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.