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...