Call me

I dont understand it at all. In general, I am not a terribly popular individual. I am not barraged with calls on my birthday and though I like to believe that I get calls from people who enjoy my company all the time there are really only 3 people who call me regularly - Re, Ma and Fido. Apart from these my phone constantly rings for the following reasons:

1. Wrong numbers
2. Clients with problems
3. Wrong numbers
4. Clients who are problems themselves
5. Wrong numbers

Right, so that about covers it. And the few calls I get, I get them ALL at the same time. Strangely, the 3 people that do call me, seem to think of me at the same time as I think of making an official call at work. Brilliant. So I have no missed calls as long as I do not talk on the mobile. As soon as I make/ receive a call on my mobile, the 5 nanonseconds that I talk to someone will have at least 7 people try to reach me.

It is therefore hard for me to explain to people that I am, in fact, not so popular. It is not that I am costantly on the phone, but that people are constantly ONLY calling me when I am on the phone. Get it? Its almost like karma.. like God telling me - "you wanted to use a phone, so use it now, use it!! Use it!! Look at it ring like that annoyingly while you are on another call..." Yeah, God can be quite mean sometimes I think.

Blessed

I think I am truly blessed.

Caution: For those of you who may get queasy on reading mush, please dont proceed. Oh fine, I see some of you are continuing to see how mushy I can get. Dont say I didnt warn you then.

So I am working hard(ly) at my desk and get a call from the boy. He says 'lets meet for tea' and who am I to refuse a cuppa chai? Especially if it means a bunch of roses and 2 cds as bonus reward points. They were more like bribe to stop complaining. So who is going to suffer the consequences of my lack of complaining? Err yes, thats right, its going to be you.

Out of the blue today I have received a bunch of roses and audio cds. If I felt more affectionate towards the world in general and Firdaus in particular, I think I might explode. I love days like this... of joy and happiness and general excitement for really no reason in particular. Come to think I dont think I have days like this very often. And imagine if flowers and cds can put me in this mood, what would the effect of balloons added to all this and some ice cream would be? The sugar high would make me hyperactive and drive everyone batty I would think...

Thank you love for being the best.... Whatever I say now will seem too corny so I will just end with something thats corny and yet so perfect to explain how I feel about you -

"You had me at hello..." - Renee Zelwhatzername in Jerry McGuire

Clubbing

Clubbing in Mumbai is an interesting experience - to say the least. Much like the rest of your experience in this city, "crowded" will be a good word to describe any club here. So we head to a club - all girls in our most provocative clothes (given that we cant be very provocative even when we try, you can just imagine how we looked) to find we are not dressed provocatively enough. The bouncer wont let us in and tells us patronizingly - "its very very crowded inside, you dont want to go in.. no really". I did the whole leaning-forward-to-display-what-appears-to-be-the-lack-of-a-cleavage, but the bouncer was obviously getting his jollies with actual cleavage from others! Ah the unfairness of it all!!

So off we go to the club next door only to find creepy crawlies all over the place. No I am not talking about lizards, but well, to be honest with you those men could practically be lizards and one wouldnt know the difference. Ooooh bitchy!! So back we go to the bouncer man at Club 1, this time a few beers down and lot more confident of the powers our cleavage held. This time he relents (maybe he had also had a few beers) and lets us in. Ah joy, we were in a local train with fancy music and lights. Not once did one feel like one was not on ones way to work, except the people were dressed in much cooler clothes and the music was truly deafening. Ah yes, critical differences one would say, but not this one, no sirree!

And then, just as the mood was beginning to get peppier... tequila shots had been downed, we were seeing the beginnings of some conversation, they stopped the music. Cops wanted a piece of the action as well but club 1 decided they werent cool enough. "No cleavage no entrance", the bouncer must have said. In response the cops would have lathi charged the crowd and to avoid violence the club was unceremoniously closed. And we still had coupons left! Ah the injustice!! These coupons will be used next time around surreptitiously mixed with the new coupons we will buy. Club 1 will never know the difference... muahaha!!

Chandni Chowk – Lehnga and the End of an Adventure (Part 4, the final story)

Noooo… you are STILL around?? How I love you… so we had reached the deserted shop. The fat men who looked very bored pointed at a precarious looking ladder pretending to be stairs to another floor. We went up the ladder.. err stairs to find a whole new world.

Fat ladies from south Delhi were sitting there in all their finery to select some more finery for their girl-children. There were fat ladies from other parts of Delhi as well. We were there, it seemed, only to add to the confusion. Lenhgas were being flung around the room. "Oooh! I like that one there", one heard some woman scream and next thing you know - some shiny fabric that weighed a few tonnes was flying across the room.

We definitely upped the cool-factor of the place a few hundred notches. While the person next to us saw rainbow coloured dresses with stones that would put the Kohinoor to shame... we decided rainbows were best left in the sky. Draping superlatively heavy lehngas after another... each glitzier than the other, Ma and Re 'oohed' and 'aahed' at the appropriate moments (whenever they liked someone else's stuff - only to be buried under the fabric the very next second!!).

Compromise was finally reached, I wanted peach so we got peach fabric, the mother wanted red so we had red net over it and Re wanted "antique" work so we got a bit of "antique" work and not so antique work as well. Yes I know it sounds pretty clownish right now, but when you stand there at my wedding (holding your sides and wiping your tears)....

Shopping complete and lighter my a small fortune, we decided 2 rickshaws were the mode of transport required. The mother zipping past like Road Runner in one and us chugging along trying to navigate the people, cows, buses, cars, cycles, autorickshas and motorbikes who all seemed to be standing facing the direction perpendicular to us at the crossing. They stood there pretty much motionless for fear that someone might actually want to move in the direction that the road was MEANT to carry!! Motor vehicles were a new concept it seemed, and the joy of driving one around to prove the sheer existence of such marvel of modern technology appeared to be the aim.

Finally we caught up with the speed demon who cycled my mom in the face of very very real danger to life to be brought home safe. We are yet to recover. Can you blame us?