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.