someone better come rescue me. i'm down where i find myself nowadays usually - the doldrums. not the cheeriest of places to be sure.


my jaws hurt from all the talking i'd done yesterday.

doggone it!

one of those days.

winter blues. no posts today.

one hit and quite a few misses

BigMistake-1 : Saawariya.
mr.bhansali needs to learn this all-important lesson - lovely sets and an (almost)full monty do not a movie make. (though it does make for some uncomfortable-but-interested oggling, esp on the part of the female part of the audience.)
guys being projected as objects of desire is quite rare here, to say the least. no one has done it with so much style since Alisha Chinnai had had a dishy milind soman delivered to her in a crate.(!)














BigMistake-2 : Laaga Chunari Main Dagh.
Ugggh!









TimeWellSpent-1 : Jab We Met.
deceptively inane name, engagingly fresh movie.

TimeWellSpent-2 : Johny Gaddar.
wham-bam! spot-on.

PMS

to parody the lycra ad, i have got it, have you?
i call it misery. mom calls it 'showing your true colours'.

The season of mellow fruitfulness

I leave the place for a few days, and entire seasons change! It was summer when I left, it is autumn now.

Orange season.

Leaves are dropping with every breath of wind from the neem trees in a steady golden shower, carpeting the tiled walkway. Some of them fall onto the still waters of the fountain in the courtyard, and slowly sink to the bottom, flecking the pool with yellow and gold.
It is lovely, to be alone here, and to stand in the steady fall of happy, free bits of yellow.
A squirrell runs down a tree and stays for a while, before running up another. It does not mind me there. Does not mind me humming below my breath, softly. Happiness is made of moments such as this.

Sudden Showers

It rained today. Sudden.
The gulmohur tree below my window looks happy, newly washed. The smell of wet earth rises up as I sit on my balcony with a cup of coffee and my book. I forget to read after a while. I watch the sunset after a long time and sit there till it grows dark and grandma calls me in for dinner.

….flashes upon that inward eye..

Slept through the morning and much of the afternoon. The ol’ noodle is beginning to wake up.

It surprises me how I could have endured the long trip to and from Kutch without throwing up even once. I have all sorts of motion sickness. You name it, I have it - water sickness, car sickness, bus sickness, and if I ever travel by air, I’m certain I’ll have air sickness too. I went everywhere with a plastic bag handy, just in case.
What surprises me even more is that I managed to see enough of the truly beautiful countryside through the bus window. Normally I am a ball of agony, curled up with eyes shut tight on any long trip. I did a bit of that this time too, (must not break long-standing personal records) but it was prompted more by the principle of the thing.
As we entered the Rann, the landscape changed dramatically. One moment, it was all scrub wood and acacia trees, and the next, it was an empty, salt-covered wasteland. Somehow, the done-to-death ‘desolate’ does not come to mind. It was a wasteland, true, but it had a strange beauty to it. The beauty of solitude and barrenness. Like some kind of weird moonscape.




(signpost along the way drowning in the marsh)



(salt)

We could occasionally see pelicans and other birds on and over the lakes on either side of the highway. Should have stopped the bus a bit. Or, perhaps not. There was not another human for miles, for hours. It really felt like we had come away somewhere far away. Farther than we had ever gone. Or was it just my queasy stomach?

The Day After Pill

Everyone all tired out and droopy-eyed, so all of us unanimously decided to watch a movie, and not study at all today, in the interests of our sanity. Saw Bebe. I love that pig.
Diwali vacations from tomorrow till the 19th. I’ll miss the kids. Got some greeting cards made on note-paper with “Happy Diwali ma’m” on them. The thought counts, yeah, it does.

Himalay met me on the way to the bus. Turns out he is making what he optimistically calls ‘bookmarks’ to sell to all and sundry, collect the cash, and donate it to lesser privileged kids this Diwali. He is also giving up his pocket money for the good cause. I bought the four remaining ones he had left. A kid with a conscience – one of the many reasons I just love this little bat-child of mine.

Going to A’bd tomorrow to see Ms. Sethi about the next term’s planning. I’m doing a bit too much of traveling lately. Living out of a suitcase and all that. They’ll be calling me Pegasus the Winged Horse if this continues much longer.

The Incident In The Toilet, Damsel to the Rescue and Other Tales of High Adventure:

(the southern reservoir-cut into rock partly, n partly brick-built)


I love teaching, no doubt about it. What is a little doubtful is all this in loco parentis thing one is expected to do as one goes about teachering. Take for example, The Incident in the Toilet.
It goes thusly –

Setting: the citadel at Dholavira.

Cast: Darvish, yours truly and assorted etceteras.

Curtains Up!

We were all listening carefully to the guide and nicely into the note-taking business. I had just done my bit about how the Indus Valley people were such marvelous engineers, when I noticed the grimace gracing the countenance of the hero of this tale. Total ijit that I am, I took it to be a look of intense concentration. Well, one lives and learns. The worst is yet to be, baby…..

It turns out our hero had disdained the opportunity to visit the loo-loos in the hotel, and now had serious cause for concern.

Moral Dilemma - What does a dedicated teacher do in such circumstances? Does she give in to her demons and laugh gleefully, and say ‘I told you so?’ Nope. Nada. She plays martyr, and offers to guide the erring gentleman to the nearest available spot wherein the said gentleman can answer Nature’s Urgent Call.

So off we went. The drama ends not here, my pretties….

Revelation – What does a toilet in a remote excavation site with only a rude man posing as the curator and a couple of drunkards to watch over it, look like? Answer – like only a toilet in a remote excavation site with only a rude man posing as the curator and a couple of drunkards to watch over it, can look like.

To move on….

Our hero turns up his nose at the establishment and expresses some doubt about doing something so important in such a place. The teacher points out the abject lack of choice, in case he hadn’t noticed. So our hero, like the true gentleman that he is, goes in. One offers to wait outside. Offer accepted. One settles down on the doorstep looking forward to a few minutes of peaceful beholding of Nature – a lot of scrub bush and a brown mongrel, in this case. But, but, but - did the righteous ever have it easy? No sir. Ask the early Christians. The righteous got thrown to the lions.

D: “Umm.. ma’m, there are a few cats in here.”
Moa: “oho?”
D:………
Moa: “Problem?”
D: “Well, you see, I don’t like animals. Once a dog bit me…so…”
Moa: “Just don’t pay much attention to it. It will go away. Won’t hurt you.”
D: “Are you sure? It is looking at me very rudely.”

(One detects growing panic in D’s normally sanguine voice, and goes in to find not one, not two, but three cats giving the world the disconcertingly superior stare that only cats and mothers can manage.)

Time for idle talk is past.

Moa: (ever the one for action, cat-shooer-off par excellence.) “You just have to flap your hands thisaway.”
This continues for sometime. One hasn’t done so much hand-flapping since one’s P.T. classes from school, but one gives it all one has got. The cats watch in interested silence. One takes a chance and turns around to have a look. The feline nearest the opening in the thatch roof turns menacingly.
D: (in that reassuring manner he has, screams)“Ma’m, he’ll attack you! Watch out!”

The he (or she, one can’t be too certain. One wasn’t in a position to check the anatomical details of one’s adversaries, and even in case one had, one wouldn’t have had the slightest clue.) left! The others followed. Victory! It may have been a small step for a cat, but a giant step for Mankind Trapped in the Toilet with Angry Brood of Cats.

So that was that.

Oh there are perks of course. On the way back, I get the most sincerely meant, fervent ‘thank you’ ever. We call ourselves the Brotherhood of the Toiletally Challenged now, and offer to write about it in our respective blogs for our respective friends to laugh at.
Here I am, keeping up my end of the bargain.

(this is what Dholavira might have looked like all those years ago.)

Damsel to the Rescue:
Murphy’s Law: (not my fault if he didn’t state it. If he had had any sense, he would have.)
The urgency of the desire to tinkle is directly proportional to the distance you are from human habitation, and by inference, from anything remotely approaching toilets.

The truth of this wise dictum was proved to me as we were on our innards-jolting 320km. bumpy ride to Dholavira from Bhuj. Having a busfull of giggly pre-teens is no help. Pee-stops had to be carefully maneuvered. It goes without saying that when it comes to matters like this, even teeny almost-men will balk at having a teacher of the female variety around. So the bus had to be emptied of all the gents (except the driver, of course) at promising places in the care of Salilbhai - our escort for the trip. We then had to take the bus a good distance away, persuade the ladies to have a go right in Ma Nature’s lap, so to speak, and stand watch, after which, we turned back to where we had jettisoned the male members of the party, picked them up, and continued on our merry way.






( this is one of our more scenic pee-stops.)


Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon:

This is the name Stuti gave to the contortions we had to put ourselves through, to attain some level of privacy while doing what I described the younger ladies doing in the previous para. Elegant, huh? It has ruined the film for me anyway. I don’t care, I don’t care! The Gods could have laughed for all I care! I am not a bloody camel to go without drink for an entire day the way Gunjan did.

A Room With a View (and a toilet that flushes)

Bhuj is a lovely city. Dusty, colourful.

The lake in the middle of the city shines and sparkles and dances in the sunlight. Our hotel Lakeview has a lovely view of the lake from all its windows.
We reached Bhuj around 10:30, allotted rooms to the kids, got them all washed, combed and freshened up and down in the dining hall by 12:00. That’s record time.
No one complained, threw up, demanded ketchup or threatened to starve during lunch. A long bus trip is the best appetizer.

After lunch, we went for a spin around the lake. No visit to any place in Gujarat is complete without a visit to a local temple - permanent fixture on any itinery. We did not go against custom. I particularly wanted the Gods on my side for this trip.


We then took the kids to the park next to the hotel, and they all attacked the monkey bars and slides with all the pent-up energy of seven hours of relative inaction. I wonder where they get all this energy from. After all that travel, I just wanted to curl up and die in peace somewhere. Teesta climbed up one of those contraptions which has a rope ladder at one end and a step ladder at the other, with a platform on top, and could not get down for a good 15 minutes. The guys all surrounded her from all sides, and would not let her climb down. Revenge for all the times she smart alecks them in class, I think.

Rhythm showed off spectacularly doing the most daredevilish things like hanging upside down from puke-inducing heights and crossing the monkey bars at one go, repeatedly. Stuti and I spent some time speculating who among the young ladies in the audience was the intended target audience for this circus. He has a huge soft corner for both of us, and now we think Teesta may be the one to grace the third unoccupied chamber of his heart. Hmmm…..gives one furiously to think, like Poirot used to say. Will
have to do some serious detective work once we are back.





Back at the hotel, all of us spent the next 20 minutes rushing around like our pants were on fire, trying to get ready to start for Dholavira as soon as we could, so that we could reach the site by 4:00p.m., when we get news that the routes are closed down for repairs again. We’ll have to reschedule the trip to tomorrow early morning 4:00. That means waking up at 3:30.

We got to visit the still-spectacular 18th century palace Aina Mahal, which was considerably ruined in the earthquake that rocked the state.




Not even Gaia could hurt the beauty of the walls so beautifully built, the latticed windows from where queens might once have peeped out, the pillars with dragons and hibiscus flowers carved on them, the grand durbar hall, the huge mirrors….. the kids were a bit disgusted with all the stuffed heads on the walls - tigers, antelope, lions, lynx, even a hippo! Those princes were something!

The museum next door had a lovely portrait, a miniature, of Mastani. When Stuti and I were exclaiming over the oval perfection of her face, Ashita (who can say the darnedest things at the darnedest times) announced aloud for all to hear, “but she is not wearing proper clothes” driving the boys hanging around us many shades of red brighter. (Well, truth be told, the costume was a tad too transparent. Probably fashionable harem attire.) Poor Rhythm, he was trying his debonair, man-about-town act. He did not deserve such mortification. We could not help laughing.
The museum has very interesting old photographs. There was this picture of Lord and Lady Mountbatten taken when he was in Burma.

That evening, after a shopping trip, ice creams and dinner, we let the kids play for an hour before bedtime. All 30 of them ran about whooping and yelling their heads off. The other guests put their heads out of their windows to see what the commotion was about. Just my kind of game. Anything that requires one to yell at the top of one’s voice and run about at top speed is my kind of game. I would have joined in, dignity be damned, if Stuti had agreed to play too. Still, just sitting about watching people bump into plants, fall over chairs and call each other names was grand entertainment as well, so no complaints.

The Maachi Game:

Teesta suggested a new game, one invented by Nirman when they were in the fourth grade. Rather interesting. It goes like this – the person who gives the ‘den’ has to go about like a zombie with his hands outstretched saying “maachi, maachi…” till he touches someone. Then both of them do it, and so on till everyone is touched with the maachi. What makes me like this game so much is the sheer inventiveness of it. One can substitute maachi with whatever disgusting thing one can think of, say “charak” or “podhro”.

I’m planning to suggest to The Gang that we play this the next time we meet, in place of the tame Antaksharis and Dumb Charades we normally play.

For the uninitiated:
Maachi – fish
Charak – bird shit
Podhro – cowdung

Oh I know, I know. But the best kind of humour one gets from 11 year olds is sparkling toilet humour. The best kind. Actually, the only kind. I’m resigned to it now. That old saw about ‘if you can’t beat ‘em….’

The odyssey:

I’ll be taking my class to visit the excavated remains of the Indus Valley site Dholavira in the Rann of Kutch on this 30th.

There are evidences of city planning found at the site, dating from 2500 B.C.
The 3rd millennium city, which was spread over an area of 250 acres, had an incredible 17 man-made, interconnected, canalized lakes for rainwater harvesting. Situated on the island formed by the rivers Mansar and Manhar, it was very systematically planned, like any Indus Valley settlement, into four. What historians call an acropolis, divided into two – the castle and the bailey, the lower town, the middle town and the burial place.

All of us are very excited. Never before have I wished for a Sunday to rush past.

sound bites

i just cannot seem to get away from a surplus of decibels. wherever i turn these days, i get my eardrums fried by blaring noise being passed off as music. even the commute to school, which used to be my substitute for zen, is now a disco on wheels. and to think we paid for having the radio installed! talk about cutting the branch one is perched on... to make matters worse, singers who should be shot for singing even in the bathroom assume it is okey to sing along if the song is being played on radio. that is the worst part. noise, i can handle. what does not bear thinking about is the accompaniment.
finally seen the last of the DTT thingie. the relief is indiscribable. words fail me. freedom! blessed freedom from the constant feeling of having an axe hanging over your neck, ready to drop any time. mala ma'm had tears in her eyes at the bye-byes. a sneaking suspicion if all the saline water was prompted whether by sadness at not seeing us anymore, or less charitable thoughts. probably not - she called moa's reflective report 'flawless' and moa 'brilliant'. moa retaliated by doing something moa does rarely- moa touched her feet, and sought her blessings.

the goddess of hair is having her revenge by making innumerble tendrils stick out of my braid. considered sticking pins into the braid, but decided against it, as it would be too weird, even for me.

on the brighter side, he-who-is-not-going-to-be-named is starting to look a little less green around the gills. less like the thwarted coming face-to-face with the thwarter. good, i guess. redemption.

I shall overcome....

Well, regular Monday blues apart, noone laughed at my hair. not many people did, anyway. atleast not to my face.
i did get some eyeballs though.
Darvish gave me a once over and went 'oh so u cut your hair? hmm....', Teesta went and announced it to the B's at loudspeaker pitch prompting an immediate stampede which ended somewhere behind me. after much deliberation, Ashna totally threw me. she went, 'ma'm, i'm now convinced u are a girl!'. well.

can't say i don't know what 'being the cycnosure of all eyes' is about. now i do. and how. not very pleasant.
that blooming idiot desai got our trip to dholavira postponed to early next week. hope he gets a flat tyre, or a pimple on his nose, or bird shit on his head.

missing Someone-i-Should-Not-Be-Missing. very, very strange. i get hungry, thirsty and sleepy, as usual, so it cannot be u-know-what. oh gawd! nooooo....

Snippety-Snip. Snip, Snip, SNAP!

She who wields the scissors, (the Rini of ‘Rini’s’?) cut through one’s tresses with a dedication suited to a better cause – like clearing up the Chambal, or stopping people wearing low-slung jeans, or Dev Anand from making any more movies, to name but a few. One resolutely closed one’s eyes tight, and prayed the hardest in one’s life ever, and swore never to sin again, if one emerged looking humanoid after the attack.
After Scissorhands and the Others were done with one, and one had managed to get one’s hair (whatever was left of it), out of one’s eyes, and managed to locate one’s specs, one chanced a look in the mirror.

One is interested to note that one’s crowning glory, which hitherto extended its vertical freefall to one’s waist, now stops shy of one’s mid shoulder. It now executes wild turns and curves, fluffs up around one’s face, curves around one’s chin, and looks rather movie-star like. One is in turn, curious, interested, enthralled, aghast and then mortally fearful.

One encounters soul-searching questions like –

What does one say in one’s defense to an irate mother and an even more irate mother-of-mother (when she comes)?
What does one do if one’s pupils mistake one for a porcupine? Or Einstein? Or My Little Pony? Or Milind Soman?
What does one do if one gets a Faceoff scare when one looks at one’s face in the mirror in sleep induced delirium?
How does one get along without one’s trusty companion of eleven years – one’s braid - quite literally hanging around one?
Does one now become a possessor of hairpins, banana clips, butterfly clips and scrunchies? One may just go bananas.
Or does one become one of ‘those types’ who leaves their hair open? (gasp! One has never done it, except while drying out one’s curls after a shampoo!) One has always found it mildly indecent. (the leaving hair open bit, not the shampoo bit)

One thinks (involuntarily), of one’s last Experiments with Hairy Truths. How one was called ‘cute’ when one wanted to be taken seriously in one’s new boy-cut in grade 4, and how one had fled home those long years ago, and had never, ever cut one’s hair again. Ever.
One resolves to go home and plait whatever is left of one’s keratiny dead-cells. One loves one’s keratiny dead-cells.
One dreads Monday with a new and powerful dread - the dread of the Newly Hair-Styled. Indescribable.



Shraddha, the things I do for you…..You better name your first child after me. Even if it is a boy. Call him Elizabethan or something.

The Despicable Delights of Dandiya;

One gets to see little guys’ feet getting entangled in their own dhotis, and tipping over onto their faces all over the place. Most entertaining. One then remembers that one is a teacher, by virtue of which, one cannot laugh at one’s pupils. One finds it quite impossible to stop laughing, so one simply laughs on behind cover of one’s handkerchief, and thusly, spares feelings all around and avoids a scandal.

One also gets pushed, shoved and pulled from all angles by one’s devout pupils who want to witness the sweet sight of one making a perfect ass of oneself on the dance floor. One acts with lightning wit and acuity, and feigns swooning spells by the simple expedient of rolling one’s eyes most effectively, and collapses onto the mattress in a heap, thusly solving the problem, and scaring off said pupils.

One struggles for a glimpse of one’s face in the mirror in that most hallowed of meeting places – the washroom, and learns an important life lesson in the process – thou shalt use thy elbow as a battering ram. The needs justify the end.

One witnesses colleagues dressed up to give a complex to a Christmas tree, and despairs over one’s plane janeness.

i think i just murdered my blog.
nowadays all i do is fret and fume at the powers that be, and agonize over my hair.
even the usually pleasantly productive passtime of irritating my bro to fits dosent seem to do the trick. makes one wonder if menopause strikes one in the early twenties.

The Ten Commandments.

thy shalt not give in. conquer, cajole, career around rejection. break down barriers. make the stone-hearted sing.

thou shalt say i art the light of thy life. thy joy, thy pride. thy weakness, thy strength. thou shalt keep saying it again, and again, and again.

thou shalt love my burnt toast and my bitter coffee. thou shalt not call my rasam bland.

thou shat walk with me in the rain, splash through puddles, ruminate, star-gaze, doodle, smile in the darkness.

thou shalt not make me wait. waiting is an endless pain, an unfinished book, a half-smile.

thou shalt lift me up and carry me about. thy arms wilt be mine cage, locomotion, refuge, sanctuary.

thou shalt sing me racuous melodies. read me gibran, the songs of solomon. croon careless whisper, every move you make.

thou shalt not find govinda movies funny. thou shalt love gulmohars, golden showers, the smell of old books.

thou shalt wander the world with me. inhabit the realm of mists and high mountains, never ending plains, old bookshops, streetside musicians, grassy knolls, hillsides.

more than anything, thou shalt be a goof. let thy silliness wash away my morose broodings. be the silver lining.

lost my fav yellow hanky!

Went to the airshow in Jamnanagar on the 18th, and Shikha promptly fell in love with the gravelly, deep voice saying things like 'flying is a true bonding between man and machine..' and stuff over the public address system. of all the depraved things to do......
i am now convinced, i seriously have no life and neither has anyone else around here.

bad hair day number three.

my hair has a mind of its own - and a mulish, willful, malicious mind at that. today i had to suffer tendrils pointing at all the directions on the compass, and some more. i'v tried oil, serum and prayers. nothing works. my own personal purgatory.

the day i wash my hair, i have to walk around with the disquieting feeling that a voluminous, dark, hairy cloud is following me about. i quite literally feel under the cloud on shampoo days.

the next day is worse. much, much worse. then, i look like medusa. (not so bad, eh? rather a glamorous ol'girl, i always thought.)

life would not have been so difficult, inspite of all this if i were not cursed with a pest of a brother who thinks it is funny to take potshots at my crowning glory.

putty in my hands

everyday catastrophes apart;

clay workshop today.
it was fun, but it did shatter one illusion i'd carried for a looong time - getting one's hands all gooey with clay is not much fun if one does not have patric swayze around. then of course, it is an entirely different matter.(or does one have to look like demi moore too? that would be a bit too much to ask for.)
i made among others, a bug eyed snail, an equally bug-eyed fish, a tortoise/turtle and an octopus who must indeed be one of his kind-all his arms are of different sizes and thicknesses. they all have one thing in common,though -all of them seem idiotically happy. maybe the eyes have something to do with it. esp the snail. it looks particularly imbecile-like - like the idiotic offspring of an unhappy snail couple.
will post pictures once they are dried and painted.

gorefest

just finished reading elizabeth kostova's 'the historian'.

very enjoyable. almost gothic in the terror department. one will almost forgive stoker the dracula influx into pop culture, if it in any way inspired this book. it is both literary and entertaining at the same time. kostova creates atmosphere admirably. mountains, monastries, architecture, food, travel, east european countries, filial love, the impact of the iron curtain, religions and the superstitions they foster, and above all, the power of evil are all delt with, with a wonderful acuity.maintaining the suspence through such a long book cannot be easy,that too in one's first book, but she manages to capture one's attention and hold it. all the research -ten year's worth- is put to great use.there are the occassional, lovely turns of phrase.a very compulsive read. rather in the league of 'the rule of four'.


went rakhi shopping with shraddha today. just the right thing to do when u have a huge assignment to submit tomorrow and u haven't yet done a thing. when facing deadline, shop!

gutter poetry

hold your breaths - an original creation.

rythm's haiku -

"coackroach
struggling to stay alive
overflowing gutter."

i should probably drown myself in some gutter too.
(and to think it was 'edited' to this from
"an old pond
a frog jumps in
stillness disturbed.")

that said, i now have multiple deadlines to meet. at this rate, they'd find us all dead in a line in no time.

oh by the way, im going to start teaching the detective genre to my class. this should be fun.

Shikha is threatening to strangle himalay. why? well, Because.

the other day, he did what he is best at - he lost his little book which was to go into his evidence file. again. and again. and again.
he seems to have a special kind of genius for this kind of thing. quite inhumanly superhuman, the way he manages to lose, misplace, tear, drip water over, drop snacks over, and generally destroy utterly the papers we most fervently wish wouldn't be subjected to his evil genius. (this is one of those instances which make me feel almost nice - almost, mind - about shifting to grade 6.)
to continue,
shikha found him lurking near the waster paper basket engaged in his favorite occupation (what else?) - sharpening his pencil to a stub. when demanded that he produce the little book, the little devil pronounced he had lost it.
of course, it is not the first (or last!) time he has lost anything. but to someone new to his charms, it could be heartburn-inducing. no wonder his mom looks as if she might drop dead any minute. this guy is a surefire health hazard.

did i mention somewhere here that he is quite in love with me? in case i haven't, now you know. he had been after my life for a while now, demanding my address and email i.d. he managed to corner me near the bus last friday. i predicted that he would lose the scrap of paper with my email i.d. on it in no time. miracle of miracles! he hasn't yet, and loses no opportunity to remind me he still has it.
i'm now having to eat humble pie.

hp7 atlast

i just got the HP7(that's Harry Potter 7 for the uninitiated) today!

Read 2 chapters while gulping down some snacks, drinking some scalding coffee, tying my shoelaces, combing my hair and wearing my jacket (quite gymnastic of me,what?) prior to rushing to school for the sadela DTT.

at this rate, i might start rivalling shraddha at time management. till now, the mad hatter and i shared the same idea about time- a kind of hopeless exasperation. i'd even started thinking of time as a very malicious 'he'.

saw the sun after three rainwashed days. nice to see the smiling face of Phoebus.
and oh! i just blew out the fuse of the bedrooms. again. lucky i had to come to school today. escaped the customary tonguelashing from mom. this is what they call the silver lining, i guess.(or is this particular dog having her day atlast?)
whatever.

i just discovered these great blogs, and now can't figure out how to add them to a list here.
so well,
http://www.dooce.com/
http://pkblogs.com/jaiarjun
http://indiauncut.com/

beautiful nightmare

the surreal and mundane intersect seamlessly in this brutal, unflinching, yet visually lovely magical-realist movie by Guillermo del Toro. this visually stunning adult fairytale won three Oscars -- for cinematography, makeup and art direction.

the story takes place in a remote rural army bastion in post-civil war spain. franco's regime is spreading like a corrupt, indelible stain over this lovely land. though the war is over five years before the 1944 of the movie, insurgency is alive in the mountains of spain, supported by villagers.

the protagonist, prepubiscent Ofelia(Ivana Baquero in a stunningly mature performance) is called to her stepfather's garrison with her pregnant mother Carmen. on the way, she comes across a praying mantis-like creature, who she assumes to be a fairy, like those from the many fairy tales she reads to escape from the bleakness of her situation. she follows this creature into the ruins of a laybrinth,where she meets a faun,who tells her she is the princess Moana of the underworld, who must complete three tasks befor the 'moon is full', so that she can return to her kingdom and her father, who has long been waiting for her. the laybrinth is one of the many portals her 'real' father had openend to let her through to her rightful land. in the pursuing of these tasks, (two of which she fails, incidentally), she comes across creatures both horrific and fascinating.

her stepfather is the villainous ogre of this story. we see him summarily, sadistically kill and torture those he take to be republican insurgents. (Captain Vidal is played most menacingly by Sergi Lopez). his heart set on having a son who will carry on his name, he does not hesitate to direct the doctor, 'if you have to choose, save him, save my son'. his chilling disregard for human life, especially of 'the vermin' as he calls the rebels is one of the strongest pivots of the movie.

in this atmosphere of daily cruelty, Ofelia finds a friend in her stepfather's housekeeper Mercedes, who is living a dangerous double life-her brother is one of the rebels-the 'men in the wood'. Mercedes later becomes mother-substitute for the desolate Ofelia, but even she fails to protect Ofelia from the cruelty that awaits her.

Del Toro does not make you comfortable, indeed, this is one of the most disturbing films one may see. but it also remains one of the most original, forceful, fascinating films of recent times. what i personally liked was the ambiguity of the film. Del Toro leaves it to the audience to figure out if Ofelia's fantasy-world exists outside her dreams or not.

not to be missed.

p.s. i rather liked the mantis-fairy.

i have this really sharp pain somewhere in the solar plexus. bhargav tried to comfort me saying 'don't worry ma'm, it's probably food poisoning'. now why does that make me feel worse? after all the groaning and moaning i did in school today, it would be rather embarrassing if it turned out to be a case of saada gas. i am beginning to think that khanbhai's chaat could be the culprit.
i guess this is what they mean when they say only time will tell. if i'm alive tomorrow morning, it's gas, if not, well......i bequeath my books to B,dresses to Shiny and teddies to Shraddha.

that apart, i'm planning to watch Pan's Laybrinth tonight.

oh happy day!
samit basu added me to his friend list on orkut. i now have a true-blue, authentic, sachh-mucch ka writer friend.

the benefits of gloating and bitching

today was the second day of mr.shaw's design workshop, n she-who-must-not-be-named-for-her-own-good was all decked up to impress him and did a perfect impersonation of a moth hovering around a lit lamp, much to everyone's amusement.

i'd give anything to know if it worked. this was the topic of poonam n moi's daily quota of bitching for today. we spent an enjoyable half hour of our time on the bus discussing this weighty issue. as she sagely pronounced, the pitfalls of falling for a man some umpteen years your senior are many. anyway, he is just too brainy,and she is just too....

interesting how an averagely attractive man (with a lot of talent, to be fair) can make utter fools of a bunch of women supposed to be the paragons of common-sense and decorum. a rather entertaining circus, if one is lucky enough to be an onlooker, which ofcourse will take place only if a) one is not-too-unhappily married, b) one is already taken, c) one is oriented the other way, or c) the least likely, one has a bit of sense.

i have cause to be proud, n justly so, because i fall emphatically into the last category.

Sometimes.

gender bender

pinder got called 'Pinder' (to be rhymed with 'Binder') today by mala ma'm in our DTTclass. she is most offended, and wanted to know if the 'pinder guy' is one of the good guys or one of the bad guys. i just know that he is one of the dreaded greeks who contributed to making life hell for the generations to come. like they say, latin killed the romans, now its killing me......
anyway,
met himalay on the walk to the bus. he said, and i quote " there was a cobra today in the toilet, and she was doing like this (hooded hand, accompanied by hissing noises), and rajnibhai caught it with sticksssssssss."

on being asked how he knew that the serpent was a she, and not a he, he had no satisfactory answer. i would have loved to know. how does one find out the gender of a snake? one of life's unexplained mysteries, i guess. anyway, i'l never get close enough to find out for certain, if i can help it.

hmmm......another day gone feeling the deepest of blues.

i just realised i need this. badly.

(except the diaper bit,of course. substitute- tissues)

i read a bit out of alice in wonderland to the jaded senior citizens of grade 6. one whippersnapper made the amazing statement that when she had read it first, she found it to be the 'most boring book of her life' (which is of a vintage of some 11 years). gak! people hating the march hare? strange,strange world. strange,strange times.

oh well. she did go ahead to pay me the momentous compliment of saying i made it sound interesting.

now i can die happy. my life's purpose is served. nirvana, ho!

i finally made truce with my grumpy lil new neighbour. she is around 4, and drives a snazzy red tricycle, which makes her think she can make faces and stick out her tongue at anyone with impunity. well, i'm not a schoolmarm for nothing. i made a horrible face right back,and neighbourly relations started off on an acrimoniously wrong foot.
today we both were waiting for our respective chariots to come pick us up and convey us to our respective schools. my huge yellow bus impressed her very much, and it should,compared to her common ordinary autorickshaw. i said as much to her as well, getting no reply. probably ashamed of herself.


as for school, i miss my kids. i am getting bored in grade 6. noone here gets into life-or-death wrestling matches over interesting things like water bottles, pencil sharpeners, erasers, crayons,handkerchiefs,curious found objects and dead insects. i miss moderating fisticuffs. above all, noone here hugs me at the slightest provocation. noone gives me high-fives. noone runs after me to say special 'bye's or 'hi's.
everyone here is boringly disciplined. one the bright side,they sang a song to welcome me to their class.

shikha says my class created a mini riot the day i left. they started a shouted chant of 'not fair,not fair.....' as loud as they can, which is loud enough to break the sonic barrier, n generally ran amok, n got rowdy. on they way back, sujan and bhavya cornered me, n demanded to know when i'l go to their class to teach them next; when i promised to try to go as often as possible, n said that il miss them terribly, bhavya said, " our misses are bigger than your miss".

well.

minky's mom has cancer. terminal, unoperable.
i cannot believe it yet. she fed us umpteen times, scolded us, bugged us,as friends' mothers,(and your own) are wont to do.
now she is about to go.

orientation day tommorow.

farewells and godspeeds

more to the point, met tana after her wedding. spent a nice couple of hours exchanging insults. nothing like meeting childhood cronies to make even a chronic grouch like me feel like a million bucks.
made the most of our time together and mercilessly ragged shraddha about her 'elopement' to lonavala with jimit. how il miss them both, tana and shr, after they follow their husbands to different continents. poor jimit! he must have got quite a nasty shock when he made one of his religious-three-times-a-day phone calls to shr. instead of a bashful fiancee to talk sweet nothings to, he had to talk to to a lot of saalis.

continents apart! and to think we all once dreamed of living together in one house after we were all grown up. funny how 'old' to us meant '20' then. those in their 30s were positively ancient.

i'l never have friends like these again. one cannot be so blessed again and again.

i'l soon turn into some sort of a nocturnal beast ( B, i know, i know, u think i'm one already) if this burning-midnight-oil-thing continues much longer.
i have dark-circles to put a panda to shame.

anyway, finished 'the golem's eye' yesterday. the highpoint of my sunday. (how pathetic this is! i have no life!) nice book. i love bartimaeus's cheeky footnotes.
the last year has made me an automaton, and a grouchy one at that.
oh ha! the school wants us to pay Rs.20,000 this year if we leave Riverside, and Rs.40,000 if we leave the next. what, if any, is the logic behind this extraordinary demand, i'd like to know?
duh!!!
some enlightened being from the meteorologic department has been spreading panic announcing quite cavalierly that it'l rain like hell in the next 48 hours. rains like rajkot has never witnessed before. i wish! nice things don't happen to me these days. i could sure do with a holiday.

went to dipali's place with shikha after school to slog on the parent-orientation powerpoint presentation. himalay was overjoyed to have us on his bus, n spent the whole journey whooping, laughing loudly, putting his elbow out of the window, hanging from the handlebars, and noisily showing off generally (and getting royally scolded for his efforts).
i love this guy. i'l miss him when he moves on to the next grade.

Chulbuli

my favourite ad.
i fall down laughing everytime the frogs jump.

trinkets and trifles

i have the (ahem..) 'the runs'. (thanks to the monsoon-special-virus-infested-pani puri i ate)

Shweta and i went shopping the other day, and she has a fever to show for it.
but the silver lining is here, nevertheless. on our way back, walking to the bookshop to buy mom's magazine, we came across this vendor selling such goodies as bangles, danglers, hairpins, safety pins, hair bands, scrunchies.....all for the unbelievable price of Rs.2! needless to say,we bought half his stuff,squinting by the streetlights. i bought these really nice bangles, which-wonder of wonders- were my size for once. now that is a rarity to get the disbelievers believing.
they now have taken residence with all my other stuff in my cupboard, where they shall dwell for ever more in undisturbed peace, to a long, ripe old age.

blur

i miss summer.
unlikely as it seems, i miss the burning hot months and the riot of colour it brings with it.
i miss looking out of my school bus windows in the morning at the gulmohurs and golden showers standing sentry at the road sides. whereever i looked, was a quilt of primary colours-red, yellow and green.
now i'v gone back to my 'closed-eye' commute posture.

i do love the sight of the road wizzing past the foggy windows, though. esp. when on the way back home.

montage

i usually keep my eyes resolutely shut in the mornings while on the bus to school. this has quite a few advantages;
a) my brain gets a chance to properly wake up to face my high-energy, low-patience pupils,
b) helps fend off unsolicited conversation,
c) it saves me a lot of queasy moments.

i made an exception one day the last month and mentally kicked myself for semi-sleeping all these summer months away. the road on either side was set aflame by rows of

gulmohars bursting into riotous flame, wherever one looked.

heaven in a wildflower...

the walking song

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

- The Walking Song

J.R.R. Tolkien