Tuesday, October 31, 2006
BUGSY!
:-)
Monday, October 23, 2006
Candy Floss
Trying to do a Carrie Bradshaw and talk about matters relating to, well, relationships here. Everyone knows that we all love the sugary phase in the beginning of a relationship. We love sending/ receiving flowers and chocolates, the looong phone conversations which serve as a bedtime story before drifting off to sleep, and the dates spent just... gazing into each other's eyes. And we all know that these things rarely last. After the honeymoon is over, it's time to get down to the grisly business of, well, Life.
I remember reading a blog post somewhere sometime back, where the writer was complaining how her significant other refused to let the romantic sweet-somethings die down, even after two weeks of mutual admissions of love. The blogger complained that too much of a sweet thing is simply too yucky to bear, and all relationships should come with a well-declared caveat that after Week Three, all chocolate deliveries should stop. Period.
It's not exactly strange. A lot of people can't stand chocolates. Most people feel that making much ado about something is simply unrealistic. And then there was that episode in SATC where Carrie muses about the Russian's penchant for romance: have NYC gals become so hard-headed and used to 21st century life that poems and chocolates and gifts and having doors opened for them simply become... cheesy? The thing is, that's a question not just for New York gals - it's something that people all across the globe have begun to identify with.
And yet... and yet, there's the part in the beginning of the relationship, when we hanker for something that may not be there. A glance here, a word there, a gesture here, a smile there - could they all mean (possibly) something that wasn't intended? In the first flush of excitement, every little remark gets magnified a 1000 times, and it's OK then if the person is being mushy - hell, you're praying fervently that the object of your affection lets loose a bit of mush... so then, two months later, what happens, when you suddenly think that the person is clingy for calling you three times a day and telling you he/she loves you?
Admittedly, I'm part of the mush brigade. But recognising that everone isn't, I've had to tone down. I'm the kind who can see Notting Hill and DDLJ any number of times. I'm the kind who would call up for no other reason but just to say I'm feeing marvelously in love. I've been scared sometimes that the Love doesn't see things quite like that, but I think we've both adjusted to each other, adapted to each other now - touch wood. But it's still funny (weird funny) to see how the whole rigmarole plays out in my friends circle. When I see A rejecting B, because B talks too much/ calls too much, and A would earlier moan to me how B probably means 'I love you' when he says "I want to visit you'... I'm not sure how to respond to that. Am I just an old fashioned stodgy ass, who thinks that love can remain a mushy-gooey candy mess for ever? Or just a hopeless romantic who refuses to grow up?
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
It's time to wish everyone a Happy Diwali. Weekend's coming up close, and though I won't be having a great five-day long holiday, I am looking forward to a fun time. (Punctuated by some studying, of course, but we shall try to ignore that for now! *grin*)
Meanwhile, away from Diwali and all, I've been meaning to write about the Greco-Roman fairy tale-cum-mythological tale of Psyche and Cupid for some time. Have always been a major afficiando of Greek myths, and this particular parable is as fairy tale as you can get. Starts off like Beauty and the Beast, and ends into something like one of those Indiana Jones movies with all the quests! ;-) Ridiculous to compare the old Greeks to Spielberg, of course!
This morning, while giggling at the workplace with a friend, I manufactured a truly horrible way of looking at Beauty and the Beast. It started off, when the Mad Bawi commented that looking out through the windows of our basement office, felt like being trapped in a cave.
Livinghigh: "Aha. Kinda like those cases you read about, about all those silly US-Canadian teenage gals being kidnapped and held for years and years in the cellar, na?"
Mad Bawi, shocked: "You're demented! Did you actually say that?"
Livinghigh, proceeding happily, unfazed: "If you think about it, it's kinda like Beauty and the Beast - the new modern Stockholm Syndrome. That must have probably been what made Beauty fall in love with the Beast!"
Mad Bawi, attempting biting sarcasm: "Yea, right. A very modern version of Beauty and the Beast."
*Sigh* Sometimes, I can be such an ogre, na?
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Not exactly hair-raising, but...!
Last Saturday, I decided that enough was enough, a haircut was in order, and trooped into one referred to me by a friend, right opposite Churchgate station, on my way home from work. To tell the truth, it looked like a Hair Factory. A haircutting, facewashing, bodymassaging factory where time is money and money is time, and if you can't make up your mind about what you want the miracle workers to do for you within the first ten seconds of walking in, then you don't really deserve any of the nicer things in life and you can go hang - or at the very least, go to the end of the queue.
Ok, so it wasn't quiiiite like this, but I love this silly old pic from that great 0ld Western in the sky, so I used it. Instead, imagine two long rows of barbers and their charges, and in the middle, there's a long seating area for you to sit and wait your turn. And all the barbers are snip-snipping away - all twenty or so of them. Sweatshop meets Snipshop!
But, of course, as I walked out after paying a paltry Rs 55, I decided to come by some other time - my usual place in Bandra charges around Rs 85. Actually, even that is a step down from my very first salon/saloon in Bombay - in Khar, charging around Rs 150. And while some of my well-coiffured friends would argue that Rs 150 is negligible for a good haircut (I know of a place in Lokhandwalla that charges Rs 350 for one!), I decided to go easy on my wallet.
After all, consider what I came from:
Cost of a haircut in Delhi - Rs 50
Cost of a haircut in Chennai - Rs 30
Cost of a haircut in Calcutta - Rs 15
In Economics Theory, we call this the Law of Diminishing Returns
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Operation Conversion
Been thinking for quite some time on whether or not I should switch to Blogger Beta, but since I realised that I have to start a whole new account, a whole new blog, etc etc etc, I decided it was simply not worth all that trouble to just get in a couple of 'categories'. Category viewing is undoubtedly fun, but then, I can just imagine sifting through all the archives, hunting, hunting, hunting.... back-breaking stuff. Gaahh!
But, when my colleague announced that she wanted to start blogging, after watching me spend at least 2 hrs of my 8 hr workday blogging/checking out blogs/ commenting, I decided to open an account for her on Beta. Let her have fun with those 'categories' if she wants to. So then, we sat down, poring over possible blog names and account names, and even though she hit on a pretty catchy sounding name for her blog, she can't decide on a user name. Her real name is just too popular, and she hates the idea of having a user name like archana8206 or something like that, which makes her seem like a pretty obsolete robot. So, we were stuck - we are stuck - and the new Beta account never got made.
They say that of all the millions of blogs out there that do get made, most of them are abandoned by their owners pretty fast. That's not to say that only the techno geeks maintain regular blogs - hell, even the sorry-ass whiney kinds like me do it. But, most, however, get bored or disenchanted or use that silly old line: "I have nothing to write about". Some people hate writing about what they consumed for breakfast and some people don't eat breakfast in the first place - no, I'm not a diet per se, just never had the time to indulge in breakfast when I'm dashing late to work in the mornings - and so that blog usually ends up being... to use a culinary metaphor, half-baked.
Of course, that's not to say that I'm the most prolific blogger in the universe. Nach! But it feels funny to realise, after a point of time, that the guys you started out blogging with have kind of slackened and don't post much anymore, ("much" = never), and that most of the links you have at the side of your page lead to blogs that saw their last post in December 2005.
And that makes you bug your colleague over and over again, even when she's not that enthsiastic, to come up with a proper user name she can employ.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Director's Cut
It's been a movie packed weekend, starting from Wo Lamhe on saturday. Not too bad, and though the actress is a mite screechy and wayyy over the top, she's quite a stunner. Her waist is so tiny, Scarlett O'Hara of the 17'' fame would claw her eyes out, and her face looks really great without makeup. Shiney Ahuja, the hero, is (as usual) fantastic. The guy apparently never uses glycerine for his sobby scenes - and the way he cries regularly in the movie, complete with shuddering face and eyes squeezing out trains of tears, is quite... amazing. I was tempted to sneer 'pansy', but then, got a pinch from the die-hard Shiny fan I was sitting next to, when I attempted. ;-)
Mahesh Bhatt is stupid and worse, evil, if he wants the world to believe Parveen Babi was such a complete nutcase.
Sunday, I planned to check oput Lage Raho Munnabhai, over which the entire city has been going gaga. Barely a day passes by in Bombay, when the newspapers don't have at least one edit piece/ middle/ art of living article/ city beat story about how the city has embraced 'Gandhi-giri'. Fun movie, decidedly stronger on the heartstrings than its prequel was, and I had a blast. Vidya Balan is pretty like hell!
When we came out of the theatre (Eros), we saw a group of guys selling Gandhi autobiographies for Rs 30, and they were being mobbed by the people coming out from the movie - we have pictures on the cell phone to prove it! ;-)
Was hoping to catch the night show of brainless chick-flick John Tucker Must Die then, but since everyone bailed on me, I decided to go back home and watch a couple of the Flatmate's CDs. Picked the Rahul Khanna-Lisa Ray starrer Bolywood/Hollywood, which I hadn't seen before. Total time-pass: cheesy humour, weepy mother I wanted to slap, bad English accents that were meant to be that way (I think and hope), and a long drawn-out Bollywood-ishtyle ending. Rahul Khanna was so thinnnn here!
After the pav bhyaji that I'd ordered with Bollywood/ Hollywood finished, I decided that I wanted something else to nibble on, before movie no. 3 for the day. The so-called 'nibble' turned into yummy prawn biryani, and the next change in the CD Rom was one of my fave Disney's of all time, Beauty and the Beast. Cutesy stuff, and great songs. Realised later, that Belle and the Prince bear a remarkable resemblance to Jane and Tarzan in Disney's later production. It's obvious that Tarzan and the Beast are related, then.
;-) ;-) ;-)
