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. 

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.

“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.

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…

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?

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.

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.

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.  

Mallu Love stories are made of these...

1. You can sing the Popy kuda (pronounced- poe-pee kuda) ad jingle (in the right meter, mind it!)

2. You tune in to Asianet when you feel homesick coz you know the folks back home will be watching it for sure at around the same time

3. You scour the Regional DVD section at Rhythm House looking for obscure mallu movies that resident mallus in their homeland wouldnt dream of watching anymore. They are busy scouring the Hindi/English section

4. You feel a sense of duty towards Mohan Lal’s film career, can’t let him down, must watch latest release

5. You feel an instant karmic bond with any Nair/Menon/Kutty/Pillai that you meet and attempt to stitch together a conversation in malayalam 

6.  You turn up your nose at the sambar served at the local Udipi joint. (“Le Sambaar? Le Joke!!”)

7. You still remember an actress called Shobhana

8. You watch Srinivasan’s films again n again n again…

9. You can forgive Yesudas for singing in Hindi (Actually, on second thoughts, I forgive Yesudas anything..)

10. You forego your usual empathy with fellow mallus when you see Messrs Sreesanth’s on-field antics

11. You begin a conversation with a newly found mallu with “Naad evde?”

12. You feel a sense of belonging when you pass Matunga Central

13. You have a family member who takes offence at the word ‘mallu’

This was fun, actually.

I was travelling to work today when a large expensive looking shiny black Land rover passed by. One second later, a blue Mercedes passed by, with three people in it, who were clearly following the first car as security. One of the guys on the back seat had a whistle, too, which he was going to use to shoo traffic away from his master, I am guessing if anyone got too close. On cue, another Honda Accord passed by, with ‘MLA Gujarat’ written on the license number plate.  So? you may ask…well, so my dear friends who have bothered to drop by, the point that i am trying to make here is that this is the kind of thing that would not have seemed wrong to me before November 26th.

Post November 26th, all this seems petty-taken-for granted-misbehaviour that people shouldnt have to put up with. I was personally seething at the spectacle before me. That as citizens of this country, we had stopped seeing the blatant arrogance of the politicians that we had elected to office. That it’s the done thing to make way for that fat lump of lard. and we extend that privilege to the lump of lard’s family, and distant family, twice or thrice removed.  Why do politicians need to get the preference of way on the road? What is it that they are in a tearing hurry to do? Extinguish fires? Rush to Mantralaya to discuss important legislation that they will then pass for the benefit of their poor citizens? No? Then why can’t they wait at traffic signals like others and not expect people to make way for them?

So forgive me for my ignorance but can anyone explain to me whether this right of way privilege given to politicians is legal? Does the constitution provide them this cover? Because if it doesnt, then I think we all need to start questioning why such privileges need to extend to anyone except the PM, the President and other top officials? And if its provided in the constitution, then its time to change the rules…

As outmoded as the Ambassador car. No actually, thats doing a disservice to the beloved Ambi