Binny and Bubbly

Those are not cartoon characters, in case you were wondering. These are sophisticated (err well almost) ladies in the heart of south Delhi who design jewellery for the typically enormously wealthy, and yet sometimes quite ugly, ladies of South Delhi. Whats surprising is that they keep a gazillion pieces of jewellery in what looks like an ordinary godrej cupboard. I say that it looks ordinary because it is obviously protected with some super-cool safety procedures, because if that was not the case I fear that we are being rather bold with entrusting our jewellery with Binny Auntyji. As she waved jewellery worth probably millions of rupees in my face, I wondered what we would do if a man with a gun walked in right then. Binny Auntyji may have screamed enough to make the man run, but if hewas resilient enough, chances are high that he would have been able to take trays full of diamonds and run as fast as his little legs would carry him. Enough speculation for the time being though - given that she has managed to keep jewellery safe from such gun-toting individuals, we have no reason to suspect this might be a real scenario (right).

My mother and I spent some quality time with Binnyji today. Here is a sweet lady who knows the first names of each and every person who walks through her doors. Not only that, she will carefully enquire about their twins, or children's exams, their dogs health and grandmother's arthritis problems. This is truly a quality I admire. Indeed, I often try to emulate this quality with disastrous results. More often than not, the person who I end up experimenting my memory skills, will usually not have children, or have a grandma who is quite hale and hearty with no signs of arthritis or have several cats but no dog. Such is my luck.

For those of you wondering why there has been no post lately, I have left Bangalore for good and am vacationing in Delhi for a few days before heading to the most energetic city in India - Mumbai. So while I wait for a hectic life in Mumbai to begin, at present I am stuffing my face with hot chocolate fudges from Nirula's and butter chicken from various other places. Of course, all this has been thanks to my company which decided to hold a "capability conference" read "turd-like training" in Delhi over the weekend. The weekend, it seems, is not yours if you work with my company. When you sign that dotted line, you sell yourself to weekends of conversation filled with words like "competence", "strategy" or "competent strategy" and .. yawn. Yes, I can tell you cant wait to hear more about this one. But hang on dearies... what will I write in my next post if I write it all here? So watch this space. I'll be bach (you know what I mean!!).

The new place to be with your loved one

This one is going to come as a surprise to some of you - Beauty Salons! Fido and I went to one on Sunday and found that we were not the only couple there waiting for our hair to be styled simultaneously while we chatted with each other about things like what styling gel to use to make ones hair look appropriately toussled (is that the right spelling?). I have therefore come to the conclusion that the coming of the metrosexual has opened yet another avenue of entertainment for couples who have been seeing each other for a while. So you did the whole clubbing scene when you first met, then you did the romantic dinner just with the two of you on occassion, have watched movies together in movie halls and at home and gone on holidays together. What do you look forward to then?? I recommend the swankiest neighbourhood beauty salon. Makes for watching pretty people and decent conversation as well.

Now that I have that out of the way, I have to complain about queues. What is with queues everywhere one goes in Bangalore on a weekend? I think its probably the same in Delhi as well, but I prefer complaining about Bangalore. Its understandable on a Saturday night. I understand that EVERYONE in Bangalore likes to go out and preferably to the same 5 places in the city. Understandably there would be queues. But why at 2.30pm on a Sunday afternoon are you (residents of Bangalore, I am speaking to you) people queing up for lunch?? Should you not have finished lunch by n0w?? Why are you torturing me by making me wait for 30 minutes before I even begin to order???

Much beer has been consumed over the weekend accompanied with large quantities of food. The week will therefore consist of smaller quantities of food at meals and less beer (preferably NO beer, but lets not get carried away with the resolutions, shall we?).

On this note, I shall end my rant for the day.

Whatever.

Supplies!!

That was meant to read "Surprise!!" Err... well it was actually meant to read as it does because I was pretending to be Chinese (no offence to my Chinese readers, if any). So I was pleasantly surprised today with Fido dropping by out of the blue. At 8am in the morning, I woke up to the monstrosity that is my doorbell. Of course at 8am in the morning, anything that wakes me up is a monstrosity. So I groggily open the door expecting the maid to tumble along and do her work and clean up my place while I continue back to my cozy bed. Instead, Fido stood there screaming "Supplies!" in his best Chinese accent.

Nobody was a happier child than me at the time (and nobody ran to brush her teeth faster than me at the time either). The boyfriend has come bearing many gifts for Pateti - thats the last day of the Parsi year, the new year's eve so to speak. It is quickly followed by Navroz (oh, go follow the earlier link for Pateti will you?) which is new years day. Gifts are exchanged and general feasting is in order. Ma-in-law-to-be has gifted some gorgeous fabric which I plan to look fabulous in. Boyfriend also gave socks (?) - I love socks, no really I do - and some tees. Very nice. I am pleased.

Enough now, its time I returned sleepy-head here who is talking in his sleep talking about 0.2% of the world's population doing something. Must figure this one out I think...