Second use of shades

You are an adult so crying profusely in front of strangers is certainly not acceptable.

You do not want to look vulnerable so even a single drop of tear is also not acceptable.

You can weep into the pillow only at night and unfortunately the day has just started.

But you need to let out a drop or else your grieving heart might break…

Sunglasses to the rescue…behind their protective dark shade let the drop roll down and take away some load off your heart…

Sorry people...I probably have bored you to death with the rantings...

Here is a compensatory third use…

You can check out pretty girls / hunky dudes (as is applicable for you) through your tinted glasses without letting the other person realize your evil intentions. Winks!

PS: Just for the record...I use shades for the first use only. The unsolicited advice is for you.

Misfortune

She had a long list of things to do. She was trying to figure out where to start from…and was also trying her best to suppress the rising voice inside her screaming “You are sooooooooooo incompetent.” Suddenly she saw a familiar face rushing towards her. May be she should ask for some advice...

The person had reached her (a little out of breath from the running). The person gave a big smile and said, “Welcome back, you are misfortune.”

A moment…

Then the brazen insult hit her like a physical blow.

She could feel her facial muscles contort and knot themselves up into a tight frown.

She could feel blood shoot up to her cheeks almost threatening to set her face on fire.

She could feel herself slipping into the defense mode with her severely bruised ego taking precedence over all other sane emotions.

And then it began.

“You ran down a flight of stairs, jostled past people to tell me THIS? You hardly know me…yet you think passing a cruel comment about me would be absolutely ok? You could have at least kept your opinions to yourself. Tell me, what good would come out of THIS? This is unfair, unacceptable, unjustifiable…”

She had to pause…she was gasping for breath.

The person had a confused...and embarrassed...and apologetic countenance.

“Er…I meant Miss…(pause)…Fortune.

Last time you were here a lot many good things had happened…so…”

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

PS: Such misfortunes…seldom come along.

Elections

Why can’t I just cast my vote online?

Let's just create a website...we already are in the process of generating the Indian equivalent of social security numbers…so we can get the databases from Nandan, generate one-time-only passwords and enable the online voting process. So smooth and so elegant.

Lousy idea??? Ok…let’s try it once…and let's start from the ward where I am supposed to exercise my voting right. (Is it a right? Is it a responsibility? Is it a headache? Who can tell...)

No…instead I have to stand in the unrelenting sun (I absolutely loathe the tropical sun.) in an endless queue and wait for my turn to feel insignificant. (I do not suffer from megalomania but I would to like to take a decision that has a weightage significantly more than one billionth).

Do you know what is the worst part about the elections?

Unrest? No.

Violence? No.

Rigging? No.

Bad decisions? No.

Worse traffic? No.

It’s the ink that they dab on your finger.

Let me share a trick that I use (learnt from someone whose name is better kept confidential at the moment).

Plan: Put lots of nail polish on your fingernail of a transparent shade and you are ready to vote.

Flaw in the plan: They pour too much of that indelible ink on your finger…it drips and colours the skin under your nail. Just imagine…no… just think (we cannot imagine…for reference check this) how mortifying it is to walk around with a dirty nail for months.

Correction incorporated...

Flawless plan: Dip the whole fingertip in transparent nail paint (and let it dry) and brave the ugly ink.

A little bit of nail paint remover afterwards and you get back your clean finger.

Every one is welcome to try this out the next time you vote (which means tomorrow for some people). Men included. (Just call me when you are painting your nail…I want to take a picture.)

PS: I know I could go to jail for writing this and you…well…you could go to hell for breaking my trust and turning me in.

Jinxing...

We are still glowing from the empathic win in the World Cup. Have you ever thought about the pains every one has willingly embraced to script this?

Earlier I have seen people sit in a particular chair or hold a particularly weird pose to influence wins but this time it had reached epic proportions.

One guy had stepped out of his home to shoo away an errant cat (The error here being trespassing into the guy’s house without prior permission) and India had to hit a boundary at that unfortunate (unfortunate for the guy) moment. He had to spend the rest of the match sitting outside listening to the over zealous commentary.

Another guy had chosen to take a loo break during another twist (positive twist) and his wife made him stay there for the entire match. (Whew! Some wife…)

Well…they do not mind their sacrifices…they did it for a cause!

I personally do not believe in jinxes. I do wear blue when Italy plays (soccer) but that is just to show my support. (And given the current form of the Italian team even Berlusconi himself would not be able to jinx them into a win.)

My personal favourite jinx is the one from the chronicles of Narnia…something good happens when you stop expecting it to happen. But even that has turned out to be wrong on a number of occasions and with immense faith in statistics I have stopped believing in that one too.

And during the World Cup I had tried reverse jinxing on all my friends. It’s good that India has ultimately won…else I would have long been identified as the root cause of India’s dubious defeat (trust me no body would have accepted it as a clean match) and would have been cremated and my soul would have been resting in peace or rotting in hell (I do not fancy any of the options…and no…I do not encourage you to suggest one).

We come and we go…in between we can only have whatever is there for us…not a bite less…not a bite more. If it is chocolate ice-cream for you no amount of jinxing would get you vanilla. But do not start to crib without tasting the chocolate ice-cream…some times destiny is a better writer than you yourself.

PS: Some people are abstaining from watching KKR matches trying to influence wins and supposedly if you write about it…the spell would not work! Looks like my days are numbered...

When loss is gain and gain is loss…

Once upon a time due to certain turn of events I had ended up in a certain city which shall remain unnamed in this post. More than the city itself due to certain other inexplicable factors I had sunk into depression and had enveloped myself in a wave of negativity that spread out like menacing tentacles trying to entangle whoever had tried to come in close proximity to me…

Repercussions? Too many…way too many…

For today I shall take up just one.

I had started overeating.

I am very specific about food. ( used to be would be more apt…now you can take out the “very”) My food spectrum includes a chosen few dishes and if I don’t get them I would rather starve to death. Well...easy to say…not really a viable proposition.

So when I did not find the food of a certain place palatable I started filling up on cheese rolls, chocolate, chips and cookies…for a month. After a point of time your body starts craving well-cooked meals…and if you are on the verge of losing sanity such pangs do not help much.

It’s a vicious cycle…you eat…you still don’t feel satiated…you eat more trashy food…you feel sadder…it goes on.

Result? I gained 8 Kg.

Ah…stop imagining me as a blob of flab. I used to be severely underweight and had a 10 Kg buffer. So after this significant weight gain when I returned home…every body seemed extremely happy about it…except me.

I was extremely sad to lose the size zero me…and I no longer had 10Kg buffer which meant I could not binge as and when I wanted to. Every well meant comment of “It’s good that you have gained some weight” meant 2 hours of sitting by the window wondering how could I have let it happen. It took me some time (several months actually) to accept the new weight…I still have a old weight ticket tucked away somewhere in the memory of those size zero days.

Why am I talking about something that happened a year ago?

Because I have been pushed out of my comfort zone again…far from there...

Anyway…this time with no weight buffer to cushion the "depression weight" I have made a new decision…to not be depressed.

Easy decision…easier to stick to…easiest on my health (mental and otherwise).

PS: Are you by any chance wondering what my present weight is? It’s 48Kg.

Conquered!!!

Things a man has to do to qualify as your crush:

1. Must be able to give you at least one sleepless night thinking all about him…even if you have some emergency to attend to. (like preparing for an engineering exam scheduled the next day on a subject whose title even is alien to you...)

2. Must be able to make a guest appearance in at least 90% of your dreams.

3. Must be present in all your daydreams.

4. Must be able to switch on the song “Tum aaye to haawao mein ek nasha sa hai…” on the back of your mind when he enters the room. (If he is a celebrity then his entrance would mean entrance into the television screen space with you in the same room as the television is located.)

5. Must be able to make you sit for hours doing nothing…with a stupid complacent smile on your face and a whistle blowing blush on your cheeks.

6. Must be able to make you interested in Honolulu if that is where he hails from.

7. Must be able to make you choose magenta over midnight blue because he told you (personally or in a newspaper interview) that he has a fetish for that colour.

8. Must be able to make you wonder about his relationship status. (If he is a celebrity like Ian Thorpe then this step would mean looking him up in the internet and breaking your heart when certain reports identify him as gay.)

9. And most importantly…must be able to take your interest off the other available hunks.

PS: Crush was level 1. Level 2 is love. So how does a man promote himself from level 1 to level 2? Or is there a cheat code for direct entry?

We will talk about that some other day...

Toxic high

Mad am I,
Mad are you...
Mad is the world...
Why? No clue.

Mad is the world,
Let it be.
Mad are you...
Just about me???


PS: Question from a friend: Who is the post for?

Answer (from me) :

1. Experience shows that throwing such questions at me is futile.
2. If you are in heaven you need not conclude that you have died.
3. I would not vouch for the veracity of the above two lines.
;)