Forget the management gurus and the spiritual speakers , it is the Cola Kings who give you the mantras to live by. First one they gave you to chant everyday as you woke up was This Heart Wants More ( yeh dil maange more) - considerately translated into almost all the Indian languages for they did not forget that the 1. billion would-be guzzlers were living in a country called a study of unity in diversity . Remember the first chapter of your civic lessons on India in school ? They had it pat and they are a dedicated lot who wanted to ensure that the secret to happy life did not stay with the English speaking la-di-da but reached the masses. So you were told to want More of everything , thus the 250 ml bottle of cola became the 2 and 2 1/2 litre mammoth bottle . When the Enlightened speak and give you the Key to Eternal Happiness it is incumbent upon you to ensure that you adopt it seriously. So everyone was convinced that the 24'tv had to be replaced with the 28' and the 28' with the 35' and the yeah yeah , you got the picture . Everyday, in every possible way, you had to keep replacing what you had with more and more not because you wanted it , but your Heart wanted it and how heartless would you be to refuse the heart . More clothes, more shoes , more gaming gadgets . Some dedicated believers even took it to the level of more relationships in and out of marriage - after all wasn't the plural of spouse : "spice".
After a while the voices from Olympus ,Sinai, Kailash or whichever Mountain they sit on, decided they had outlived that one - how could you go bigger than the big bottle - somehow glugging cola from a jerrycan wouldn't look chic and trendy. Swoosh - they produced the next mantra . With thunder and lightning the new mantra was sent along : Right NOW . ( abhi ke abhi ) you needed to get everything Immediately ! If you woke up to see a new phone advertised on the first page of the newspaper ( of course I mean a mobile phone , who buys the other kind , really !!)with all kinds of features which you wouldn't have the time to use because you were busy working your butt off to make more money to buy the next one ( you guessed it ) Immediately! It had to be instant gratification of all senses .Hungry? Don't cook - order your food now ! And before you think they don't apply this mantra to themselves ra-ra-ree you pizza will be free if it doesn't arrive in thirty nail biting minutes.
Advertisements reflect a society best . Instead of trying to read up reams on sociological analysis or wade through critical papers just flip through magazines or turn on the television. No more advertisements of - you've come a long way baby as the Virginia Slims ads of them days .Heck how do you hock cigarettes that uses a name like Virginia - more chances with the politically correct puffing crowd if sold as Vagina Slims .
Then there are all those nylon-wig-swirling airbrushed women swearing they get their beauty , youth , fairness ( very , very important for the Indian women and men as well) from five rupee mini sachets of magic . What kind of a cave woman are you if you don't want to look ten years younger, not for yourself silly (how dare you) but for your Man . Remember you wicked creature if you don't buy all this stuff and give them all the loose change that they need to build swanky houses , send their children to Ivy league colleges and holiday abroad you are doomed . No college admission, no beauty crown,no jobs, no marriage ; and the worst your family will be so ashamed , that you are not fair damsel . Who cares whether you have brains , brains should stay in the skull cavity to be displayed only as degrees . The CEOs have a penchant for other people's money and sometimes they are bold enough to slip it into their ad jingles : you are a part of our family tra la la ; kind of you-owe-us-a-living -so-be-stupid dictum is foisted on you.Super smiling Moms doing yoga while assuring their families that their health is taken care off really get my goat .
Talking about Super women , I am convinced that our mothers were far better at time -management and at juggling roles than us. They did all this way before it was called multi tasking . Husbands who were chauvinists but didn't feel guilty about it as the term did not officially have the tag-line Pig , parents in law with a smattering of brothers and sisters in law thrown in and who were convinced that they were not wrong to make certain demands as it came with the territory ( or the dowry), and the children that were faithfully produced consecutively depending entirely on the libido of the male counterpart or till the mandatory male child appeared . With all these creatures of the Noah's ark, for each had a different trait : the tiger, the sloth, the snake et al she ran a tight ship . There were servants to do the chores but anyone can tell you getting them to do work may be easy but getting them to do it the way you want , that is the real challenge.
The one person who I await eagerly each morning and after the specified time has passed look , often at the clock with anticipation and bend an ear for the ding-dong of the front door bell is my Maid. When anyone complains about her tardiness or her cutting corners while she nonchalantly re-distributes the dust , I defend her with all the sincerity that I can muster as she is the bulwark of my life. I hate doing dishes and that she does them is enough for me to nominate her for sainthood all her tantrums notwithstanding . She has killed off more relatives than I can think of and married the same nephews and nieces a hundred times over losing count as she makes excuses for not turning up for work . When she does turn up after few days I am on my knees thanking the Gods of Daily Chores.
There are chores I manage to get by, by listening to music and I have the whole thing so music-coded that I live and fall by it . So it's romantic songs while cooking , good country music while dusting so I can swish the duster back and forth with the agility to the beat of the drums and the strumming of the guitar. While I iron Air Supply, Springsteen and Elvis send me to the upper clouds and make my work lighter .
In school my music teacher taught us a ditty that ran like this :
It was on a Monday morning
When I beheld my Darling
She looked so neat and charming
To every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble O
Washing off the linen O
Dashing away with a smoothing iron
She stole my heart away!
I never can look dashing away while ironing and thank the good Lord that my husband never waited for that moment for his heart to be stolen away but stuck to more prosaic things like good food .
More MindBlast next Monday !
Monday, February 23, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Monday MindBlast
Monday mornings aren't just about blues - its about every shade of indigo . I do believe all about relativity - how long the week lingers and how fast the weekend zips through . When I daydream , as I am so wont to do throughout the week , I think of all those delightful things to do on Saturday and Sunday and the the special god appointed for Ruining Weekends works overtime and throws totally everything out of gear for me . By the way , the "wont" is neither a typo nor a short form of some eighteen syllable word shortened in the fashion of the tweetters and WhatsAppers but rather in the style of the Bard - good old Bill or Mr William Shakespeare as some of you may better know him. Can someone explain to me the mystery of why the person who can text Gud finds it difficult to add the extra alphabet and say Good instead . Good sounds so good whereas Gud sounds like the jaggery sold in kirana stores .Then of course it took me quite sometime to figure who the mysterious N was who pops up in the texts I get from the young ones until after much deliberation and re-reading it hit me that it was used for and. Really ? Is it so difficult to text "and" ? So when you tweet you really do turn into a birdbrain - how telling is the logo of the blue birdie ?
Talking about birdbrains - all those syrupy cloyingly sweet stuff I hope has been carefully stored away either to be burnt , returned or re-read at a later date - depending on whether the Charlie or the Jane of this year lasts till next Valentine's Day.There are of course the thrifty ones who just take their present beau or beloved to the card section in the store and read out the card they would have given them. How special is that? Frankly , I think if you find one Cheapskate like that , my advice is get serious about this one : I mean a person this thrifty isn't going to be unfaithful later in life - infidelity and adultery costs money ! Huge costs can be a huge deterrent , the "other" woman will expect to be plied with gifts and toyboys are usually quite broke and need to be fed and clothed and sometimes require college fees to be paid, too. I guess all these warning were inbuilt in the commandment Thou shall not commit adultery . After all how could Moses the Patriarch carve all this in detail on a single stone tablet of the size he could hold and lug down Mount Sinai? . Actually wonder if God really did say it or was it Moses' brainwave?
About God ( if you believe in the mono ) or Gods ( if you are the Pantheon of Gods kind - the more the merrier kind of person ) -those that think man was created in his ( hers or their) own image, its better to do some serious re-think. All you atheists who are convinced that we are an exotic cocktail of a lot of chemical stuff that came together perfectly ( sounds terribly liked blind date and those always go so terribly wrong) you better do some rethinking,too. Then there are the scientific kind who insist we are perfect working and computing machine and we've got this brain which has the potential of the universe trapped inside ( obviously they have never come out of the labs and met the hundreds idiots who I keep meeting !). Maybe when they finally unravel it all , we may need another brain to understand it. Now for the truth : just stand in front of the mirror and look at the oh-so-many parts stick out at odd angles and how many dangle in the most embarrassing manner. Looks like all the God or Gods ( your , mine and theirs) may be good at a zillion things but definitely flunked the course on external ( human)scaping .
That is the real reason humankind decided on clothes. Of course, Eve sharing the apple with Adam helped and don't believe those misogynists who blame Eve for the Fall of Man - imagine if she hadn't shared it with Adam - we women would be fashionistas and all the men would be running around naked ( ugh!) Seriously , test tube babies would have come about before the invention of the wheel. All those awkward body parts that tend to love gravity so much can now be turned into flowing appearances. How many apparel houses that have become major power brokers would not have existed were it not for the Apple . Surely it should be their logo and not of tech gizmos . I hope , along with Goddess Lakshmi the drapers, tailors and garment exporters are propitiating Eve too .
Same applies to all those who create unwearable clothes which girls with most unhappy faces and guys with sheepish expression ( "I need the money therefore I do this " look) walk in. It beats me how the gals manage the forty five degree angle tilt throughout their ramp strut without the aid of wires , stirrups and halters to hold them up. I am equally flummoxed by their ability to maintain the bored look throughout the show.. Fashion shows bore me to death with all that walking up and down , somehow it always seems to be pointing out that I don't get enough exercise .
Exercising , walking and I parted ways long ago , from the day I realised I can get my endorphin rush and spice up my life from hot peppers and other much more interesting stuff. I hate gyms. It has nothing to do with cougars in bulge-showing leotards making mooney eyes at trainers ( who I am sure roll on the floor with laughter when they recount their shenanigans with their wives and girlfriends later ) nor with the wannabe George Clooneys in shorts three times small with spindly hairy legs, jiggling their middle age spread acquired by lusty eating and living ; not even the thought of sweaty handles and perspiration-smelling mats and benches - no , its sheer Fear . Fear that like so many I will spin in a ruthless cycle , like some form of Karmic Wheel, of exercise to burn fat -feel hungry - eat more - exercise more to burn that- feel hungrier - exercise more to burn that .... you got the picture. Now before you snort at that with disdain , I have many acquaintances who have started and quit ( and I know i cannot do this forever - hell , even Love doesn't last forever ) and they have doubled and even trebled . That is the scary thing I was referring to !
More MindBlast next Monday !
Monday, February 9, 2015
Monday MindBlast
Why Mondays for some mind blasting ?
That's easy to explain.
Work through the week and then during the weekend when I am just sitting around doing therapeutic stuff like cooking , dusting , re-jigging the cupboard ( I am so serious about this - they are truly therapeutic ) I tend to run a montage in my mind of the things that have happened during the week that have set serial thoughts pounding my head .
The other reason is even easier to explain : throughout the week travelling around Chennai and being stuck in traffic lights gives me time to look around and suddenly something that I see sets me off on a ruminating spree . I have this luxury because I do not drive - basically it was a toss up between paying a driver to steer me thorough the mad metro traffic or pay for some fancy namby-pamby pink jar with divine smelling goo that promises to make the stress wrinkles disappear! I opted for the driver .
Talking about drivers - my friend caught me at a movie when I was between hiring and firing drivers . Sympathetically she asked me how I was managing . I leaned across and in my best stage whisper said : you know these guys who seem to come into my life and leave abruptly despite the fact that I give them what they want .....". Yeah , they carried out the two men in the front row after their cardiac arrest . Serves them right for eaves dropping though I do have a sneaky feeling the cardiac arrest was more due to lost chances than horror of what they imagined I did in my life. I guess from under their oxygen masks they muttered about what the world was coming to ! Most men ( and I just adore the exceptions because they are exceptional men and there are quite a few of those out there too !) never can handle the reality that women can speak their mind .Can't blame them really considering the bilge they are feed by the misogynistic epics. Frankly , if a woman's Fidelity is subject to inquisition because the man who irons your trouser from his mobile unit down your road gossips about it, the person to face the ire should be either the gossiper or the listener/believer and not the subject of gossip because she is a woman and therefore her "purity " is questionable .
About P3 , one would think they were really bidactyly (two fingered) for they constantly stand with those two fingers held up in ever direction humanely possible. It shatters my belief about each generation excelling the previous ones . Those are the young ones for whom I presume someone is breaking their back to pay the bills for they seem to be just living off the fat of the land. Also on P3 are the mutton-dressed-as-lamb women wearing peplum tops and frilly fripperies with sheepish looking togged up males in tow.I truly feel sorry for the male species because they cannot put on a whole new face as we women do. So they can comb their brows but they cant really tweeze them into permanent arched questions like some divas, can they? Nor can they fill up the acne scars or the pits they got pinching pimples during their adolescent nervous days with enough foundation to make it look like a smooth landing strip.I do not have a problem with using make up, I use it to enhance my face most of the time and blow up considerable sums of money on tasty yummy ( tasty and yummy because I lick them off ) lipsticks and glosses. Actually my objection is to calling it Make Up . Sounds like something you fabricate or fake - like making up a story or something . Just saying , just saying . I am not alleging anything about all that creative work that devises a new face .
Not being able to wear make up maybe why men wear such colourful ties. It is to divert attention from the deficiencies of the face and these neckpieces can be used at times as canvas for artwork consisting mainly of oil drops and sauce splashes while embarrassed wives dab at it with cloth napkins dipped in bottled water.Guess many of them did not become famous only because they were confined by the size of the canvas .The thing I really enjoy looking at are the colourful trousers men are wearing these days- vibrant reds, jewel greens and blazing blues. After all the good Lord meant the male to look ravishing for the female as borne out by the peacock and other sundry creatures that strut about in the animal kingdom. The glorious hues are at times displayed on the crown or by vibrant bottoms (as in the case of some glorious pink butt primates) . Of course it is not anybody's fault if there is little that differentiates some men from the primates.
More mind blast next Monday!
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