Helooooooooo... Can you hear me???

Dont you just hate it when you are having a trullllyyyy important discussion with someone and where life altering decisions are being made over the phone and the phone line goes dead or blurry..... I have often found myself in a quandry like this.... where I am talking to someone about the most important thing in my life and suddenly I cant hear or the person on the other side cant hear what I am saying.... and most often we end up screaming "helooooo, can you hear???"" or "Helloo, I cant hear. Can you speak a little louder??"... etc etc etc and the saga goes on...

and my biggest fear is... what if you are actually commissioned to pass on a life saving communication to someone and right in the middle of the conversation the phone line becomes all blurry... "hello, yes the medicine that you have to give X is..." and the lines go down... or if you have one last call to make from a sinking ship to your loved one and before the words "I love you" comes out the line goes all blurry....

And worse if you are put on hold with the monotonous voice of the lady saying "You are in queue. Please wait"... Arrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh....

Now you know why modernisation has not solved any problems.

Honey Drool

Have you ever heard of Honey Drool? No, I dont mean drooling over honey or anything that you might call "honey" but drool that is honey? Well, neither did I till I met Baby George.....

Baby George is at a stage where he is constantly drooling... so no matter where he is there is a constant stream of drool hanging from his mouth despite best attempts by his meticulous aunt to clean him up... so most often my clothes are dripping with baby drool after I am done with playing with Baby George.... so one day when I was frantically cleaning my clothes of baby drool, my sister in her most helpful way said that baby drool is actually honey!! So now I have named Baby George, the Honey Drool kid....

And he is also at a stage where he wants to put everything into his mouth.... So he sees my fingers and pulls it towards his mouth with whatever little energy his 6 month old body has.... and I am constantly fighting off these biting attempts by baby george... most recently baby george landed what I thought was a huge slurpy, drool filled, sloppy kiss on my cheek... I went about the rest of the day claiming to everybody that Baby George gave me my first kiss... ofcourse the party stopped when I was told by my friend and my sister that actually he was trying to bite my cheek and not kiss it....

well only Baby George can answer properly and since he is choosing not to talk for the present I declare it to be a kiss...

Chalk and Cheese

Its not very unusual for one to feel that they are different from another person... come to think of it except for a few friends, I doubt whether I am that similar to any person.... sometimes I take it as a total compliment ... "Yay, I am unique" type of feelings... and at other times I feel downright despondent seeing how different I am from some people and how even if I try I will never become like that person... obviously this means that I admire that person in some subtle way but am not willing to admit it openly....

Most often these differences come up in the most mundane of things..... for instance, packing suitcases.... now a friend of mine would pack only after preparing a proper checklist of items needed for the trip... shampoo, tickets, torch, toothpaste, mosquito repellent etc etc....and then ofcourse the packing is a work of art....the clothes are arranged neatly (cos obviously they have been ironed a week in advance) into the suitcase, properly matched and perhaps even colourcoded.... so when one opens the suitcase, all the onlookers would see a completely organised suitcase..in short akin to a neatly arranged aisle of a super market.. and as compared to the supermarket finish, if I were to open by suitcase in front of people, the first thought that would come to their unsuspecting minds is "Garage Sale!"... the clothes are all there in the suitcase but not in any particular order... infact it is without any order .... and while i keep stating that there is order in the chaos, I doubt anybody would prefer the garage sale finish to the supermarket finish... Chalk and cheese?? ohhh I think so...


Well I dont know if I will ever be able to be that organised... my life is all about instant happiness.... everything has to happen fast.... so I usually dont ponder about the long term consequences of my actions and go with the attitude of I will tackle it when that happens....maybe it is time for me to change a little bit.... at least get a "Sabzi Mandi" finish to my packing if not yet a "Super Market" finish...

Does a City belong to you?

I have been away in Bangalore for the past two days ..... just going from one office to the other and back to the airport... and in between all this I realised that my city has changed so much... why is it my city? cos I stayed there for 5 years.... and no matter what I did or didnt do in law school, the 5 years I spent in law school were one of the most life altering years of my life... and for me the city is inextricably linked to that process...

so firstly the city has become a little more crowded.... or maybe I now travel in cars and earlier I would commute using my tiny little bike which made beating traffic a little more easy... now I see myself calculating the time it will take me to get from town (M.G. Road) to the Airport... and I was like "hey, I would do twice this distance during my student days"... and everyone around me says wistfully "times have changed since you left"..

and the city is trying to braze itself for its new metro project... so one of our favourite little theatres is being converted into a new metro station... yes for all the ex-law schoolites reading this, Arvind Narayan's Plaza theatre right on M.G. Road is becoming a world class railway station.... feels weird seeing one of the most recognisable buildings in Bangalore vanish...

While I noticed all these changes in my city, I didnt feel any loss... as in I just didnt feel like I am missing out on anything....I didnt feel the pull in heart about seeing such big transformation... of lost times and bygone eras... and that is when I realised that B'lore for me will always be the city in which I became a young adult... but it is not the city which accepted me an adult... and that is only Mumbai.....