Scribbles

24th May 2012: Once more i find myself at that ugly place called writer's block. This time it's the size of and as ugly as a certain industrialist's south Bombay abode. And all i seem to be doing is sit next to it on a small wooden stool, the kind watchmen sit on, and stare up at the cold concrete tower, wallowing in self pity.

30th May 2012: Several hours after i wrote the above, I decided i couldn't sleep and so ventured out for a midnight stroll through the house. No. Not to the kitchen (though anyone who knows me would have to make that assumption), but to get the ebook reader from the living room. Now, for some reason that i forget now, i decided to conduct this *excursion* in pitch darkness, confident as i was in my ability to avoid walking into tables and walls. And i did. I got back to my room safely. Which was when i had a spectacular fall, tripping over the Fellow's suitcase (which, btw, was right in the middle of the doorway). Now you remember i had an expensive gadget in my hand? Yeah. To save that, i sacrificed the right side of my body, landing quite efficiently, on my right palm. Where was the Fellow in all of this you ask? Snuggled under his blanket, snoring lightly. Anyway. I dusted myself off, cursed the man who was oblivious to his wife's predicament and crawled into bed. 

I spent the next 5 days with my right wrist in a bandage. The doctor i visited was mighty amused and a little concerned about my mental state because the last time i went to her was because I'd walked into a rusted metal peacock and needed a tetanus shot. Which, at my age, apparently, is a little weird. I want to know who decides these things. 

2nd June 2012: All day was spent recuperating from a dinner party the day before. I'd spent all day on my feet, first cooking a meal for some 8 people and then playing host. Thankfully we'd I'd make a good decision about the guest list and so not too much effort was spent entertaining them. Alcohol and embarrassing stories were enough. Of course, they also had their children to entertain/distract them as they went about systematically trying to break my new super cool coasters (and all because they had chickens drawn on them. But that's another story). Oh, and in other party related news, i'm now the italian food expert around here. Though credit goes entirely to the friend who very kindly gave me his red sauce  and lasagne recipe, which the Fellow has now requested i make at least once a week. Yes. I have my own Garfield.

5th June 2012: Here i am. Procrastinating. Hoping like hell i can get off that stool sometime soon.  

Panic Mode: On

Tomorrow is our first dinner party since we've come to Pune. Some 20 people are expected (not counting children) and in a fit of craziness, i decided to do all the cooking. Needless to say, panic set in long before i started typing this out. In fact, the only reason i'm even writing this is because i can't cook/prep any more tonight. Why? Because my refrigerator has no space left in it to store anything till tomorrow morning. And so i have a few free moments before i force myself to go to bed. 

Anyway, my hands smell of garlic and my clothes are splattered with yummy italian tomato sauce. There is *so* much more to do that one part of me wants to throw my hands up in the air and run around the house screaming. The other (nuts) part of me wants to continue cooking through the night. But then the Indian part of me emerges and i think that if i do all the chopping and prep work tonight, what will my maid do tomorrow morning. What? Don't judge. I'm a very nice employee. She could have been doing all the cooking you know. And i could have spent that time painting my nails and trying on outfits. Ok, yeah. No. I would have just slept with my head under the AC draft till it was time to make small talk.

So. Here we are. The terrace has been washed and made tidy. The room where the children will be contained  given space to play has been dusted and cleaned up - meaning that everything that had to be moved has been dumped in the spare room, which will simply be locked up before the guests arrive.  The added advantage being that we have one room less to clean. The living and dining rooms (or that part of the house which guests will have access to) will be prettied up and dusted in the evening tomorrow. There is also a page long list of things-to-do-before-party-starts that i have, but i shan't bore you with that. Unless my party is a disaster and i have to vent here about all the things i should've done and didn't do. 

In the mean time, i'm off to bed where i shall try desperately hard to sleep and not lie staring at the ceiling, fighting the impulse to count spoons and plates at 3 am. 

When You Have Time To Think

And once again i find myself with so many things to write about that i'v ended up writing about nothing.

*So* much has happened in the last week.

The in-laws left after about five weeks with us. It took me four whole days to get used to being alone at home all day again. Also i was convinced for the first two days that my plants were looking sad and droopy, reacting to the absence of the motherinlaw and her green thumb. Turns out, they needed water. I'm kidding. It seems plants do that towards sunset. But i'm still on red alert, given my tendency to kill any plants i take care of. I have bad karma like that it seems. 

The weekend was spent in a manner that i assume is common for couples working in the corporate sector. All of Saturday the fellow was out, all of Sunday, i was. So basically we met on the weekend only for dinner. What i was doing all Sunday is worthy of a whole new post (like most of everything i talk about) but lets just say it involved escorting 800 plus women to the NDA for an all day outing. Yes. That many. Any we ended the day without any fights breaking out or anyone tearing their saree or dupatta. Quite an achievement i say. Oh, and I also won second prize in the lucky dip.  

The week saw us attending two parties (three including the one we have to go to in ten minutes). The first one was a smaller group of people and the happiest thing to happen was realising that an Air India airhostess can be identified from 10 feet  away, in any situation. Also, they really do look grumpy. Really. Oh, and the next party where there is dancing, i'm carrying ear plugs. I still appreciate the auditory sense that i possess. The second party we attended was labelled as a *Musical Evening*. This basically means that anybody in the entire station who thought they possessed an iota of talent could torture the rest of us realistic-about-our-own-talents people. So tortured we were that the Fellow and i decided to go watch TinTin that had been put on for the children's entertainment. But the tandoori chicken was yummy. Also we managed to leave early and did not have to listen to teenagers butchering ABBA for too long.

Grocery shopping happened. Finally. The mall was all decked up in the tricolour and was playing patriotic songs on full volume (on terrible speakers). Although i don't think it was the speakers as much as it was the fact that the cd must have come out of the cover after August 15th and was probably all scratchy. Same thing on TV. Bi-annual outing for most movies playing. And i think Gandhi should be banned from all tv channels. 

Last night another party had to be attended. And the only reason i went to it because i was tired of being alone at home all day. Yes. It's not as fun as i thought it would be when i was a child. This was one of those formal dos that had everyone yawning and looking at the time every three minutes. And yet it went on till nearly midnight. The only consolation was that i was smart enough to carry something warm to wear and could feel all warm and smug while the other women paid for their vanity and shivered through most of the evening. What? I'm evil like that. Maybe that's why my karma is all messed up and i kill plants. Hmm.

At this point, i've taken a look at all that i've written and i think i need to stop. Enough mindless rambling, dear diary type writing has been done. If you're still reading this, don't worry, the pain is almost at an end. Have a good weekend. 

Someone Get Me the Mad Hatter

I’m in my own personal hell. The Fellow has been away for nearly three weeks, the maid was first on holiday and then promptly contracted conjunctivitis a day after she came back (late mind you), the car seems to be missing the Fellow even more than me and so has decided to trouble me (the power locking stopped working, and now the driver’s door wont unlock with the key even). And to top it all, the other wives here (instead of spending quality time with their children and homes) insist on subjecting me to the biggest waste of time ever devised in the modern world – tea parties.

Seriously. Tea parties belong to the 19^th century when there was no internet or television or anything remotely more interesting than hooped skirts and needlepoint to keep the female population occupied. I definitely don’t need them here right now. I mean, the two odd hours I spend making forced small talk and smiling like I care could be spent so much more productively in front of my computer or even catching up on sleep.

Instead, I have to sit listening to the same bunch of women discussing the same things they discuss at every party, reacting the same way they do about the things they discuss (fake laughter, smile not reaching eyes, self-satisfied smug looks etc) and annoying me in pretty much the exact same way. Oh and the lack of intelligent conversation is beyond unbelievable, making me shudder non-stop in an ice-cube dropped down my shirt kind of way.

And instead of getting up and giving my emotions a very vocal expression, all I can do is imagine a rabbit hole appearing next to my chair. At least the tea parties there will be more fun right?

Of Food, Cleaning Up and Panic

So the Fellow and I had our first dinner party last night. Needless to say, I was the one hyperventilating all through the day, cooking, tasting, cleaning, supervising (the maid), re-tasting, organising and trying to get the Fellow away from this computer long enough to help out some. The Fellow, on the other hand, dusted off the bottles of alcohol, made sure the beer was refrigerated and checked if there was enough ice to last through the night. Yes, he did help when asked (like grating a whole tin of cheese and getting the crockery out) but like he said, at one point I was creating work for him, just to keep him involved! Eventually I let him be, and just demanded he shave and change into something presentable for the evening.

Why was I so worked up about a simple dinner? Well, to begin with, we’ve never had a party at home, so that was a little scary. It’s surprising how much stuff gets spread around the house and how much I sounded like my mom when I was putting things away. As I ran around the house, organising and tidying up, the Fellow had only one thing to say (which he yelled from his den while taking a break from Mass Effect 2): lock all the rooms so people don’t go in there, and this way you won’t have to clean anything up. Keep them contained within the living room, dining room and garden he said. And he ended his monologue with “my house, my rules”.

Once I got past the Fellow and his gyan (by simply not listening anymore), I started worrying about the food. I’ve never cooked for anyone besides my immediate family (who unfortunately had to live through my experimenting-with-cooking-stage of life) and the Fellow. And since, for the past year, I’ve been cooking for only two, I had next to no idea how to cook for more people. This obviously meant second guessing myself and wondering if what I made would be enough for everyone.

Well, as it turned out, I could have invited another 8 people over for dinner, and still have food left over [Note: The Fellow, who hadn’t taken a look at how much I’d cooked till after the party was over and we were cleaning up, still hasn’t stopped laughing].

And so, even with all the pre-party nervousness, behaviour resembling the Energiser bunny, last minute checks on everything (including the Fellow), a 10 minute window of panic (when no one arrived at the designated time), and a refrigerator full of food at the end of it all (not to talk of aching feet), my first dinner party was a huge success.

I’m now a fully functional fauji wife!

Of Tea Parties

I’m back to my whiny, complaining self. And this time round, its tea parties. Yes. You heard me right. Tea parties. In this age of television, computers, broadband internet, Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, I’m being made to attend tea parties. And not the cool, Mad Hatter as company kind either. No siree. I have to attend boring, annoying-women-sitting-by-me-and-talking-rubbish kind of tea parties. And I have to pretend I’m having the time of my life while I listen to why Mrs. Y fired her maid and why Mrs. X buys all her clothes only in Delhi. Oh, and there is also Mrs. Z trying to bond with me over something and all I’m thinking is “she’s touching me. Why is she touching me? Get your hand off my shoulder lady or I’m going to smack you”.

I mean, as if we didn’t have enough dinner parties here already, I now have to smile my way through tea too? And I don’t even like tea. But that’s a different story. Personally, I’m sick and tired of meeting the same group of women at least twice a week (and this week it’s going to be 4 times). Einstein’s theory of R never made more sense than at these times believe me. Making it worse is that with the same faces, come the same stories and the same boring conversations, revolving around set topics – their children, their domestic help troubles, cosmetic products and their usage, clothes (what they’re wearing and where they bought it), shoes (yes. They discuss shoes. Shoot me someone.) and of course the next party. Did I mention shoot me someone?

Now since nobody takes my complaints seriously (and shoots me to get me out of this misery), I do what I can. And so I got through the aforementioned party by hanging around the kitchen, helping the host warm the food (and tasting it extensively) and set the table. It made me feel like I was back home, a teenager, helping mum get ready for a party. This way I could dissociate from the bunch of women discussing nappy rashes and Amway products, and pretend I wasn’t married (sorry Fellow) and/or had anything in common with them.

Anyhoo. Tomorrow is a new day. And another party.

I need to find a gun I tell you.