Acting out the brief

As I get older, I get the odd feeling that  I am really just acting out my age according to my body clock. So while I thought i was one in a million, it emerges that  I am actually just another demograph acting out what her biological clock says she ought to do. So while I couldn’t quite figure out how people spent all their time in the kitchen in my twenties; now that I am in my thirties it seems I have a very good answer to that question. Its a revelation to me that I spend most of my free time there, perfecting some random recipe. And that’s not because of lack of house help. I have someone who comes to prepare the food. And yet, the pots and pans beckon. I don’t understand it but what the hell? I am almost embarrassed with the pile of cook books that I eventually emerge with, at Landmark’s cash counter. ‘For my mum,’ I offered helpfully to the bored cash counter executive last week.

In addition, I get gooey eyed at the sight of any child, brattish or otherwise whereas in my twenties I couldn’t be bothered with the perfunctory cooing that most women believe they have to perform whenever a toddler was in sight. In my thirties, I like to stay at home and read, sip wine…even take an interest in – good lord, is it possible- gardening??

More on my cliched new self later.

 

 

Gooey-eyed

The idea for this post came from the book that I am reading right now. Songs of Blood & Sword by Fatima Bhutto. I’m not much for biographies or autobiographies for that matter but this one I was drawn to reading. Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s written by someone as young as Bhutto and in as sane a voice as is possible for someone who has been part of such a bloody family history. And she’s incredibly pretty, too and yes, one is always interested in knowing more about beautiful people more than about less beautiful ones (yes, I am shallow and I am also female, so banish the thought)

Writing about how she pieced together her father’s life story as she made contact with his friends, family members, acquaintances, she explained how it was through letters, albums, footnotes that were lying in trunks, gathering dust, in her home. Self consciously, I wondered what paraphernalia I would have, to show to my kids,  twenty years from now.

When my mother in law passed away, it took all of us a while to unlock her wardrobe and give away the things in it. Clothes, small knick knacks whose significance we had no clue about. There was a letter written to herself on her graduation day, talking about the future and what she hoped for. A recipe for meatloaf. A few more dog eared, pages  with instructions of home remedies, hand written in her precise handwriting.  Even an autograph book (or what passed as one in those days) with good wishes from all her school mates on the occasion of their graduation, hopeful wishes for the future. Some naughty ones, too.  A hand written ‘I’m sorry’ note by my husband when he was six, apologising for having made his dad buy  sneakers worth rs 4000 then.  (he threw a tantrum at the store and refused to leave till his indulgent & hapless dad bought it for him) Pictures of her trip to Andamans where she went scuba diving at the age of 50. A life well lived. Could I say the same when I was 64?   The only bits of paper that line my drawers are bills of expensive appliances bought, and their guarantee cards. A few cards from my husband, photos but that’s about it.

Where does one write letters anymore?

I don’t remember the last time I went to a photo studio and got my pictures printed. Everything is digital, stored on my computer and liable to disappearing with one crash of the hard drive (dear computer god, I am merely hypothesizing, do not take me literally)  So how do we remember our 20s? and how will we remember our 30s (so my age is established, now)  and so on…

R.I.P….Not so fast.

Blogging is hard work.It takes strong will and a rock solid dedication to rousing your lazy friends and followers from their self induced stupor and make them drop in, comment and trash whatever it is that you have written about.

I dont remember the last time i blogged, which means in blog terms my blog is hereby declared dead. Here’s a toast to new promises and resolutions. I shall blog every alternate day for sure.

For whom, did you ask? Well, I know my mum definitely reads the blog. 

Say no to Plastic

I just got my new credit card in the mail today. And I had mixed feelings. I’ve been at the wrong end of credit card companies in my younger days and I had promised myself that I would live a plastic-free life in future. I did, for about six years. But eventually the bug bit me.

So, I’m happy at the thought of all the limitless possibilities. Mango, Promod, Aldo, MAC, Charles& Keith, Marks & Spencers, Body Shop, here I come. No wretched feelings of the end of the month need bother me anymore.

And I’m aware (just a bit) of the fine line between being conservative about the card and going nuts with it.

“I am only just keeping ONE credit card for booking my travel tickets from time to time. I shall leave it at home,” I reason to myself and to no-one else in particular.

Yet, the temptation to carry the card along in my daily wallet is…well, Excruciating.

Somebody suggests that I use it once to make sure it is working and my brain immediately goes into overdrive checking out sales at all nearby Mango/Aldo/Promod stores. I mean, if I must shop, it might as well as be a shirt rather than some mundane grocery, right?

I did leave the card behind though. I know the first swipe is as good as the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth. Once, you’ve tasted blood, its a lil naive to expect to stay vegetarian. Prudent in this case, it would seem.

back to basics…

“You didn’t back up, did you?”

That has to be the most infantile thing to say to anyone who lost their phone. It demonstrates a clear undertone of ‘I told you so’ and clearly implies the unsaid- ‘Tsk, tsk. I ALWAYS back-up my phone data.”

So yes, I lost my phone. Yes, I didnt back-up. Yes, I always meant to. But yes, I didnt .

Can we move on, please?

Despite the loss of my phone, though, I was secretly (and secretly, only!) glad that I had lost my phone. I was getting tired of the damn thing anyway. and guilt wouldnt let me chuck it and buy another. God’s way of saying, ‘Change the phone, dammit!’ was my reasoning.

So I promptly went to Nokia (some loyalties are hard to shake) and bought meself a brand new Nokia phone, nothing fancy but one that I had always wanted to buy and resisted. It’s a flip phone. You must understand here, I always wanted a flip phone, just never got around to buying one. so while its not fancy at all, has the most pixelated camera phone, allows only limited saving of names in phone memory, and has virtually no memory at all, me and my flip phone look like something out of a picture postcard, posing together happily.

organise, organise, we must

I fantasise about being organised. i really do. as nerdy as that sounds, its true. so i spend hours making up lists, crossing out tasks completed and those that aren’t generally get ignored and lie forgotten.

there is a certain science to being organised. what it comprises of, I have no clue, but it sounds nice anyways.

so in the last one week, i’ve logged in and created my profile on two different list sites. one is www.43things.com and www.rememberthemilk.com.

check them out if you are a freak like me…

Currently reading…

I am currently reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and I have secretly added ‘graphic novelist’ to my ultra confidential list of things I aspire to be. Things I aspire to be in my head, that is. By  the respectable age of 30, i am honest enough to realise that maybe five of those may become true at some point.

I have a graphic novel in my head, its there somewhere and flashes lil bits of brilliance from time to time, but it is, by all accounts, shy and needs to be coaxed into the public spotlight.

Here is a list of the top five things I aspire to be: (Confidential, i know but wot the hell…)

1. Design shop owner

2. Award winning screenplay writer

3. Graphic Novelist

4. Genius (read elusive) illustrator

5. The best rally driver in the world

6. Best chef in the world 

Umm, thats six but no harm in getting carried away, eh?

Beyond the FB walls

im bored of facebook. i still log in, anyways. but it doesnt seem important to let the world know what i am doing every minute of the day anymore. i also seem to be going through a-rebel- against- the- FB- status- update mood, so i’ve steadfastly refused to have anything to say on my update line except for – I dont have a status update. this isnt a trying to be off the beaten track thing, its just a i’ve had it upto my teeth with FB, thats all.

Movie Junkie

Something satisfying about doing a back to back four movie marathon on a Sunday. All different movies..not sure I’ll do it again sometime soon but I think if they could write on my epitaph that I “watched all the movies that were ever made in her lifetime,” it would be a life well lived. Among other things of course… like travel to all existing continents in my lifetime, eat every possible cuisine, learn to swim (better late than never, never is how it stands right now), read all the books in my shelf (mighty task, that!) and dress up every single day of my life.

Calling all ye faithfuls

Watching Sex and the City back to back (seasons, not episodes…yea, I know I am a freak) made me realize how similar I am to my mum. Ever since I can remember, my mum got intensely involved with what was happening on the screen. If the vamp was mistreating the heroine on screen, and it was going on and on without anyone interfering and telling the vamp off, there would be a point when my mum would get really worked up and exclaim, “That’s too much, how can she do that?”

From what I remember, that was always the elastic point. The point where the screenwriter made a mental note that said, ‘This is it, now send in the rescue men/women’. My reaction to all such agitated dialogues was an amused “Mum, it’s just fiction, why are you getting all worked up?”

True, but by the same logic I ought not to get irritated when I watch Carrie swoon over all the wrong men in her life and bypass the man she ought to be with. According to me, that is. (And for the record, Mr Right is Aidan Shaw. Aww, that man is just too good to be true. And she breaks his heart??? That’s too much, that woman deserves to be put away in an asylum.) My self-realization happened when I happened to mention it to hubby in a moment of utter irritation at the treatment of Messrs Shaw.

“Why does she keep going back to that dick Mr Big?”

My husband for all his angst against the creators of Sex and the City (his official view? Ban the show, its taking our women away) looked at me in a moment of utter logic and patiently said, “Honey, how is the series ever going to go on, if she turns to Mr Right?”

There. The most logical answer that I, in my TV induced stupor, otherwise perfectly capable of logic and reason, had failed to recognize.