most scandalous representation of liberty and that has been my opinion only lately. Earlier, I did – like a blind fool – think that all what they did constituted a ritual that freed an individual of restrictions conferred by society.

By George! What a fool I was to think so. The only reason they did all that they did was because they were addicted to being happy and did not want to confront the most intimate of feelings and emotions at all. They thought themselves (and they actually are) inept at handling all that and I was so blind, I did not see the obvious!

Anyway, at 30, I can see all that and more. And I don’t want to have anything to do with that pack at all.

I am better off with my books, my music, my movies, and the select few – my family including – who know me and want me in their lives for what I am.

Monologues

What’s the meaning of life? I don’t seem to understand it. It seems as plain as a plate starved of  lunch at times – bland, no expression on itself, and not in the least ready to make any conversation.

I have often tried to find answers to understand my existence. But they always elude  me. They giggle and show promise of a solution from afar. And when I near them, those very answers pretend to feign an ignorance of my question that is oh so irritating.

Why do we live here in this world, really? Why? Is it because we chose to – at some point in our lifelines way back in the past? Did we ask The Creator to let us alight here for we thought Earth to be a dazzling star of happiness from afar? Were we that daft to not realize Heaven is far better than Earth and that we were taking it(Heaven) for granted?

You see once I start to think of these questions, they just arrive a dime a dozen into my thoughts and populate it so furiously, I have no way to cope with all of them at once. So in a fit of desperation I just shoo them away and try to occupy my mind with something else.

But they come back you know – one by one. Some wander into my reverie in the evenings when I am in the bus on my way home. Some make me toss and turn once I am all weary and tired in bed for the night. And some – the most irritating of them all – hit me in the head as I make my way back to office in the mornings.

Sigh! This is so tiresome – thinking about it – about the way I think about it all. I wonder why I have to think so much. Perhaps I have a fit of epilepsy in such matters – well, wrong choice of words, but then what should I term this whole thing that eats me up so much without so much as giving me a chance to comprehend its presence, its existence?

Quarrels, Fights, Angst, Etc.

I feel useless, really. At work, there’s not much to do other than think about how useless I am. At home, I get into fights at the drop of a hat. Yesterday, I fought rather violently in the verbal sense of the term with Mother Dearest and Father Dearest. Mother accused me of not doing much in the house and that blew my cool. I yelled at her saying she had no idea how difficult it was to travel to Andheri and back and be humiliated everyday with the kind of talk I have to bear during lunchtime.

Father of course avoids confrontation. So, he began to make noises to get us to end the quarrel. I lashed out at him in the bargain. I reminded him and Mother of the times he would come home and raise his voice just because his boss had yelled at him. That time, I said, no one said anything to him.

“Everyone says they’re frustrated here,” I said, my decibel-limit rising with each syllable, “Fact of the matter is I am the most frustrated man in this house!” And I slammed the door of my bedroom shut.