Moday MindBlast

We all make lists. Every one of us. I do not mean those boring grocery list or the tasks to be done lists   , the ones of which even half the stuff  doesn't get done on time  The list on the white board scrawled in green and red markers that gets carried over week by week . The one you look at , sigh , swear to yourself this weekend you will definitely do some of them or at least ONE of them  and then convince yourself weekends are not for lists and that you will start first thing on Monday. That same list which makes you feel so rotten as it stares at you every time you go into the room until you vanquish it and wipe the sneer off it's silly face.  Such joy when you strike just one item off it - the feeling of somehow taking the elevator all the way up to Mt Everest and now all you have to do is look around and drink in the pure beauty. 

No,  I intend talking about  those other lists , the secret ones I relish  ,  really interesting lists I revel in .I have several of those and now I shall make all privy to a few. I have the Genuinely-I- Want Wish List. This has as many as twenty items which are so mundane and hopeless  I don't  even bother about them  anymore  like " I wish I fit into my  skinny jeans again , I wish my hair grows back in those little patches that I cleverly hide by back combing , I wish my forehead would stop receding so that like male aging film stars I don't need to artfully arrange  bangs to cover them , I wish my mid region would  shrink so that  I don't  have to hold my breath for a photographs  and  it will not  jiggle so much when I am shaking a leg at the New Year  party etc etc . Most have to do with vanity and less with reality. 

It’s my Totally-Impossible-but-Hope-It-Happens Wish List which is really exciting. The first wish is that my unfinished scribblings stashed  in the dusty Adidas shoe box gets discovered a la Gone With The Wind style and then upon publication I become richer than J K Rowling and that I can buy Scottish castles and English Manors and a couple of Indian palaces . Of course ,  I have no idea what the heck I will do with them but let's not get real here. Alternately, I wish a long epic poem full of human misery and foreboding gloom penned by me wins the Nobel Prize. I may not make money but surely all the publicity will ensure that I can endorse some memory hocus-pocus drink or some runaway luggage or at least a pair of nerdy spectacles with tortoise shell plastic frames.

 That is followed by the wish that someone hides in my shopping bag while I am tooling aimlessly in the mall, this little black velvet bag of diamonds worth trillions like it happens in the Hadley Chase books which was made into the highly successful Bollywood movie Victoria No 203. I really don't  think  too much about disposing the diamonds part but it  would really really be  convenient if  the police or the rival gang guys or the cheated and angry Boss shoots the guy dead so no one ever  finds out about it and I am home free. I could just use them as paper weights for a start and sell them off one by one later.

 The next on the list that really sends me in a tizzy is that some rich Sheik sees me and has a déjà vu moment or a last birth revelation, realises I was the sloe-eyed beauty with lissome body and enchanting grace who mesmerised him with the Dance of the Seven Veils and stole his brave Bedouin heart away and then vanished forever. He bequeaths a couple of oil wells to me for old times’ sake. I am not one bit choosy but in the current political situation in those parts I would prefer a fiefdom where there isn’t much bombing going on. Now just in case you start thinking that all my wishes are  all about fame and fortune ( of course none  of us can have enough of that anyway) I also have in the  same list a wish for  becoming God's Chosen  Emissary and bringing joy and peace to all mankind , oh wait !!  That’s also about Fame and plenty of Fortune isn’t it? 

My next list is truly the BEST. It's the Absolute-Pleasure-Giving-Worth -Dying-For Wish List. 

This List starts with a smaller list in parenthesis, which comprises of the names of persons who are the subject matter of the List that I shall now reveal. These so-called persons, who are actually unworthy to be deemed human , are those nasty creatures who bitched about me without reasonable cause. There are , I am sure , many  to  whom I have given reasons  to be horrible and vile  to me and I do not  grudge them their meanness for as  a good sport I am willing to take what I dish out . However, the ones who have messed up a day or even a minute of my life,  oh boy are they going to finally get it and how! So the List which contains their names contains my Deadliest wishes too and the pun is very , very intentional.  

The first on that is after I die I wish that I turn into a vile screechy ghost who carries her head tucked neatly under her arm and runs up and down the corridors scaring the living daylights out of these listed people. All the ladies whom Henry VIII so cheerfully beheaded and are doing that in the Tower of London are my inspiration.  I think this wish should truly be granted as a reward for the few good deeds I have done. It shouldn't be difficult for St Peter for not many people will ask this.  His waiting list for this surely,  cannot be that long. The next exciting item on this list is more present day. It’s also a kind of contingency plan, if I get bitten by a rabid dog these are the. people to be bitten by me. Of course I will not tell them I have taken the injections and am not rabies- carrying anymore, I want them to suffer for the next fourteen days watching me. What is even more pleasurable, these horrible harridans are going to be praying for my survival like they've never prayed for anyone before. The  list goes on and on but I shall not relate  all other wickedly naughty things I wish  but neither shall  I keep the last item , which is not just an item , it's the ultimate fantasy wish. The wish is to have enough money to hire Wembley , invite all the  obnoxious people of the earth across nations and creeds  , the wily greedy grabbing-from-the-people Politicians,  the earth destroying Nature-marauding Business Honchos , the thieving Bankers,  the holier-than and talking-down to us pompous screeching all-knowing  television Anchors Journalists , the mind destroying no-principles-or-values Educationists , the God-calling Divinely self-endorsed  false Propagandists of religions , the Corrupt bureaucrats , those sitting  in exalted seats meting out injustice in the name of Justice and all those who have paid to get positions and are now earning it back every which way; to  invite them all for a mega party and then signal the aliens to take them to the farthest  moon of the most distant Galaxy and keep them there for all eternity . I did warn you it was a totally impossible wish. So off I go now to get cheated as I buy the without-any-preservatives  stuff in a department store ,to be  hoodwinked by some package that claims  it's all organic , to get conned by the advt that promises me soft  shiny hair , spotless younger skin, no-fat- keeping-my-heart-ticking oil and fizzy drinks that assure me  happiness and success  .
More MindBlast next Monday !

Monday MindBlast

The angle is all wrong -either the person is looking upward as if awaiting beatification by the Pope  or looking downward with the ghastly under-the-eye bags highlighted for all to see . Sometimes it is a head tilt that makes one look like a person undergoing a bout of temporary insanity or it's a stilted smile so fake that it would make the air-kissing socialite cringe .  When it  is such an obvious  conspiracy to make one look uglier than usual,  one wonders why anyone would want to do it except in a moment of masochistic pleasure . I am indeed talking about the taking of  a "Selfie"! Wherever I have traveled , I have always found that strangers not only oblige when asked  to take a picture of you in front of a pillar or a market or whatever but sometimes kind souls who see you clicking camels, bazaars or wherever takes your fancy and do offer to take a picture of you standing  in front of it. Returning the good deed that these unknown souls have done for me over time  , I too have offered the same to giggling young ladies , lovey-dovey couples , geriatric lovebirds,  extended families with innumerable cousins fitting into frames  et al  . Struggling to pan the Vatican with my camera I had this very tall gentleman watching my effort and smiling . I requested him for a picture with me in the foreground and so he took my camera and walked back a few steps. He obviously had a problem with adjusting the three factors ;   his height, my diminutive self and the grandeur of the Vatican Square in the frame - so he went down on one knee to get the best shot . As he stood up after a couple of clicks I heard a voice behind me : That is the second time he has gone down on his knees to a woman. His extremely attractive wife stood arms akimbo laughing at the scene and it was then that he and I realised how it must have looked to her and the motley curious crowd that watched  us mildly amused.  "Groupies" are even worse because it looks like a gaggle of mindless geese sticking their neck into the camera , something more appropriate for the Discovery Channel programme on Funny Animals than a cherished moment of  camaraderie of  human beings !
I spent the weekend correcting answer sheets which left me squinting and cross -eyed as I tried to figure out the sentences as I was  handicapped by illegible scrawls , outrageous spelling,  hastily constructed grammatically-hacked  sentences and absolute gibberish. Some students adopt the ploy of repetition to cover space , something that would read like :  Jack is a boy in blue , therefore Jack wears blue because he is boy and so blue is the colour  that Jack the boy wears as Jack is a boy who like blue and we can conclude that blue is a colour as Jack the boy wears it . Either the student have concluded that those who teach are idiots incapable of spotting the subterfuge (and sometimes they really are justified in thinking so ) or that those who correct papers are doing so while listening to head-banging heavy metal and therefore will not pay any attention whatsoever to the bilge they  have spewed all over the paper. To me it provides hours of amusement and pain alternately  . Even though Mr Wren and Mr Martin ( those who can remember-  that was the Grammar Bible we used in school - the red cover still dances menacingly  in my dreams when I mess up my Past Participle ).  Even if  Wren and Martin would be committing continuous harakiri , I see it as an   opportunity afforded   to learn new facts that do not exist anywhere but  in the mind of the inventive student. To paraphrase Lord Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade suicidal mission  I murmur to myself in self-  destructive mode  : Mine is not  to reason why ,   mine is but to  read and sigh !
When I was little my Father insisted on yoga in the morning which was basically taking deep measured controlled breaths while  sitting cross legged on a mat followed by arm support on the back with the legs thrust towards the sky and the final heave to stand on the head , all the while under his watchful guidance so I wouldn't damage myself ; perhaps also  to untwist me if I knot myself up in childish enthusiasm.  It was a slow graceful and measured  act and so I am quite amused when I hear acquaintances holding forth about  all the innovations that have come in that seem to have twisted poor Yoga itself into new contortions. There is Hot Yoga in some kind of sauna atmosphere where you sweat it out ; and here I naively had thought  Yoga was about cooling you down by reducing the metabolic rate with slow movements. Then someone told me about  Face yoga  - most of us am sure do that several times a day when we pout , grin, purse our lips , bite our tongue in anger , blow up our cheeks in frustration , (yes,  you got the picture) and all this without paying someone by the hour to make faces. What scam will they think up next : perhaps  Nose Yoga where you pull your nose and perhaps your neighbour's as well or rub them together as Eskimos are wont to do or simply ten ways to blow your nose . Maybe  Finger Yoga where you stick the middle finger in the air while holding the other three bent with your thumb. Now that is one  I would happily sign up for , heck I can even teach it for free ! Try it - it will give you the greatest satisfaction and in certain situations , done to the face of  annoying colleagues  and behind the back of your supercilious puffed-up barking  boss ! Keep that up to relieve tension from the jaws and the pain in the neck (actually and figuratively) - it works amazingly!
More MindBlast next Monday !


  

Monday MindBlast

My word , how the week flies and the weekend it's like the Red Bull advertisement - it really does have wings. The reason I felt this week go by so  quickly was  because it was a good week. It's always a good week if one feels vindicated -  it was good to see a detestable  pompous person eat crow. It's so true what they say - the smaller the man , the bigger the ego . So this person was quite convinced that I was not needed in his scheme of professional work . That was quite alright with me , like a realist , I had resigned myself to that fact and got on to other activities . There is so much to do out there if one  moves out of that comfort zone we all love to wallow in and shake ourselves up a bit.   But the gods, they really can be so wicked ,  always love to meddle ,  so Mr Pomposity  was forced to pick up the phone , call me and  plead for my assistance .Don't we all love that moment - that special  moment that should be put on 'Pause"so we can savour it a bit longer . Now it is wicked to enjoy another's discomfiture but what is life if there are no nasty moments for nasty people.
Nasty and neighbours seem to go hand in hand like teeter-totter or teeny-weeny or hoity-toity. When the fire and brimstone pastor thundered from the pulpit about "Love Thy Neighbour" on Sunday ,  it made me wonder why Neighbour , why not Love Thy Cousin, or Love Thy Insufferable Aunt . Then  I realised what a whacky sense of humour God had - you can love anyone as long they are afar;  but loving your neighbour now that's a real challenge! I have had an assortment of them but there are some who are unforgettable for they were insufferable. One that leaps to my mind is the goody goody busybody self-appointed trustee of my virtue ,  who waylaid my husband when he returned from tour to inform my husband  that his brother visited me while he was out of town ( oh dear me !) . My reluctant brother-in-law had been ordered by my husband to drop by and  make sure I was ok while he was away . Oh how that answer disappointed her, all the joy of life dissipated  ! Then there was this deranged  lady who would beat her daughter and son with steel plates and their pitiful howls were unbearable. She , just as a matter of interest , was a qualified psychiatrist . How many affected people she drove to  complete insanity , I truly have no idea but I was mighty relieved when she upped and left one day - hopefully to the Hades.  Then there are of course the Borrowers of everything from ladders to bottle openers , the Know-it-Alls who tell you everything from how to set your table to how the country should be run , the Leapers
-from-behind-walls who want to tell you about their son in the US or daughter in UK or Australia , the Waylayers who just wait for you to emerge from your front door  and jump right in front of you with some inane comment about bus fares or milk prices .... truly the list is endless . Having mastered the art of escaping from these sundry creatures I impart the secret to you - just wheeze and in a raspy voice say you have the flu and they will jump right out of the way. For the more stubborn variety you could try the swine flu variation with a burst of coughing .
Talking about exotic diseases always reminds me of the time in school when our entire gang  wanted to play hookey from a Maths test and wandered off to sit in the air conditioned Library  . Of course we were caught and marched off to the Principal's office . We stood in a line in front of the glowering Principal who asked each  in turn why we missed the test . The first one said she had a headache , the next settled for stomach pain. The next took a neck pain and the next claimed she had a toothache . By the time it was my turn there was no part of the part of the body left , so out tumbled from my mouth : "Sister , I sprained my spinal cord".  "  Thank God she had a sense of humour and laughed and sent us off to class . Humour I realised can save many a day . Like the time I was caught ( seems my school life was all about getting caught ) grinning like jackass in the midst of a shake down ( yes it was the same Sister God bless her soul) and she turned and asked what was amusing me . From somewhere I heard myself say : My lips were twitching and I was only stretching them a bit ".
More MindBlast next Monday !

Monday MindBlast

I love Birthdays - mine and others' too. I love Birthdays so much that it's the only other word for which I use  the uppercase (capitals)  besides I (that's me)  God and sometimes even he/she gets the lower case when spoken of in plural or when I am a wee bit mad at them.  I know a lot of people who do not get excited about it  for different reasons. First ,  the morose ones - because it actually reminds them they are getting older. I would like to remind them of the time we couldn't wait to get older. When asked  how old we were , we rubbed our grubby  palms on the front of our frocks or shorts and said four and a half - heck, that half mattered so much to us ;  or we said :  I  will be five in two months , my birthday is coming! Aaah childhood, if only I knew I would regret growing up some day.
Then there are the other  ones : deeply dyed in pessimism  - they believe that every year brings them closer to The Day - the End . I am quite flummoxed by this variety that lives in denial . Of course there are a whole lot running around  who turn their snooty noses and say so what is the big deal about birthdays , it's just another day  - there's a whole PhD in psychology waiting to be done on those joyless persons  ! 
Birthday is a  wonderful thing - it  comes once a year ,  don't be a killjoy and say so does Christmas or Diwali or whatever day you use as an excuse for binge eating )  it's YOUR own special day. Of course you may be unfortunate enough to share it with some pimply  boy cousin or obnoxious shrilly girl cousin or God forbid even a  celebrity( unless sharing with a celebrity is your only claim to fame and so you surreptitiously  check in Linda Goodman's Sun signs who that is and pathetically preen about it  )  . So it is your exclusive day and if you have friends who go back to your frilly bloomers days or your Disney characters pyjama days and they call you and wish you - you can sing tra lalal la  for the rest of the day . Someone other than the Guy-in-the-sky loves you ! There is a material part of me that also kicks in , so to avoid major disappointments  I make sure that I start announcing a week ahead that the Birthday doth approach to the family members thwarting any plan they may have of escaping from gift-giving. It's quite alright to be a little obvious about it - it happens only once a year . Diwali , Christmas et al , everyone in the family is peering at shop windows , showing pictures online and dropping hints faster than the fast food guy dropping dehydrated french fires into the oil fryer, so that does not count. 
Fast foods of the simpler  variety , which is fast only in the sense it is quick, is fresh i really love. Hot steaming idlis, crispy dosas, puffed up bhaturas , right off the tawa tikis, ladled off the stove channa , pulled out of oily depth samosas , crispy floating in sugary syrup jalebis , boiling in cauldron kesar milk, tossed in the wok noodles - i have no problem going at them with gusto.  . No one dishes out dehydrated idlis , pre-cooked dosas or frozen rotis  in those ubiquitous  Bhavans and  Dhabas .The more complex the name , the higher the budget for the  impossibly-ravishing photogenically-perfect  mouth-watering  advertisements , the more you pay for a meal - the staler it is ; kept at subzero for a long , long time before it is chucked in oil for you to chuck into you. 
On the other side are the smarties who are cashing in on the organic rage. Probably grinding the humble  lawn grass and peddling  as alfa alfa, the I-wouldn't-serve-it-to-the-dogs  huge fat  grains of all sorts  as  being good for some condition or the other . There are persons in a  parallel universe who want  to stay healthy eating all those things you would never even know what they tasted like if your mother didn't dish it out and your father didn't glare and threaten hell.  I swear I  would never have eaten french fries if I knew they were made from potatoes , I thought for  long time they grew like that on trees. I, however, signed a  truce  with the tuber as it was way better than the rest of the squiggly ugly stuff that was fried or floated in curries and made funny faces at me , mocking me to reject them .
I love getting gifts , like most people but I enjoy giving gifts even more . Of course it  gives me an excuse to shop and thereby  buy all the bags, belts, shoes , stoles, dupattas, shirts, trousers,  leggings, jeggings and lingerie I definitely do not need ; but more importantly , it provides me the impetus to plan a major strategy. It's never a simple pick up a gift thing for me - oh that would be sacrilegious . Every time you feel tempted to do that grab-a-gift-and-wrap-and-shove-into- giftee thing ,  think about  receiving a sad wooden dolphin with a clock in it's belly that beeped every hour. I actually did get it and as much as I love  karma because it is a bitch , even I draw a line on recycling such horrendous offerings to my bitterest enemy. I still remember how I pretended that I kept forgetting to take the gigantic  I LOVE O......CITY  ceramic mug  which weighed a ton.  After dinner , thinking I was rid of it I smiled gracefully at the host ,  until she placed it next to me  in the  back seat .  It clung to me like the Old Man fastened himself to Sinbad's back . All night it beamed at me from the side table and in the morning ( when I put a towel over it ) ,  I devilishly  grinned  as I the  left it behind in the room   when I checked out . The honest bellboy chased after the airport taxi waving it to me but I ignored him like a  diva ignoring the mongrel. Phew that was so close !
So now I trot off to stuff myself  with chocolate cake and unwrap the goodies................ 
More MindBlast next Monday