Cut Off

For the second time this week, the phone lines went dead, and with that, the internet. And since my cellphone has no network inside my house, i was basically communicationless, cut off from the world for all practical purposes. 

Now, under normal circumstances, such happenings are most likely to bring out extremely violent reactions in me, with lots of tantrums and tears (of anger) and cussing at the universe. But i think i've been sleepsmoking or something. Because not one moment of crankiness happened when i realised the phone was dead on Saturday evening (after having spent 9 hours at the mall - something I'd rather not talk about till i can do so with good humour) and that there was no way to get it fixed till the weekend was done with. 

And i got so much done. I started and finished reading The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik all in one day. I doodled after ages and got a lot of artwork for the walls done (just need to get them framed now). I even did a simple DIY project that i'd been thinking about for weeks done. And all i needed for it was an hour that i wasn't online. I'd hoped to get some baking also done but i'm only human right?

So yeah. As much as i hate to admit it, being offline was good for me. And my to-do list. 

Someone Give Me a Time Machine

This is an extremely random post. Read only if you have nothing, and i mean absolutely nothing better to do. You have been warned. 

I was in class nine when i first read one of Georgette Heyer's books. And fell in love. 

Today, nearly 15 years later, i'm still in love. 

If there is one thing i really really really want to do, it is to experience first-hand, the regency period in England. Yes, I know that that time period in England was full of sickness and rampant poverty and the peasant class was exploited by the nobility and was illiterate and the weather sucked (which it still does) blah blah. Which is why i'm being very specific about whom i want to go back in time as - the daughter of a super wealthy duke. What? I can be selfish here, since i'm choosing to go back in time  (volunteering really) and all, in an age without the internet and microwave. I need to have the money to be able to really enjoy everything society had to offer then right? What is the point of going back as a maid emptying chamber pots (yeah, no toilets)? Of course, i would be able to have more fun as a man but i don't think i possess the stomach to be in a man's head even for a jaunt across the time-space continuum.  

So yes, i'll be content with living in the Regency period as a woman with a large dowry (quite essential then), bound by a hundred and five rules and crazy tight corsets that might give me lung disease and make me want to run a campaign for women's lib, definitely unheard of in 19th century England.

Yes, i may be sounding crazy right now. And maybe i'm romanticizing things too much. But I think I'd like to sit at a heavy oakwood table and use a genuine quill (none of your ballpoints thank you very much) to pen a letter on heavy, beautiful creamy paper, making sure to write in a tiny hand because paper was an expensive commodity then. And i'd like to wake up each morning to a mug of chocolate because apparently that was all in vogue then. Imagine.  I'd like to dress in gowns made of silk and velvet and real lace. Gowns such that i need a maid to help me dress. And do my hair up in fancy dos (ok i can do that even now, but still). And have all kinds of hats and bonnets. And jewellery that would, today, be called antique and unaffordable. Of course, i'd have to be every bit the lady and not curse (and in that time, even *damn* was an inappropriate word, yes) or sit slouched or show my feet in public (very forward that was, and not at all the done thing for a noble lady). Oh, and i would have to know how to play the piano, speak and read french, italian, do calligraphy, know the use of watercolours and how to dance several dances (none of your random all over the place kind of dancing). I would have to take care not to get freckles and have a healthy rosy look about me, even if it meant rubbing crushed strawberries on my cheeks to make them look rosy! And as an innocent young lady, i would know nothing about the birds and the bees. Expected really, since if you kissed a man you expected him to marry you!

Oh, i would also have to get married before twenty (the only acceptable age to get married) and pop children for the rest of my life but i'm certain i'd decide to come back to the future before that, er, happy occasion occurred. I don't think i'd be able to go long pretending i was a lady, what with my brain threatening to explode at the no cursing rule and the having to have a chaperone all the time. And i'm more than certain i'll start missing pants very soon, not to talk of rajma chawal.

So until such time as a time machine is developed, i'll stay content with day dreaming and sound slightly cuckoo.

Of Compression.

One of the hazards of marrying a fauji is the nomadic lifestyle. Everything you buy (that is not clothes)  has to be considered in terms a) how easy is it to pack and transport and (b) whether it will survive a cross-country journey in a rickety truck. This makes it a tad bit difficult when eyeing glass stuff or really gorgeous but delicate things that wont last even one move (like that awesome handcrafted miniature ship, complete with sails and stuff, but that's another post altogether). But glass and the like are not the only things difficult to move. Books are. Especially if you own a couple of trunkfulls of them. Ever tried moving a trunk that had only books in it? It's akin to moving a large boulder (as i learnt the hard way), done only at personal risk and little care for your back. Also, it's near impossible to move. So what do you do? You could distribute the books over all your various trunks. But that has its own problems which i'll talk about some other time. Or you could do what we did - cartons. Bubblewrap inside and out. Except that we ended up with some 9 cartons of books, 8 of which are still waiting to be opened (owing to several factors not entirely in our control). But considering our experience with the one carton of books that was opened (as well almost another carton full that emerged from trunks along with the ones we've bought in the past few months), we can't help be glad the bulk of our books are still packed away. 

Before you gasp and call us boors, hear me out ok. 

In the last 6 months we've moved 4 houses. And with every move, at least one car trip to and fro from the old to the new house has been entirely dedicated to our books. Do you know how tiring it is climbing up and down stairs with armfulls of books and loading/unloading them? Especially if you love them and are loath to toss them around without a care? The last time we had to do this (yesterday), we finally put all the books in a big drum sized bucket and heaved it up to the new house. This is when the Fellow finally decided upon something we've been unsure about (and i'm still not entirely convinced, no matter how tired i am of balancing book towers as i try to open the car door single handed) - the Kindle. He has now come to the conclusion that Kindles (and other e-book readers) were designed for faujis. After lugging about one-eighth of our books around four houses (along with the unopened cartons, dont you forget), the man has finally had it with hardcopies and is now looking forward to his entire collection weighing in at a few hundred grams. And when i tell you that he even mentioned both of us with our Kindles, you'll know how serious he is. 

But for now, i'm holding onto my paperbacks (vehemently) and figuring out where best to get bookshelves installed in the new house. We'll have this discussion when we  have to move houses again. Till then, lead me to Flipkart someone. 

Of ABCs

A long time back i wrote this. The same friend is now mother to a year and some months old infant. Now considering that she got pregnant about 6 months after her newfound interest in books, she found herself reading up on pregnancy, what to expect and all that. Of course, since she bought her first pregnancy book in month 4, she skipped the first 3 chapters. Why read up what has already happened right?

Anyway, now that she is a responsible parent she is taking the buying of books very very seriously. And so picture books, nursery rhymes, story books and of course, alphabet books are being bought whenever possible. Now one would imagine the imparting of knowledge from picture books or alphabet books wouldn't be much of a challenge right? Wrong.

For starters, picture books are not what they used to be. So when she picked up a book on dogs, she expected cute stuff like cartoon dogs and lots of *bow wows*. Instead she gets a mini encyclopedia on the various breeds of dogs, most of which she can't even pronoune. So she decides to do the easy thing and tackle the english language. But apparently my friend is more than a little stumped when showing her boy letters of the alphabet. Why? Because ABCs arent what they used to be my friend. No siree.

No more does A say Apple, or C say Cat or F say Fish.

A says Ambulance.

C says Camera.

F says Fire Engine

The poor woman is having to relearn everything because when she says A and Apple in the same sentence, the poor kid is left looking at the photo on an ambulance.

Oh, and Z says something called Zeebu.

Yes. You read that right. Any wonder that the poor girl is baffled?

Carton-full

The Fellow and I decided to go to a second-hand bookstore today.

There is something about piles and mounds of books that make me happy. It doesn’t matter that there is an inch of dust over everything (never good for my insane allergies), or that I have to look through hundreds of books to find one or two worth buying. Just being there makes me more than a little happy. And when I come across a book or a comic that I had read as a child (and never seen ever since), there is no stopping me from jumping around all gleeful. And then I stick it under the Fellow’s nose, and insist he read it and get appropriately excited. Finally, after several hours of browsing, excited squeals, careful pondering and monosyllabic conversations, I stand before a huge pile of books which I’ve finalised, and look at the Fellow (with as innocent a look as possible) for his reaction to my low willpower.

At times like these I’m really glad the Fellow is also a book-worm. This way he is able to understand my lack of self-control and overall happiness when I’m around books.

For now, we have a carton full of books, and several more days of holiday left. Yay.

Confession Time

(Day 77 of 112)

I have a confession to make. As stupid and moronic as I think the Gujarat government has been in banning Jaswant Singh’s book, right now I can’t help but wish the Himachal government had also banned it. At least that way I wouldn’t have been able to buy it and my brain wouldn’t have been put through the entire trauma.

And trauma it is. I’ve read only the introduction and a couple of chapters but already I want to use this 669 page book as a weapon, preferably on Jaswant Singh’s head. I mean, it’s such a cumbersome and heavy read. The sentences are super-complex and it seems like Singh has only recently discovered the semi-colon. There is no other explanation for the liberal use of the annoying punctuation mark. In a first, I’m finding myself reading each sentence several times over just to get some connection between the different parts. And while a lot of ideas are definitely interesting and insightful, they’re lost in punctuation, making it a tad bit difficult to appreciate wholeheartedly.

Of course I believe that the editor has to take some of the blame here. I mean so it’s a book on a figure prominent in the history of India and Pakistan. But why the book has to read like a history tome is beyond me. So far the book is as dry, drab and depressing as most history texts, the kinds that make students hate this otherwise fascinating subject.

And so I have a confession to make. I don’t want to read further. I know I should. Maybe it gets better. Maybe the beginning is like an acid test to see if you’re really worthy of reading the book. Maybe I’ll have a different opinion once I struggle through to the end. But right now, I don’t want to read further.

PS: Knowing myself, I probably will continue reading. And I will continue handing out opinionated gyan whenever I can. But at least it will be informed opinionated gyan right?

2 Naps, a Movie and a Book

(Day 76 of 112)

The title of this post basically summarises my day today. It’s some vacation I’m having here I tell you. I mean one would imagine that since I’m at the in-laws’ home, I’d be playing the role of the dutiful daughter-in-law and dazzling the new family with my brilliant cooking skills and social graces.

Alas. It’s not so. Not that I suck at cooking or in company. It’s just that the MIL enjoys being in the kitchen more than I do (and she does everything so much faster). Additionally I’d rather bond with the laptop and practice my social graces on Facebook as opposed to smiling like a slightly crazed chica for half an hour while some aunty or uncle makes mundane aunty-uncle talk, all the time thinking “damn my feet are cold.”

So since I’m not cooking and/or smiling for strangers, I have to keep busy. To start with there are the naps. Since it’s pretty cool (cold for me), naps are made extra fun under a warm, heavy quilt. Bliss. Then there is the DVD collection the FIL has built up, comprising mainly of old Hindi classics. I’m actually enjoying catching up on some brilliant film making belonging to a time before glossy and shiny was in. And then there is always some book I’m reading. There is undeniably relaxing and irresistible in a good book, a table lamp and a comfy blanket.

And so between naps, a movie and a book, only the Fellow is needed to make it a perfect holiday.

Of Political Expulsions and Book

(Day 75 of 112)

So the last several days have all been about Jaswant Singh, his book and the BJP. To put it in a nutshell, Singh wrote a book, the BJP over-reacted and Singh got humiliated with a no-warning expulsion from a party he’s been with for 30 years.

However with the BJP’s knee-jerk reaction being discussed everywhere and on every news channel, two things were certain – those who hadn’t heard of the book before did so now, and those who would have not read the book or left it for a couple of years later, made a beeline for the bookstore, just to see what all the hype is about.

I mean like Singh said, it’s just a book. It’s a personal opinion expressed in a democratic country. So what’s the big deal? The answer, I know, lies in politics. But I have a minimal understanding of politics and am not ashamed to say so (yay for me). Thus all the political jargon being thrown around on national television bores me (seriously) and also serves to simply confuse me further. Thus the only way I can make sense of this whole issue (and pass judgment on all the hype) is by reading the book in question.

And this is just what I’m going to do. At present I’m simply enjoying the smell and sight of a new book and fresh, crisp, untouched and unread pages. The reading shall commence soon.

Look out for some opinionated gyan soon.

Yesterday

(July 30th, Day 49 of 112)

Ok, so first I must apologise to Anonymous for not updating my blog yesterday. Next I have to break into a jig because now I know I have at least one reader who keeps check! Yay.

That done, I now know how jail inmates feel, locked up in a cell with nothing to do all day. No, getting arrested was not why I didn’t update my blog yesterday. I felt this empathy towards jailbirds because I spent the entire day yesterday doing more or less nothing. Since my computer was not hooked to the internet, it was like a living being without a soul. Just an empty shell really (this is the dramatic side of me). I was so bored that I was reduced to reading books on my computer – something I’m principally opposed to. I mean, it’s not a book if you can’t turn pages, insert fun bookmarks or take to the bathroom to read!

Now reading books on the computer wasn’t the worst thing I was doing (!!!). It was what I was reading – the Twilight Series – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. I started reading Twilight in Bombay out of sheer curiosity (Robert Pattinson and hot vampires taking up all of Hollywood’s energies made me a teeny bit like George) just to see what the hype was all about. Now as much as vampires fascinate me, the whole god-like description of Edward and the utter bimbo-ish behaviour of Bella was a bit tiring. Also I think Stephanie Meyer has an excellent publicist. It’s also a series designed keeping in mind hormone riddled teenage girls.

Why did I continue reading these books? Well, the option was between watching mind numbingly annoying TV soaps with my grandmother or Bella’s equally annoying whining, I chose lesser of the two evils. Also Edward has some redeeming qualities and there was now a werewolf (!) in the story.

So this is what I did yesterday - fed on a teenage romantic triangle between a vampire, a human and a werewolf. This was followed by an overnight train journey, the most striking bit of which was the smell. But then since my seat was right next to the door (which people insisted on going back and forth through all the time) and the concept of clean toilets is alien in our country it’s hardly surprising right?

This is my excuse for not posting something yesterday – mythical creatures and holding my breath for extended periods of time.

Gujju Land

(Day 48 of 112)

Am in Ahmedabad. Breakfast was dhokla, khandvi and khaman. Lunch was thepla. And now i'm craving buttermilk.

In the meantime i'm reading the 'Twilight' series out of pure and unadulterated curiousity, seeing as thats all Hollywood seems to be gushing about these days - and Robert Pattinson. And i've come to two conclusions. One, that Stephanie Meyer is not paying her publicist enough because the books are just about eh. And second that Robert Pattinson is so not worth all the hype. He's not even good looking really. Although, to be fair to him, the description of the character in the book is so over the top that he would have to be surgically altered to come close to the divinely chiseled features!

Anyway, between dhoklas, my granny, her tv shows, vampires, werewolves and supremely moronic teenage girls who swoon at the sound of a voice, Ahmedabad is turning out to be not bad. Not bad at all.

Ps: oh there is some totally awesome pickle here which has made the trip absolutely worthwhile. So yay.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning...

…A very good place to start. To read we being with… whatever has the largest print, least number of pages, a lot of pictures, and hopefully has had a movie made on it. Oh and whatever your friend has in her own personal library.

No, this is not my notion of reading but I do have a point to make with it.

A few weeks back a very close friend (who doesn’t even read magazines and avoids books like the plague) asked me to lend her a book because she wanted to start reading. After I’d gotten over the shock and managed to close my mouth, I continued looking at her waiting for someone to jump up and yell ‘bakra’!! When it became apparent that this wasn’t a joke, I asked her what type of book. That is when I got the big print, not too fat, simple story and something she would like bit. After mentally reviewing all the books in my possession and not being able to come to something that fit all her criteria I was about to give up and give her a lone Sweet Valley lying in one dusty corner in my house when another friend who was a silent spectator of the scene tentatively voiced an opinion. “Give her One Night @ the Call Centre na?” Hmm. Not a book I was a particular fan of but it seemed to spark some interest in my friend. I was surprised she’d even heard of it but it just took 30 seconds for me to know why. Though my friend may not know books, she knows her movies. And given that a beefed up Salman Khan is prancing on our tv screens in an apparent movie version of the book, it wasn’t surprising that my friend readily agreed to read the book.

Over the next few days, my friend would randomly call me and gush about how much she was enjoying reading the book and how she couldn’t wait to finish it. On completing it, she moved on Five Point Someone and then the third offering by the same author. By this time, my friend’s husband and mother were both getting a tad bit worried about this abnormal behaviour while I was looking through my bookshelf about what to give her next.
Today morning this same friend calls me barely coherent. After being assured that nothing was wrong I asked her what the hell was happening. “Chetan Bhagat is on 94.1 fm.” Even though I didn’t rush to the radio I couldn’t help grinning (a lot).

From barely reading college notes to give her exams to reading three-fourths of a certain Ms. Jones’ diary, from gushing (inexcusably) about Splitsvilla to listening to radio interviews of novelists my friend has definitely come a long way. And so it doesn’t matter if the start is a book with big print, lots of pictures and few pages. It’s still a very good place to start.

History Revisited

I read The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank when I was 12 yrs old, almost the same age as Anne when she started writing her diary. For me, the diary was an introduction to the truth of the Holocaust. Before then I hadn’t thought about WW II as anything more than another war. Anne Frank’s diary changed that for me.
I started reading up on anything that would tell me more about the Holocaust. I searched for testimonials from survivors, from witnesses. I looked for books devoted to the subject. I saw any movie that dealt with the topic.

So when I came to New York and saw that there was a Jewish Heritage Museum dedicated to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, I absolutely had to go visit it. And I wasn’t disappointed.

The museum’s collection tries (I say try only because it is impossible to compress thousands of years of culture and tradition into one gallery) to give you a peek into the lives of Jews, their way of life, customs, values. It takes you on a journey – one that starts in peace and ends in war.
The museum’s artefacts bring to life what I’ve only read in books and seen in movies. From a yellow Star of David that was once stitched onto someone’s clothes, to a passport with the name changed by the authorities to identify the person as Jewish, to a sign saying that dogs allowed on a leash and no Jews allowed, everything spoke about the Nazi regimes attempts at crushing the morale of the Jewish people.

Photographs lining the walls tell you about life in the camps. They show you men, women and children who are mere shadows of themselves.
All along the gallery there is a time line that marks the ascend of the Nazi regime and the increasing atrocities and systematic annihilation of a race.

There are stories of people asking for help. Of being denied help. Of losing hope. Of death.
There are stories of valour. Of Rescue. Of escape. Of reunion.

At the end of it all, the image which remained with me was not the board games that the Nazis designed and which had children sending Jews to die to win the game, or the ‘Racial Biology’ classes that were introduced in schools to teach children about racial purity, or even compulsory youth camps for young boys to train them in the Nazi ideology.

What remained with me was the 20,000 photographs they had in one part of the gallery of people who were sacrificed in the Nazi ‘experiment’. These were photographs collected by one person in an attempt to keep the memory of the holocaust alive. These were photographs of people not as they died, but as they lived. Full of hope, dreams and life.

It was in memory of the people who were.

We Love You Jeffrey!

I know more than one person who doesn’t like JA’s books. They find them repetitive, convenient, sensationalised, and tied up very neatly (among other things).
I love them. And after Tuesday evening, I know that at least another 300 do. Why else would they stand 4 deep, literally falling over each other and they hundreds of books around them?!
Lord Archer was in town promoting his latest book. Not his best work. I belong to the ‘We love Kane and Abel’ club. But it was an opportunity to see the man who wrote one of my favourite books and hearing him speak.
And I wasn’t disappointed. Far from it in fact. He had the audience charmed as soon as he walked onto the dias and asked the people at the back to come in the front and take the empty seats in the ‘reserved’ section. This one act told everyone that he cared more about his fans than snooty journalists who couldn’t make it on time.
The man is funny, witty, expressive and can sure tell a story! He knows his audience and says just the right things. He pauses at the right moments, and he poses at the right ones too!! :D He had the bulbs flashing all the time!
He is 70 and exudes excitement like a 10yr old.
He takes his writing seriously and makes sure the audience knows and appreciates what an uphill task writing a book is. He is appreciative of intelligent questions, and handles the stupid ones with amazing tact and diplomacy.
He just makes you want him to go on for hours.
So I stood in line with everyone and got my book signed and a picture taken and came home all tingly and excited.
Now I can finally understand why people spend hours waiting for a Mr. Khan or a Mr. B to pass by in a car. :)

In Memoriam

I read Tuesdays with Morrie a few months back. Apart from being one of the best written books i've read, it touched a chord in me somewhere.

I too was seeing a teacher battling a serious illness, and living on sheer will power and determination.

Reading a book it all seems unreal in a way. Its difficult to imagine someone dying to be so full of life and so insistent on being independent.

But seeing my teacher doing it made it all so real.

At the time i didn't get how he could still continue taking classes and insisting on conducting all aspects of the course when he was so obviously in pain. He would be on pain meds, sometimes to the extent that it affected his memory. He would lose track of what he was talking about. He would repeat the same things over and over again.
But through it all he never once gave up. He never took the easy way out.

Reading Tuesdays with Morrie i realised that sometimes lessons learnt in a classroom arent as important as the ones you learn outside of them.

Spending 9 months with my teacher i realise that sometimes lessons learnt in a classroom arent as important as the one who teaches them.

Just by being who he was, my teacher taught me more important things that theories and therapies. He taught me how to take charge of who i am and what i do. He taught me to be responsible for what i think, say and do. He taught me how easy it is to let an illness become an excuse for mediocre performance and how difficult it is to perform no matter what the condition. He taught me that i really am in the sensori-motor stage.

My teacher was incorrigible, difficult, stubborn, opiniated.

But then, he was the only one i knew who couldnt care what anyone thought of him. He was the only person i knew who truly made choices he wanted to and lived with their consequences.

He lived life like he wanted to.

My teacher passed away yesterday.

This is in memory of him.

Good night Father.

Dumbledore's Gay!!!!!!

Im a self proclaimed Harry Potter fan. I read the last installation of the series in one 12 hr long sitting. I spent the time between the final two books reading up every new bit of info available on the Leaky Cauldron (Google it). I had very serious discussions with my sister or any other HP fan around me on what could happen, and what would happen.

But nothing prepared us for this. And i must give credit to Ms. Rowling, or atleast to her PR manager for knowing just how to stay in the news. The hoopla around HP7 had just about died out, when another trump was thrown from the Rowling stables (i know i know, bad mix of analogies). Ms. Rowling announced to the world media that Dumbledore was gay. People around the world gasped in unison at this titbit. And then people like my sister shrugged her shoulders and said it wasnt surprising. After all, what could you expect from someone who wore purple robes, took pleasure in wearing a vulture topped hat and cried at the drop of any wizard hat??

So what Rowling has really done here is not shock people with her news.

She has managed to make a fictional character so real, and so alive that people even care about her news.