Surprise!

I got a book from my Secret Santa but unfortunately she doesn't seem to have opened the book before packing it. I can't read half the pages because the letters are all hazy!

Man of Letters

I like Somerset Maugham. I find his characters easy to relate to, I envy the varied experience he's had and as it turns out, I find some of his quotes echoing my own thoughts. I've read a couple of his novels before and now I'm reading his short stories and after some time my mind kind of anticipated what the end was going to be. But then, we are reading these stories a century later and I wonder how it would've felt reading them back then.

Solidarity

Peshawar attack happened and people are mourning and all our TV channels can say is "I told you so!" Is this the time?

Wishlist

Why don't they make a movie out of Jugari Cross? It has all the necessary ingredients. As I was reading it, various points of Shiradi and Charmadi Ghats were coming in front of my eyes. In fact, the book can be a prelude to the actual treasure hunt movie!

We're Crazy Fools...

So often, fantasy is so much more believable than the reality.

Find Your Humanity!

The other day, when I was coming by an auto from office, we got stuck in the traffic and it usually happens that the driver starts talking just to kill time. Mostly they talk about the roads and rain and sometimes they ask about your family or native place. This time the driver started about an operation he had to remove the appendix and the troubles he had had because of that. Traffic eased up but he continued and said he was asked to take rest but then he had to drive the auto to earn and he still had pains in his stomach because there was some other complication(I couldn't catch that part) and he had to get operated once more. All this while I was wondering why he was telling me all that and if he wanted me to do anything. The worst part is that in the end, he didn't want anything from me and I couldn't even mumble some encouraging words. I was ashamed of myself, really.

I guess it's because I've heard many a stories like this from my mother. Old and destitute ladies, people who luck has deserted totally and some times, even friends and kin who one can't see in misery. Sometimes she asks me explicitly to help them and other times, I do it voluntarily and make her happy. But it's always easy when it comes from my mother because otherwise when I hear them from people directly, I'm always at a dilemma - may be people just want a sympathetic ear and I may offend them by offering money? I never know.

Pretending to be Real

Anu asked me to hold out my palm so that she could give me a chocolate. I did that and she opened her empty palm on mine and I understood it was a 'pretending' game. I said vow and put the 'chocolate' in my mouth and chewed it and said it was very tasty. She laughed merrily and said, "But you didn't even remove the wrapper, you chewed it!"

Recycling

Sleep is the best medicine for many diseases. Or specifically for the common cold as I've learnt yet again. And movies are the worst enemies of sleep. As Nana Patekar cutely puts it, "Control! Control!"

I had a boss called Ghanshyam once and he was known to keep grudges. One day, we found a wedding invitation card on his desk addressed to 'Gunshyam'! I don't know if the girl(our colleague) put it deliberately but knowing his own reputation, I guess even Shyam would've given her the benefit of doubt.

Bleak

Things are not looking good. Suddenly we have a spate of resignations, we are trying to retain some people somehow, there is a lot of pressure from top brass to do 'something', we seem to be the in the limelight mostly for the wrong reasons...Difficult to see a silver lining at the moment.

The way Bangalore is having these child rape cases, men will find it very hard to get jobs in school. But the other day I read a female worker doing that to a girl and that was much more difficult to digest. Aayi says most of these culprits must never be opening a newspaper or a news channel so they don't even know it's a punishable offense! I said let's go back to the old days of drums then..."KeLrappo KeLri...."

Thinking of it, I want our Civic body to do that too - going around beating the drums. People just don't seem to understand that they are not supposed to throw their garbage anywhere and everywhere! Why is it so difficult to have some personal discipline?