ministry of lost causes

requests for memberships invited to:

1. committee for the encouragement of long hair on women
2. committee for the discouragement of long hair on men
3. committee for the banning of pink shirts on men
4. committee for mobilizing funds for supplying decent trousers to poor young men who can only afford low-waist jeans
5. committee for the spread of awareness regarding the decorative value of freckles
6. committee for the welfare of people who do not like to lend books. to anyone. at all. never have, never will. ever. never ever.
7. committee for the conservation of energy expended on pointless activities like bathing in winter and chewing
8. committee for the protection of endangered species like women who cannot fill-in bank slips on their own and women who are scared of snakes
9. committee for the alleviation of suffering caused by the sight of emran hashmi's face and himesh reshammiya's voice
10. committee for the exaltation and honoring of selective non-violence

issued in self-interest by;
the president-for-life cum commander-in-chief cum treasurer cum chief secretary cum public relations officer
department of daring activism
ministry of lost causes

need for steel

sir knight's armor is rusty, my lord.

iGot! iGloat!

The loot so far.

THE CHRISTMAS MYSTERY - Jostein Gardner 

I'll forgive him 'Sophie's World' if this turns out well. One and only chance, before I get seriously prejudiced, Gardner. Historical/Theological Mystery. New Genre.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE - Helen Cross 

starring 15 year old Mona, a drinker, thief and fruit-machine addict, who meets well-endowed, posh Tamsin who has an acress mother and a sister who's died of starvation. black comedy expected.

BLOODY WOMEN, IRELAND'S FEMALE KILLERS - David M. Kiely 

women murderers, my favourite yet being Kate Webster, the one who boiled the dismembered bits of her victim and tried to sell off the fat as 'the best dripping'.

PRINCE OF THE CLOUDS - Gianni Riotta

Supposedly "even more enchanting than 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'". Promises post-WW2 Sicily, a battle scene and a beautiful Russian woman.

THE FALL - Joyce Carol Oates 

My first Oates novel. Portrait of an American family in crisis, set in the mid-20th century. The plot is quite original, to say the least. Post a disastrous honeymoon night, a young woman's newly-minted husband throws himself into the Niagara. :-)

SMALL GODS - Terry Pratchett

The sight of this one among all those lurid lurve stories taught me what 'paralyzed with pleasure' means.

AH, SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE - Roald Dahl

Neither juvenile fiction, nor macabre short stories, this one is a side of the master i've yet to encounter. Here he writes of the eccentricities of rural life.

1066 AND ALL THAT - W.C.Sellar and R. J. Yeatman

The much-longed-for, never-expected-to-be-owned satire on textbook history.

UNDER THE EYE OF THE CLOCK - Christopher Nolan

The brilliant, handicapped young writer's autobiography, almost.

LONGITUDE - Dava Sobel

Beautiful, beautiful, hardback. Coincidentally, right when the kids and i are working on the 'imaginary lines' too.

GOODFELLAS - Nicholas Pileggi

A look into the career and machinations of Henry Hill, a New York mobster, turned Federal Witness, turned one of the most hunted men of our times.

TOMORROW - Graham Swift

An intimate story. A look at long-standing marriage, parenthood and the fabric of families.

THE TEENAGE WORRIER'S GUIDE TO LURVE - Ros Asquith

If this is anything like Adrian Mole, then i'm blessed to have found this, being surrounded as i am, by tiny people with hormones doing funny things to them.

MISS PURDY'S CLASS - Annie Murray

Young schoolmarm in the early 1900s in the poorest area of Birmingham, and all the troubled children she comes to know and love. Inspirational almost-chick-lit. Got a nagging feeling the Hollywood factory has already moviefied this.

OPEN - Lisa Moore

Getting compared to Annie Proulx is no mean achievement. A collection of 10 stories.

THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE - Stephen Fry/Alan Davies

If a book says 'George Washington's teeth previously belonged to a hippopotamus', i've discovered i'll buy it.
 

101 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU'RE OLD AND BORING - Richard Horne and Helen Szirtes

I guess a frog-in-the well provincial could be bettered by some armchair inspiration.

ROAD RAGE - Ruth Rendell

She, and she alone knows how to make a whodunnit moving, literate, insightful and thrilling. The best there is.
 

E IS FOR EVIDENCE - Sue Grafton

Kinsey Millhone, my favorite kick-ass sleuth, in another of her adventures. 

 

if i needed any more evidence of approaching senility, this is it. more non-fiction here than fiction.



Notice:

Amoeba, Stuts, B, Gunji;

I will NOT share. Unless, of course, you buy a few and share with me first.

Hyper-critical, Reader-on-a-Mission Sailor Man;

keep your comments to yourself.

voiceless.
silenced.

the zoo in my room

when the pest moved away for his post graduation, i rejoiced for days on end, thinking that my room would finally be my own, and that i would be freed from loud, off-key renderings of a tasteful selection of the choicest of himmesh reshammiya hits.

but in keeping with 'the best laid plans o' mice and men, gang aft a gley...' and all that jazz, my hopes were dashed against the merciless rocks of fate. little did i know that this was but the lull before the storm.

there is this thriving bee hive right under the eve of my window. the members of the colony think that my room is the most happening hot-spot in this part of town, with the hottest chick, to boot.
come evening, all of them make a bee-line (aha!) to my window and hang around buzzing to be let in. the ones who do manage to sneak in somehow, spend the rest of the night making giddy circles around the light, serenading the unresponsive beauty with buzzy ballads sung with much enthusiasm and never-ceasing effort.

the most ardent of suitors are well-versed in the casanova-style of seduction. they shun the direct 'i'll fly at you, and you fall for me' approach and try more sophisticated variations. some of the smoothest moves i've seen so far include moving in a diagonal path towards the object of adoration from the farthest corners of the room, making sure to do all sorts of impressive stunts on the way. they dip, they soar, they manfully thump their rumps against the wall, they walk backwards, they walk forwards, they fly in circles, they fly in straight lines, they lay in wait in seeming indifference and then make quick feints...all of course, with total disregard to the rightful owner of the room, trying to read her book in peace. the braves terrorize any visitors i might have, who offer interesting reactions of their own and shrieks of varying decibels and tonal qualities.   

if all this was not excitement enough, the gecko family has decided to make my room their home as well. the pater-familias (i think, though i can't be certain) keeps peeking out at me from behind the bulb and casts malevolent glances in my direction.
my traitorous mother refuses to have them swept out of the house, and has been ignoring my pleas on the grounds that they make huge dents in the insect population. i would gladly eat all the mosquitoes she can catch, if only i can be free of the specter of a yellow eye beaming malice at me.

the mother-of-mother is a kindred spirit. i suppose a supari offer is in the offing. an offer she cannot refuse.a weeks-worth of smuggled in sweets in exchange of the dirty deed.


why must such tragedies be visited upon me? my only refuge from the madding crowds invaded. tragedy of 9.99 magnitude.

horror story

my mattress is out to murder me.

one day i shall be found impaled upon a spring from my own mattress. what a way to go.

rime of the ancient merryner

woozy woozy wally hoo,
coughy coughy through and through.

all around the house i go,
wheezing sneezing as i blow.

i need a frog to croak with

a cold is an interesting affliction to develop. it gives one ample opportunities to study life's vagaries.
the progression thus far has been hugely interesting, if at a little personal cost.

day before yesterday, my voice was slightly husky. very bette davis. if i had someone to smoulder at, i'd have made a very convincing vamp, if one were able to ignore the runny eyes.
then yesterday, it got a little heavier. more rani mukherjee. still, not too bad, i consoled myself.

now here i am, ready to play the star part in the 'princess and the frog' remake.


not everyone is sad though. in fact, except my own miserable self, i don't see anyone upset about this domestic tragedy.
the representatives of two previous generations who share my dwelling with me are almost apoplectic with glee. short of rubbing their hands together and doing a jig, they are displaying every sign of utmost happiness. in the name of medicine, the geneva code is being violated randomly and 'we are older so we know better' is being thrown at me at every waking moment.
in these past hours, i've drowned various monstrosities, out of which the omelet from hell takes the cake. it had strange green bits in it and refused to let itself be swallowed. i made the fatal error of pointing out the lack of salt and pepper in it, and now am faced with a bowl of pepper powder drowned in honey.


even the announcement that i shall pay them back when they are senile and at my mercy has no effect.

if i live to tell the tale, i shall tell some very horrid tales indeed.

unsolved mystery: number 6

why do doors, seemingly-innocent by daytime, creak at night?

by night, my room door, the bathroom door, the fridge door, all assume characters out of the ramsay brothers flicks of yore and engage in indiscriminate groaning and ghoulish creaking. this mysteriously stops the moment it starts looking like dawn.

what? am i being haunted by the door-hinge ghost?

important new learning

"may i look at your hair?"
plait unplaited.
"have you ever had any chemical treatments done before?"
"no"
"ok. so you are virginal then."


!!!

never knew he could tell only from the hair.

modest self-examination of the day

i have guts!
i impress myself.

on clocks and inspiration

the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless ones. take diamonds, for example or rainbows.

by the same count, if the measure of true beauty is utter and total uselessness, then i have something that should be a joy forever. the lovely clock that i won as a giveaway on all the purchases i made at the annual scholastic book fair at school is refusing to either tick or toc. it has a second-hand that is refreshingly original - it moves anti-clockwise. its other two hands are truly worthy of greeting a teacher's bleary morning-eye. they move at a sedate and dignified pace in any direction they like.

all this is hugely inspiring.
every morning, in the midst of the daily race against time, made more exciting these days after the arrival of The Clock With an Attitude, i find lots of inspiration. yesterday i got inspired to be radical and swim against the tide, and today the inspiration to be sedate and dignified dawned on me. for tomorrow, i am already inspired to fill every minute with sixty seconds of distance run.

totally plebian people like my mom fail to grasp the import of the revolution taking place in my room every morning right before my bus is about to arrive. if gobbling an egg, downing a mug of milk, combing a lot of hair and wearing glasses in five mintues is not proof of my increased state of enlightenment, what is?

the beauties in my stable

 

rushing down the stairs, i am met by a little salesman in company of a littler salesman, with a shared load of balloons, plastic toys and whistles.

both of them had abandoned their wares and were busy trying not to fall off from all the tip-toeing needed to ring the bell of the downstairs flat.

ever a sucker for wind-up toys and plastic vehicles, i spot these minuscule beauties among their stuff. it took a little persuasion to get the little salesmen to abandon the bell-ringing for some cut-throat commerce.


whatever they were expecting, it cannot have been a customer. after regarding me silently for a while, the elder businessman decided to clarify matters.
"you want this bike?"
"yes."
"you want to buy this?"
"yes, please. may i?"
"you want to give us money for this?"
"yes."
"and then you want to take the bike?"
"yes."

this was greeted in some silence. then, to the littler partner. "what should we take from her, fifteen rupees or ten rupees?"
"ten" came the decisive solution to the problem.


the exchange of the note was done in solemnity. both of them immediately lost all interest in me, and turned back to their previous occupation of trying to ring the doorbell stubbornly out of reach, and i was left to pick any one that i liked.

on my way back, there they were still.
i offered to buy one more bike.


"you want another one?"
"yes."

glances were exchanged.

the littler one this time;


"you want to give back the red one and take a green one?"
"no. i want to buy one more. a green one this time."

"you want to give us ten more rupees and take another one?"
"yes."

after the mandatory silent examination, they took the money and then ran up and down the stairs whooping, only stopping for a while to grab the apples that i offered.


and that is how the Red Bike and the Green Bike came to dwell on my bookshelf.


i wonder what the parents might have said to the enterprising salesmen on their return home. i keep thinking how kids as little as these two got sent out. i spend time exercising my considerable imagination on dire possibilities - a mother ill at home? i am wracked by guilt. i ought to have paid more.

poster art

while hunting for old propaganda posters, i came across these lovely vintage travel posters.


great use of colour on the hawaii poster. the new york one is pure sophistication. i like the smart persuasion of the delta air poster for atlanta.





totally beautiful. would look great on a wall. not so great as a poster, though. what are people to think?

lovely colour and juxtaposition. an eye-catcher. these games went on to be called the 'austerity games', a nod to the privations and rationing of the post-war years.

a commercial poster. lovely use of colour and an unusual perspective. the work of an artist. the foot sticking out is a nice touch.

ww-2 propaganda poster focusing on the anglo-american alliance. rather direct, with hitler and goebbels lurking with evil intentions in the background - diminished figures compared to the robust allies on the foreground.

che always makes for great graphics. such an iconic picture. what a charismatic man. what could he have been thinking of, to have prompted that far off gaze? certainly not being emblazzoned on t-shirts and coffee mugs, at any rate.

mis(s) amores

the paper heartlessly informs me that george clooney visited Sudan on a peace mission.
someone inform mr.clooney that Sudan is not the only place on the face of the earth with any noticeable lack of peace. he can look a little more eastwards. to be precise, right here. i lack peace right now. i can do with a visit from clooney.

why must all my love stories be so hopelessly one-sided?
a careful and objective look at my life so far tells me something fearful - it is a long saga of impossible romantic tangles. kindergarten playground up to a few weeks ago. either they love me and i don't or i love them and they don't. no double-coincidence of wants, here. salman khan (loving whom was tricky country, because a bosom buddy loved him too) and ricky martin (who i famously wrote a love poem to, and vowed to marry and who even more famously turned out to be gay) and now, clooney (who so cavalierly ignores my existance) cases in point.

the only love i have had satisfactorily returned is of the little worm-toothed bus parther, who faithfully keeps a seat for me, and everyday shares his biscuits with me.

 

small vehicles of joy. 

a little death

iBuy and then iThink

one should not covet a book by its cover, but one does.
i am such a sucker for catchy design and colour.

the Hachette editions of Alexander Mc.call Smith's Mma. Ramotswe books have such excellent woodcut-style cover art by Hannah Firmin, that i cannot help going into a trance imagining them on my bookshelf and wake up to find that i have bought them.
not that i'm complaining.

the gentle rhythm of the narrative and the contemplative pace of the stories bring to mind vacations spent lying stomach-down, reading and eating, to the accompaniment of the rain pattering down outside. Dusty Botswana of the sleepy, sweet-smelling cattle is a far cry from the robust lushness of my Malabar Coast, but the abundance of good food - the produce fresh from the garden - the chickens picking away in yards, the possibility of pausing whatever one is doing to just 'sit and talk'...all of that is the same.

  

 




sadly, leisure is such a lost art nowadays.
noone seems to know what to do without a computer or a cell-phone or a television to amuse oneself. why are all the realms that one could cross, in the snugness of one's thoughts so out of bounds for so many now?

i had once asked my students to think of a few things they could do to amuse themselves on a dark rainy evening, with the electricity cut off. they just could not! except for scaring people in the dark, and for telling scary stories to each other by torchlight, that is.

i wonder if we have taken away something vital from our children. the connection to the soil they stand upon, and that which has made all of us.

on pe(e)a brains

important scientific discovery of the day -

i'v just discovered the missing link.
he owns a paunch, wears glasses and has a brain the size of a smallish pea.

someone pay me a lot of money, fast.
i will gladly and expertly stuff him and even throw in the glass display case for nothing.

figuratively speaking

from the Personification exercise today-

"the softboard shivered in fright on seeing the pin." and "the tooth struggled to hang on to the gum."

such gems.
after i had spent the requisite amount of time moaning, i realised i ought to be heartily glad none of them mentioned poop, pee or any other staple of that most enduring of all school-favourites - The Toilet Jokes.

the bane inane

WHY do people ask certain questions?

what is it that drives people to inquire solicitously of you when you drip your way inside from the pelting rain oh, you got wet? is it raining? when you are too damp all over to clarify not at all. just felt like practicing the butterfly stroke.

or are you having lunch? when you have your mouth too stuffed to reply not really. just licking it before i spit it out.

or are you reading? when you have your eyeballs stuck to a page, and are dying to say, no,no,no. gasp! no. never. just trying to think of ways to use this to scare away stalkers.



i am going to cultivate a ruthless expression. one that shouts i-hate-questions-especially-the-inane-variety. i have already mastered the half grimace. only the nose-hair is left.

the fourth fairy

B's day to be glowing bride. a more matter-of-fact and cheerfully optimistic bride i've yet to see.


i tried out the new tooth. not half bad.

blood and gore

the receipt for B's wedding gift lists 'one neckless' bought and paid for, and our DTH service proclaims 'the service may be temporarily unavailable due to a mechanical or weather condition at your end'.
my end? which one? the one that is struggling with helpless incomprehension or the one that is painted black at the tips? someone educate me.

no quick-fix

cracks never fully mend, i find. grime has a way of finding itself into the most carefully held-together spaces and lodges there. being whole again is just an illusion; shattered easily at sudden moments.

dental agony

there are times when i really wish i were a damsel in some exotic tribe that required women to cover the lower halves of their faces -or else!- even when they ate tricky things like spaghetti. i live in fear of mirrors, spoons and other shiny surfaces. my life has changed. i shall smile with innocent abandon no more. i take recourse in modest smiles and quivers-of-lip-ends. i am the next mona lisa.

my broken front tooth was to me what his moustache was to poirot, buffaloes to laloo, mummies to ancient egyptians and rats to cats. too dear to part with, serious claim to fame, glamor quotient and source of pride and glory.

it had served me well. on childhood playgrounds, one carefully administered bite with the nicely pointed edge had rendered helpless many a worthy -if villainous- opponent prostrate with fear and pain. on growing up to be a flower of young indian womanhood, it added charm (if friends and admirers are to be believed - and i choose to believe. i am a believer) to my already charming smile, paralyzing many an admirer (or so i am told. reasons for the paralysis to be discussed later) with admiration (or so i am told. again.)

now it is gone.

the small man with the wicked looking tools with support from my traitorous mother took advantage of my helpless fascination with the gleaming thing descending towards my agape mouth and stuck on the rest. half-toothed no more.

now i am like the rest of the mortals that walk this earth.

the right to education is finally a fundamental right. so long delayed.

green and gold

it would be good to be a blade of grass. to look up at sunlit trees. to take root and stay and never move house.

mobius

objective detachment; carefully held wisps of dreams. both absolute when they come. both unbidden. twisted, separate, yet the same. too many differently shaped bits. some fit together so well. yet the ones that get left out form pictures too. fragmented ones, near-complete except for the few missing bits. loop going into loop going into loop.

nothing and everything makes sense. depends from where i look inside.

people are only people afterall.

a very hungry -or blind- gecko

the fever is doing funny things to me.
my hands and feet feel too far away to be of any use and my head feels like a ton of bricks. the throat feels as if mean little monsters with a particular grouse against me are scraping away at the inside with broken nails. i sneeze with such violence that i am blinded and disoriented for seconds afterward.

to redeem the day, one funny thing happened. funny for me, that is.
a gecko bit mom.

now geckos don't, as a rule, bite. this was one gecko that did not know the golden rule. mom feels something funny on her big toe and looks down to see this gecko repeatedly biting into it with much vim and vigor. when she awoke sufficiently from her shocked silence, she let out a yelp, which the attacker mistook for a war-cry, and promptly took evasive action. she is now excusing away her total cowardice by saying that the poor gecko probably mistook her toe for lunch.

walking on petals strewn on the ground - just another day at work

24 happy little people rushing out of the class to shout hello and give hi-fives is no ordinary welcome. it is a good thing that teachers of little people and mothers have arms like the law - very long. long enough gladly, to expand to hug very many little people at the same time, while simultaneously rapping a few on the head.

i walk over nicely wilted flower petals to the door.

i'm instructed to close my eyes and get pushed into the classroom by encouraging hands. on getting permission, i open my eyes into a bouquet staring me in the eye and welcome back on all the writing surfaces. everyone has been hard at work.

they must be indeed glad to see me back. they volunteered the supreme sacrifice of foregoing 5 minutes of their much-awaited sports class to complete an essay.

royal welcome, or what.

if home is where the heart is, then this is home. i am home and i am happy.

many thousand words

the colors are marvelous - at a small temple some 4km from Kurunagela.




the benign Buddha on the Elephant Stone at Athugalpura.




Paws the six toed cat.

coming home

“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang


i am home. and it is sweet, i suddenly realize. after spending some time saying hello to the walls in the traditional manner - the traditional manner being hugging them and chanting "i missed you, i missed you", i move to my room. i open the window and all my friendly neighborhood honeybees swarm in to say buzzy hellos.

i am so happy that for a while i forget that my left eye looks like a fierce tomato and feels like hell. mom insists that i'v been laid low by the evil eye. sounds very exotic and mysterious and all that, but a bit hard to believe. who would put a hex on my eye?
and anyway, i cannot understand all the attention paid to eyes. they are such small things. why would anyone notice them? i just dont get the 'windows to the soul' logic at all. i try to look alert and flattered when nice things are said about mine, but i just dont understand the logic. i prefer to look at bigger, more noticeable things. like feet. mostly feet. something freudian, i'm sure.