Italicizing is the New Bold

I saw Working Girl. Ounces better than The Devil Wears Prada for one. Importantly, it reminded me of someone I know. At least the first bit did... before the delicious entree. If you don't know what that means, then you obviously

a) Have not seen the movie, or

b) Are not a girl (woman? Not lady... this much I'm sure of)

Meanwhile the year end is almost upon us... and despite the best predictions of my jyotishi I still haven't had my affair... not even the whiff of one actually... and believe me I have been looking... so have my friends of course but in the wrong places and at the wrong, reah-lly wrong people... children must have their fun. The point is, this time I was sure because he gave me a ring to ward off the planetary influences that would precipitate the affair and the ring gave me a rash... a green rash for some weird berger reason. So you see don't you.. the fates want me to have an affair... the odds are drastically reduced... so much so that even a tax accountant would find it too predictable to be betted on. And yet here I am... doing all my projects on my own. And paying my own bill at the dhaba. Oh well... there's always Tom and Jerry.

I wonder what oysters taste like? The one thing I will do before I die is learn wine-tasting (Learn?!? "Excuse the novice, masther", slurred Egor to Count Dracula as CD told him for the ninety-seventh time that month how to toast marshmallows). And Dracula reminds me... Van Helsing is passable... though I like the black werewolf better than Jackman. If it wasn't for the comfort of my heels, I'd know I was pagan. As it is, sleeping with them under my pillow has been helping a lot... I hear the alarm go off now.

R called today... she just got a job... I'm proud of you sweetheart and wish you the very, very best. If truth be told, I think as of this moment, I'm a wee bit homesick. Okay... maybe a little more than a wee bit. As long as I'm not bawling. Or throwing things. The last looks so tempting on TV... vent frustration... break the Lladro vase... and then pick up after yourself? Anti-climax... very funny anti-climax and since I like wallowing in my moods for at least a day or two, I don't do this more than can be helped. Why let go of a good angst? Onwards charioteer, Betty Foy lives.

Parting Pinch: How much wood would the woodchuck chuck if Kipling's mongoose came for lunch?

Abenteuer

It's been a good few days - from Saturday till today. Went home after eons... good food is undoubtedly the mainstay of civilization and law and order. Start scrumptious food distribution systems, call them Harry, and watch the crime rate plummet. I swear to gawd you'd soon see moms-in-law shopping with tax proffs for pink Christmas gifts.

Be that as it may, behaved extremely juvenile-ly despite A&A being quite out of action after a virulent virus visited. It's a good thing rock-paper-scissor is inter-generational. Which reminds me... if in a house, the ground floor has bombs, and the first floor has chocolates, what would the second floor have? Go on... think like a 8 year old... it shouldn't be too hard, and I mean this in the nicest way. No? Oh well... burgers. I don't know why either. But that's what A felt like eating then. Hence. So anyway.

CCD on Sunday... espresso after four and three seventh lifetimes of powdered milk coffee. Ummmm! Also Ayu-ffee...

Shopped for my interview... on my own for the first time since sixth grade... c'était un cauchemar... bought my first pair of heels... no wonder they are called stilettos... sheer murder... but so very, very desirable. Put your hands together for my first love... a pair of shoes. Typical.

Post-birthday treat on Monday... the four of us together for the first time since time began... we are a bunch of idiots to have not done this before... especially because it was not merely almost fun... it was fun... S divorced me and got hit on by a guy with a green matka, T made eyes at fellow passengers on a hot rainy day, while P thought of food and salivated. If music is the ultimate expression of the human soul, we might, for all we know, have been chanting Dilwalon ke dil ka at full volume, top speed, and no holds barred. Yes, no bars held either.

After appropriately stunning the Basanti that fell to our share with our multilinguality, we barged in at 3.20ish for the buffet ending 3.30. Good Samaritans, like ghosts, exist. For the rest... o-r-g-y is a good word... distinctive and indicative of the sense of abandonment it means to depict. Conversation would have flowed, but we were too engrossed in other matters to notice, even if one of us had spoken up, which I doubt.

That evening we won the Twenty20. Tuesday was a holiday. And today, after a particularly interesting Environment Law class, just a few minutes back S and P have promised to do something which it would be quite enjoyable to watch them accomplish. And hilarious. What dull lives moral people must lead.

It's been an eventful half-a-week. 'Nuff said.

Dial-an-Intrigue

It's simply staggering how many things make me want to learn the salsa... the latest to enlist is Sway by Michael Buble.

Yes, I think it's a nice last name too.

Meanwhile I await the conspiracy of the elements... salsa... sooner or later. Also, now that I come to think of it, origami. One wishes Parker Pynes existed.

Saturday Night Philosophy

I went to watch a movie with a few friends and this one fellow said that songs in Hindi movies are but metaphors of life and feelings... how they are not on-screen superpeople but ordinary everydayers... only with songs in their hearts.

In the middle of a perfectly trashy film? Some people are such killjoys I tell you.

The Insider Reports

A few gems encountered in the three years of pretending to traipse through law school. Let's not get apologetic shall we. "Wallow" has such a nice ring to it. If only the pigs hadn't made it so pedestrian.

"Justice while it winks at crimes
Stumbles on innocence sometimes."

"Justice must not only be seen to be done. It must be seen to be believed."

"The court will not deny equal protection of the law to the unwashed, unshod, unkempt and uninhibited."
(Herman Weinkrantz, ruling that disapproval of hippies should not interfere with their civil rights)

"This is a British murder inquiry and some degree of justice must be seen to be more or less done."

"How much justice can you afford?"
(Anonymous lawyer's answer to a client's demand for justice)

When a 10 year sentence was imposed on the accused:
Prisoner: My lord! Ten years! I'm seventy-six. I'll never do them.
Justice Stevenson: Ah well! Do as many as you can!

Scene from A Night At The Opera by the Marx Brothers where the artists are discussing the clauses of a contract:
"Groucho: Oh, that's nothing. That's the usual clause in every contract. It says that if any of the parties participating in the contract are shown to be not in their right mind, the contract is nullified.
Chico: What do you call it?
Groucho: That's what they call a sanity clause.
Chico: You can't fool me. There ain't no sanity clause!"

"The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella."

"The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose,
That steals the common from the goose."
(Anonymous 18th century jibe at the Enclosure Acts)

"This is the grave of Mike O'Day
Who died maintaining his right of way.
His right was clear, his will was strong,
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong."
(Anonymous epitaph)

"Reform? Reform? - Why, aren't things bad enough already?"
(Lord Justice Astbury)

"The law in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread."
(Anatole France)

"We all know here that the law is the most powerful of schools for the imagination. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth."

"The Lord Chief Justice of England recently said that the greater part of his judicial time was spent investigating collisions between propelled vehicles, each on its own side of the road, each sounding its horn and each stationary."

"This contract is so one-sided that I am astonished to find it written on both sides of the paper."
(Lord Evershed discussing a standard form contract)

"The difference between divorce and legal separation is that legal separation gives a husband time to hide his money."

"She cried and the judge wiped away her tears with my cheque book."
(Tommy Manville after his thirteenth divorce)

Letter to Aetna Casualty Insurance Co.:
Gentlemen,

I had an accident yesterday. I consider that neither vehicle was to blame but if either were to blame, it was the other one.

There now. I thought you'd like them.

Keep breathing.

(Alekhya)

Brownian Thoughts

If people/things had no names, would they still be what they are or might they shape-shift into each other occasionally?

It’s strange but from the purest of motives my friends don’t talk of D any more and hence, it was only today through the offices of two non-friends that I realized how very, very funny all of it was… maybe respecting sensibilities defeats its own purpose.

It was raining today and so hundreds of people were bartering shelter under awnings with willingness to buy tepid coffee. Inequity apart, most of them were either with friends or on phones. Sad. We can’t even watch the rain on our own anymore.

My niece finally called me bua. I’d be thrilled if only she signified some differentiation in pronunciation with respect to that and a dog’s bark. However, the enunciation was directed at me and she’s too young to be consciously abusive. Hence I hope for the best. Also she’s started walking… though she might still be asked to pull up for drunken tottering. At least it's a start.

One day I’d have earned enough to walk into a bookstore, browse authors, and buy the entire oeuvre of a likely candidate. I’m comfortable being shallow, thank you very much.

Mid sems are history today… which leaves me with a couple of projects, one and a half couples of presentations, preparing for interview. Etcetera. And some fries to go with it. Now is therefore the perfect time to watch Pulp Fiction. Exit, stage right... watch out for the third step.

Waterloo and Assorted

It's a strategic error to begin reading a book when on a time crunch. It usually goes for a six. The time crunch I mean. Not the reading - that would be a crime.

In Re The Proposed Moniker for the Contemplated Diary: I am christening it Tethalal Mamarde... and if you know why then I'm sorry for you... I really am.

Smile OK Please

I shall, I believe, start a laughter diary to record when I laughed at what. I've been told it's a great indicator of character. That and how one eats apples. So by the end of the month, I should know enough about me to know whether I should buy Chocolate Truffle or Chocolate Total.

I wonder what I shall call it. Perhaps Pelham?

Aside: I wonder why they call it Absinthe... it's so perilously close to abstention that I always imagine it to be a quakerish man in an astrakhan coat frowning through the window pane. Now Rum sounds nice and frolicky... like a fun, rough-and-tumble sort of a person. Whisky, I'm afraid, sounds a little drunk and unable to carry it. Currently, I have no opinions to offer on Merlot. Let me read up on Arthur and I'll get back to you on this. Also, I wonder where the female liquors have gone off to.

Reviewing Real Estate

I read The House on the Strand again today... it truly is magnificent... the grandeur is awe-inspiring. The sheer audacity of her... to think she could pull off a stunt like that! Multiple, multi-layered story-telling is a very, very hard technique to bring off successfully... and she doesn't even attempt her tracks in parallels... she coalesces and blends and makes two wholes into one: it's like mom makes the extra roti... a little atta from this and a little from that... and there it is... the roti that should not have existed but does due to the pure genius of creation.

The colours are brilliant... even the winter-white has the sheen of a glassed-over lake. It's a monochromatic part of the earth - all greys and whites - landscapes and people. But how it sparkles in the moonlight!

A world so marvellously peopled by the reals and the caricatured with equal panache and equal claim to existence. Admittedly, it's a man's world that she sketches... but with so sure a perception, even if the hand be a trifle unsteady, that the monosexual environs seem as unquestionable as the aurora - a flickering, magical world of mirages waltzing with reality to the tune of Pan's pipe. And the music goes on - a prologue long after the last page has been turned... she writes third stories within each reader. I don't know if that's a good thing though. But let her caress you into believing. It's a little like living after all.

Read it preferably at a stretch on a rainy evening. No coffee.

Provisionally Resuscitated

After a long time, today I breathed again from eight in the evening till eight seventeen... now I must make like a wall plaster and study for mid semesters...

Oh well...

Appreciating Asmodai

There are quite a few people who are not just people… they are artists… and not your unshaved, shoeless variety… they are the real thing… they are where it’s at… and a smattering of them are soulless… for they are so absolutely topping at what they do that they’re sure to have rented their soul to the devil, if not to have auctioned it outright… or maybe even sold it over the counter at a 10% discount…

There is of course du Maurier… nobody could possibly question the authenticity of the fact that she had sold her soul to the devil… after all she is so darn delightful… there is also I believe Wodehouse, who in the enormity of his heart faced the world with a brave smile, not wanting us mortals to know of the vaccum in his gallbladder where his soul had put up a “To Let” sign and rented a summer cottage in the Hades… Christie I think leased her soul out at different periods of time… there are in her oeuvre occasional gems indicative of the truly soulless… Dickens and Hardy fancied themselves soulless and that I’m afraid has been their undoing all along… and one cannot not mention von Trapp – mere modesty aside: soulleast, if ever there was one.

To think all great literature and street-corner pubs are nothing but the indelible signs of the munificence resident in dear Ol’ Nick’s heart… the misunderstood unappreciated poor little dah-ling! Sniff!

Fifteen Dead...

That was the day before. Yesterday a girl tried to resuscitate a sparrow that had hit the fan. The sparrow didn't make it through the night though.

Actually, it's not so much about life or death. Love or hate. Or fanaticism. Maybe money, yes. But not entirely.

When push comes to shove, I think it's about deciding to let the athapookalam remain and to make the rangoli around it: it's about letting be.

The Day Joseph Kesselring Rode Again

Scene: Some day, some show, some kids... the mommies want the mommy-ers to lisp shaggy dog stories...

Kid A: There was a cat. No... actually there were three. No no... from the beginning ok? There were three ants. One was gray, one was white, and one was... uh... (the mommy responsible pssttss-ed from the third row)... yes... one was gray, one was white, one was green. A black ant (the kid in question was too young for arithmetic... but then, aren't we all?) asked the gray aunt why it was gray and the ant (the gray one and not the black) said it was because she ate stones (even the kid knew that an elephant would be a wee bit over-the-top perhaps). Ditto the green: because she ate grass. Punchline: the white: because she used Fair and Lovely. "Thank you".

Kid B: There were three ants. They planned for three days to eat a snake. The snake came and ate them. I want toffee.

I, for one, laughed. Fluoride and Old Bobbin, if ever there was one: with her heart in the right place.

La Famiglia

Starring:



Banquo, the Serenade-er... the resident minstrel... even if a little mistimed.





Manpreet, the Juneja... friend, philosopher, guide... they don't stuff 'em the same no more.

Daisy, the Closet Monster (in closet)... lending new dimensions to the phrase "stage fright".

Artist's Rendering (Garbetian School)... inspired by the hieroglyphic graffiti in the Parthenon... by von Trapp.

The Arctic Winter is a Saturday Night

Some weekend this was. To begin with, it commenced quite on schedule and rather hospitably volunteered to stretch till Wednesday – obviously an improvement. Then of course, after numerous calls of dithering, general lecturing, and chocolate chip cookies, the mountain came to Mahomet… with mirche ka achaar and lehsun chutney. To complete the effect and given the usual surfeit of weekend work (including assignments and laundry amongst the more diverting ones)… I remained inflexible, resolved, resolute, unyielding (etcetera) and as a matter of policy actuated by principles of high living and right thinking, buffed up my indolence to a finer point than even I ever thought possible. That again is always welcome… one wishes to add ‘change’ but lying to imaginary friends is not well-bred. My academic life of late has tiptoed as close to putting up a “To Let” sign as it possibly could without chipping a nail … al-most the novelty begins to keep continuously running off on coffee-breaks. It must, however, be admitted that this inactivity rounded the weekend off rather nicely… that and the crochet border.

Meanwhile, while I was away, a closet monster came to play and Manpreet had company over cocktails. The monster continues to keep dropping in even now and I’m planning to call her Daisy, after the cow. After all I can’t keep referring to her as “that monster”… it’s the same principle as in the case of mothers-in-law and potential-judicial-process-professors, only with more justification. Be that as it may, Daisy is almost family now… especially now that she has taken to borrowing my clothes without asking and forgetting to return them. Such affection reah-lly… sniff!

In passing: Whoever says cut-copy-paste is effortless and ‘easy’ should be flayed, impaled, hung, drawn and quartered after being made to attend Labour Law class punctuated with infomercials, with his/her eyes taped open. Socialism in projects is sound doctrine. So is communal authorship.

Snippets

A. It was P's birthday yesterday... so today's been a lifetime and a day of bickering... and in all sobriety I modify the past 15 years of "I'd have preferred the salamander" to read "No salamander makes chocolate cake as well as you do"... cheers!

B. Today, after a month and a half of exile, I was returning home. And then I wasn't. Now maybe home will come to hostel. Last bulletin awaited with bated breath. But then I haven't lived with my luck for the past so many years in an entirely clueless fashion.

C. I rediscovered why I am infatuated with older men. Not that after last night's Sean Connery extravaganza, I needed any reminding. But I did anyway.

D. Another birthday tomorrow. I feel so old all of a sudden. Not jaded you know... just old... in a now-I've-seen-everything sort of way. Which is very strange given that all the world I have seen is home, school and college... and two-thirds of these as instruments and vehicles of capitalist conspiracy to enslave the youth of today. Which would be okay if it didn't include me. Which is also why the youth of yesterday and tomorrow must rent their own spokespersons: the current rate seems to be two and a half bars of Milky Bar and one of Juditha Triumphans. What I need is a chocolate cake, a Maggie party and lots of coke. What I have, on the other hand, is a project in Interpretation of Statutes. Life, such as it is, goes on.

E. There are lots of words I like the sound of: there is salsa... I like the way my tongue rolls when I say it. There is also Michigan... I like the slight whistle that sounds. Then there is snippets. Point being I don't get to use these words everyday, in my day-to-day-oh-gawd-look-at-them sort of life. Also that perhaps my favourite phrase would be "Snippets of salsa in Michigan"... I'd like Chile certainement, if only I was sure once and for all of the pronunciation.

F. This is primarily just because... though the fact that three multiplied by two is six figures somewhere.

Learning from the Ostriches

The two things I haven't been able to get the hang of in the three-odd years of my adult existence are ironing clothes and saying goodbye: I keep wanting to put both off for tomorrow and keep hoping they'll come up with self-ironing clothes or sumfing.

The goodbyes will still remain a problem though. One could say au revoir: but isn't that like hiding your tooth and brushing it everyday anyway, when one could've traded it for whatever the prevalent exchange rate is in tooth fairy stocks? Pointless, if you know what I mean.

Meanwhile, until a breakthrough is made in this regard, I prefer to sleep through the goodbyes. After all, everything said and done, Ostriches have survived evolution just as well as we have. And they have better plumage.

Watch Before Sunrise and Before Sunset: in the latter, watch the last shot at least thrice. Not just because three is a good number.

Insomnia

In a world where it takes approximately 157.94 hours for a could-be to become a has-been, it’s a wonder that it takes ice-cream all of 7.49 minutes to semi-melt.

Little miracles such as this make me glad that I remembered to get chicken curry along for the long ride home.

(Alternatively, I could stay up and beat about frenziedly for the tooth fairy… we have a flutter going… I suspect she looks a little like Bugs, the Bunny while Banquo bets on Bevan, the Beaver. Let’s see what turns up)

The Little Prince

There are certain stories so full of beauty that they wring all the unexercised joy out of my heart into the wind such that all I can do is dance and quite forget that I don’t know how to. So haunting that they bring to life a primordial exultation embedded in the very marrows of being. So throbbing with the unadorned energy of existence, bursting at the seams with such a sense of wonder, that they make me regret that I am neither the nightingale nor the rose.

I am deeply humbled on being invited into a few of these tales as if I was one of their own – for being permitted to hide in the grandfather clock, share crumpets, hew logs and be tamed by the boy from B-612 with the laugh like tinkling bells. And I am grateful for being allowed to sneak a few hours of these stories’ lives into mine.

And hence, for today, I was Betty Foy:

for today, I was a believer.

In Memoriam

Memory jumpstarts at the oddest of times. Today in Labour Law class, I thought of my grandfather for no earthly reason whatsoever. And I remembered a story he would always tell me… about a swami and a snake and how the latter eventually became a reformed character… unfortunately, then as now, the world hadn’t much use for a reformed anything, let alone a snake, and so people threw stones at him and beat him with sticks… and when the snake went to the swami to tell him that the swami had it all wrong with his rest-in-peace-thingummy, this chap tells the reptile-wonder that he had told him to stop biting, and not hissing…
Now of course I must have been a rather obtuse kid to have fallen for this tale… remarkably ignorant of poststructural and neocolonial streams of thought, not to say Marxist critiques, deconstructionism or even good ol’ feminist jurisprudence… at all times that this tale got told… and I remember making sure that it did get told quite often… I lapped it up like a camel readying for a two-month-trek into Havana…

But that is not what I thought of today… I thought today of the way grandfather would hiss… technically there were only two places one could logically work the hiss in – the scene where the snake first meets the swami and the place where the swami tells the snake to hiss… but I would desire a constant background refrain of hisses in various pitches… mostly in the wrong places and in the wrong key… a hiss when the swami met the villagers, a hiss when the weather changed, a hiss in the middle of quite, quite different stories… sometimes even while having lunch I’d walk up to him and ask him to hiss… and he would… the something-year old man would hiss in a high or low key for his granddaughter… and before today, I never quite comprehended the sheer sumptuousness of the scene…

Like I said… I must have been a very obtuse kid.