Sunday, October 14, 2007

Hear,hear....!!!

After much pleading and child-like pouting,
I hereby declare The Rainrider's birthday week (12-19 Oct) OPEN!!! :) :) :) The big day,by the way, is on 19 October.

Those who feel sweet enough to wish him may do so via comments to this post :)

Have yourselves a happy week!!!

Monday, October 1, 2007

Mmmmh,it's been a while since I posted anything.Not that there hasn't been anything to blog about.It's just that everytime I started writing,halfway through I'd lose interest and leave it unfinished.Consequently my google documents account has a lot of half-written unfinished drafts.Maybe I should just get clever and put them up as contests-"Finish the draft and win a prize....".Though I can't,for the life of me, imagine who'd want to finish my sentences for me.

Here's a whirlwind of an update:

  • Worked nights all of September.It's been an eye-opening experience.I've learnt to value food and a good consistent healthy routine because...
  • ...on one fine day,I had one of those dramatic faint-and-fall episodes at home.Result:doc prescribes 3 months worth of vitamin and iron supplements.Bleagh
  • Went on a short weekend getaway types to Pondicherry before that with Dad,Mom and Amit.Want to go back again.
  • The Mal family and the TamJ family have been exchanging sweets lately...Kaju katli and Nagapattinam Halwa.Sweet Business,that.
  • 3 birthdays went by.Amma got two sarees, Dad got Peter England trousers and C-ma was wished over conference call and ended up with confusion about what I was doing with her nephew after a night shift

Yesterday was "catch-up on your chores" Sunday.After a really longish break, I managed to oil my hair before washing it as opposed to the usual run-in-shampoo-condition-run-out routine with Amma's yells trailing behind me accusatorily as I run off to work with wet hair tied up.

Spent some time with T and expressed deep dislike for his maidservant.I must've sounded like Amma when she goes off on her ranting trips about our weird maid with kleptomania;my reasons,however, were completely different and extremely scandalous.

We ate lunch at Subway yesterday.As always,there was one difficult customer making everyone in the queue behind her pull their hair out.Madam arrived in a car,stepped out on her stilettos and firmly ordered her boyfriend to "stay there" while she gets their takeaway.The guy must be stupid or henpecked or both because he actually parked the car and followed her in.Grave mistake if you ask me.He would've realized yesterday how crabby and whiny she can get at the same time.But like I said maybe he was stupid so maybe he's the kind who says stuff like"She's so assertive and aggressive....I love aggressive women you know?" *wink-wink* Bleagh.

Anyway back to our story....not that there is much of one here.Madam placed her orders and gave the already confused new staff an even harder time as she kept complaining in extremely high pitch about how she didn't want olives added, or cheese, or this or that.My God!!!Oh yeah she said that too."Go-hod!" with nose in the air and eyes rolling.Kinda made her look like she was having seizures,that over exaggerated eyeball movement.The S & H boyfriend, meanwhile, stood very close behind her for a while and when she started yelling, quietly went to the nearest chair and sat down.When it finally seemed like the order was getting around to being ready he stood beside her again and sympathetically enqured what happened."They screwed up my sub" was the anguished reply.Stupid woman.

On the other hand, T sweetly assumed his duties of deciding on our orders (he knows I can't order food even at gunpoint) and patiently answered the befuddled questions the newbie staff asked about toppings preferences.What would I do without him.

As we chomped into our respective subs, we watched a little girl who by all means was a dynamite in the making.She entered hand-in-hand with her father loudly exclaiming that he didn't give her time to wash her hair.Jaws dropped."She scares me",T said.Her father ordered and while they waited,the mite ran around her table scrunching up the menu pamphlets and throwing them at her father.The patriarch caught her, grabbed her close and did funny antics to make her laugh repeatedly.It was a really sweet laughter I thought.

"She sounds like a ringtone", T said reaching out to take a paneer cube out of my sub.

When the girl's food arrived, she took one look at her plate and loudly said "Baba I won't eat this!"

"Why dear?"

"Because I don't like it."

"You must finish it, it's good for you."

"Wait till I tell Mummy!"

Somehow, he managed to coax her into eating quietly.T, his sub finished, took a leaf from the girl's book and pleaded child-like for an iced tea.It was a complicated manouevre which involved me leaving my half eaten sub and walking all the way to the counter to get it.A few mock angry glares later, I fetched the drink.The girl had finished her food and was now running around pausing at tables and peering into faces of its occupants.

At one particular table, she gazed at a baby. The baby's grandma smiled at the girl and asked her if she wanted a baby.

"I already have one" was the reply much to everyone's amusement.

Kids are such sources of amusement.They put a smile on your face no matter what.I watched as the baby's father joined their table and bent down to kiss the baby's head gently before sitting down while his wife smiled at him lovingly.I turned away from the intimacy of the moment to look outside.A ragpicker passed by with his baby son in his arms wrapped in a cloth.The baby playfully whacked his nose and squealed.The ragpicker laughed and for that one sweet funny moment he might've forgotten about the miseries of his existence.