Will he or won't he?

Yesssss, he did! But I thought he looked as jubilant as someone who'd won a custody battle. And a little embarrassed. I would be, if I were the subject of all the nonsensical "please give him one" campaign. Now that he has got what he wanted, I hope he acts a little less self-conscious. Enough of the 'intense' performances, please! I want a comedy, if you can...

Family Matters

We have twin weddings waiting for us this April - my husband's nieces are getting married or I should still say hopefully. One of them is slated to marry her cousin but nobody is sure until the wedding happens because she did a U-turn in between. But some unexplained change of heart happened and she retracted. But she's been throwing such tantrums at her family that makes many sons-in-law look like angels. P is jumping mad sitting here, 800 kms away.

My 40 year old cousin got married last month after everybody had almost given up on it. He has never stuck to a place for more than a year and his current salary is 2500 Rupees and the only thing one can put in his favour is his temperament. But I was wondering what made the girl of 27, a graduate who was working for a better salary than his, marry this fellow when it's obvious that only slogging awaits her in her new home. Relatives are all very happy.

I hate it when people say, "You had a love marriage? Can't believe it!". Whatever does that mean! Nobody said that to me, of course.

Nature Trying to Paint a Pretty Picture of the Landscape

Overheard at children's play area -

"Oh, don't worry about soiling my clothes. My mother washes them. Go ahead, climb over me!"

Misnomer

Yesterday I saw a van in front me with the name "Rathi Pre-school" at its back. I thought it was pretty refreshing to see a pre-school carrying the name of a nymph while most others were repeating themselves with Angels, Rainbows, Foundations and stuff. But then no, no such luck. The name was Vidyarathi and the first few letters had just fallen off.

Diary

A day spent on the road - at least 5 hours of them but it troubled us so much that Rishi vomitted all that he had eaten with relish, the moment he got home.We had gone to my cousin A's house, who along with her husband is leaving for London in a couple of weeks.

South Bangalore is definitely a better place to live in, if you happen to have some wings to reach there.

Children can be heart-breakers in their own naive ways. I mean, one time they get attached to you so much and you, the mechanical you, get all sentimental and happy about it. When you go away, you think fondly of it, with some self-gratification. Then you meet them after a while and you long for the renewal of the old bond but they may not even care to look at you, they've just moved on. I saw that look on my uncle's face yesterday when he was looking at Anu, while she was just interested in everything else, I felt very sorry.

JNU row has entered our house too, with P and I at two ends of the argument. It got a little high-pitched and P became desperate and appealed to Rishi. I didn't want to trouble his mind over it but his stand and counter-questions made me very proud. I think we lose some amount of maturity and objectivity as we grow older.

One for the Day

Thousand lines of code reduced to under-100 and working better than ever before! Makes me terribly happy and want to tell everyone about it but I know I can only tell P. I'm grateful that he's in the same workplace and can understand when I prance about.

I must add that I'm hungry for more now. 

Bits and Pieces

People with skewed sense of fairness - being fair to everybody, in their words - are being so unfair to some and they don't see the kind of harm that does to both the wronged and the beneficiary,

A question a 'pseudo-secular' is faced-with generally is why all 'your' intellectuals are protesting only now. Weren't there problems before? There definitely were and people protested, may be to no avail many a times. But the difference is that now you are losing the right to protest itself. People want you to talk and even worse, think in line with the establishment. You cannot even remain neutral; you must choose your side and only their side. They cannot accept anything otherwise. So like with any belief under threat, others are wearing the symbols all the more, sometimes looking paranoid in the process.

When I read my books, Anu reads some passages with me and it's becoming a habit with her. I don't know if she'll recognise Raskolnikovs and Alyoshas when she grows up. I wonder what her books will be and what she will call history.

When Hanumanthappa was battling for life, Sagarika Ghose wrote, "your country is praying for you" and people promptly asked her if she was from Pakistan. I think for once, Sagarika would've had the last laugh. 

Dishonest Associations

I don't understand why JNU guys brought out Afzal Guru now. Except to generate maximum reaction from certain quarters. Nevertheless, it is so different from the 'mind-your-business' that I've seen all my student life that it's mildly exciting.

I found that out of the 171 Friends that I have on Facebook, I've written at least a line only to 30-40 people and much as I try, I can't think of anything for others.

We lost Under-19 over the weekend and Rajani was blaming it on Dravid and I didn't understand what she was saying, because she's as ardent a fan as I am. She was like, "He's never won big tournament finals for us and he could not now, even as a coach"! I said I never praised him when we did so well to reach the finals and so didn't deserve to hear him derided like this either. She says, "Dravid will always be No.2"! I couldn't believe my ears but recovered to say that I love the fact that he's never fretted about it. I should've added "like you" for a better effect. @#%#$^*

That Rainy Day

It was the year 1997, L and I were busy running between library and computer lab for our second-semester exams. We were particularly anxious about the computer practicals and the time that we got to spend in the lab with our good friends Mallya and NNS had not given us enough confidence. So when our well-wishing localite senior DRB (thinking of it, my first year was all about such seniors giving me all sorts of advice and help, unfathomably.)  offered us an evening at his home to practice computer programs, we didn't know how to thank him. But he wasn't taking us home himself so L and I set out by bus and got down at the stop he had asked us to. But unfortunately, it was raining very heavily by then. We had some distance to cover walking, the stop didn't have any shelter and we didn't have any phone to call DRB up to come and pick us up.

So the only way was to wait the storm out. But standing on the roadside with our umbrellas overturning, we could see that we were becoming a spectacle - some men in cars and autos passing by had whistled at us already. So we looked around and the only thing that offered any protection was Hotel KI(which has since become an educational institute) and we didn't lose a moment before we hurried there, wringing our rain-soaked clothes. Couple of men in the lounge gave us looks and the guy at the reception didn't look pleased to see us but we explained to him that we would be off the moment rain abated. He gave us a serious and worried look but we were only glad that he didn't refuse. After a while, another guy joined him and we could see that they were talking about us. Then the new guy came to us hurriedly and said, "this place is not a nice place for young girls like you, please make a move."! Now the rain hardly mattered, we just bolted from there.

What in the end? We folded our useless umbrellas and managed to reach DRB's house somehow. His mother was understandably not too pleased to have two thoroughly wet girls in her house but we shamelessly concentrated on computer programs. The journey back to the hostel was uneventful. 

New Learnings

Rishi suddenly asked me today what was meant by Love Marriage. He had told me a couple of days ago that his classmates use the 'F word' but I had not asked him if he knew what it meant. Now the question of love and marriage were also coming up and I asked him where he had heard about it. He evasively said people talk about it. I said love marriage meant that a girl and guy decide that they should get married, instead of parents finding them a match. Then he blushed and said his drawing teacher had asked him if his parents had had a love marriage and he had replied "of course not". It amused me that he was so convinced about it but I didn't pursue him further.

L wrote to me that she's happy in Versailles - cooking, busy but without her tyrannical guide, enjoying life in general.

I've finished War and Peace but have to re-read certain chapters. Now I'm onto Crime and Punishment and reading it very slowly, of course. Unlike Tolstoy's, Dostoevsky's characters are more interesting - each one of them. Tolstoy introduces varied people and describes them to some detail but Dostoevsky lays his people bare in front of you and makes your heart cry for them. You wish sometimes that they were uncomplicated like Pierre but you also know that they cannot, somehow in spite of themselves.

Sulky

Tell me something, there was this debate on intolerance some time ago (very one-sided it was) and  people took umbrage to anything that was perceived as anti-national. Bhakts urged their mates to stop watching SRK's movies, caused Amir to lose some of his endorsements etc. Fine, I understand how they must've felt - I mean, come on, 'these people' living here at our mercy and telling us what not to do! But now, I'm wondering why their pride in our country shines out only on such occasions. Mallya and company cheat us of so many crores but I haven't heard of anybody calling for a ban on watching RCB's matches! I bet half of these motor-mouths don't pay tax worth counting. 

Judging the Covers

I subscribed to BookBub sometime ago and had ignored all that they sent to my mailbox so far. Over the weekend opened some of them and I was confused as to what preferences I had chosen. I've got only Romances recommended so far and it's amazing how many novels people can write involving mostly ranchers and cowboys as heroes and ladies in distress(financial trouble, loss of father, brother, lover, husband etc) as heroines and all of them by 'best-selling authors'! Nothing on software guys, though.

Read somewhere later that Michael Holding was a computer programmer when he joined WI cricket team and that kind of compensated.

I think the Dalit oppression in India is no less than any holocaust. To keep someone suppressed and oppressed for generations and worse, to make so many people believe that they are really inferior to others is so damn inhuman. Imagine the kind of kick upper-castes would've got - with successive levels of superiority - treating them like slaves. I remember even the smallest improvement in their conditions being talked of with so much of heartburn and near-hatred. But then, what does a Dalit do when he comes into mainstream(what's the right word?) ? Does he try to help others who have filled in his old space or does he just 'mind his business'? Class has become a very strong caste now and  I think that's part of the problem that they have to overcome.

Speaking (in) My Mind

L has gone to Versailles. She hasn't written from there and I try to imagine how she must be doing there, alone. I felt uneasy this time after meeting her, like her sadness had rubbed on to me. I know some of the things that must be playing on her mind but I would've been glad to hear it from her. My limitation is that I find it very hard to put direct questions and she's my dearest friend and I know that she doesn't need my questions. She came to see me around 10 on a weekday and was forthright that she wanted to have me all alone; no children. I couldn't help smiling. But she went away after an hour and hugged and kissed me on the cheeks and I almost cried on the road.

Coming to think of it, she's always been vocal that women should work but this time when I told her I was going to quit in October, she was very glad. She would've submitted her thesis by then...

I finished Maugham's Christmas Holiday and because I had watched Chameli just some days ago, Charley Mason felt like an extension of Aman Kapoor. But the problem with people like Aman or Charley is that we become greedy with them, we turn snobbish at them. It's not enough if they are good-natured. Do they really have depth in their feelings? Most probably not. It's just that they are born or bred to be good. It's in their nature, like some birth defect and they can't help it. So you'll find that people with shades of grey or even black become more acceptable because those are acquired qualities, hard-earned even(nobody is born with them!) and you become fascinated with them. So stray acts of kindness from them will be remembered much more than everyday-goodness in other people.

I just looked it up in Google and was amused to find that the movie version was a more 'believable' one.

Work is picking up and expectations seem sky-high and I'm coping with it by watching lots of movies.

Anu's advice to me to avoid coughing - "Reduce talking, Aayi. If you really can't help it, speak in your mind!"

Discoveries

I was reading December's National Geographic magazine and the page on Chia seeds caught my eye. The description of the plant and the seed so reminded me of 'Ganji' seeds we used to eat as children but on closer look, it was different. Ganji seeds are black and almost totally flat and have a shape similar to heart. We ate it all the time while in primary school; not with any celebration but going to the plants and finding the dry seeds and popping them into our mouth to feel the white layer getting formed was a totally subconscious act.

Rajani and I fought bitterly on lunch table and this time also it was about politics. Nothing new really but this time because A was absent(she is the only one who can shut us up) it went on till I reached my floor. I sent her an apology message later acknowledging that pseudo people like me are not to be taken seriously. She said it was a surprise that educated people like me could think the way I did. It flared me up again and I replied that I had made up my mind in high-school itself and I was not educated enough then. She said I was just trying to show-off by being different. I said fair enough and we dropped off after that. She is one spoilt brat.

Sunsets are so beautiful these days and yesterday when I saw it, I wanted to make the whole floor look at it. But everybody seemed so busy so I went around till I found an old team-mate of mine and felt happy.

I liked Mr. and Mrs. Iyer also because I thought it was trying to break the set notions about Muslim men in the minds of general public.