Livinghigh was here at 1:08 PM / (8) Comments

Holy Night

Time for carols. It's Christmas tomorrow, and I'm damned because I can't remember more than the first two lines of any carol. I used to sing loads of them earlier. I used to decorate a real tree earlier, not the plastic ones you get at Hill Road for Rs 1000 apiece. I used to pin up wreaths on the pelmets, above the curtains. I used to go to sleep at night, and rush to the tree first thing in the morning, to rip open wrapping paper and maraud gifts.

Sometimes, I would purposely brush teeth, go to the loo, do all those silly things while buzzing with excitement inside, heightening my excitement at what lay outside the room...

;-)



I may not believe in Santa anymore, but I do believe in the spirit. How corny of me to write that! But it's true, you know. Gets me calm every time, this time of year. Gets me feeling relaxed, and in a mood to party. No tree here, no wreaths, and the only presents I have are the ones I buy myself, but it's great to have the parents over for Christmas. Silly, sentimental fool.

Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way,
O what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh!

There. Four lines. ;-)

One more night to Christmas!

Livinghigh was here at 8:47 PM / (3) Comments

Tally-ho!

My first Christian style wedding. Well, not exactly, as the people hosting it were Marathi. Save the Christian bride. Hope you have a great life together, Kripa and Neeraj. I had a great time at your wedding!

And HOW!

;-)

So I did the Wedding March with Nutcracker. She and I held hands and went under loads of other silly people doing the same. She was looking quite sexy in the bridesmaid's gown, and I must say I looked dapper. Sigh, leonine ego, nothing can save me from it. ;-) Loads of people thought we were a couple. So we decided to play it up. The wine helped.

Home back again. My parents are here and it's less than a week to Christmas. I feel strange at times. Especially when my friends ask me what I'm doing at the office, blogging till 9pm, when my parents are in town. How can I explain it? It's like a routine. I'm used to it. I've missed blogging. I've been very busy at work. But then, I still sound like an ingrate who's avoiding his parents.

I don't mean to be.

So I'm going home now. Right after I phone a friend who's a bit down now.

Four days to Christmas!!!!

Livinghigh was here at 5:53 PM / (11) Comments

Wax

I'm done with feeling wretched. Done with feeling old. It's a strange new part of me, this sudden piece of melancholy that just somehow fell out of the sky and landed... on me. It couldn't have found any other place to land on, it seems on hindsight.

These are the days when I find myself telling others that they should wait for love, instead of griping why it doesn't hurry on, and these are the days that I find myself talking about optimism in the soul. These are the days when I'm twenty four, but these are suddenly the days when twenty four seems too old. These are the days when I don't follow my own advice about waiting for love. These are the days when ideas seem to pop faster than boiling water snapshots. These are the days when I look back and wonder what I'm doing. Do I really know what I'm doing, living, talking, listening, wondering?

Melancholy seems like a dull piece of wax. It refuses to melt. It remains burning hot.

And I think to myself, what the hell, maybe this time it's the quarter life crisis for real. The last time I thought I had it, there was some solace in company. I had company in feeling wretched... and that was merely restricted to my work... this time, however, it seems to be much more... deep-seated. This time, I keep thinking: twenty four is OLD. O-L-D. Terribly old. And I wonder what I'm doing here.

Flaking wax.

I started this post with the line: I'm done with feeling wretched. Done with feeling old. I told myself this afternoon, in the car, looking out of the window. Somehow, though, even as I wrote these whiny paragraphs in the middle, I seem to have forgotten my resolve. It's a phase, I tell myself. A phase. I'll get over it. I will. I will. I will. I find myself in an exclusive club, where you just don't get entry in... because to my inflated ego, your problems are just never as big as mine.

Dumb wax.

Livinghigh was here at 7:36 PM / (5) Comments

Going Potty at last!

I guess it had to happen. The last barrier, or as close to it as you could possibly get, had to crumble. I finally read Harry Potter. Rather, since I finished book 2 in record time and rushed out to buy books 3 and 4 this afternoon, I guess you could say that I've become a Potter fan.



I resisted, as long as I could. I remained a staunch Tolkien fan. I resented the extra publicity that the Harry Potter movies got, when part 1 released at almost the same time as Fellowship of the Ring, and so I never read any of them. Saw Philosophers Stone but didn't think much of it. Ignored Potters 2 and 3, and only recently saw Goblet of Fire. It was ok, I thought, but the curiosity to read the series had been kindled. And so I decided to be fair.

Last week, I bought Potter 1 and 2 (books).

Potter 1 was ok. More or less ok. I thought Rowling had done a great job with the imagination, but it reminded me too much of Famous Five and Mallory Towers with all the 'plum cake and tea' mentions that I found it slightly... irksome. But, Potter 2 was.... good.

The Chamber of Secrets is a great book. It rivets you, from first to last. The Rowling imagination is very much in form here, and the plot has that extra zing which somehow I couldn't find in Potter 1. I wish I'd caught the movie. So, I became a fan.



The rest is history. Am anxious to start reading Potter 3 once I get back home.

Livinghigh was here at 7:11 PM / (3) Comments

A day spent idle

Sitting at home for the day, and I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Wondered briefly about that interview I'm supposed to go for tomorrow, but very briefly. Ordered chicken sandwich for lunch, bought s0me toilet essentials and cursed the medical chaps for not having home delivery, and surfed the net. Thought I'd sit down to write something, but blogged instead on Timecode. Some existantial angst about being a TV reporter. Welcome back to the whiney me.

So my parents are due to visit next week. Mum, dad and gran in tow. Merry Christmas. We used to celebrate Christmas at gran's place when I was younger, complete with pine tree and wreaths, and they were fabulous. Spoilt kid that I was/am, I used to hanker for presents. Mum says, she's going shopping when she hits Bombay. I should get something for them too. I earn now.

Not much. But still...

;-)

Over to Gabbles then, where there's a new story posted. My first thought when I re-read When Harry Met Sally and I? That it's one of the most honest pieces I've ever written. That's not to be confused with the supposition that it's me in the story - none of the characters are me, they're ALL me. They're ALL a mix of me and some other people I've come across. I hope you guys like it.

Livinghigh was here at 10:44 PM / (3) Comments

Gone to the highest bidder!

There was an invite to an art auction the other night, and being an acutely perverse person, I went. The King of Morocco was also there at the Taj, though we didn't bump into each other. It was only me and Aristera and all the snooty people of South Bombay.

I've never been one for art, never understood much of it seriously, and it somehow seemed so surreal to me that people were just calling out multiples of lakhs as if they were loose change, for paintings that looked like my retarded dog could have done a better job of, if I ever had a retarded dog. Either the sketches were demented, or they were obscene. Something resembling a fat naked woman with masses of hair around her, pointed nipples and particularly hairy private parts. Yech. Or a spotted blue dog with its balls particularly pronounced by the 'artist'. Double yech.

But I clapped as the gay compere exhorted the madames and sirs to bare their bank accounts, and whispered nasty asides to Aristera, who sniggered at my lack of appreciation. But it was interesting, if nothing else. Interesting to see the young and the restless, the old has-beens too, with their new money and old, socialising, chit-chatting, on their latest decoration spree, or simply 0ut to clinch the biggest art deals of their lives. Where did I fit in all this?

Like I always do: Interested Observer. (capital letters)